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Check this post out. In reference to a similar question.
Basically the TLDR is that unless it looks like blatant PBN/SPAM/Manipulation google doesn't seem to concerned. I have plenty of backlink that are 75% spam score and higher. Obviously I don't recommend looking for links that are super high spam score but I would put your effort into link acquisition as opposed to link cleanup.
If what you are doing is working then don't change it! IF your business grows enough to be worth it then fold NY into the larger site. If NY is the primary target, just keep both of them for now. You can refer all the NY traffic that is coming to the MY page to the NY page.
Hey everybody. I am working with a handful of medical news websites and some of these sites are rather large. I am noticing/suspecting there is some cannibalism going on here. How do news sites deal with this? Do they noindex the old stuff? Update the old stuff instead of writing a new piece all together? Curious what to do!
Do you have a rule of thumb? Check anything over 50% and then disavow anything over 70% etc. Obv there are exceptions but just looking for some guidelines
Hey everybody!
Looking for a few opinions on this. I am working with a site that has some backlinks with extremely high spam scores, all the way up to 86%. I have ran these through screaming frog and A LOT of them are 404's, or even 301. So obviously if they are 404's then I don't need to worry about them as much. They will sort themselves out.
But what about all these other ones with a 25% and higher spam score? A lot of them also do not have SSL and are obv insecure. I would presume google doesn't like backlinks from sites that are not secure. Thoughts?
Hey everybody,
I am seeing some confusing results. I am seeing that in the back of our Search Console we are showing around 4,500 sites indexed.
If I use the "site" operator in google, only 2820 show up... any thoughts as to why that happens?
Thank you! I think the problem is what you mentioned in the previous post. So MOST of them are indexing but I guess really it is a ranking problem.
I have been banging my head against a wall and I cannot figure out why this site isn't ranking, driving me nuts!
So just looking it appears you don't have a robots.txt file or a sitemap. At least one that I could easily find.
This Moz post might help when creating one.
Hey!
I'm seeing that you have 1,300 Domains linking to you and 21,000 individual links going towards your site. Are you seeing different numbers?
You will never have an exact answer as to how many backlinks there are to your site. Moz, ahrefs, Majestic, and Search Console will all tell you different answers. So you decide what your source of truth is. I personally feel that Google Search Console is the ultimate authority. Moz is my second source of truth because Moz find the most similar answer to Google. You can download a backlink report from Search Console as well!
Hi Chris.
I don't work for Moz.
Most of the time I have found that a the best way to get in touch with company representatives like Moz etc, is to state your question, or issue, as opposed to leaving it open ended. Not only that, but you would be amazed at the wealth of knowledge that people on these forums are willing to share. Even Rand, the founder of Moz, is known to drop in and share a few words.
Part of the reason I signed up for Moz, not only because of the analytic tools, was because of the forum. And the resources that were available to me from my colleges. I met with an SEO director one time and he explained to me one of the reason he didn't like many of the SEO tools that gave you "answers" was because all it was doing was giving you the opinion of who ever wrote the code. He also explained that one of the reason he liked Moz, Majestic, and Ahrefs was because they left the data open ended and allowed him to make the decisions.
Agreed, at first it is frustrating, I pay good money for an expensive program, and at first there is just SO much information that I became overwhelmed and felt like I couldn't take advantage of everything the program had to offer. Essentially what Moz has done is crowdsourced support. They have done it in a brilliant, controlled way that not only saves them money, but actually helps people LEARN in the process. I have learned more in the past few months of asking/answering questions than I had in the previous classes/tutorials/seminars on SEO I had taken.
Not only that, but people like KeriMorgret literally has Moz implanted into her head, so anytime people have serious problems regarding Moz products, her or the other team members seem very quick to answer.
Sorry for the frustration! I promise it's worth the blood, sweat, and code!
When I first started SEO there were 3 big guns in three search marketing world.
