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Hi everyone,

Anybody have experience when you have some websites which stored in Google Webmaster Tool and they exchange links between sites. So is it good for sites? We are hosted on different server.

Thank you so much

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html
_Hey! Rankings in mobile search results will change April 21st. _

Moz Toolbar not working in either Chrome or Firefox. I've updated both browsers, uninstalled and reinstalled the toolbar, just get nothing (see image link).
Anyone else having this? What's the fix?

IH9uyNP

Again, thank you very very much.

Hi Jane
Thank you very, very much for the detailed, informative response.
A handful of follow-up points/questions:

• I've only ever written for sites in my industry – so I get around the "...totally at odds to the topic of the site..." problem.
• "…posts come with a generic author bio that links to a commercial site…" Given that I run a commercial site, do you recommend I completely avoid an author bio and only link (where justified) in the article body?
• "...The harder you work to "hide" the fact that you're guest blogging..." Some site owners have inserted bylines on my articles, eg: "By Jeepster of Jeepster.com" (followed link), making it clear it's written by a guest. Again, is that to be completely avoided?
• Further to your post here, there's a reputable site in my industry that openly asks for guest writers (completely unpaid; and it's not one of those built-for-guest-posts websites). Can I safely contribute to this if my articles contain relevant links?
• Finally, I've been granted approved guest authorship to a couple of heavyweight sites in my industry, ie, I submit articles to them which are vetted at their end before going live. Is that still safe?

Thanks

Thanks for the response. By the way, I'm guessing 2 cents is a Yorkshireman being generous

We're reaching out to companies that we have a business relationship with (past and present) to find out if they would be interested in linking to us. 
All are obviously in the same industry so highly relevant. But some of the sites are low in Domain Authority (with scores of about 15-25). 
Should we also ask these sites -- or avoid them?

Hi Steven
Thanks for the reply. But my question remains:
How can it be possible to "build" links with specific anchors/text around the anchors in an age in which link-building (guest blogging, directories, etc), are all but a busted flush?

Thanks for the response, Marie

I asked the question as I was wondering whether I'd need to add "boilerplate" text to each description to fill it out. I'd rather not as a) it's not very scaleable and b) I'm not sure it would add value to our users per se, as in the main people want to see pictures. Here's an example of one of the shorter descriptions we run.

-Is the content the same MLS description that is on multiple sites?  If so, then I'd noindex it Of the 4,500 pages, 95-98% are content that's unique to our site (the other ~2-5% are managed by individual realtors who I'm guessing probably copy and paste descriptions from their own sites. We're not in the US so aren't part of the MLS network).

-Do users engage with your content? Mos' def.

Thanks for the replies, guys. But I don't think my question has been answered head-on.
In a competitive field, on-page tweaks will get you only so far. Assuming I've done all those, is there anything I can do off-site to influence matters for a specific keyword?
And to Mark, how can it be possible to "build" links with specific anchors in an age in which link-building (guest blogging, directories, etc), are all but a busted flush?
My gut feeling is no on both counts, but I stand to be corrected.

Hi Moosa
Thanks for the response. Two things:

• Guest blogging: The overwhelming majority of the "SEO community" says guest-blogging for links is dead. Even assuming it's not, my question stands: if links in the article are meant to be natural and you can't use targeted anchor text, how do you target a particular keyword?
• Infographics. Same thing: the links you get back are natural. All fine and good. But how do you target a particular keyword given you have no control over the anchor text linking back to you?

If you're a professional SEO and a client wants to target certain keywords, other than on-page tweaks what else is there? Or am I right in presuming there's nothing you can do off-page any more?

"Thin content" question:
I run a real estate website and carry about 4,500 property pages (each page consisting of between 5-13 photos and about 50-300 words of a property description) Might the pages of ~50 words run the risk of being deemed "thin content" even though they have photos on them?
I also have around 200-250 article pages that are far more text-heavy.
FWIW, I don't think I've been hit by Panda 4.0. (I've slid from about #8 to #12 over the past 2 weeks but I suspect that's more to do with sluggish content marketing/link-building).

Rhetorical question: but surely these guys shouldn't be allowing followed guest post links?

Thanks for the reply, Marie.
What does "improve my branding" mean exactly? That you use branded, followed links?
Also, what happens when, as is often the case in my industry, a blogger writing a piece on the wider industry contacts me for a quote and writes in his piece, "...Jeepster of Jeepster.com (followed link) said: "Blah, blah..."

Following Google's nuking of My Blog Guest, is there any way of doing (high-quality, small-scale) guest posting safely?

Specifically, do the tips from Neil Patel here (written Jan 22) still stand up?

