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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!
So i am working with a review company and I am having a hard time with something.
We have created a category which lists and categorizes every one of our properties. For example a specific property in the category "restaurant" would be as seen below:
And so on and so on. What I am noticing however is that our more obscure properties are not being linked to by any page. If I were to visit the page myurl.com/restaurant I would see 100+ pages of properties, however it seems like only the properties on the first few pages are being counted as having links. So far the only way I have been able to work around this issue is by creating a page and hiding it in our footer called "all restaurants". This page lists and links to every one of our properties. However it isn't exactly user friendly and I would prefer scrapers not to be able to scrape all properties at once!
Anyway, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
So, i have done some research on this and I am running into 2 problems. We run a review site for a specific niche.
wordpress is viewing our category pages as an "archive" which i don't know that it really is.
Google seems to only be indexing the first 9 pages of this category. We would like google to be indexing these pages because thats the only place on our website where all our specific products are linked.
Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
Is there any tools people know about where I can verify that Google is seeing all of our content at scale. I know I can take snippets and plug them into Google to see if we are showing up, but this is very time consuming and want to know across a bulk of pages.
Hey there!
So the only thing that stands out to me is there is no space between Redirect 301 and /store. If this is working however I think you don't need to change anything. The htaccess is read in order, so as long as they are in there you should be ok! The only change I would make is listed below.
Redirect301/store/index.html https://www.notesinspanish.com/store-home/
should be
Redirect 301 /store/index.html https://www.notesinspanish.com/store-home/
Hey everybody. In Moz when I compare link profiles to my competitors my domain is showing up as only having 4 internal follow links, and 0 nofollow. I know for a fact this is not the case however it is disconcerting.
Is there any reason why Moz wouldn't be able to pick up my internal links? Is there a difference when linking internally by "/page_a" vs actually spelling out the entire URL i.e. "https://www.mysite.com/page_a"
I have the same question. If you compare link profiles you can see what he is talking about.
Moz says we have 4 Internal Links, but Search Console says we have closer to 350k
Hey guys, I have a bizarre situation on my hands.
I have a URL that is being wonky.
The url is redirecting to another url and the 301 redirect is not in my htaccess.
There is a 301 redirect in my htaccess but is being overwritten by something else, i.e. whatever is happening in above.
So basically URL A should be redirecting to URL B but instead its going to URL C.
I know we were not hacked, it's not redirecting to a strange bizarre domain. I have also disabled all of our plugins that redirect (to my knowledge)
Any thoughts would be great!
What about for Mobile speed testing?
We are at a loss. We have been following Google Pagespeed Insights which gives us horrible marks. Nothing we do seems to really make a difference. GTMetrix and Pingdom give us much better scores.
We don't know what to do...
So, then I will pose a different question to you. How would you determine the age of a page?
Oh ty! Ill try that out!
Do anything EGOL says... he is a local legend.
You could also redirect those pages with a 301 directly to the 404 page. Or you could block those pages on robots.txt if you don't need them anymore.
Hey there. I asked a question that has some similarities, figured I would share that here.
https://moz.com/community/q/competitor-has-same-site-with-multiple-languages
I don't know that there is "structure" that you can implement as far as having categorical pages. However, an easy way to fix this would be to use the canonical tag. Moz defines it as "A canonical tag (aka "rel canonical") is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. Using the **canonical tag **prevents problems caused by identical or "duplicate" content appearing on multiple URLs."
That way you can tell google which of the two you really want them to index. Otherwise you have to change the content enough that google see's it as different content.
Hey everybody,
I have been testing the Inurl: feature of Google to try and gauge how long ago Google indexed our page. SO, this brings my question.
If we run inurl:https://mysite.com all of our domains show up.
If we run inurl:https://mysite.com/specialpage the domain shows up as being indexed
If I use the "&as_qdr=y15" string to the URL, https://mysite.com/specialpage does not show up.
Does anybody have any experience with this? Also on the same note when I look at how many pages Google has indexed it is about half of the pages we see on our backend/sitemap. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
TY!
Thank you!
We have decided that localizing is not worth it, it appears spammy and we cannot offer curated content on that level.
I am still a little confused about HrefLang. For example lets say we have a .com and a .de website. Both are nearly identical with the exception of hreflang and a handful or product/pricing descriptions (for example the US website might not list german specific dating sites, where as the german site will most likely include most major dating sites simply because they have the reach). Does google see this as duplicate content? Or does the hreflang indicate to google that this should be treated as two different websites.
