Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Toby,

thank you for your quick respons. To answer your questions:

• Site structure stated the same -> no changes were made
• The resposiveness was done by recreating the code of the website that was build in Tables and recreated with div's. I've tested the code off course and found no problems with it. It was completely HTML5 validated.
• No not logged in to Google account
• Incognito window of chrome is still untested -> will try that shortly -> thank you for the pointer
• Changes in Google and in Moz.com crawltest
• I know mobile friendliness has to do with mobile searches but since that rest of the site did not change I did not expect any change on desktop (been no. 1 since 5 or 6 years for most of the terms). I would sooner expect a increase do to the cleaner code then a decrease in rankings
• I testen in Google itself on my ipad and iphone and noticed the results there too. All of the competitors are not mobile friendly yet.

Hope this clears up some.

I will PM you a link to the site for your point of view on it.

regards

Jarno

Hello Mozzers,

I got a questions about some rankings. Some of my sites always had no. 1 rankings for most of the competitive terms per niche. I recently made the change to a full responsive design for more mobile friendliness. No all of the sudden I see different competitors that are not mobile friendly outranking me for some of my most important keywords but also I see some link farm sites (like: camping.startpagina.nl) outranking me for some terms.

I was under the impression that Google doesn't like link farm sites? Also I provide a lot of good unique content on my pages and my competitor does no such thing. Still for some terms he outranks me. I understand that it can't be just 1 thing and that there are a lot of factors playing a rol in the big picture but still, you must understand that this is pretty frustrating. I obey the rules of the search engines and see competitors do no such thing and still being outranked by them.

Further details of this matter can be send to you in PM if you need it.

Looking forward for your thoughts on this.

regards

Jarno

Howard,

As far as i know there is not an exact number you are allowed to link to form content. I looked at your page (disney part 1) and the number of links is not to high for the amount of content but I think it's mostly everyone's opinion.

A thing that stood out for me: When I visit your site I see a huge header section with social buttons, site-search, logo, menu and a huge H1. Then I just see a small portion of your content with more adds then content. This could get you hit by Panda/Penguin. Also I see 2 search columns? One on the top right of the page and one in the main section of the site on the right just above the Most popular by Views section. Why?

I would suggest keeping just 1 search bar, making your header a lot narrower (lower) and removing some of the ads on top and placing them further down in the content. That just my 2 cents on this. As for your question about the outbound links: If the links adds value to the page and is logical then you can keep it but keep it all to a minimum.

Jarno

Wayne,

What if you would make a section on your main website for licenses and there each license that you have given to a company gets it's own page. On that page their company information is shown with adress, phonenumbers etc.

They put up a shield or badge, that you have to develop, with a link to their section/license on your site. That way you do the licensing and resolve the issue of duplicate content since the information is gathered on your site. And you get about 50+ incoming links. About the link network I'm not all that concerned. I run a website with over 900 campsites. I guess about 200 of those sites link to our website and we link to their website on their own page. We never had any problems with that method.

Hope you understand what I'm getting at.

regards

Jarno

can you go in even further, showing the Facebook pages/profiles that refer to you? Have you searched for your website, business name, name in Facebook and Twitter? Have you promoted a #Hash to social media or anything?

Maybe start by searching in the Social Media networks to see if anything comes up.

Tom,

I do get what you are going for. I also understand what Ray is saying and I do think he has some good points. I would also start by looking at multiple options. The options I see are this:

1. Keep the current domain and expend it like Ray suggested (/mazda=tires/ etc).
2. Start a new domain (carparts.com) and redirecting your current pages to the new domain (carports.com/toyota-parts/)
3. Keep the current domain and create a new domain for your expansion and linking them all together. So you get toyotaparts.com, mazdaparts.com, hondaparts.com etc.

Every option has a few pro's and cons speaking for it. The domain you currently own and use also has an age factor in its favor. By redirecting it to a new domain you may pass on the authority but you won't pass on the age of the domain. Though new websites tend to rank well in the beginnen, then start dropping some and then settle down it's still a risk factor. Ever more in a very competitive niche.

