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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?

We have recently re-programmed our website to Responsive Web Design. All the URLs have remained the same, all the content is unchanged. We have this new version sitting on a development server and are finding ourselves hesitant to make the changeover. Our rankings are great currently, and our question is whether or not there are any risks that we will incur by making this change. We would appreciate any advice on how to implement this change safely. Or if that's it's even possible to insure that there won't be ranking losses.

My latest Moz report is showing a 404 for:  http://www.fateyes.com/how-will-googles-hummingbird-affect-your-search-ranking/”ht
(and showing the link this way with the characters after the last / which are not part of the page URL) Google Webmaster Tools says we have no errors. I'm wondering why there is this descrepancy and I'm wondering how I can track down where this link is originating from on our site. I've tried downloading screamingfrog and deeptrawl to no avail (java issues). I've also tried a couple of services online and installed Broken Link Checker plugin with no luck finding it. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

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!

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.

Can my site be penalized for including a book review verbatim in my blog that I also post on Amazon? What are the steps I need to take? I have written a book review that I want to post on Amazon. I am also planning to create a blog post and include the exact text of the review within the post which I will then also promote on my social channels. What do I need to watch out for in terms of duplicate content? Is there a sequence I should follow? We have the rel=canonical tag on our site which is WordPress.

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?

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")

My reports are showing a 404 error for a link to a page in our WP site for which we changed the URL months ago. I can't find where the link is coming from. I used Screaming Frog, but can't find where it might tell me the origin of the link, only that it exists. I am pretty sure it's internal. Can someone please tell me how to find the originating page so I can remove the link without having to comb through every page of the site to look for it? Thanks!

This feels like a question I should know the answer to and I'm a tad embarrassed to ask, but the part of my brain that gets tripped up by somewhat simple things sometimes, is begging to ask just to confirm my understanding. I want to make sure I have it right it prior to giving advice. When one guest blogs I assume that it is critical to create content that is original and unique to that one instance of the guest blog. That means, do not also put that post on your own blog and do not submit it to any other blogs for inclusion. This is both for duplicate content issues and also to respect and not put in jeopardy for duplicated content, the blog owner you are guesting for. Is this correct? Are there any scenarios in which there might be a deviation of this "rule"? Like some use of canonicals or anything else?

I'm thinking about changing the URL for a new blog post that I have already promoted off-site today. I overlooked a detail and am gently kicking myself. I can't determine if it's worth any negative issues that adjusting it might create vs the value of having a more "perfect" URL. Would it be OK to do this by applying a 301 redirect to the page? Would this be the right thing to do or is there some other way? Thanks!!

I have been watching my Notices, Warnings and Errors increase since I added a blog to our WordPress site. Is this effecting our SEO? We now have the following: 2 4XX errors. 1 is for a page that we changed the title and nav for in mid March. And one for a page we removed. The nav on the site is working as far as I can see. This seems like a cache issue, but who knows? 20 warnings for “missing meta description tag”. These are all blog archive and author pages. Some have resulted from pagination and are “Part 2, Part 3, Part 4” etc. Others are the first page for authors. And there is one called “new page” that I can’t locate in our Pages admin and have no idea what it is. 5 warnings for “title element too long”. These are also archive pages that have the blog name and so are pages I can’t access through the admin to control page title plus “part 2’s and so on. 71 Notices for “Rel Cononical”. The rel cononicals are all being generated automatically and are for pages of all sorts.  Some are for a content pages within the site, a bunch are blog posts, and archive pages for date, blog category and pagination archive pages 6 are 301’s. These are split between blog pagination, author and a couple of site content pages- contact and portfolio. Can’t imagine why these are here. 8 meta-robot nofollow. These are blog articles but only some of the posts. Don’t know why we are generating this for some and not all. And half of them are for the exact same page so there are really only 4 originals on this list. The others are dupes. 8 Blocked my meta-robots. And are also for the same 4 blog posts but duplicated twice each. We use All in One SEO. There is an option to use noindex for archives, categories that I do not have enabled.  And also to autogenerate descriptions which I do not have enabled. I wasn’t concerned about these at first, but I read these  (below) questions yesterday, and think I'd better do something as these are mounting up. I’m wondering if I should be asking our team for some code changes but not sure what exactly would be best. http://www.seomoz.org/q/pages-i-dont-want-customers-to-see http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html Our site is http://www.fateyes.com Thanks so much for any assistance on this!

