Welcome to the Q&A Forum

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.

Oh whew, Keri! In the meantime, I won't look down.

I made a request for assistance in getting links that I feel weren't procured in our best interest or within Google's current guidelines. Our vendor offered to use the disavow tool on my behalf saying that was the quickest way, but from everything I've read, this was premature and could due potentially do more harm than good.  I turned down their offer. I didn't want to perpetuate their lack of good sense and expertise by continuing to depend on them.

Sheldon, I'll leave this to you for the final call. But I would say "yes", a Home page should be publisher, not author.

Hello again,

Thank You to those who took the time to respond to my query. You've offered really great information and I've learned quite a bit.

I am still looking for the cause of this literally overnight drop for my most important keywords and would like opinions as to whether you think the following, is correct:

The conclusion I am reaching is that it is possible that our on-page SEO is no longer having a positive effect (or any effect) on our targeted keywords. Could this really happen overnight?

If this is the case, other than the obvious long-term SEO strategy refocus,  the only short-term remedy I can think of is to go back and re-word the anchor text of our existing links to contain the keyword phrases we want to re-target on whatever sites we are able to. The majority of our links are coming from client sites, so while tedious, this should be doable.

Having been #3-4 on Google for 14 years, and a great local reputation, it's a sad situation.

Thanks again for any assistance on this!

Hi Sarah,

Our company experienced a similar situation in the past week. I posted a question about it and have received a lot of quality responses that you may find helpful. Posted December 29:<a name="question-1"></a>

sudden disappearance from visibility on Google
I'm so sorry this is also happening to you. It's a challenging situation at best and devastating at worst.Wishing you luck in recovering your position!

There is also Paddy Moogan's link building book: http://www.linkbuildingbook.com/. It is not a free resource, but well worth the $37 cost.

Hi Tcolling,

I just wrote you a long, detailed response on my ipad and when I hit "post" there was an SEOMoz error and it was lost. Arggh. I'll try to recreate what I said now, from my desk.

I had many of the same questions when I started using Google+ in the same way you are. Once you start getting the hang of it and contributing, the +1's and Circles will begin to generate- and quickly.

Here's what I've learned:

It's best to post your blog links (to Public and all  your Circles) with generous intros on both your business page and your personal profile. And then participate as YOU in order to build trust and Authorship.  When I switched back and forth between my two identities, it was confusing to people and of course, they didn't connect my business avatar with my personal one. The advice I received was to engage and myself and have my business page as further validation of where I'm coming from, experience, expertise etc. You want people to get to know your face in connection with what you contribute.

The most critical piece of getting anything out of, and enjoying Google+ is to join Communities and participate regularly. You will begin to get to know people and it's fun! AND this is how you will begin to build plus one's and being Circled. Generally, your business page gains the +1's (and to a lesser extent added to Circles). Most people will Circle you via your personal page. I figure if this is what the power users are doing, I can trust that. At first, I was trying to get our business circled but that seems less important now that I've been around for a bit. If you find anything out about this to the contrary, I would love to hear it, btw.

One piece of advice:

Use caution when posting your blog links within the Communities. Each community has its own guidelines and rules. I have found it helpful to write special inquiry posts to the Moderators to learn what is acceptable and what the attitudes are. This will help you begin to build relationships with the moderators, but more importantly you'll learn where the edges are. If you cross them, you may get banned. Typically, they frown upon blog links for posts you have written because it's perceived as self-promotion...even if it's quality content. This isn't across the board, but be aware.

The good news is that once you start engaging, it will all make a lot more sense.

HI,  it may have showed 16% for you because you may have been using the wrong business name. We are Fat Eyes on Yelp, but also appear sometimes as Fat Eyes Web Development and maybe occasionally Fat Eyes Web Design on some of the others. I loved that you pointed me to getlisted.org. Very helpful! While we have listings on many, I hadn't "claimed" our business on all of them and will follow-through with getting listed on the others.

Nope, sadly, no positive changes. This only just happened on Saturday, the 29th. We are now  below the top 50 for our 3 most targeted keywords after being # 7. We'd been #3 for years, had a drop to #15 in October and I'd brought it back up to #7 with a lot of on-page work. I was getting 'A' report cards from SEOMoz. Sigh.

The really sad thing is that we are a good company, with an outstanding local reputation, tons of local high profile clients who love us, very high integrity.........SIGH.

Jesse, I really like your webmaster letter instructions. Great attitude and tone. I think I'll have to be a bit nicer next time I need to do it. I wasn't not nice, but I like your idea of extra nice.

Thanks, for initiating this discussion, Debe. I sure can relate. AND! Most importantly, great job on the catchy question title. It worked!! When I saw it, I immediately made note to self: "catchy question titles - gotta get better at them to get attention from the big kids".

