Please try looking at "First Click Free" by Google
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/74536?hl=en
I think this is along the lines of what you are looking for.
Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
Please try looking at "First Click Free" by Google
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/74536?hl=en
I think this is along the lines of what you are looking for.
A penalty is something google will have to manually remove and you will be able to see that in webmaster tools. A devaluation is when you are adjusted by the algorithm and lowered as a result because each thing that google does not like acts as points against you but you can quickly change and see your results return. Does that make sense?
We decided that it was worth a large investment as we would own the content ourselves and not worry in the future about anyone claiming ownership to the content as google gets stricter. So we re wrote half a million words!
You have two issues here.
1. Interlinking site sis never a good idea with a dofollow links, so I would look at that. But it is not an issue if its nofollow.
2. Googlebot only crawls from the US and will only every crawl the US site if you send all US ip's to the US site. I would use hreflang on your site.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Otherwise you will confuse Google and possibly get a cloaking issue on the site.
Also look at the canonical tag
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394
AND
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en&ref_topic=2370587
This is a Panda issue.
Google has said many times with affiliate sites that use the same content that if they do a better job than the original site it will rank them. So its not all bad when you look at it from that point of view.
However, Google loves unique content and will do its best to rank sites first that have the unique content. I have a business in the office space industry and a few years back we used to aggregate office apace listings which were shared amongst 30+ sites. The display of these listings would be different for many searches but the content was the same as all the other sites. This slowly put us in a PANDA DEVALUATION (there is no panda penalty).
After re-writing them with our clients we saw a significant change once the content had be re-crawled.
So it can have a great effect. If Google starts to see that large parts of your site are duplicate content it will start to question the authority you have in your industry.
Could you offer and incentive to your customers to write something unique? And also maybe inform your users not to copy and paste their own content on your site as this could affect them negatively in Google?
If you are an authority could you tell users that if you want to be listed it must be unique? Or if its a paid service have an ad on service for a few bucks where you write a professional description? Might become a nice additional income?
Just a few ideas
I understand what you are saying and its not as cut and dry as that.
Any sites profile that consists mostly of high PR links is going to fall into a suspect filter by Google.
Also every phrase is different. Some may be easy to achieve and others have a lot of competition. So would need more links etc..
i have seen a site dominate a very good keyword because they have one PR5 from a government website. Outranking big brands with a large solid link profile.
I would say don't go crazy, take it step by step and watch the results, be patient, if you rush into it and trip a Google filter for over optimization it will be harder to correct and will look less natural to get all these high PR links in such a short space of time.
Be diverse with anchors, don't use anchor text that are keywords, let your landing pages do all the hard work.
But in short just one Good link can do the job these days.
I don't have an example off the top of my head but what I will say is that the way software sites do comparisons of packages is great like avg or something like that.
3 columns, Gold, Silver, Bronze
Then down the left a list of all services you offer and then under each column a tick if it is included in that package.
Does that make sense?
It gives people a very clear understanding in one page what the differences are, rather than having to scroll up and down or flick between pages and scanning sentences.
It will likely help people choose a higher package and spend more money with you.
A bit like McDonalds asking if you would like fries with that for the small additional cost of X
I would say you are correct, I have had this happen many many times. Sometimes things are not correct to begin with and you make some changes and Google just treats you like a new listing and you have to start again.
My theory is this:-
1. Your listing has a set of details
2. Google has a list of sites with citations that match that set of details
3. You make changes to your listing and now they do not match the citations you have out there.
4. Google re-crawls your citations over time and as they start to match again your result return and because of those changes your results are stronger then ever before.
That's my theory of why this happens.
I would love to hear if anyone agrees with my ramblings
OK here are the issues, stop using hyphens (-) and stop using pipes (|) these is seen as an attempt to stuff words in just for search engines. Google thinks that this will not be a good read for its users and will rename them.
Also please keep in mid that Google does change title tags based on the search query sometimes to give you a better click through rate. They are testing things all the time.
Also make sure your meta tags are the correct lengths for best results, some you have are very short and just one word not great for SEO and others are too long.
It really makes very little difference to be honest, if anything you have more chance of ranking for both with the hyphen in place. How is your site performing for those keyphrases?
Google will decide what title tag to show for your site, if they feel that your title is not compelling enough they will try different options. They do this mostly when a title tag is full of keywords or phrases and not a readable sentence.
This was actually brought up yesterday in a conversation with John Mueller yesterday.
Many recent experiments show that the Title tag is still a big ranking factor.
Forget about those others sites, focus on you one good site and make it as best as can be.
If it is clear to see that he owns multiple sites in the same niche the by all means report him, especially if they all link to each other.
Focus all your efforts on making your business as best as it can be and try to forget about the people around you.
