Welcome to the Q&A Forum

They were paying attention to GA but lapsed and when they checked back in, saw a drop in traffic. Great point about that "critical" message.. The developers did force a crawl and I'm hoping you are correct about the time it might take.

Thank you methodicalweb. Great suggestions.

Thanks, Travis. You've offered a lot of very interesting points.

I will double-check that they have looked at the server log files, but I'm pretty confident that they have done that.

They did assure me that the proper redirects were done but I'm not sure what they did regarding extensions. There was also a server change.....

Thanks for clarifying KeriMorgret. Much appreciated. As are all your thoughts. I will definitely suggest that the monitoring software be used to avoid any future problems. This was such an unnecessary and frustrating experience.

Thanks so much for your response KeriMorgret. I'm not sure I fully understand your suggestion unless you are saying that it would have alerted the dev team to the problem? I will pass this on to them and thank you if that is what your intention was.

The developer removed the robot.txt file which fixed the problem and I am trying to ascertain if there is a general expectation on how something like this - a de-indexing - gets reversed within the Google algorithm.

This may be a difficult question to answer without a ton more information, but I'm curious if there's any general thought that could shed some light on the following scenario I've recently heard about and wish to be able to offer some sound advice:

An extremely reputable non-profit site with excellent ranking had gone through a re-design and change-over into WordPress. A robots.txt file was used during development on the dev site on the dev server.

Two months later it was noticed through GA that traffic was way down to the site. It was then discovered that the robot.txt file hadn't been removed and the new site (same content, same nav) went live with it in place. It was removed and a site index forced. How long might it take for the site to re-appear and regain past standing in the SERPs if rankings have been damaged. What would the expected recovery time be?

Wow! Thanks, Jeff. Can't tell you how much we appreciate your efforts here. It's great to have the wider based testing in addition to our own. Thanks also for your footer suggestion. We always used to have footer links and when we changed over to WordPress, because our menus are html now, we dropped them. But you offer a great reason to put them back in. We need to make a widget spot for that and I am considering some text changes for the Home page, so we won't be launching the Responsive site until those are completed. Thanks again!!!

Thanks so much, Peter. We actually do have a redesign percolating but that's for later and not to be mixed up with this switch to Responsive. ;o)

Hi Jeff,

Here is the link to the dev site: websitetestingserver.com/fateImportant to note is that I just learned that the dev site isn't fully up to date with our current, live site: http://www.fateyes.com.

For instance, the blog directory is several months behind and some of the thumbnail images are missing. This has to be corrected. Not sure why they didn't bring it all over. So before we replace it, it will be fully updated and reviewed. Also, the social counts are missing and/or off but I imagine those will correct to the live site once the transfer is made.

Not sure if this renders your taking a look ill-timed and if it would be better to wait until I can have the guys get it tip top. Please let me know what you think. Thanks again!!! Your help is much appreciated.

Thanks so much, Jeff. I would love to post the link and have you take a look. That would be a terrific help. I don't have the address but as soon as my partner gets back in, I'll ask him for it and post it here.

To all the Mozzers reading this,

I joined SEOMoz in a panic when we were seeing the first hints of an impending ranking crisis for our company website in October, 2012. We tanked in late December for our most important keywords. Simply GONE. Holy C---! It was devastating to say the least. Thankfully, we have a lot of work due to current clients and referrals, but the phone got quiet. That's a deadly sound.15 years of comfort zone gone.

I still don't know precisely why it happened, it may have been a number of factors. But I've learned a huge amount through this crisis and can honestly say that I'm glad it happened. How weird is that? But what other fire under my butt would have gained me so much curiosity, fascination, engagement and excitement with deepening my scant knowledge?

A week ago, we got our first report showing us that we have now gotten back our positions on page 1 for the 10 keywords that matter. It's continuing to improve according to today's report.

So now that I've gotten somewhere- and I am well aware that it may not stick and there is still more to do -it's time to shout out a great big "Thank You".

Truly, I don't think I could have survived this situation without SEOMoz and all you wonderful Mozers answering my frantic questions and lending your expertise and support to my situation.

It wasn't only my own questions and the responses to those that helped me through this. I have been essentially addicted to reading a vast majority of all the posted questions because it's so dang interesting. So I've been learning bucketfuls from other people's questions and responses. My own personal SEOMoz education. It's only just begun.

What an incredible culture and community we have here. I feel I can say "we" now because I am beginning to feel a part of it. And I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. I love this place.

Thank you!

When I wasn't looking, I became a "Journeyman". Hooray for me, but I kinda liked being female. ;o)

Is there such a thing as a Journeywoman?

(couldn't resist- please excuse me if anyone objects to completely inappropriate "questions")

I believe that if it's showing up in the tester and on your blog posts with your author bio, you are all set. Whether or not Google shows it in the SERPs seems to be haphazard and to take time. Mine shows up in lots of places but on only select Google listings.