Good to know you are using it. Yep. I've been studying the alternatives this morning. One called "Redirection" is standing out as a potentially good one and has a lot of downloads. Anyone use that?

Others seem potentially complicated and my concern is that i dont understand enough of what I'd be getting or how to use considering the complex description details. Some of them say they won't work with permaLinks? Or look like they aren't designed for a simple URL change within a site. Another thing I saw was that some seem to require creating a new post or page and it would be so nice not to have to do that.

I'm not a programmer and it would be so nice if I could take care of this on my own without having to wait within our company's own queue. sometimes I feel like the shoemakers kid.

Simple is good!

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.

I have been using Link Detox and have found it to be very helpful in the ways that Tom and Kyle describe. And being a non-SEO doing the SEO job for our company, I also find it to be valuable in educational info there. I think it's great.

One of the features they offer is an appropriate email link to use for link removal requests. Pretty handy! It's still important to do further research and action on the offending site, though. In doing that, I have found some alarming things- like fictitious people/authors who do not exist and are claimed as employees of our company.... And I am finding that in most cases, my requests arent acted upon. (Keep records of requests.) But I have  had at least one good, response with link removal.

My rank tracker reports are odd. The 'Changes From Last Week' don't align with the numbers in the other reports I have been getting. For instance, it will say +3 for a particular search term and show the Latest Ranking to be the same as it has been for a couple of weeks. There has been no +3 to the ranking according to the reports.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks!

Hi Eliran,

I believe both Sheldon and I have both answered your question by saying to use rel=publisher on the Home page.

Is there something we are both not understanding about your question?

I'm curious about the relationship (or lack of ) between Google rankings and Bing rankings. We took a huge hit last winter with Google and have since gotten back up to the top 3 and have been holding steady on all our most important terms. Most of our losses since regaining Google, have been with Bing. This week, we dropped 44 points on Bing and Yahoo! for our most important term.

Are there known factors for Bing ranking? If so, can anyone please enlighten me? And does anyone think Bing rankings even matter these days?

Everything Jesse said and...

Ultimately, we are building relationships and also building our authorship. Eventually, that will add to the big picture of earning links.

In my humble opinion, adding thoughtful, relevant  comments on blogs benefits the blog owner, their authority and your relationship with them and in turn will eventually do the same for you.

I also notice that it is a good practice arena for continually developing better communication skills which will add to your ability to create great content. Which will, in turn....It's a win win in my opinion.

Thank you Everett. We are not using either of those plugins.

BUT! Your explanation about the double quotes got me thinking in the right direction. This blog post has an embedded infographic and when i was installing it, I had to correct a number of double quotes in the link to make the graphic appear. However, I didn't see that the attribution link had the double quotes also. So it's all solved now! Thank you again.

Egol, I was thinking the same thing while I was out on a hike just now and you beat me to it. It is so logical- so much talent here right under our noses and we get to learn so much about members here by their interactions and smarts. No place like home.

Thanks, Charles. I appreciate the time you put into your replying to my question. I hope my responses do not come off as defensive, but since you gave me a list of changes I thought I would fill you in on our reasoning behind the issues you bring up.

I believe the archives and tags on the right sidebar to be necessary and handy for our visitors.

As I mentioned, we are in the process of limiting the number of post excerpts/links showing on the main blog page. Thanks for your tip to limit to 10.

Why would you remove the footer text? It's true that we serve those areas listed and I want that on-page info included.

I hadn't thought of the duplicate content issue when using excerpts- not sure if it applies. And would love to not have to create additional writing tasks. Anyone else have an opinion about that?

We are not interested in using a template for our blog. We prefer to have our site design remain consistent on all pages of the site. We are using a template- that we designed. Perhaps I don't understand your advice on this.

All of the images in the blog have alt tags: EXAMPLE: title="soc_signals_4754681424" src="http://www.fateyes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/soc_signals_47546814243.jpg" alt="The effects of social media on search engine results pages (SERPs) - social signals and Search engine optimization (SEO)"
1080 monitors: We are designing for iPad first and foremost and it's not a responsive theme.

My original impulse was to give a catchy title to our blog so I studied a lot of blogs and found that it seemed most appropriate to keep the blog title short and concise.  It also seems smart to keep it short to allow for longer post titles.

Thanks again.

Hi Miranda,
I never heard anymore from the team or you on this. Any news?Thanks!!
Gina

Hi TorontoV,

I'm not sure why you say one cannot promote posts on Google+. Are you talking about paid promotion like in FB? Or are you talking about promoting your Blog posts in G+?

Adding to what Matt said, which is great advice:

In G+, you can promote anything you wish to from your home page or profile. Write the comment, include your link to your post and make it Public and also choose whatever Circles you want it to reach. I find it naturally reaches way more users than FB.