Has anyone experienced this before? YES
Why would Google not honor a canonical tag if it is set correctly?
The canonical tag is a recommendation, Google will make its on decisions on whether to use it or not. If you do not want it to be indexed why not put a noindex meta tag there as well. This will make sure that you get the desired result.
Google is seeing enough difference between the pages that it thinks those pages offer more value for the term searched.
Does that make sense?
Actually we just had this conversation in another Question
Try some of the ideas spoken about there?
That sounds good to me
In your search field you have "#wedding" change it to "#wedding -bobbleheads"
That should do the trick! Let me know how you get on.
I have run into this same problem in multiple industries.
John Mueller at Google has answered my question multiple times on this subject saying that internal duplicate content is NOT an issue and especially if you can justify it being there a manual review of sorts would not identify a problem. Google will make a judgement call on what the best page to serve is by the users query.
In your case you are doing what should be done, the least helpful page is the actual product page and in many cases in the past I have no indexed them.
This same problem arises for many industries, real estate, office space, used cars etc...
How bad would it be for the company reputation if he moves all the social he has to his new site and starts a new ones for the current site in the company name?
The reason I ask is that businesses get sold/change hands etc... and when that day comes all his social property will be attached to it. That's not attractive to a buyer and can cause a lot of trouble.
I am not sure your use of the term "natural links" is the same as everyone else?
A natural link is one that you did not place yourself. I have a feeling you are using it in the context of it being brand related? Would I be correct?
Regardless, remove those blog roll links ASAP they are an totally no no regardless of the anchor text. Google hates them and were a huge target in the recent Panda Update.
If you have an EMD its a hard thing to market now. Google does not care so much about anchor text when it comes to ranking, it cares about the link itself and will get the information it needs from the landing page. That's why good on page SEO is vital.
Try to use your url as much as possible as anchor text and various other generic anchors like "click here", "more info" etc...
But I would advise if you have a Manual penalty from Google? That you disavow or remove as much of those links as possible.
Hope that helps?
OK, not to sit on the fence here but both are good options.
However when it comes to "URL Parameters" there is a section in Webmaster Tools that you can set to ignore certsin parameters. So that's always an option.
I like to look at sites like oodle in cases like this.
Here is an example
they spent a lot of time working out the best process and they use the node type url.
However Google has been said to prefer shorter urls recently.
Hope my sitting on the fence did not make things worse LOL
Would a canonical tag on all the .org.uk/uk pages pointing to the .org/uk pages be strong enough to pass on link juice to the .org/uk pages (from all links pointing to .org.uk)
Canonical tags DO NOT pass link juice, they are separate pages in their own right and you are asking Google to consider using your recommendation not merging pages.
Would a 301 redirect be required in this instance?
Yes, unless for some reason you would like to have two copies of the same site available? I am pretty sure that you would not.
Indeed would it be best to stay with the .org.uk/uk domain?
Now that is a more tricky question. Google loves localized top level domains. If it is a .uk it knows your target market is the UK and ranks you in Google.co.uk as a priority. Moving to a .org will take that away. Do you have each folder setup in Webmaster Tools under a different "Geographic target" in "Site Settings"?
You will be best to do this if you have not. Where is your server hosted? If not in the UK this can also have a big effect on the site when moving to a more generic top level domain away from a localized one.
Hope that helps to shed some light on the matter
Out of those 7 links they have, is one very powerful? Quality over quantity maybe?
Do they have the keywords in their domain name?
Is it their homepage vs your internal page?
If you 301 the domains to your current site, that is fine provided non of them have any nasty stuff like penalties associated with them.
It can actually boost business sometimes if they are good domains that people go to directly, does not happen often but it can do.
Many websites have multiple domains 301'd to their main site for brand name protection such as spelling mistakes. So its a very common practice.
If on the other hand you refer to linking I would definitely not do that!
Or you could build up the other domains with relevant content and save them for a rainy day if your main site ever got hit in the future by a penalty. Seems to be a backup plan many have right now as Google is in crazy mode right now.
Does Site A also have a clean Link profile? Doing a 301 will pass any bad links over to the new site. FYI
I hear you and it has got out of control.
I am very frustrated by the whole process too. A lot of the time it is very clear when the article has been ghost or guest posted. The focus is on your company and the link goes to your company.
Read what is about to be posted back to yourself and see if its a little sales'ie, what else would be useful to the actual customer? A link also to one of your competitors? I know its horrible to think about but doesnt that look more natural? And the author should never be you it should be the sites author if it is pushing a service/brand.
If its advice and not self promotion pushing you site then great, I would use your name as the author. But that does not seem to be your goal?
the only issue I see would be on the category page if the brand is repeated a lot of times, this will not look good from the Panda Algo.
