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Thanks, that is very helpful to know.   Nice work!

Thanks for your thoughts.

I only have two questions....

Approximately when did you do it (year is close enough)?

Did the rankings of Domain B go up?

Any other information that you care to share will be appreciated.

Thank you!

OK... "It all pays the same".

Good luck.  I hope you do well.

I wouldn't do this.

It could muck up your search rankings.

Just do things properly.

Oh... maybe they should be slapped for dupe content ?  

Good info on this subject and more on SearchEngineRoundTable today...

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-faq-on-http-to-https-migration-21568.html

If they are nofollow, that eliminates the problem.

The ones that I looked at were...  (1) keyword rich (2) site-wide (3) do-follow and (4) in the footer.   Each of those 4 items are listed in Google's "Link Schemes" document that I linked to above.

From the recently updated Google Quality Guidelines.....  section on Link schemes.

• "Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites"

In reference to these.

If this was my site, I would look at analytics to see if any of the old posts are bringing in traffic, then ask your current blogger if he/she sees topics that will be useful and that he/she is excited to write about, then improve those pages without changing URL.

After that is done, if this was my site, I would 301 redirect the pages that will be deleted to the homepage of the blog.

I believe that these "domain mentions" are valuable.

I believe that some manufacturers benefit from them enormously.  Let's say that I manufacture the Egol Widget and wholesale them to lots of other websites.  When those websites publish pages selling the Egol Widget, google sees my product and my brand being mentioned on lots of retail and review sites in my industry.  I think that is a powerful signal to Google that there is a lot of interest in my business and its products.  I think that these domain mentions cause my content to perform better in the search results.

This is all opinion.  Just sayin'.   Maybe someone else agrees.

Taking websites offline, redirecting multiple times, can damage the value of a business.

They are actions that must be carefully considered, developed into a plan, and then played in the proper sequence.   Doing this properly requires a lot of detailed study to maximize value of the assets.

For that reason, I can't give you a detailed procedure for doing this.  It is different with every website.  When I have done this type of work, I develop a plan and then get feedback or confirmation from other smart people.    It's not the type of work that is done on generic methods or quick answers from a Q&A post.

Is this sneaky or not?

   It's dumb... and kinda sneaky.

Dumb, because they would have been smarter to point the links to their main website, instead of using an intermediate website.

It's dumb because they waste money on domain registration and hosting.

It's dumb because there is a loss of power in the redirect.

It's dumb because Google doesn't like links on press release sites or any kind of site where you pay for a page that has pagerank-passing links on it.

So, its dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.. and kinda sneaky.

Thanks for the info.  If I look to the southeast from my home or my office the first major ridge of the Appalachians rises out of the Earth and occupies a spectacular 180 degrees of my view.  If I cross a few of those ridges to the south the way people talk changes and words seldom heard elsewhere are common in the spoken language.  I worked in that area for about twenty years and loved the words, the cadence and the tone that most people used.

Glom ??  A word, I used to hear in a previous life.

Now, maybe I understand the name "Highland" ?

From what I know glom is a word from the Scots dialect, used here in the states by people in parts of New England and the Appalachians.

My 301 redirects will be in place when I am at my funeral.  My business succession plan instructs those who remain to protect them.

I would not be in a hurry when taking over another domain.  There are many options that include running the site, rel=canonical, and many ways to do the 301 redirect.   It's not a good idea to redirect and then change to a new redirect.

Depending upon the domain you took over and the domain that you own, the right plan can make you a tremendous amount of money.  The wrong one can cost you money that you never knew about.   If this domain is worth very much, I would invest in a detailed analysis from an experienced person.

Even the tiny businesses that I run have a diversity of clients and types of clients.   Far too many to summarize well in one short video.   I believe that the message should be customized different types of clients.

If I was making videos they would be one click below the homepage.  There I would post very short videos that simply present the product range, the value propositions that we offer our clients, and the support that we provide to help clients be successful.  What we do for YOU.

Each business service or major product category would have one of these videos.

Instead of showing the CEO's face in these videos, I think it would be better to feature the staff members who will do the actual work and interface with the clients.  Show staff in the work areas and offices where client work is accomplished.  The goal is to show the experts who offer their skills and services and the assets that we have to accomplish the work.

How long?   Two or three minutes.