As far as self-promotion inside Communities goes, make sure you check the guidelines of the Community before promoting your own posts. In some Communities, it's frowned upon. You can also write a post specifically asking the modorators what the policy is. Some may delete your post and/or ban you from the Community if they feel you've done it too often. It's important to respect the guidelines if you want to build relationships.

What I have found is that if you participate in Communities in good faith and do your promotions publicly, your fellow Community folks will see your post, know who you are and will more likely click through because you've spent time engaging within the Community. And as you build your Circles, more and more people will see what you post, click through and comment on it. Also, make sure to comment on posts at your Home page level so you are getting to know people you wouldn't ordinarily.

Just keep at it. It takes time, but I have found it to be much more fruitful than FB overall.

Hope this is helpful and not just a bunch of early morning talkativeness.

Kevin, Keri and Bond13, Thank you for sharing my celebration!

Kevin- You nailed it so succinctly.

Keri- Happy to brighten up your Monday morning! It's really fun to let you know. Nice to write a happy post for a change, eh?

Bond13- Thanks for the empathy and encouragement. I feel like I am passing a lot of new found intelligence and knowledge to our clients and even our leads. I turned someone away from us last week and towards SEOMoz recommendations and companies I've been turned on to by being here in SEOMoz. It felt great to have such fine folks to recommend.

And really, things improved for us much much faster than I had dreamed possible. So I'm happy as can be.

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the tip. I checked and our .xml sitemap has 55 pages and Google is indexing 53. not sure what the 2 missing pages are or how to find out, but I imagine the difference may have to do with blog archives or something along those lines. At any rate, I'm reassured by this. Thanks again.

Gina

I am wondering what would happen if I switched my plugin for social media integration on my WordPress site. For instance, if I have been using Sociable for a long time and have accumulated +1's, likes, shares etc. and then I switch to Flare or Social Stickers, what will happen to all my counts?

Thanks so much! I haven't been able to find any documentation on this.

Thank you, Mike and James. This makes a lot of sense since this is the only blog page that has a comment. (embarrassing to say that publicly ;o) And I haven't gotten this notice for any other blog pages.

Hi Everett,

Thanks for your response. This situation has continued to develop since I posted my question.

Our positions for critical keywords has continued to improve dramatically with yet more improved rankings reported early this week and again yesterday. We're now #1 for 3 keywords, 2 for a couple and 4 for a few more. Increases for additional keywords also.

Positions in Bing and Yahoo have gone up and down by relatively small amounts, mostly down this week but still holding on page 1 for those I care about other than "Gina Fiedel" which dropped 5 for Bing and Yahoo this week down to #14 and up to #6 on Google.

Immediately after I first posted this question, we did change one of the more worrisome site-wide citation links to the name of our company only (removing the keywords from anchor text), but left it in the footer for the time being.  -we didn't do more due to internal issues that aren't worth mentioning here or I'll start venting- although, as time has gone by and we're doing so well, I'm afraid to rock the boat even though I know the advice from Russ and Mash was otherwise and I'm kinda embarrassed we haven't gone after it thoroughly yet. I guess I also felt that spacing the removals might make sense. The positions did drop a tiny bit when we did that but bounced back and as I mentioned, are continuing to improve.
Now to answer your question directly, Everett: We never received any messages in GWT and had no proof of penalty-manual or otherwise, so we did not file a reinclusion request. Our company name continued to rank #1 throughout the whole thing. It was only a couple of keywords that were effected. I now feel it may have been a manual penalty for those keywords (see below).

More info:
Just prior to the bounce back I found and got removed some inbound links that were really spammy with duplicated content in an article supposedly authored by an employee that never existed, a completely fictitiously named and imaginary person. (thank you http://www.linkdetox.com).

I also believe I overused those keywords on our Home page and had obviously re-wrote that right away but further tweaked it just prior to the bounce back.

Probably most importantly is that I started a blog and have been adding thoughtful, quality content and engaging much more on social sites and promoting the blog posts on social sites.

I am happy you chose to respond to my question at this belated time because it's a whopping good reminder of Russ and Mash's (and now yours as well) advice......

Oh! And one more thing! We will not continue putting site-wide footer links on client sites when we launch them. We will NOT be perpetuating that mistake.

Thanks!

I agree with David. The last thing you want is for your visitors to have to search for how to get in touch. Best rule of thumb- hand that to them on a platter. Make it easy. I also agree that it should be text, not a graphic.

Thanks, Jesse!

Tee hee hee indeedy.

That's a really valid point, Chris. There could be some messes to clean up with that kind of imprecise assignment. And who knows, there could be some PC, gender harassment kind of stuff attached to it also. While we're on the subject, there may be some terms that aren't gender specific at all like Voyager but that just doesn't describe it like Journeyman does.