Maybe the real answer is somewhere in between the options. You could also keep what you have right now, and expend by creating both carparts.com and mazdaparts.com. What you then could do is build something on carparts.com and from there refer to each individual site (toyotaparts.com/mazdaparts.com etc). And you expend by creating new fresh sites and by creating your own high quality new fresh content that's unique and refer it to your other content on the other websites. That way you get a spider web with carports in the center of it and the other sites at the far end, linking it all together to one giant network. Some SEO's might have to say something about this too but I'm just giving you my piece of mind and my thoughts on this subject.

Hope this helps you some.

Regards

Jarno

Hi there,

read your question with great interest. This kinda thing is what I face during some projects to. The first problem is that you are the fourth company working on their site. Every SEO has his/hers own methodology. In other words, things you might not consider to do, might be considered or done by someone else. Then again, the basics should all be the same.

The fact they've had some bad SEO done in the past can hurt a site. I would disavow those links, wait for maybe a month or 2 and check regularly if the links have been dropped. And then look at what the rankings will do. But don't focus on rankings alone. For instance, what is the bounce rate at this point? If the incoming traffic is unrelated to the subject through directory links or bad links you might see a high bounce ratio or low views per visitor. That is also I factor I would look at after disavowing some links. In stead of disavowing everything at once (which you could do) maybe it's wiser to disavow 25% first, then another 25%, another 25% and then the last 25% of links. And keep measuring the effect.

As for using singular or plural domain names is always tricky. It also kinda depends on the language your focussing on. In the Netherlands we have some terms that the plural is completely something else as the singular version. Sometimes it's just a "s" on the end other times the entire word becomes something different.

I would work a bit more on the old domain, making sure the on page SEO is completely up to date and correct, making sure you disavow some/all of the links, creating new unique content, acquire new links through your new content and keep a focus on the future. That way you might also get this old domain to work. Besides the age of the domain could also be a factor (several tools take this into account).

If you do switch to another domain, I agree with Ray. Make sure you also host it on another IP adres and make sure you don't get any reference from the old to the new domain because then the bad link juice might just flow through to the new domain.

Hope my point of view helps

Regards

Jarno

Lubov,

I do feel you improved your titles here. Using the Engineered Brown Wood as the start of your title seems logical to me. The Cipressa in the old title, what does that  refer to? A particular type of wood or product name you use?

Using London in the Title might tell your users where you are but they don't tell them who you are. Danny Dover's book suggest you use | Companyname/sitename at the end of the title. I implemented this for several websites and the results seem to work great. However, when you do that and implement it throughout your site you don't mention London. But you do refer to it in the footer. Why not implement your entire contact details in the footer of the page? Then you can leave london out of your title tag and you have it in your page footer. That is what I would do.

Hope this helps you some.

regards

Jarno

Ivor,

i think i counted correctly:

1. above the content main section
2. right next to your own ad (which Google also counts as Ad)
3. Mid content in between the audi's (the page i looked)
4. at the bottom of the left side bar.

So you actually have 5 ad blocks on your site. Then again, the first ad block should not be that high on the page. Delete the above the content one, and the bottom left sidebar one and add some content before using the block next to your own ads. That might work for you. But at this moment you are violating Google's policy on using ads (IMHO)

I would defiantly add more content, more text less ads. Maybe 1 or 2 ad blocks on at least a 1000 words ? I never measured a ratio that works. Maybe a good idea to do that sometime.

As for the errors, can you give a few examples of the pages that are duplicate, I will look into it a bit further.

Regards

Jarno

Ivor,

what I would do is make sure you update your sitemap.xml daily and also have Google scan it every day (add it by hand in your webmaster tools or use another tactic). That way you are constantly telling Google where all the pages are. Besides that I would recommend having the right structure for pages that no longer exist so they give a correct 404's and make your pages canonicalized for content (but only if you indeed have unique content). 34000 pages are hard to inspect for problems but you would have to start somewhere.