I think it would be better to cover a limited range of information.  That way the video is relevant to the listener's interests and not go into services that are not what the visitor has clicked into.

"typical" home page "Explainer" video that tells about a company.

I'd rather see explainer videos about products and services.  Information that I want and need.

An explainer video "about a company".... sounds kinda sleepy.... I go to Wikipedia for that type of info because C-level company people are going to be thumpin' their chests and I'd rather read just the facts, presented with lots of subheadings so I can jump over what I don't need to know.

Yanking a couple of articles that make up a tiny amount of your traffic should not be a problem unless those articles have a lot of links or other off-site assets or unless those 0.51% of visitors do a lot of buying.

If you are worried about this, have someone write same-topic replacement content and toss it up on the same URL

I bought a domain that had about 25% infringed articles.  I took them down right away and tossed up replacement content and the rankings held.

This is Q&A, not a signpost for articles.

It looks pretty interesting.  Why don't you write it up and submit it to YouMoz.

do you think this would have much impact for SEO?

Five years ago, my answer would have been a definite YES!   That is when the flow of PageRank through your site meant a lot.  Each link that you removed would cause more PageRank to flow through the links that remain.

Today, Google has not said that PageRank is less important (that I have heard or read) but I am betting that it is a lot less important.  I believe that it is being replaced by the authority of your domain, the engagement level of your visitors, and those "machine learning" factors that Google connected to their most recent changes.

But, every little bit of strength that you can get into your moneymaking pages is important, and for that reason, I would get rid of as many nonessential links in your template as possible.

Lots of people and SEO guides say that you should not have over 100 links on a page.

You can hear about the history of this straight from Matt Cutts in the video on this page.

The Google guidance for today is to "keep it reasonable" but they can crawl and count a lot more than 100.... and often pages with 300... 400... links are fine as long as your links are not spammy.

When I look at the footer of your page... If this was my site, I would simplify it.  I would have one link to "Help".... one to "Services".... one to "Manutan Group".

But, before deciding exactly what to do, I would run crazyegg or a simliar service on some pages and see if anybody is clicking on the links in the footer to find out what links might be important to visitors.  Some links like, terms & conditions, privacy, cookie policy, should always be there but a lot of others can all be addressed on one deep page.

I would also replace the dropdown to Manutan Family and replace it with one link to an "international sites" page where lots of information and links to country sites is provided.

That's what I would do, but I would not be surprised if manager level people didn't like me cutting back on the Manutan links.

This Thursday... just four days away?

You are starting very late for sticking $10,000 on the line.

I would use FedEx rather than the Internet.  Your target audience is dozens of people and for $1500 you could FexEx them on Monday a golden invitation and a lottery ticket.

I just read Ryan's article a second time and reflected on my beliefs as described above.

They looked at "related search" to see if there were topics that would beef up their articles.  It is possible that adding information about topics made their article more relevant to Google because it "covered topics that people are asking about".  I wonder if the "hernia" and "gall stones" articles had that type of improvement.  That could explain the jump in rankings because of a sudden increase in the relevance of the article to the query.

I've always belived that "a diversity of important query words" is key to rankings.  Ryan's study points to where the important query words are recommended by Google.  I really like how he did this and plan to look at it when I revise old articles or write new articles.

I have always believed that a "media beyond text" is important.  My thinking was that photo, video, tabluar data was where to get this.  However, his "Q & A" and callouts with "prevalence information" might have the same effect because they give the reader "something special" to consider while reading the article.  It is possible that the article already has such information embedded within it, but calling it out with a diverse format could be "refreshing change" or "more interesting" for the reader.

I think that his article was one of the most important articles that has been on the Moz Blog.  Reading it a second time has probably been one of the best investments of my time in the past year.   Thank you Ryan.

If you have a service that is based upon people "carrying a device into your office" then you need to be looking at local search to cultivate that business.  Your publishing would be a separate activity and it could earn income from ads, affiliate programs, direct sales, and you could attract some consulting services done by skype or other media.

The 0.01 percent number is based upon a single piece of content.  However, lets say you have a website that regularly publishes high quality articles that are extremely helpful, entertaining or valuable in some way you can attract a following of subscribers.  Here the bundle of what you are offering is in the 0.01 percent, even though individual posts are in the top 10%.