I still think those 3 are they best in their realm, and with an unlimited budget, I would pay for all 3. But I don't have an unlimited budget, and I to had to pick just one, so I set out to do some research like you did. Upon further review, I did found that someone actually basically did the baclkink study for me!
http://www.analyticsseo.com/blog/link-data-research-majestic-seo-moz-linkscape-ahrefs-part-2/
They all have their pro's and con's, but for me, Moz seemed to be the best bet. I looked at is as an investment. I felt that in the long run, the quality of links that Moz were finding was more important than the extra links that Ahrefs or Majestic were finding. My second thought was that as all these companies grow, Moz, seemed adapting to the needs of modern SEO better than the other companies. So after weighing the pro's and con's I figured it was worth it and would only be a matter of time before Moz's backlink tool was more powerful, or would outshine the others simply because of efficacy.
So far, I am pleased.
As I said, with an unlimited budget, I would have all 3 programs. Moz, SEMRush, & Majestic. I can't, so I choose Moz, any day.
Hope that helps.
So, assuming you have done the necessary research before hand, for example this Moz article on mobile Google makes it pretty clear that it is not going to hurt your desktop rankings, so before any panic sets in, I sincerely believe in checking the data and making sure its worth the investment.
For example if only 2% of your traffic is coming from mobile, and there don't seems to be many conversions from that, I personally would take my time finding the perfect solution, and hold out until everything could be made responsive.
Also based on this website you sent, I fear it will end up being a lot more work than it appears. I HAVE NEVER USED IT, but based on my 10+ years in graphics/web design, conversion tools generally are not as effective as they appear, although some work very well.
In conclusion, look at your mobile traffic and conversions. Look at what people are using mobile for, are they simply getting a phone number? Then a Google + Business Page can help serve the same purpose while you start the new site. Are they making purchases? Then maybe it would be worth looking into the solution they sent simply to keep revenue. If mobile isn't incredibly influential to your overall web presence, I would just hold out and do it right. Measure twice, cut once.
Hope this helps!
I would agree with Don. Matt Cutts, who is pretty much the authority of all of this, has answered this question. Granted it was 7 years ago I think the answer is still valid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6-KA20QqL8\
Quantity is important for people, quality is important for google.
Good morning,
To my knowledge, the end result of the review doesn't really make a difference. The general rule of thumb I always try to follow is if any money/product/services were exchanged/traded then I have to have some sort of disclaimer stating that there was some sort of exchange made in return for the review.
I try to be as transparent as possible in my marketing/SEO tactics. At the end of the day, its going to come back and bite you in the long run.
Consumer Reports became famous because they refused to receive anything for free, and they were able to build trust with the consumer because of that.
EGOL, a active member on these boards, states over and over, that your content will speak for itself. If you are writing content that is worthy of the positive review, it will come on its own. You may need to help push people in the right direction, but I would agree with Houses, that same energy could be put into refining content, natural link building, creative marketing etc.
If shortcuts were easy or better, they would just be the way.
-e
Hey there,
I am in a similar situation and I have posted about it on these boards. If your company can afford it, it is probably in your best interest to just hold onto them. At the same time, as you stated, all this can change in an instant. Take .mobi for example, that was supposed to be the mobile browser extension, but clearly with responsive design, there isn't as much of a need for the .mobi in my opinion.
On the flip side, Google keeps doing more and more towards local, or so it seems. So having the domains in other countries, may become more beneficial. I have all of our extensions forwarding to our primary domains.
My personal opinion is the vanity domains aren't going to take off. Everybody was so excited with the .tv extension for example, but once people find a way to keep all of that, or display similar information on a .com it becomes useless. There used to be benefit to having a .org, and people realized it was being abused. Now the only other benefits are .edu and .gov, because there are restrictions to owning them.
If you can, keep them, it certainly doesn't hurt. Is it going to make or break your company by not having them? Probably not, but it could save you a headache later down the road.
Hope that helps.
Good Mozzing,
So, as some of you may know based on my previous post, I am working with an odd situation here. I have taken over an account for a company and the Main domain pretty much falls into the category of everything Google hates. I have suggested to the CEO that the practices they did before me were sorta in the Grayhat realm bordering on Blackhat but I need empirical data before I can make any drastic changes.
In May and June of 2013 Panda, Penguin, and Payday Loan all had updates. Our company has nothing do to with porn, apartment rentals, finances, or anything like that, but the SEO methods used were, as I said, questionable.
