Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Powerful statement. Question everything and I like the statement. I want to keep learning and I want to do White hat principles for my clients to raise their DA and ultimately get found.

EGOL,

I appreciate you taking a stand on the position and question raised. I guess it all comes down to competition. I have only had my website and marketing business for two years. My competition has been doing this since 2010. They have a ton of the footer links coming back to their site which helps their DA which is presently a 34. If this helps them, why can't it work to help my DA while showing off my work?

I just wan to know what is right, so I don't do anything spammy but I can tell, my frustration with getting found is already putting me on the slippery slope of cutting corners.

G

Like I posted below, the CIMC is a digital marketing conference which MOZ is attending as an exhibitor. They have four links in their footer no of which are no follow.

Does this mean they are wrong?

They are rel="external" . Is that considered best practice?

G

Hi Deacyde,

I'm talking about the Website Designed By Constructiv Works type URL. It's purpose was two fold, one of which I have learned is bad. 1. it is to allow people who are looking at the site, if they like it, find me in the footer and come to my site. 2. To provide link value like almost every other site I have now reviewed.

Here's one I came across this morning with multiple URL's. http://digitalbuzz.ca/

How is this site any different? Denbow.com 

"sometimes I think I know what I am doing...other times I feel like a child lost in the forest..."

Hi Kirsten,

Thanks for sharing. I'll have a look. Thanks for sharing the three points.

Have a great day.

G

Hi Deacyde,

Thanks for dropping in. I'll take a look at both sites and see what I can come up with.

It's funny the more you work at digital marketing you realize the less you know...

Fun game, just want to stay above board.

Gary

Thanks Kristen. appreciate the feedback. What is the top three steps I would take to check the site for an algorithm penalty?

Thanks,

G

Hi EGOL,

I consider myself a white hat SEO person but I honestly didn't know about this. So am I a "good designer" probably not because I didn't know and everyday I am learning. I am working on trying to build out better and better sites with good design and UX.

However, am I someone who wants to learn from mistakes and improve? Yes, yes I can definitively tell you I am.

Thanks for the slap on the wrist and telling me to get my stuff together. Also, thanks for sharing the information so I can get better...

G

Hi Moz Community,

How do you find out if you have been hit with a Google Penalty?

Thanks,

Gary

Gotcha. That makes sense and yet I am hoping that people in this person's network are looking for a webdesigner then they will click on and find me. But if that is spammy, I will remove it.

Didn't even think this was not good practice... almost two years in and still learning about the moving target.

Thanks again.

G

Thanks EGOL.

So if your a webdesigner and you built a site for a client, you are spammy if you put a link in the footer to your site? Is that correct?

Gary

Hi everyone.

I am trying to build up DA for my site and create linking opportunities with my clients sites but I am not seeing any link value.

I just did a redesign with another firm and we built out www.denbow.com . We have links to our sites in the footer but for some reason it's not being indexed.

Can someone help me understand if it is good to put built by a href link in the footer? I've built almost 12 sites in my first 1.5 years of being in business for myself and I thought the links would pass some sort of value.

Thanks in advance for the help and education.

Regards,

Noob Gary

Hi Tom,

I agree. It will be a ton of work and quality content to build and stay competitive. The EMD does not have a site on it right now. It is simple an EMD associated to a very high traffic keyword. This keyword is also very competitive.

The competitors are already established and have decent traffic and DA.

I'll keep digging, asking and researching before I pull the trigger.

Thanks again.

Gary

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the response. The site itself is sweat equity that I am putting into this. I have SEO experience, not tons but just enough to be dangerous! And I keep learning and expanding my knowledge everyday.

The site itself isn't active. The niche market of this URL is pretty highly competitive and profitable.

What did you mean by hold up the site by itself? Do you mean the value of the EMD and associated keyword would hold up the site? If that's it that's the question I am looking to answer.

I already have a couple of domains that have the keywords in them but I feel like the exact EMD would be stronger. IE keyword "buy great widets" (Google Keyword Planner 60k avg searches per month) coupled with buygreatwidgets.com as the URL.

This is great discussion and helping me work through some of the issues that may be surfacing during this process.

Thanks a ton.

Gary

Awesome response. Thank you. Yes the URL/EMD is not a site and hasn't been. Someone has just been sitting on it. The site itself is built on shopify and yes, I cannot hold the EMD accountable if my images, alt tags, content and pricing are garbage. Garbage in garbage out!