Slowly that website and its subscribers can become valuable and grow to thousands of people.  Each time you publish they will flock to your site to see your new content. That is an opportunity for you to show them ads, offer a product, offer a service.  Lots of people have built highly successful business this way.  For this to work you gotta know your stuff and your stuff must be something that has recurrent appeal to large numbers of people who are excited about the topic that you publish.

Based upon your writing and the thoughts behind it, I think that you have potential - although your paragraphs are way too long

I don't believe in "magic numbers" and I don't believe that "walls of text" have any magic either.

I do believe that Google enjoys substantive content, that is understandably written, addresses a diversity of important query words for its topic, engages visitors, includes media beyond text, and is on a website that is in good technical health.  The most important part of that is "engaging visitors" and that is a broad term that can include many on-site and off-site actions.  Don't underestimate the value of great media, probably more valuable than the text but without the text it's impotent.

I know a common advise is that you should create a site with such amazing content that everyone talks about you and mentions/links to you without you even to need to do any link building. But in my opinion (I could be wrong), but I feel that this probably happens to less than 0.01 percent of websites.

I agree with every word.  You "get it".   There are only ten positions on the first page of Google and if you are not able to earn one of them for many keywords in your niche, your business is probably going to fail.

If you must rely on a linkbuilder then you will be spending big money to catch up with the people who have been working hard for the past ten years.  If you have crap content today, meaning if you have one of those 99.99 percent of sites that can't make it on their content, then you will be paying a linkbuilder for five years and the amount of work that the linkbuilder will have to do will accelerate over time - because your competitor is adding awesome good content every day.

Some people don't "get" this.  They think that they can toss up crap content and a linkbuilder will make it rank.  Those days are gone.  Today you must please the visitor and produce a website that will attract them because something is there.  If you rely on a linkbuilder to deliver visitors to crap content the visitors will arrive, look around and say WTF?  and leave.  With that Google will realize that your site is crap and demote you.

The days of fooling google with linkbuilding are gone.  The people who try that are eaten by Penguins.  The days of fooling google with crap content are gone.  People who try that are eaten by Pandas.   You are now in The Age of Real Websites.

Can this be done without money?   Maybe, if you can produce the content that is needed.  As you know, only 0.01 percent can make that happen.  If you are one of those and have the money, spend it on a technical SEO to be sure that your website is functioning properly and working efficiently to deliver pages fast, mobile-friendly, not producing duplicates, etc.

I'll be honest.  I do not build links.  Have not done it in many years.

All of my retail sites have lots of content that engages people and gets spread without the need for linkbuilding, hiring SEOs or any kind of marketers.

If I owned a forum, I would make sure that it is optimized properly, occasionally trim thin posts that bring in no traffic from search, contribute vigorously to threads that are about evergreen content topics.

"hey, check out this cool discussion about this totally niche area of government regulation!"  So, by "good content," it can be super in-depth, opinionated, fact-filled and authored by folks who know what they're talking about. Does that qualify as good enough material for a reputable link builder to work with?

In my opinion, your content might be good enough that it does not need a linkbuilder.

Don't underestimate old geezers.  Many of them are more websavvy than you think.  Your visitors sound like influencers to me.  And they are not that old.  If they are about 50 years old then I was in college when they were born!

You are right.  My answer was based mainly on "article content".

Forums would be very different.  They might promote well on social media sites.  This would be paying for advertising rather than paying a linkbuilder.

You might also see what you can do that will inspire members to invite their friends.

For search, you might edit some of the thread titles so that they better align with relevant search query volume.  Also, category pages with title tags that target a keyword and a few word to provoke, entice, elicit, inspire, seduce, etc the click.

The first step is to create content that is so good that people who see it will link to it spontaneously.  If you have that it will accumulate links on its own.  if you have that a linkbuilder has the proper target for links and he/she can then be successful.

If you don't have the proper content, then nobody will want to link to your content.  If you don't have the proper content then  you need a magician instead of a linkbuilder.  Crap content is one of the most common reasons that linkbuilders fail.

Another common reason why linkbuilders fail is that they accept the job of a magician instead of having the cojones to tell client that his content sucks.

- Finding one whose methods/links achieved won't later destroy the domain?