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!

Anyone else wondering who the man behind the glasses is? And is there anyone who remembers To Tell The Truth? Will the real Branagan please stand up. (I hope this isn't overly impolite and doesn't get me in trouble with anyone, or in anyway insult the RB, but I couldn't resist) Happy Friday!

Here's a happy story: Some of you folks with sharp memories may remember my questions and worry over the last 3+ months regarding our fall into the abyss on Google after great positions for over a decade (we've always been fine in Bing and Yahoo). And our company name URL was still #1 so no site-wide penalty. Well......I've been working hard on fixing this in a smart way with all the ingredients I've been learning about. Thank you to SEOMozers for all the help!! There's still plenty to do, especially in the link earning department, but I've come really far from where I was in the Fall. Anyway. I am here right now to report what may be true to life fantastic news. I was starting to suspect an improvement last week, but it proved to be wrong. Then, I saw another sign yesterday but couldn't trust it. Today, my latest SEOMoz report is showing me the following for the several keywords we lost position down to "not in the top 50" for. keyword 1: up 44 points to #6keyword 2: no change still at #4
keyword 3: up 46 points to # 4
keyword 4: up 43 points to #7
keyword 5: up 46 points to #4
keyword 6: up 2 points to #2 What I'm wondering is if this is real. ;o). I'm pinching myself. I realize that it could be one of those sliding readjustment things and we'll drop back down, but we are not a new site. It seems that even if that is the case, it still must illustrate something good. Some kind of elimination of possibilities for why the drop occurred in the first place. I did a few things in this past week that may have put it over the tipping point. One of which was signing up for adwords a week ago. I'm happy to give details if anyone is interested. A few specific questions: 1. What might this be showing me?
2. We have about a 45% number of anchor text footer links in client sites (we're a web dev co) one or two of which are numbering in the hundreds have keywords in them and are continuing to generate more links due to ecomm and large databases. I was gearing up to remove them or get them moved out of the footer so there's only one, but now I'm afraid to touch anything. Most of the footer links are just our company name or "site design". Any suggestions? 3. any other bits of advice for this situation are appreciated. I don't want to blow it now! Thanks!

SEOmoz has us our position for a particular keyword as "Not in Top 50". The same keyword is listed in GA with an average position of. 3.0. What am I missing here? When I do a search, I most definitely am not seeing us listed as #3 for this keyword, and tend to believe the SEOmoz number, but why is it so wildly different in GA? Should I have hope? There is another keyword that SEOmoz has us at #4 and it isn't even on the GA list. Can anyone explain this to me? Many thanks.

I am linking manually to blog posts in my site from my Home page. Our site isn't set up with an auto "Recent Posts" that shows on Home. Should I use the exact blog post title as the anchor text or do I need to create something that is not an exact match to the title of the post?

Is it possible to get penalized by Google for a specific keyword and essentially disappear from the SERPs for that keyword but keep position for the brand (#1) and some other keywords (#4 and #7)? And how would you find out that this is what happened if there is no GWT message?

Question 1: What is the general consensus on gaining links through blog comments on blogs with CommentLuv enabled? Backstory: I was studying our competitor's links and tripped upon something I haven't seen before. There were a number of blog comments created in 2011 by an individual who was probably an SEO hired at least partially for the purpose of making blog comments to gain inbound links for the competitor. I haven't dug deeply enough to find if there are any more recent than 2011. The interesting part was the name/link of the company for this individual which was not the company's actual name but a URL crafted from a main keyword. It  obviously has a redirect to the actual competitor's website which is where the link took me AND a link to this individual's "most recent blog post". This blog post on the company site was written by someone else entirely. Question 2: Clearly some manipulation to build links- would these links be considered unnatural? Question 3: Would it be smart for me to find blogs with CommentLuv to gain links to my blog?