I also noted that you have a lot of adsense blocks and other ads blocks on the pages. Google Adsenses insist that you use no more then 3 ad blocks on 1 page. If I look at your page I see at least 4 blocks. So I would drastically dial this number down and keep them as low as possible on the page. You now have one above the main content (http://www.mercadonline.es/ads/coches/9909). I would never do this. Start with content (maybe 3 or 4 paragraphs before you introduce you first ad block. I work with adsense a lot and I know the policy of Google on this. This might be why you got hit by the penalties. Panda and Penguin both look at the quality of a page and the ration between ads and content.

Hope this helps you some.

Regards

Jarno

Dear Bristolweb,

in some way it still does. Page Rank as you know is being build be gathering links to your websites. PR from the linking website to your own flows over a little. The same goes with Domain Authority and other metrics.

The more people "vote" on your website the better Google will have to like your site because people told Google this is what we would like to see.

So:

quality linking to your websites increases page rank - > more quality links improve your metrics -> more quality links improve your position in Google.

If you really want o improve your pages rank or page rank or whatever name you want to use you could commit yourself to a on-line community asking question, answering questions about the subject of your website. Linking to it from the community helps a lot and also spend time on link building. Use the tools provided by SEOMoz to check out your competitors and make sure you get a link on that page. It could only help not harm your site (not completely true but it's all about the essence in here).

So to sum up my advise:

Yes, PR of pages rank is a (very small) factor in the Google Algorithm so it's still important.

Should you focus on it? In a way: Yes. As I already explained PR is mainly build on the number of "Votes" that go to your websites. So getting more Votes improves your PR and improve the amount of traffic (when you get quality votes) which in turn is a factor in the Algorithm.

Focus on gaining good quality links to your website. It will help!

Wayne,

What if you would make a section on your main website for licenses and there each license that you have given to a company gets it's own page. On that page their company information is shown with adress, phonenumbers etc.

They put up a shield or badge, that you have to develop, with a link to their section/license on your site. That way you do the licensing and resolve the issue of duplicate content since the information is gathered on your site. And you get about 50+ incoming links. About the link network I'm not all that concerned. I run a website with over 900 campsites. I guess about 200 of those sites link to our website and we link to their website on their own page. We never had any problems with that method.

Hope you understand what I'm getting at.

regards

Jarno

ok for starters: if i scan socialhero.com with my tools I only get 4 pages returned. With the index being duplicated even. So something is going wrong here.

The 404 error is probably induced by a page linking to a non existing page and returning server code 404. You should follow the links on the site untill you find the problem. Or you can use a sitemap tool that also tells you where are the links are going to and coming from.

The 302 redirects do present a problem. There are 2 different way's of redirecting information. 301 is a permanent version and that one also passes linkjuice, authority and all other things. 302 has been reseached and tested by some of the biggest names in the SEO world and passes on almost no linkjuice/authority. Use a .htaccess file to redirect the pages to the correct location.

The 92 missing meta description tags I would also solve as quickly as possible. Although there is no direct correlation between higher rankings and meta-description tags there is an indirect correlation between the two. As you may know Meta Description tags are used by the seach engines to show up in SERPS and telling the searcher some information about your page/site. Using this information correctly you can influence the searcher a bit by making your description look enticing of irresistible. By doing so your CTR (Click through Rate) will go up and Google measures CTR. Higher CTR in combination with more time spend on the page equals to a great page. Why else would the searcher click on it and stay on the site?

Those factors are known to be used by Google to determine rankings. So that is the indirect link between descriptions and higher rankings.

96 notices about rel=canonical all depends on how they are used. If there is only one canonical tag in the entire site (for instance every page tells the search engine that your homepage is the original one, you're in trouble). So check that one out to but I wouldn't spend to much time on it.