Feel free to send me an link here or in private and I can take a look.
hmmm
$1000 / 8 hrs = $125 per hr
Should have taken 30 mins tops and that's really too much time.
So thats $62.50, and if they must charge you an hour minimum its $125 MAX
At those rates they are claiming Almost 3 hrs work.
Nice site and domain name!
hmm looks, like any subdomain works on your site, I would fix that ASAP. It looks like it redirects to the root folder that's why it shows the most current content. (because it is)
You Need to turn off / disable Wildcard Subdomains on your server. This will fix the issue.
This might just be robots digging around trying new things out for example http://1234567.webdesign.org/ does the same thing and I just made that up.
Most sites say 90 days but the small print is that they will get you on page one for your brand name not your #1 key term or they will get a Google local page for you and get you ranking that way.
It can take a while to rank well, depending on the keyphrases it can take years, and for the very long tail stuff just a few days/weeks.
Links are still very important and you need to create good quality content on your site and then let sites that would be interested in knowing about that aware of it in the hope they will link to you.
Be careful with your link building, Google is dishing out penalties left right and center.
Get a link in some big directories like dmoz and yahoo. Get a facbook profile and twitter, Google loves social as well. Try to update them once a week. Even with just a small post.
Write good content and interlink where possible to create a good internal flow. (don't over do it)
It all takes time but all of a sudden it just happens and you start ranking well.
There is a lot that goes into dealing with this issue.
You will need some good tools that can be found here http://www.reconsiderationrequests.net/tools/
You need to focus on dofollow links and this may come as a surprise but also links that appear missing.
Download the latest links from WMT, Ahrefs & majestic.
Combine them and use excel or "ScrapeBox DupeRemove" available from the link above to remove and duplicates.
Use "Blackhatlinks.com Free Dofollow / Nofollow Link Checker" to see if the link is dofollow / nofollow or notfound for the webmaster tools links.
Once done you can start to look at what is good and bad.
Under a manual penalty you are under review by a real person and they are meticulous, they will make you remove links you never even created and all sorts of crazy stuff.
Almost all links are bad in Googles eyes, this includes urls, brand mentions and non optimized anchor text like click here.
You need to attack it hard and remove as much as possible, because a penguin refresh only comes around every 6 months, the next will probably be in Feb or April.
Remove anything that has optimized anchor text no matter what or try to get the text changed if its an incredible link.
The most creditable links are ones where multiple sites are mentioned that include your competitors in some form of comparison on a forum, article blog etc... Almost all others are trash.
Also some directories are ok, like dmoz, yahoo dir etc...
OK I Mentioned before about missing links, you will find links in WMT where the link does not appear anymore, BUT in the case of a directory it may have moved down to page 3 or 4 when it was on page 1 or 2 when first crawled. The link is still on the site and if you see the site itself is trash, add it to the disavow.
Dont bother adding links to the disavow file, add domains.
example:
domain:xyz.com
domain:abc.com
This will ensure you capture all links on those domains regardless if the move around.
If you do not want to do this all yourself there are many tools out there, like Link Detox and rmoov.
Feel free to ask me any questions or send me some examples if you are not sure.
Its a horrible process I have had to do it myself and helped many others,all with success!
Also to add to that last point, any pages where you are going to list lots of links to pages, make a brand category and then list the products my name excluding the brand
Dont do
"Cool Surfboards HiFive", "Cool Surfboards Rad" , " Cool Surfboards XYZ"
Do
Cool Surfboards
HiFive, Rad, XYZ
So you are not being repetitive and having huge keyword density that will look very suspicious
the reality is this, if a user finds you from Google and lands on your page and all they know about the product is that its "HiFive" but have no idea that its a brand made by "Cool Surfboards" then your site is doing a poor job.
So I would say it is essential to optimize your site fully for each page, the meta needs to convince the person that they are about to click on the correct result in the Google result and that can also not be done if you exclude the brand.
If in doubt look at any major site, electronics for example, best buy maybe or similar.
Also you could have a similar products list but exclude the brand on those links so the page is not brand keyword stuffed but interlining those pages will reinforce the power of that brand on your site.
I have done this before for a huge site in 7 languages and had many a debate over the years with Matt Cutts on it.
The short answer is multiple TLD's
Reason:Matt Said in a video and for the life of me I am unable to find it. That if they allow sites to rank in every country then people will just create content for them to get extra traffic, if they created a tool in WMT people would just tick every country saying their site was relevant. The only sure way was if they created a TLD and put some hard work into it.
doing xyz.com/jp/ is an option and then targeting a "Geographic target" in "Site Settings" but it will not get the same power as a TLD specific to that Geographic location. TLD are a very strong indication of location.You will have to setup sub folders in WMT like separate sites and target each directory with the "Geographic target".
