Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi all

Our domian authority has increased from 39 to 42 last week. We have been improving our metadata and removing bad backlinks recently.

Is there any other reason or updates last week that would have resulted in this increase?

Thanks
Gavin

Thanks for the advice Pixel by Pixel. Sounds good to me!

We have been generating decent online press coverage with links to our site thanks to our PR agency and I have been asked to link to the online coverage from our website in a 'press coverage' section.

My question is would google consider links from our site to the online press coverage as reciprocal links?

Thanks
Gavin

Thanks Paddy

I guess my next question is; does a pay wall stop google from crawling a site? Does anyone know?

Thanks
Gavin

Hi bjs2010

If it was just the 904 error alone I wouldn't be too interested. However it came at the same time as a rankings drop. This also was the second week in a row that I had received the Crawl error 904.

Would be good to know if others got the crawl error notification though? Is there any way to know when SEO.Moz do their crawl as it could be when our server is running some back ups.

Thanks
Gavin

Hi all

Our PR agency has obtained a few inbound links from the UK's Times website. This is a great website with a very high DA, however they have a pay wall.

My question is does the paywall counteract the efficacy of the links into our site?

It would be good to know because if they aren't having the desired effect on rankings then I'll ask our PR agency to focus their efforts on other national newsapers.

Thanks
Gavin

If only! We host the website internally and the IT dept who look after the server say there are no issues with the server or network configuration.

The 904 error is on both our sites which are both located on the same server.

The best solution would be to outsource the hosting.

Cheers
Gavin

Thanks Martijn

The drop in rankings is quite significant and comes at the same time as the crawl errors in my reports.

I have 2 websites on the same server and both weekly reports show '904 Response from Server Timed out Without Completing Page Request' and both sites have shown a drop in rankings.

Thanks for your response.

Gavin

Hi all,

I have experienced a drop of 11 places for our main keyword since our last Moz rankings report which means page 2 to page 3.

I have also received an error 904 in my weekly crawl report two weeks in a row and think this may be the reason for the drop. Could this result in a drop of 11 places?

Last week I also tweeked the H1 tags on my main landing pages, nothing major just a reordering of the words. Could this result in such a major drop?

Final question is does anyone know of any major algorithm update last week that could have affected rankings so drastically?

Thanks all
Gavin

Thanks David

I havent used the open site explorer. I will give use it now though as I suspect we have many spammy links on websites we have had no contact with. Thanks for the advice.

Gavin

Hi Tim

I submitted one disavow doc last year during the time we were trying to remove a google penalty. It was removed after the removal of links and the submission of the disavow doc. However I think there are many more spammy links out there so your right another disavow doc would probably be best.

Does Google look unfavourably on too many disavow submissions?

Thanks
Gavin

Hi all

IN Jan of this year our company re-branded and in doing so we changed the domain of our website. So as to transfer the domain authority from the old site to the new we implemented a global 301 from the old domain. So far our old domain still ranks as 41 but new domain as 38.

Unfortunately due to old SEO agencies black hat activities we received a Google penalty on the old domain. We managed to remove the penalty after removing as many spammy links as possible and we also submitted a disvow notice for links we couldn't remove.

My question is, is the new domain being harmed by the global 301 from the old domain? And if I remove the 301 from the old domain and let the new site stand on its own could i be faced with rankings disaster?

All thoughts welcome!

Thanks
Gavin

Thanks both

Just been reading about the nature of the update and bit surprised our rankings have fallen based on the panda update. I'm thinking it may have more to do with the pay day loans update as we still have some spammy links floating about from a few years ago which I can't remove.

Thanks
Gavin

Hi All

I have experienced quite a significant rankings drop since week commencing 19 May.

I have heard there has been a Panda roll out recently was it around that time?

Thanks

Gavin

OK, thanks Dean. I'll update the sitemap and look into rectifying the errors identified by screamingfrog.

Thanks for your assistance!

I was waiting for the next crawl as I thought the 4xx would be removed from the crawl diagnostics, however I received a new crawl report today and they are still listed in the report.
I think the simplest way to remove the 4xx would be to create 301s for the URLs. Would you agree?

Hi 
I have quite a lot of 4xx errors on our site. The 4xx occurred because I cleaned poor URLs that had commas etc in them so its the old URLs that now 4xx. There are no links to the URLs that 4xx.

What is the best way of rectifying this issue of my own making?!

Thanks
Gavin

Thanks EGOL

I think I have a better understanding of where I stand now.

Thanks again

Good question EGOL!

I have only just taken on the job of looking after our SEO and am leaning towards stopping our linkbuilder and adding the budget to our SEO company.

A more pragmatic answer would be that our linkbuilder is based overseas and doesnt cost as much as our SEO company would for linkbuilding.

My worry was that when our SEO company used a scare story re the linkbuilder's links they were pitching for business rather than providing solid info.

Thanks

Hi Donnie

Thanks for your answer. That makes a lot of sense. I was thinking it might have been our SEO agency using some scare tactics!

Thanks again

Gavin

Dear all

After talking with our company's SEO company they have advised that a link builder we employ to post artciles is posting on sites which will have negative page rankings / equity and which Penguin will penalise.

These are the sites our link builder is posting on:

wordpress.com
weebly.com
blogger.com
livejournal.com
tumblr.com
squidoo.com
blog.com

Ouir SEO company have advised we ask our link builder to stop posting articles to these sites as Penguin will penalise us because of it.

Do you agree?

Thanks

Gavin

Thanks Mat

Thats exactly the result I'm after. I'll give this a go and try.

Thanks

Thanks Micah

I'd be happy to take that idea forward, however would have trouble convincing my CEO!

Cheers

Gavin

Hi guys

My company CEO is concerned that when her name is googled pictures of a glamour model appear in the image results area.

The glamour model shares a second name with our CEO and this is why the model's images are appearing.

I have been asked to rectify this situation.

My CEO has a linked in page and twitter account which are underused but no personal page on our company website.

I was thinking of buying the url for the CEO's name and optimizing a small site for her name with bio etc and links to twitter, lined in etc. Would this be the best strategy?

Thanks

Gavin