To sum this up, we are trying to determine just how our competition has such a large keyword footprint when as far as the numbers are concerned (page count, wordcount etc) we are basically on the same level.
Hey Moz,
I am working with a dating review website and we have noticed one of our competitors is basically making duplicated of their site with .com, .de, .co.uk, etc.
My first thought is this is basically a way to game the system but I could be wrong.
They are tapping into googles geo results by including major cities in each state, i.e. "dating in texas" "dating in atlanta" however the content itself doesn't really change. I can't figure out exactly why they are ranking so much higher. For example using some other SEO tools they have a traffic estimate of $500,000 monthly, where as we are sitting around $2000. So, either the traffic estimates are grossly misrepresenting traffic volume, OR they really are crushing it.
TLDR: Is geo locating/translating sites a valid way to create backlinks? It's seems a lot like a PBN.
That certainly should help. However it's no guarantee, Google doesn't always follow whats on the page. The problem is you are competing with Nasdaq. But yes that should help. They could also noindex their content for that page however I have a feeling they won't want to do that.
Hey there. So it appears it is being indexed. I have it showing up for me. I have a feeling what is happening is websites like Nasdaq.com are taking preference to your article. The reason being that they not only have the same exact title, but they are a more trusted website.
If you do a google search for "DTCC Moves Closer to Blockchain-Powered Trades" and then tell google to show results with omitted searches you show up. Also my contact info is in my profile if you have any other questions.
Hey there,
I seem to have heard mixed results on this. We have a LOT of pages that we are trying to tell google are important. Does it make that big of a difference if those pages are linked in the homepage/header menu? Or mega menu for example?
We are essentially a review site, so we potentially have thousands of links that could be implemented into the menu. Thoughts are greatly appreciated!
Thank you for your response.
The Hoth is a Forbes 1000 company, so I have to assume they are doing SOMETHING right. Maybe they are building PBN's I'm not sure, but how would they survive if they were utilizing tactics that don't work?
So the company I am working with has purchased backlinks from Hoth and Fiverr. We have noticed that a lot of links seem to be from very low level DA's as well as wix,wordpress blogs that seem like they are the bottom of the barrel as far as links are concerned.
Is there any value to even having these. Is there a way we can quantify the value that these links provide. It is relatively expensive to purchase these packages, if the company can ensure DA50 posts is it worth doing that sort of this? Is it better to have a lot of a little or a little of a lot.
Something else occurred to me. So, our api rewrites EVERYTHING every night. So technically 1300 landing pages are coming online EVERY night, and the content isn't really changing. If that a problem?
To sorta explain, this is a review site for other websites/apps. Our API scrapes the description from the app/site, as well as ratings from app stores etc and then publishes that onto our page. So, generally the content isnt really changing, its just updating. Thoughts on that?
Thank you!!! Thats great info.
I agree with Gaston 100%... not only that but changing your URL is not only a major pain in the butt, if not done properly can severely hurt your SEO.
Yeah so basically we are bumping up all the static content on our review pages. The reviews are updating daily. And to clarify when you say "wouldn't work in your favor" you mean we aren't getting any benefit from the content, it isn't negatively impacting us correct?
Thank you very much! Can you clarify number 3?
Hello!
I have a website with over 1300 landings pages for specific products. These individual pages update on a 24hr cycle through out API. Our API pulls reviews/ratings from other sources and then writes/updates that content onto the page.
Is that 'bad"? Can that be viewed as spammy or dangerous in the eyes of google? (My first thought is no, its fine)
Is there such a thing as "too much content". For example if we are adding roughly 20 articles to our site a week, is that ok? (I know news websites add much more than that on a daily basis but I just figured I would ask)
On that note, would it be better to stagger our posting? For example 20 articles each week for a total of 80 articles, or 80 articles once a month? (I feel like trickle posting is probably preferable but I figured I would ask.)
Is there any negatives to the process of an API writing/updating content? Should we have 800+ words of static content on each page?
Thank you all mozzers!
Agreed! Forcing the rewrite will solve the problem, I'm guessing OP is currently using 301 redirects to send people to HTTPS.
I have been hired to work with a dating website to help with some SEO. The website itself is in a lot of trouble from an SEO standpoint. I have been working on a plan with them for how to fix their problems.
