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Did you leave the old sitemaps (xml and html) up until Google got all your new pages indexed?
My understanding (could be wrong) is that leaving the old sitemaps provides a simple way for Google to keep seeing that "oldpage.html" is redirected to "newpage.html".
The more often Google sees the redirect, the faster they index properly. And an easy way to make sure they keep seeing the change is to leave your old sitemaps up for awhile.
Hi Martijn,
I checked my FIrefox, and not seeing any plugins or addons that would cause that issue.
It is strange that it is only that one page. None of my other similar pages do that...
Did it happen on your computer? Any other ideas?
Greg
Hi Julie,
The domain authority on the pages all look good. But what matters more to the SEO impact is how related the linking page/site is to the site that they are linking to.
You did not say what the target site was. But if the target site is for a musician or artist, then the spotify or creativemarket links would be more valuable than the moz link.
Hope this helps,
We have a https site and have been checking our 301 re-directs from the old http pages.
All seem fine except one...and it is ONLY weird in Firefox (it works OK on Chrome and IE). The http version of that one URL is redirecting to the correct https URL, but with ?ref=wookmark being appended to the end. Why?
On the Firefox browser only...
http://www.easydigging.com/broadfork(dot)html
301 redirects to
https://www.easydigging.com/broadfork(dot)html?ref=wookmark
From the research I did Wookmark seems to be a JQuery feature, but we do not use it (as far as I know). And even if we do, it probably should not pop up when doing a 301 redirect. I did try clearing my cache a few times, with no change in the problem.
Any help is appreciated 
Anybody else have ideas or suggestions about this question?
Happy New Year!
Greg
Hi John,
Sure thing! They are mostly images we made for a Yard Drainage Guide we wrote years ago that used to be very popular.
Here is image #1 - https://www.easydigging.com/sitebuilder/images/drainage_33-600x388.jpg
And here is image #3 - https://www.easydigging.com/sitebuilder/images/drainage_22-600x386.jpg *MOZ is showing a Link Status of 403 (forbidden) for this and many other images. But not sure why since the images are easily viewed and appear in the drainage guide.
Attached is the screenshot of the "Links>TopPages" screen from Moz Pro.
Looking at my "Links > Top Pages" report shows the top fifteen being image URLs (jpg files). Weird or normal?
Clicking the "View Links" icon for a few of the image URL's shows that the best links in the list have DA in the 30's and 40's, and some PA in the 20's. But the linking sites have names that SOUND pretty crappy (from sites with names that sound weird or spammy)
QUESTION 1: Do links to image URLs... A) help the overall SEO of the site's HTML pages, B) only help the specific page the image appears on, C) or are they of no value to the regular pages?
QUESTION 2: What to do with the obsolete images? (images still hosted on our site, but do not appear on any pages) If I remove the images, the links will be lost. Which is good if the links are hurting us, but it would be bad for our SEO if the links are helping (unless we 301 the obsolete images to current ones)
Thanks!
Hi Ian Watson. We have 2 questions (hopefully you are still monitoring this thread)
1. In the case of an old-page.html that is 301 redirected to current-page.html, will Link Explorer automatically assign inbound links going to old-page.html to the current-page.html ?
2. What is the purpose of showing "Internal, followed links" and "Internal, nofollowed links" on the COMPARE LINK PROFILES PAGE? What good does it do to know or compare those counts?
Thank you!
Thanks Roman. I am good with doing redirects, and it is not many pages, so making coding mistakes that cause chaos is not really the issue (though it is always good to avoid).
My question is really about using some of the "link juice" being directed to useless outdated images to improve the ranking of some deep but related pages on our site.
There are probably dozens of reasons, not that they are good reasons 
For my ecommerce sites it is because we want to keep the viewers (potential customers) focused on the product pages (where they can buy stuff)
The blog pages BRING a few people to the site, and that's good. But for the people who are already on the home or product pages, we don't need to show them that there is a blog available, we just want to keep them focused on shopping.
Hi David. Or it can be done more simply (If you have G+ pages for both your self and you business) by just putting these two lines in the head of your page
where publisher is your G+ biz page.
If it is just one thread on a forum that was flooded with bad links, you could delete that thread. Make sure that any traffic to the associated URL's get a true 404 response.
My understanding is that doing so shows that you did not want those incoming links and that you are not gaining any advantage from them. If you do another Reconsideration Request, you should probably tell them that the targeted page was deleted.
Hi Chris,
I have a couple of small ecommerce sites and ran into the same problem with MOZ Recommended list. They are wonderful intelligent folks - but way too pricey for small businesses.
What I did was search the Forum for questions that sounded like they matched the problems I was experiencing. Then started a list of who answered them in a way that sounded intelligent, that I could understand, and that were polite. You can then check the profile of the MOZ members who answer questions in a way you like. Some will run small SEO firms, or work for small firms. Then put together a Request For Quote (RFQ) and send copies to 3 or 4 of your favorites.
It really does not take that long. Just an evening searching and reading the Forum, then an afternoon to write the RFQ.
After that I did have a hard time choosing just one - I wanted to work with them all but the budget did not allow ;-(
Good luck!
Hi Chris,
If your product is in a market that is saturated, high volume, and highly competitive (like iPods or hiking boots) then stick with Egol's advice.