Also, this is something I have been saying all day long, separate sites are good because you never know when Google is going to slam you with a penalty for a silly reason. You would lose all your locations in one go if they are on the same domain. But only have one site down if it happened.
Also have a good read about "hreflang" this will help you make a few decisions as this is new since the time I worked on the Multi-regional site.
Definitely http not https
Ok this gets more strange, I just check on my cell phone as well with wifi switched off and I still get n/a for pagerank on 5 different sites.
PA and DA show up correctly.
What the hell is going on? My business partner in the UK is experiencing the same issues as well as others I have spoken too.
I really need to get to the bottom of this issue, but I am at a total loss right now.
Just installed search status on firefox on another computer and have the same issue! That computer has never ever loaded up my website and is on a totally different operating system etc...
WTF? LOL
If you do this and I do not advise it
Then they should point to relevant places on the site that article is referring too. If you get a penalty as a result of this it is best that they DO NOT point to the homepage. This way it is easier for you to 401 the page they point to while you work to have the links removed.
It can have a very fast impact in getting you results in Google with powerful sites like that.
If you are going to link to yourself, DO NOT use keywords. Use your domain name, URL, more here, click here, etc.. something generic. This will be seen as less manipulative.
Same with PaRameter Pagerank 0, I cant understand what is going on.
The homepage says PR5 so I know its not the tools
I just used installed Status Seo Chrome tool bar and it says PR 0 for the same page? i just dont understand it?
Its not a great Idea to interlink in the first place and you can get a Google Penalty for that.
301 Redirecting can be very powerful as the links that point to Site A will now point to site B directly. Plus all the links that site B might already have.
One powerful site is better than two not getting full attention.
However as I have said many times, Google is on a rampage and it seems wise to have a backup site these days if you get hit by a penalty.
If your description tag is only 10 characters, then Google algo will not find it useful and will replace it with what it thinks is best. It can do this for your Title tags too. Sometimes using Dmoz.
What PR did the page say? Also what tool do you use to see the PA & DA?
First off I suspect those sites would take issue with you having the same article on their site.
If you are the publisher of the article and you plan on getting a dofollow link from them to your new site, I would seriously look at a different type of marketing. Google's last Penguin update hit that style of link building pretty hard.
The article would get decent visibility being hosted on those powerful sites and could pass some traffic through to your site if its compelling and matches what the user is looking for.
If you want to get links to your site I would suggest you write those great articles and host them on your site,you then reach out to those sites and tell them about your wonderful service and how you think it would benefit their users to know about it. Then you hope that they write something about you and post a link to your site. That's how Google want it to happen.
I have lost all internal PR on my site when using the browser toolbar, only my homepage has PR now, the rest are unranked. It has been like this for a few months now.
Can anyone confirm this for me please? The site is yourcityoffice.com
If you have any other interesting ways to check PR that do not involve a toolbar or tool bar equivalent. Please let me know.
Using the WMT tool to remove bulk pages like that is the best way for a speedy recovery, so good decision on that one.
Panda actually runs about once a month right now, so I would expect to wait around 4 weeks before the changes are integrated and maybe a few weeks more for the content existing on the site to be re-crawled and calculated to see where your site should be placed.
Also if your main content that exists on the site is not the best of quality then you may need to do some work there.
Was it an unnatural links penalty? Around what date did your search results start to return?
I am but there are issues, WMT has some serious issues few people know about.
When you download your latest links and compare it with the previous one (lets say two weeks apart), now check the same date for example 1st June. The links will be different! For some reason a vast majority of dates will have different links. So if your file is like mine and has 16,000+ links, going through them and working out dofollw/nofollow/notfound is hell on earth to do even once a month.
Google does not want you to recover. If they did they would give you some assistance in this matter, instead they direct you to ahrefs and majestic etc.. That do not have as all the links either and leave room for mistakes. If they wanted you to clean up the mess you or seo agencies made then why not give us the tools to do so and we would all get a good job done.
Anyway I don't want to hijack your question with my rant LOL
Ahh I sent you a link to a site that explores those links and creates a list, I thought you needed it to build a list.
The tool I use for my browser is SearchStatus by Quirk, its for firefox and it does some amazing stuff
Your homepage contains very little content and Google loves content.
I would either look to add some more content or I would create the page http://tastebuds.fm/ meet-people and focus on that page going into more depth about actually meeting people and how the whole systems works to help achieve the goal of meeting people.
This will reinforce the objective of the site and offer a nice amount of juicy content for Google to dig through.
The order of elements in any tags do not make a difference.
Also you can have rel=nofollow without and quotes and Google will still recognize it.
Also Google will test out new algorithms and then roll them out country by country.