We also use All in One SEO, btw. At the moment, I am usable to recall if there was something special I had to do to enable the snippet to appear. I just took a look and nothing stood out. If I come up with anything, I'll let you know.

Thanks, Andy.

I can't say 100%, but I am as sure as possible that the URL was created as a redirect. I checked on archive.org and wayback machine doesn't have URL archived. So, then, I also understand you to be saying that the links this company has obtained through blog commenting with CommentLuv aren't worth much and may be considered to have been manipulated.

And I think you're also saying that chances are, it's not worth my while in terms of search engines to pursue commenting on blogs with CommentLuv, but it may help me get more traffic to my blog. And that would make me happy.

I appreciate the advice to not just look at one type of link. I am not. I just tripped on this thing and got curious enough to pursue more info. Finding ways to get more traffic on my blog is something I have been investigating - links aside. Seems to be a don't put the cart before the horse kind of thing.

If you are focusing any of your strategy on local search there are worthwhile directories to look at using such as Yelp, foursquare, hotfrog, bing, google+, citysearch, superpage, YP, localize, info group. Regardless of the value that comes directly from these links, there are other more indirect but valuable results of being listed and getting reviews on the review directories.

SEOMoz getlisted.org is a great free tool for these.

Also, if there are any reputable niche or industry directories that relate to your business, those are worth investigating.

Hope this helps.

Hi Casey,

My feeling is that whenever a vendor is unwilling to be transparent, provide reports or discuss specific strategies they may be someone worth steering clear of. Saying he has never had problems in the past is waffling and not responding to or addressing your actual request. You are entitled to the information and if it's not willingly given that is a red flag. Additionally, this tasks he is performing do beg some qualifiers since they verge on outdated and/or less than completely safe practices. I would investigate further and/or locate an alternative.

Hope this is helpful.

Hi Glen,

This has a familiar ring to it regarding my own experience with On-Page Reports. In fact, it brings up a caution I'd like to share with fellow MOZers, especially newly arrived folks. Watch out for those report cards. They are seductive and can be harmful if one over-focuses on them.

When I first subscribed to SEOMOZ, I had seen a small drop in my SERPs for the most critical  keyword for my Home page.

I just loved those on-page reports because they addressed something I felt I had some control over and was familiar with executing. They offered something I could DO when i didnt understand what was happening. I went a little overboard  trying to get 'A's' on my reports. And with each slight position SERP improvement, I got more greedy and did more. And I succeeded with getting A's.

AND/BUT as a result (or at least partially), my page dropped completely out of sight to "not in the top 50". But those keywords had A's! I now believe I overstuffed those keywords and while for a week or so, it improved my ranking, it then settled down to a completely plummeted spot. I now think i I had gone over the line.

In reality, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise (lost business aside) because it forced me to learn a whole bunch of good stuff and to get off my butt on things I'd procrastinated.

My rankings are back and I'll never know the exact cause of the drop, but I no longer look for high grades on my Reportcards. In fact, even with my rankings back, I think the grades are pretty stinky. I now have a 'C' for that term (and even an F for a term ranking OK) and that's just fine.

The point of this story is that it's better to focus on developing great content, publisize it on your social accounts and work towards earning quality links. The grades don't mean as much as you may think.

Thanks, Sheldon. I've been trying to pay it forward whenever there is something I can add. Hopefully, it's been helpful when I am able to pipe in.

Other than finding site owners of good sites willing to include your link within the content on their site without an exchange, the kinds of links you are describing aren't really your best bet in terms of high quality links that will impact your standing. While these tactics aren't necessarily bad practice per se, they each have their cautions and they won't earn you especially potent links.

Watch out for the link exchange route- only do this within your niche with sites that have an indisputable relevance and connection to what your website is about. Forums are great to participate and learn in, and you stand to develop some strong relationships that way, but don't count on links within the forum to benefit your link portfolio. Same for blog comments even if they are follow links.

What is raising my curiosity the most here, is why your client has website in an industry she or he doesn't know enough about to create content? Is this a new business endeavor in a field they have yet to understand or participate in?

Here's my real answer to your questions:

It's not all about links. Having a successful business and website is about offering something of value.

My best suggestion is for you both to spend your time developing knowledge and confidence to write about kite surfing and related topics. Read like crazy. Research and learn. Gain knowledge and build opinions and a viewpoint to write from. You can write about related topics also- what are kite surfers interested in? Great locations for kite surfing, other related water sports, equipment, lessons, stories about kite surfing experiences, dolphins, beaches, dangers.....

Creating compelling and helpful content and publicizing it on your social accounts and anywhere else you can will give your readers an opportunity to share and link to your site is the way to earn quality links.

Hope this is helpful, Juan.

I just installed the "Redirection" plugin and used it successfully.

Super easy:

1. Change the URL

2. Go to Tools/Redirection/Redirects

3. Add new redirection: input Source URL, input Target URL, hit "add redirection" and that's it!

Thanks Brad and Underscorelive for all your help!

Have a lovely Thursday.