The word "brand" is a reference to the EMD being your brand online not as in the brand "Nike". It's a generic keyword string that gets 60k searches a month in the US based on Google Keywords and seems to be consistent with Marketing Samuri's keyword research.

I definitely want to spend the right amount of time before i spend some serious dough and I also realize that it could be dough well spent considering the other options to drive targeted traffic is paid which can convert lower and cost about the same. $3500/month in adwords isn't too tough to burn through a site early on.

How would I check the URL for any bad linking or history? Run it through Moz?

Thanks for the opinion. I realize that it's just that but I believe in asking people who have already run through this situation.

Gary

Hi Everyone,

I am launching out into an e-commerce site and I am looking at purchasing an EMD as my brand. The brand of product I am selling is different "brand" but the e-commerce brand I will be building will be for a three word keyword that is competitive and gets great traffic. My questions are these:

1. Is an EMD worth it? The asking price is $42k for a site that is a keyword that gets 60k searches per month.

2. How much should offer without being rude to the seller?

3. The $42k represents a significant portion of my start up cash. Forget converting, (that will be an ongoing tweak that I am committed to perform) will a good EMD help brand the site and drive the traffic? My thinking is that with social media and ppc you could burn through that money and not be any further ahead.

Thanks a ton in advance for the weigh in. Happy Holidays everyone.

Gary

Thanks everybody. I thought as much just wanted to make sure. appreciate the feedback!!

Gary

Hi There,

I am about to implement analytics for a customer site and I am wondering if I should use Google Analytics or https://www.afsanalytics.com ? I am leaning towards Google since it's pretty mainstream but I would love some feedback on the AFS !

Thanks everyone!

Gary

Thanks Patrick.

Appreciate the encouragement. I will provide a service that is above board and ethical. I know that there is a lot of interpretation on things and I would rather take the high road then get stuck in the mud over a few successful, short term leads.

I am going to get back to the "other" guys and challenge them on their practice and try to encourage them to change practices. Doesn't matter what their response is, just my actions.

Thanks again. Really appreciate it.

Gary

Hi Highland,

Thanks. for the feedback. I do want to ask the question to learn and to grow. I have partnered with a company who has sold me on this tactic as white hat and lead gen. It is obviously neither. Pretty crazy.

I have done the Google Chrome, inspect element and removed the overlay iFrame to see what the page is serving the Google bots compared to the end overlay is to the end user.

Again, it's just a little over my head on these types of practices. I am more of a content marketing grow your brand type of professional and I bought into my partners "tactic" thinking it was safe. Before  now I didn't even know what cloaking was.

Thanks for the feedback.

Gary

Hi Andy,

Yes. I have made up my mind. It's not a practice I want to be involved with, promote or use. I am looking for other professional opinions to re-inforce my belief that this is wrong. I am moving my customer away from practices like this and I am separating myself from this partner.

It comes down to my "noob" experience with this type of work. I needed affirmation from professionals and experts who tell me that this is clearly wrong. All I had to go on was my gutt and my limited knowledge.

Thanks for chiming in and giving me your opinion. It's appreciated!

Gary

Thanks Tim.

To be clearer, I have another company that has sold me on the program and once I found out it was potentially cloaking then I didn't want anything to do with it. They are now assuring me that it is above board and that the pages are driving leads. I still don't think the end justifies the means.

Thanks,

Hi Patrick,

Thanks a ton.

I appreciate your help in telling me to follow my gut. It's definitely what I am close to doing.

The apparent value that I am told it does is it gets the site indexed quickly. I am using another partner who is implementing this program for me. They assure me that it is legal and valuable. I am not so sure and not technically savvy enough to know if they are telling me the truth.

Thanks it does make sense and I'll take that into consideration.

I appreciate the feedback Patrick.

Gary

I am a relatively new SEO professional, Can someone please look at this link and tell me if this is white or black hat SEO cloaking practices? http://loghomeconstructionpro.com/ It has an overlay landing page over a html page. I had a partner promote this to me as a proprietary software when really it just looks like cloaking.

I want to do my business above board and this doesn't feel right. However, I would like some opinion on it before i pull the plus on my partner.

Thanks all for the advice and the help.

GD