As for some learning material:

MOZ.com beginners guide to SEO is a great way to start. If you manage everything in there you can move along.
http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

another great resource are the Youmoz and Moz blog on this site. I spend more then 1000 hours on there resources alone to learn more about the subject. So if you really want to be a great SEO/Inbound Marketeer/Web Marketeer be prepared to do the same.

Hope this helps you out some.

oh yes the book by Danny Dover is also very usefull:
http://www.dannydover.com/lp/seo-secrets.html

regards

Jarno

DH,

how important is it to show a picture of his page next to the result? The page is about him therefor the subject of the page is this person in the photo. So i don't see a problem with that but did he actually write the page? Author is the person that writes the page. In that case I for sure wouldn't use it.

I also wouldn't use it if i would write a general page about for instance vacuum cleaners. Why would I want my picture next to a vacuum cleaner even if I created the page? It's not that relevant is it? So in general I wouldn't advice on using the author tag other then for blog posts with useful information.

hope this helps

Regards

Jarno

The way Eliathah is suggesting is correct if you are looking at external links from your site.

If you are look at links to other pages on your website ("lot of pages on my site") then i would never nofollow them unless they really are only the increase the number of pages on your site and don't contain any real usefull info. Then again, why would you make a page without any usefull info right?

Hope this helps

Kind Regards

Jarno

Dana,

the buildup of your sitemap.xml is very strange to me. I use an external program to build my sitemap.xml for me entire website.

You now have a link in your robots.txt file pointing to a sitemap which contains 2 files (both .xml) with een map of the site?

Why not use a program (free or paid like Microsys A1 (the one I use)) to build 1 sitemap.xml en point to this file from your robots.txt?

hope this helps

if you do have any questions, please let me know.

kind regards

Jarno

Dear mnkpso,

as far as I know there is not correlation between your position in a city and higher rankings for local results. It all depends on the searcher. For instance if we take Londen (lovely city) and you are located in the very north of londen and you went looking for a restaurant in Google changes are you are only finding restaurants in the north of londen. Google would like to offer you useful information and if you are located in the north why would Google give you results in the far south part of londen ?

So again, I do not know of any correlation between proximity to a citycenter and higher rankings.

just my 2 cents

regards

Jarno

Andrew,

If I understand you correctly it's about the on-page factors of your SEOMoz campaign?

I think they just check what page is indexed for that keyword by Google. Adjusting the page manually in the system is a temporary solution. After that they again go for the indexed page. Maybe it would be wiser to adjust your pages for the keywords in stead of altering the URL.

The page that ranks best for your keyword might just be the most logical page for that keyword. So in stead of adjusting URL's you might want to rethink that strategy and adjust the page.

Hope my insight may help you

regards

Jarno

FFTCOUK,

are you sure you are using the rel=canonical in the right way? You should include it linking to your own page and on page duplicates so you let the search engines know what page is the original one. If there only is one copy op the page you could debate the fact that the rel=canonical isn't necessary for that page.

For instance: If you have 3 pages about vacuum cleaners and page A is the original one then you include a rel=canonical on page A, B and C all pointing to page A

But what if you only have page A? Why should it then link to page A telling that this is the original post? There's only one page about the subject so that makes it the original post right?

I feel pretty strong about using code that has a use for it. For instance, the keyword tag is no longer used by search engines only by your competitors, so why use it? If you only have one page about a specific subject, why use the rel=canonical? The only reason I can come up with is that when someone duplicates your page they include the tag pointing to your site.

Misuse of technical solutions for specific issues doesn't seem right to me. You can use a car, but if you drive to fast or on the wrong lane you're misusing the technical solution for transporting yourself of goods from location A to B and if you get caught doing so, you will be punished. Right?

Hope i made some sense to you.

Any other thoughts on this matter?

regards

Jarno

Zora,

I would also go ahead and ask the webmasters from the websites that are linking to your old domain to change the link to the new domain. Since this can take up several months with google to be noticed you could already do that. In combination with the 301 redirect you could do just fine.

kind regards

Jarno