If you are hiring a "magician" or a "linkbuilder with no cojones", then you just hired one who will be using methods that will destroy your domain.

So, to answer your basic question...  You avoid hiring bad linkbuilders by creating content that people will link to spontaneously.  This can be done, but most website owners don't have the skill to produce it or they don't have the cojones to be honest with themselves that their content isn't very good.  A few website owners can pull it off and a few are smart enough to get professional content help (from a quality author, of course).

Thanks!    That's mighty nice.  Makes perfect sense.

Thank you!

If I have a limited supply of an item, I raise prices so that I make a maximum amount from the stock on hand.   I do the same if I am selling a service that is billed by the hour or by the job and I need to limit its availability.  I allow the customer to decide if they want what I have at the price I want to receive.

If I have other products that are close to what I am short on, I will remove the short supply product from the category page competition.  That will allow people on my site to see comparable products, but anyone who is searching for that product by name might still find my item in search.   For that reason, I would allow one or two links to those pages on the site, but not give that item a "noindex".

The above are pricing plays.

For SEO plays, limiting the number of links that enter the pages that are in limited supply will allow pagerank that originally went into them to flow to other pages.   This was very effective ten years ago when pagerank flow was important.  Today there are a lot of other items in the algo and on-site connectivity to a page is not as important.  However, cutting down the internal links into a page still might be slightly valuable.

Good question.  That is a very important thing to do right.  I use this before my tag.

Both would be nice.  

But the one that I use the most at other forums is questions answered.  It allows me to appreciate the wisdom of people who I trust.

Being able to view questions posted by a person is valuable too.  Some members will post the same question again and again.  Sometimes the need to hear the same answer multiple times from different people.  Sometimes their questions will be attempts to manipulate and if we look back we see that it is a pattern.

Thanks for asking.

Some people place all of their 301 in the root .htaccess folder.   I think that is a bad idea.

Mine are in subfolders, as deep within them as possible.  I believe that reduces work on the server.

My 301s will still be up when I attend my own funeral.

I am old enough that the web will still exist, but for you maybe not.

I need to add an item to my business succession plan about 301s.  Thanks for the reminder.

**this didn't really answer my question about OSE.  I'm curious about how sophisticated the tool is.  Does it take into consideration reciprocal links for example?  **

A lot of people worship the numbers out of OSE.  I do not.

I don't use them for any decisions, although if I hear that a site is 25, I think that it is probably a lightweight.

I beleve that almost everyone who uses it sees  lightweights ranking above heavyweights on a regular basis.  In fact, one of the most common posts in Q&A is something like this.. ... "Wah! my site has a DA of 32 and a spammer with a DA of 26 is beating it.  I am getting screwed by Google."  These posters have high levels of consternation and distress.

So, it is a service that a lot of people are using to "bet their fortunes" but it is not accurate at what people perceive as its primary job at worst, or is widely missunderstood at best.

That's my honest opinion.

The little box you talking about.

Make a small table or div and float it to left.

When you say duplicate menu at the bottom, do you mean main menu or sidebar menu.

You can do either.  Anything you want.

It dosen't have any backlinks but I'm stumped as to why it isn't ranking higher than what it is, I'm not expecting 1st position but outside of the top 50 is something else.

No backlinks and a recent domain registration date are big answers to your question.  This isn't an especially difficult SERP, but a person can't walk right in and expect to displace sites that were on the web and working to gain visibility ten, even twenty years before your first upload.  That's the situation when you arrive late to the battle.

Just as a comparison.  If I upload an article on a twenty-year old domain with a DA of about 78 and a keyword of similar difficulty, that article might not rank in the top 100 for months, and might not rise to the first page for a year or more.  The people on the first page for your keyword are making money and will fight to hold it.

If you are slapped with a Panda problem, you better either be pruning or noindexing.  I really don't care to disagree with the advice given by some prominent Googlers, but if you got the poison on your site I think that you are better off pruning than allowing it to be consumed by their crawlers a thousand times every month.

I think that PatrickDelehanty is one of the best persons to read.  I read every post of his that I see, and I read some of them twice.  If you look at Don's spreadsheet you will see that Patrick has the highest endorsement ratio.  He is earning lots of Moz points lately because he has lots of good ideas and is generous with them.