In June of 2013 there was a drop from 8,000 sessions to 5,000 sessions from organic traffic. If I switch over to all referring traffic the loss increases to 11,000 to 7,000 sessions. To me that seems pretty substantial. Not only that, but according to the data we have not been able to recover.There was a steady climb for about 5 months before the drop, and then now we are in this middle ground.
I have only been here for about 2 weeks, so the things I have been uncovering are pretty amazing.
Is that enough to assume that we were indeed hit by the updates?
EGOL, a big time member on these forums posted years ago that there will be a day when the only thing that a search engine truly judges a website on is Keywords and content. Now I'm not entirely sure I'm completely on board with that (I'm about 95%), but I do agree that content, especially after the recent SE updates, has shifted back into power.
My father owns a business, we make educational materials for people with mild to severe autism. He is very successful, and he personally doesn't have the time or energy to spend in writing a daily blog, and unfortunately doesn't trust anybody to ghost write for him.
So we came up with an alternative. A combo of original content mixed with educational reports, interesting studies, and every now and then some strange funny story from theOnion. We would post at least one original piece a week, if we could 2, and then everything else from there. I made a few Bullying Infographics for his business to post and share on social media. Now, it wasn't always keyword heavy content, but as long as it was content worth sharing, it did get us a lot of links.
At the end of the day, if I have to make a decision on how Google is doing something, I try to remind myself Google is in the business of making money. They do that by providing the best, accurate, human, natural, semantic, organic, pefect-beacue-I-am-a-snowflake, result. Google, in my opinion, will take how current the website is, into account.
Content is King.
I wrote this before you posted you're response, so I will have to think more
Good Morning!
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is very hard for things to change online and have little to no effect be felt either positive or negative.
To expand on what Kevin is asking above it is incredibly difficult to examine what is causing drop in traffic without knowing what came before. For example, if you changed ANY of the URL's and didn't properly put in 301's that is a very quick way to get some of your traffic back. I ran your website through Screaming Frog, which is a spider of sorts and it found one 301. Without telling Google where an old URL lives you are loosing any SEO that the old URL had.
Another thing to consider is the content. If the previous website was a literal rug encyclopedia on repairs and was the go-to website for "oriental rug repairs", and the content was now shifted more toward "oriental rug cleaning" you may see a drop in traffic as Google feels that you have less authority with the new content, and have lost authority in the old.
Hope this helps guide a little.
Another good resource below.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-avoid-seo-disaster-during-a-website-redesign/
Demi,
I am running into a very similar problem with my website, and after coming across the same Matt Cutts video as the one linked above I have begun a pruning campaign of my own. A plethora of the links that are coming to my website are all asking for 5$ for my link to removed. I haven't paid for anything, yet, and obviously would prefer not to, but drastic times call for drastic measures.
In one of my posts a few weeks ago EGOL, a member on every single SEO board ever made (literally), said:
"I don't trust having Google do stuff for me that I could do myself, because plenty of times Google says how they are gonna do things and then change their mind without tellin' anybody."
That says it all right there. At the time we were talking about redirects, which is slightly different then this, but still. The more that you can do on your own the better. Not only will it be immediate, but it will effect all search engines, not just Google. Even the Disavow Tool suggests contacting the webmaster and asking to be removed. The Disavow Tool is a very advanced dangerous tool, that used incorrectly, can harm your site.
Marie Haynes, one of the "penalty experts" around in the SEO world wrote a great article on the Disavow Tool. Here it is below.You can also find here around these boards if you're lucky! It's rumored she has an affinity for Penguins and Pandas, but that's just water cooler talk.
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2330944/7-Things-You-May-Not-Know-About-Googles-Disavow-Tool
Anyway, I think the disavow tool is great FOR GOOGLE, but use it carefully and sparingly, and pretty much as a last resort. Ray-pp brought up some good points about Google ignoring some of the links, and I too am confident in their ability to weed through the jungle of negative SEO. There is also "link rot" which is the concept that over time a link that is left alone will slowly wither and die a painful death and stop hurting you as much as it is.
Depending on how deep the spam runs, it may be worth calling in some 3rd party SEO experts who deal with penalty analysis, and spam. Depending on the size of your website and just how much they are hurting you, it's always worth getting a second opinion.
Hope that helps!