My blog is still very young - and I feel like a total newbie, but I'm working at it consistently. I've got  21 posts that I've put up since the beginning of January (except for 2 from October) and another in the pipeline and of course, plans to continue on this way. I've been building up my confidence and feel like it's just about time to branch out farther than my Google+, FaceBook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts (which I've been doing regularly). My hope is to gain more visitors by publicizing the posts in some other environments. I would so appreciate some suggestions on how I might do that.  And also, is it too soon? I don't want to jump the gun before there's an respectable/acceptable amount of content.

I have two questions regarding Domain Authority: 1. Is it possible that a drop in Domain Authority may have been caused by adding a blog and blog posts? In other words, would adding pages/posts dilute the site's authority? And will it catch back up with itself or will that require inbound links to those new pages? (oops! that was 3 questions in one) 2. Would it be detrimental to have internal links coming from blog posts without authority to my Home page and could that have contributed to a drop in Domain Authority? Thanks!

I just read the following comment in a response to someone else's question. The Responer is an SEOMoz Authority whose opinion I respect and have learned from (not sure if it's cool to mention names in a question) and it spurred my curiosity: "...Generally you will receive a warning from Google before your site is penalized, unless you are talking about just specific keywords." This is something I have been wondering about in relation to my own sudden  ranking drop for 2 specific keywords as I did not receive any warnings or notices. I have been proceeding as if I had over used these keywords on my Home page due to an initial lesser drop, but identifying the cause for the huge drop still seems useful for a number of reasons. Can anyone explain this further?

On my most recent campaign report, I have 2 Notices that we can't find any cause for: Meta-Robots nofollow-
http://www.fateyes.com/the-effect-of-social-media-on-the-serps-social-signals-seo/?replytocom=92
"noindex nofollow" for the page: http://www.fateyes.com/the-effect-of-social-media-on-the-serps-social-signals-seo/ Blocked by Meta-Robots -Meta-Robots nofollow-
http://www.fateyes.com/the-effect-of-social-media-on-the-serps-social-signals-seo/?replytocom=92
"noindex nofollow" for the page: http://www.fateyes.com/the-effect-of-social-media-on-the-serps-social-signals-seo/ We are unable to locate any code whatsoever that may explain this. Any ideas anyone?

Is it possible to receive a manual penalty on just 2 keywords (or any penalty for that matter) from Google but receive no message in GWT? I am going to give a lot of information here, in the hopes that it will be helpful. My apologies if it's too long. Some of you who are here a lot, may remember my panicked questions in early January. I have learned a ton since then but I still haven't fully solved our mystery and one of the questions that remains is if perhaps one can receive a penalty for particular keywords only and not receive any messages. Our company name, company name.com and company name + location is still coming up #1. We also still have a couple of other keywords at #4 and #7 so it seems our site wasn't penalized. My over-zealousness with the keyword usage on our Home page was pointed out to me here in the forum by Dr. Pete so I made some significant changes on that back in January and continue to tweak although I'm afraid at this point, to do too much that may cause us to lose ranking in the last two good keywords...Meanwhile, our listings on Bing and Yahoo are great and mostly continue to go up. Back Story: We had a huge drop in the SERPS for a particular set of keywords that I feel are our most critical, at the end of December 2012 after being #3 for over a decade. We had a smaller drop in October, that worried me and I worked on the on-page and brought it back to #7 sometime in Nov or early Dec and then it disappeared to "not in top 50". I believe I overdid it. I also got a lot of great advice and leads from Mike Tek and have been having a blast being engaged in reading, learning, following, commenting. I believe I have created some good content since January by creating a company blog and adding posts regularly- 19 so far.  I have also gotten some reviews on Yelp, claimed more local listings, worked on our Google+ page, joined Communities, have been promoting our blog posts on FB, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+. We are very short in the inbound link department and I have yet to activate solutions on that score, (and sadly, the majority of our links are in client footers as we are a web design company and I don't think we should remove them without being sure they've hurt us). I am at the point of looking for some help for hire for link building as I am realizing my own limitations.

I received a warning in my most recent report for too many on-page links for the following page: http://www.fateyes.com/blog/. I can't figure out why this would be. I am counting between 60-70 including all pull downs, "read more's", archive, category and a few additional misc. links. Any ideas or suggestions on this? Or what I might do to rectify? Perhaps it's just an SEOmoz report blip... We currently don't have the post list rolling to additional pages so it's kind of passively set up to be endless, but it's in the works.