I'd like to know if there is a link that I can click and see all recent posts by a certain person.   I would like to have an easy way to read all of Patrick's posts.  And I would read MoosaHemani's posts because his ideas are simple and practical, and AlanBleiweiss because he makes me think twice, and MarieHaynes because I think that she understands Google.  There are lots of people who I read one of their posts and would like to read more.  Just tossing a few out here that come right to mind.

The hard bit is that nobody on mobile devices are using sidebar and that means people visit one page and leave without exploring any additional resources.

Go to a few of your pages and find opportunities to link to your own content.

• As the hypertext that wikipedia overuses in some people's opinion.
• In little boxes that float to the left side of your mobile pages (use images and text that elicit clicks)
• As a large menu of related articles at the bottom of your page (look at the provocative images presented in the Outbrain, Taboola, and similar widgets - you don't have to be nasty or naughty like some of them - there are many other ways to earn a click)
• in a search box at the bottom of your article and invite readers to use it
• you don't need a sidebar to entice people to visit another page... just show them what you have that is relevant, what is popular, what is new, what is outrageous - depending upon your audience.
• duplicate your menu at bottom of the page

my site gets pushed back for lower difficulty, higher volume keywords, which literally pisses me off.

We often focus too much on competitive metrics and not enough about the presentation that we are making to our visitors.  Many search professionals believe that google is looking at the behavior of visitors, how long they stay, how far they scroll, the number who click in, do they bookmark, do they share your site with friends... and more important... Are They Asking for You By Name in navigational and domain queries?

This is much of the "machine learning" that Google has patented and what they say they are using in some of their new algorithms.  I've believe that this has been important for a long time and was willing to stick my neck out  about it and bet my ranch a long time ago.

lower difficulty, higher volume keywords

The numbers you are looking at are not based upon what visitors think of your site and how they  behave, they are based upon completely different things.  I don't think that Moz or others who publish keyword difficulty estimations have very good abilities for determining how visitors behave.  Google is the one who has that data, both from the SERPs and from Chrome, and from the engagement platforms like bookmarks and + and other things that they either control or can count.

Keyword difficulty is a brute force metric.   Visitor satisfaction is much more discerning and very hard to measure.

which literally pisses me off.

How do your visitors feel when they try to use your website?   Compare your site to the sites at the top of the SERPs.  Do they have better content?  Do they give a better visitor experience?  Do they have a broader menu?  Is their design better for navigation, comfort of reading, scanning, sharing, and all of the things that people want to do on a website.  How do visitors feel when they click in.

Lots of people believe that it is really easy to earn good metrics.  Really easy.  But it is harder than Hell to please your visitor.  How are you doing there?   Take a look at be honest.

I don't worry about "ranking them".  I worry about creating a fantastic article that people will share.  I try to make it the best on the web for its topic.  I don't promote these articles, I just display them on my site and they slowly get shared, tweeted, linked to... and that is what powers my sites.

I forget about metrics, and worry about making a good website.

why aren't these sites doing these kinds of articles?

Maybe because most managers think that they are "expenses" instead of viewing them as "advertising" or "customer support investments".

I guess their domain authority means they don't have to

Maybe, but when (if) they figure it out and start doing it in a big way, their competitors are going to feel it.

If I wanted to improve the traffic into these kinds of pages, I would be writing articles with lots of good photos that give ideas for how to use these products.  For me, articles get my site into the difficult short tail rankings, pull in lots of traffic, help my product pages rank better, and some of the traffic that enters them goes to product or category pages that convert the customer.  That's what I do, it takes lots of work that some managers might not consider to be "retail".

I am not surprised that this page ranks for a lot of different keywords because there is a tremendous diversity of search for boxes, drawers, baskets, etc.   SEMrush reports that it ranks in the top 100 for about 1100 keywords.  Going down 100 queries deep is a bit excessive but if you compare Page A to Page B it can be a good relative metric.

There are lots of pages on the web that appear in the top 100 for several thousand keywords.  These tend to be long-content pages that blend a lot of different topics.

If you have your retail category pages set to show 10 items at a time that will rank for a certain number of keywords.  However, if you change that to 30 or 50 items at a time the number of keywords will go up dramatically if there is a lot of word diversity in your product names.  So, I am all about showing a LOT of items on a page.  I like that as a shopper but I like it even better as an website owner.