They are currently averaging 1.6k unique users a month and wants to get to 50k in 3 months and 200k in 6 months. This seems entirely unreasonable without spending a lot of money on SEM/Social/Other marketing avenues.
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.
Matt Cutts on Sitewide Backlins That pretty much will tell you everything you want to know.
As far as the domains being spammy, really that's going to have to be a personal decision. Just because the word directory is in the name, it isn't a spam site. Just because there is a hyphen, doesn't make it spam. Google is progressively becoming more and more powerful, and more and more capable at telling what is real, and what isn't.
Visit those websites, do they look like spam to you? Do they look like a directory listing site do you? If you worked at google, and had to do a site audit, would you ding someone for linking those sites?
Really for all intensive purposes wikipedia was a directory, and then it started getting powerful, and gaining traction, and then it was being abused.
Anyway, I guess to answer your question, you will have to look at the websites to actually know the answer. Is the website functioning as merely a place to gather links? Then yes, it is probably spam.
EDIT: Also, at first I thought this was a competitor analysis, but considering that you are mentioning disavow, I will presume this is for you. The disavow tool is VERY powerful, and I would use it very sparingly. Do what you can to organically remove the links before disavowing them. Not only that but if you still have links from these sources, you are still getting some sort of juice, so build a bridge before burning a bridge. Replace those links with new ones, from legit sources. Write some press releases, post some solid social media, reach out to bloggers etc.
Thank you!
I just always felt like, why use the plugin? When I could hard code it in on a server level. It wouldn't even need the website to still get the redirects!
The ONLY last thing I would add.
I'm sure you will notice a lot of eCommerce websites will keep products that they don't sell anymore, and just keep them as "sold out". People still hit those products and land on those pages.
Check and see how often people are hitting these products. If some of these pages have some juice left, it might be worth recreating a page in its place for a product that isn't being sold anymore and up sell for something you are selling. Or as Ricky said above me, 301 them.
Don't just prune everything at once. Slow and steady wins the race. Make sure you know what you are cutting before you cut it.
Hey everybody! It's been a while since off the boards!
I am reworking a site and I have been looking into their Redirection Plugin. I personally tend to lean towards just using the .htaccess because, well, why not. However, when looking deeper into the plugin I found myself a little confused with their redirection wording.
RewriteRule ^/products/landing-page-october-2015/$ /products/special-education-news-october-2015/ [R=301,L]
Is that the same thing as a classic Redirect 301?
Although you have more than enough answers I figured I would chime in since I have had some experience with this. Bottom line, whatever work you put in, you will get out. Google progressively becomes more and more intelligent and is more and more capable of determining who wrote what first. Simply put, there is no easy way to get content anymore. Search Engine Land wrote a great article about content.
Now, we are in a time where EVERYBODY writes content. I'm not totally sure what you do but I'm guessing its wedding photography? I personally think that utilizing your creative gift of photography for links is a great idea. Maybe think of some other ways you can leverage that talent. Make an infographic of how wedding photography has changed over the years, or a youtube video on the 10 best wedding tips. As a wedding photographer (if that's what you do, I'm sure you have plenty of tips that are outside of box.
Remember, if you pay with bananas you are gonna get monkeys. Same goes with SEO. If shortcuts were easy and effective, they would just be the way.
It's hard to expand on this topic after what was just written, however I will reiterate pretty much every point that was stated above. Nofollow links are still links and the source of the link can have a large impact on your website. For example, Wikipedia links are Nofollow, but I think you would be hard pressed to find anybody who would say a Wikipedia link is not worth it. There is also argument on how much nofollow links actually affect SEO.
Although they technically don't add any link juice, Google can still see the categorization and labeling. If your website has 100 no follow links from Car Repair websites, to a page on your site about Car Repair, that will still help Google identify what your page/site is about.
Anyway, any link is worth it in my opinion, as long as it can benefit you in some way. I.e. exposure, positive SEO, conversions, etc. And the other website isn't utilizing any negative/blackhat tactics.
-Hope this helps!
I believe with Kentico, you "SHOULD" be able to modify the UI to have a better feel, and sorta streamline it, that way only one person has to suffer, that person being the one doing all the set up.
I'm going through that right now. I'm building out a program that is a total nightmare. For everybody else, it should be pretty nice though... in theory...