But from your profile it appears you sell specialty table legs, and I think that may be in a different realm of Adwords where the volume and competition are both low. The products my two stores sell are specialty items that are low volume and low competition, so I can share my experience.
The executive summary is "Start generic and start cheap". Doing that will give you an education focused on your niche at a reasonable cost.
My specialty items do not have a high search volume, so starting with broad keywords allowed Adwords to give me data on the full range of keyword searches it was actually displaying for. Depending on the search volume, it can take a week or three for Adwords to create a good list of actual keyword searches. As this list develops, use negative keywords to prune out phrases that are just wrong. Also start to add phrase and exact match for the phrases that appear often.
And I mentioned "start cheap" because Adwords has this weird habit of over-valuing itself. If I start with a bid of $0.15 it will immediately tell me that I need to bid $1.80 to be on the first page. If I ignore that expensive suggestion, I appear anyways. It may take a couple of days, but I will appear on page 1 or 2. Then I can start upping my bid a nickel at a time until I appear in the upper slots.
So budget $100 to do live research on Adwords, and consider it a market research expense. During that time, also go to the library and use their public computer to make a test purchase after clicking one of your ads - to be sure the tracking is correct. Also never delete a campaign, instead pause it so that the old data is always there to refer back to.
So much more could be said, but I need to go eat breakfast. You are welcome to contact me through one of my stores. Just google my name without the "ory". Good luck!
Hi Coral. I sent you a PM (which is accessed by clicking the little human shape next to the question mark and the magnifying glass at the top of these pages)
From the research I did, the "recommended companies" on the Moz list are all fantastic, but are all geared towards working with large business on long monthly contracts.
If you just need some quick help I suggest doing this:
do a few searches here for terms related to your issue
check the profiles of those responded with intelligent answers - some of them will be with small SEO agencies
contact them, explain your problem, and ask for a quote to resolve it
Good luck!
I checked the AquaFarm page in your image.
My understanding is that G+ prefers to use schema data as it's 1st choice for presenting, but it does not look like you have schema data on your page.
Then it goes for Open Graph data (like Facebook uses) and you do have that. But when I looked at the image linked with your meta property="<a class="attribute-value">og:image</a>" tag it is only 56x56px - which is maybe too small.
I know that the minimum image size has been changing recently, so I do not know exactly what it is right know, but I have been using 300x300px images successfully.
If you want people to be able choose which image to display with their post, you will need "tag" multiple images.
If you want to do Twitter Cards you will need add those tags also and make a 120x120 image for Twitter.
Basically you end up with two sets of pictures: one "visible" set sized properly for your webpages, and one "hidden" set sized properly for you social media accounts.
Hope this helps...
Hello speedingorange,
You wrote: "I have always been under the impression from reading online that an algorithm update would see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools, however the site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for. "
I think you have it backwards. The Panda update, which is NOT algorithmic, is the one that would that would "see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools". The Penguin update, which IS algorithmic, is the one that would cause "site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for". And a Penguin penalty does not result in a Google Webmaster Tools notification. (That is my understanding. I'm sure someone will correct me if I am mixed up, And I am OK with being corrected.)
Two of my sites are suffering from what I believe is Penguin damage. For both the damage is a lot of rank lost for only a few keyword phrases. Other phrases continue to rank normally. When I did a bunch of keyword research (using Moz, Ahrefs, and Majestic results blended together) I found that the few keyword phrases that I severely lost rank for had both:
My understanding is that these are the type of things that Penguin will bite you for. So we did remove or change a few of the anchor text links, and did a Google Disavow on most of the remaining links. We did leave a few anchor text links that were from good pertinent sites. This was done in early June, and we still have not seen any results. I have read that we will not see any big results from submitting a Disavow file until Google updates Penguin again. So we are keeping our fingers crossed until then.
Couple of quick things to explore if you are going to try a similar rescue. First, we did not pay any attention to our NoFollow links since they supposedly do not effect rankings. Second, we did create a nice file of follow links from all our link research, and used it as an additional submission with the Link Detox tool (the spreadsheet report from that tool is very valuable when checking for overoptimized anchor text). Third, we disavowed entire domains rather than individual links because we heard that was most effective.
Good luck!
Sorry, no good answer on how to effectively explain that "it takes time" (I run multiple stores myself and am not a big fan of hearing that either)
But I do have a question. Are you using PPC in the meantime to drive some sales? Also you could be doing PPC combined with CRO to get their conversions improved while you all are waiting for time to pass and organic ranking to rise. You can learn a lot from PPC about what people really search for and what message motivates them.
I've used it with no bad effects, and probably good results.
I have (or had) a keyword on one of my sites with very over-optimized anchor text links. That keyword suddenly dropped from page 1 to page 7. Just that one keyword, which points to a algorithmic (Penguin) penalty. So I analyzed my link profile (not any easy job) and did a Disavow listing enough domains containing those anchor text links to re-balance my link profile somewhat. That's all I did. No reconsideration request, no removal of links. After about 6 or 8 weeks, that keyword suddenly popped back from page 7 to page 3. Page 3 still sucks, but at least that makes it easier to do the work to scramble back to page 1.
Was it because of the Disavow? I don't know for sure, but it sure doesn't look like it hurt anything.
This stuff is often a bit vague and voodoo like, which is why it helps to get a site review from a professional. Check your PM's as I sent you a reply to your reply.