I have asked this question before and am still seeking help. My apologies for being repetitive and hopefully not too pesky but I am sincere in my search for guidance. I am looking for advice on how to manage my personal G+ profile along with my business G+ page. My challenge is the coordination between the two and getting people to add our biz page to their Circles instead of to me personally through my personal profile. Google+ requires that we have personal profiles- especially for authorship, but it's my business that I want to represent and promote. I do have the Google+ badge on my website and blog posts. And I am duplicating my posts on both the personal and business pages. I have joined a couple of communities and know that i need to find more and engage in those. And also, another question this brings up: in terms of the social signal aspect for our company website/blog, does it matter where I am building my Circles?

This is a basic SEOmoz question - Is there a way to view past campaign reports? I haven't manually "archived" any of my reports, because I didn't realize that may be important so it seems I might be out of luck on this. i would like to compare old reports to current ones and can't find a way to access the old reports.

This question is so elementary, I'm almost embarrassed to ask it. I am having trouble directing potential followers/friends to Circle us on our Google+ business page.  People add to my personal profile page instead, the result of which, i am not building up Circles for my business while I am building my personal profile which i don't care about. I have made personal requests, used our logo on my personal page header saying "Gina Fiedel representing (business name)" and "Visit our Google+ business page", etc.  I feel like I'm missing something. Has anyone found any sort of magic bullet for this?  Thanks!!

I am looking for a basic description of the use for schema tags and how and in what circumstances they are best applied. I have found a few resources such as schema.org and here on this forum, but find I still need a basics lesson and subsequently, some ways to execute. The Raven plugin appears to make the code visible to the viewer which seems unacceptable...Guess I'm just a bit stumped! Thanks in advance for any available hand-holding on this. ;o)

Has anyone used or know of a plugin for setting up authorship and/or publisher-ship? I have noticed that there are some plugins but I'm not sure if they are reliable.  Would love to know if there's an easy way to set this up. We use All in One SEO pack, not Yoast, btw. Thanks for your suggestions!

This seems silly, but I have errors on blog URLs in our WordPress site that I don't know how to access because they are not in our Dashboard. We are using All in One SEO. The errors are for blog archive dates, authors and just simply 'blog'. Here are samples: http://www.fateyes.com/2012/10/
http://www.fateyes.com/author/gina-fiedel/
http://www.fateyes.com/blog/ Does anyone know how to input descriptions for pages like these?
Thanks!!

Our Google position had a sudden and precipitous drop from #3 to #15 in October for our two main keywords: "web design Santa Barbara" and "Santa Barbara web design". I have steadily gotten it back to #7 by putting a lot of effort to our on-page SEO. As of my December 24 SEOMoz report, it was #7, and as of my check yesterday, Dec. 28 it was #7. We were #3 for "web designers Santa Barbara" as of yesterday. Today, i cannot even find our listing on the first 5 pages. Recently, our partner company was engaging in some link building for us that may have just occurred and I'm worried that this may be the cause. I have not yet had a report and actually don't know for sure yet, it has even been accomplished. We had also done some link building in October by a different company we subcontract to and there was a Google type hack of our site. Those were the two major changes that occurred at that time. I thought it would be safe to have some more link building done now, since we'd already survived that first "sudden" increase of links in October. Does anyone have any idea what may have happened and how I can fix this? I am trying not to panic. Thank you in advance for any ideas to understand and/or remedy the situation!

For years, our company placed 3 or 4 in an organic search on Google for the keyword I am inquiring about. A couple of months ago, we went down to number 15. I then subscribed to SEOMOZ and began a concerted effort to improve our ranking for this keyword. Slowly, our listing came up higher in searches and on our reports- back onto the first page #8. Our weekly SEOMOZ reports reflected this improvement, but then it dropped down again to page 2, #11. My most recent report, this week, gave us a PR 8 for this keyword, but our listing is showing upon page 2, #11. I do have my personal search and browser history disabled. I am unclear as to why there is this discrepancy.