• Only post on relevant blogs – ideally these blogs should also be larger than your website. In other words, do it because it will help with branding, traffic, and sales. Posting on bigger blogs that are also relevant will provide you with more good exposure than posting on small, unknown blogs.
• Avoid using rich anchor text – rich anchor text will become a huge red flag and will probably cause your site to get penalized eventually, especially if you are building these links through guest posts.
• Share the love – you won’t be able to link out to your site only. From Wikipedia to your competitors, you’ll have to link out to whichever site benefits the reader the most.
• Build up your author rank – with Google Plus becoming more popular, it will be easier for Google to determine how good of a writer you are. So, you’ll have to focus on publishing only valuable content as you won’t want crap tied to your author account.
• Co-citations are valuable – even if you don’t get a link from a guest post, just having your site mentioned in the article can help with rankings. I think Google will place more emphasis on co-citations in 2014.

Hi Peter, thanks very much for the response.
My gut feeling is that if the links were a serious problem, Google would already have notified me.
In line with your advice, I'll try to gradually approach the worst offenders with link removal requests but I'll stop short of using the Google Disavow tool.
Any of that sound sensible?
Related question: are there any circumstances in which sitewides from a site highly relevant to mine are a good or even acceptable thing?
Thanks

I know this thread's answered but I'd like to pitch a related question.
.
Would you delete/disavow links without having received a warning in GWT?
I've an 8-year site; we've some spammy sitewide footer links (created six years ago by some "SEO" were were suckered in by; some on sites with 10,000+ pages) and some article directory links (again about 3+ years old).

Ah I think this answers my question:

....John Mueller of Google did confirm  at Google Webmaster Forum that, if a page is made 404 or 410, links to such a page are not counted by Google.

Thanks for the input.
I agree they look spammy. I'm also going by this thread here:
http://moz.com/community/q/footer-link-2

Qu: the single footer link to my site produces a 404 Not Found (it was for a real estate listing that we deleted months ago).
Do I still need to take action or can I simply ignore?

Now why didn't I think of that?
However, my question remains: You would take the link despite its being in a footer?

Footer link, though? Isn't that a no-no?

There's a site in my industry where (I'm guessing on flawed SEO advice) all of their pages contain footer links to rival sites – with each page containing a different set of links.

One page has a link to my site, which I've just found out from GWT as the link now produces a 404.
Should I
a) ignore it?
b) ask them to replace it with a live link from my site (their site's highly relevant to mine)? or
c) ask them to remove it altogether as no-one wants footer links?

Open Site Explorer lists them and every so-called SEO expert says social signals/shares are a ranking factor. Everyone but Matt Cutts, it would seem.

So if they're not a ranking factor, why show them in Open Site Explorer?

_I personally believe that the next Penguin algorithm is going to discount any links that Google can tell are from guest posting.  It may devalue links that are in sentences like, "Marie Haynes is a writer for example.com...", or "Visit my website at example.com".  When those links get devalued then it's going to look like a penalty to sites who have relied heavily on guest posting.  _

Let's assume I put a quality guest post on a quality site, with the do-follow link to my site embedded naturally in the copy and among one of half a dozen links to half a dozen sites (ie, the thing doesn't remotely look or smell like a guest post).
Does that pass muster?

I was about to post the very same question.

This is surely sending out mixed signals in an era in which listing in directories is a busted flush. After all, virtually all of these directory links are paid links. And last year SeoMoz (as then was) took down its list of recommended directories. What gives?

Our webmaster has at long last managed to trigger a general IIS-generated 404 template page -- but doesn't know how to turn that into a customised one . Help again!

I run a real estate website.
My webmaster needs to create a 404 page for listings when they get deleted.
So far all he's come up with is 302-redirect to a standard "error template" page.
Can anyone suggest a 404 how-to guide I can show him?
Thanks

For family reasons (child to look after) I can't keep a close eye on my SEO and SERPs. But from top 10 rankings in January for a dozen keywords I'm now not in top 80 results -- save one keyword for which I'm  ~18-20.
Not a sitewide penalty: some of my internal pages are still ranking top 3 or so.

In GWT, late March I received  warning of a rise in server errors:
17 Server Errors/575 soft 404s/17 Not Founds/Access Denied 1/Others 4
I've also got 2 very old sitemaps (from two different ex-SEO firms) & I'm guessing about 75% of the links on there no longer exist.

Q: Could all this be behind my calamitous SERPS drop? Or should I be devoting my -- limited --  time to improving my links?

What I do (I also work on a real estate website):
Short-term (maybe one or two weeks): Leave as is but have a "sold" banner over the listing.
Afterwards: Delete it.

He seems to have sorted it out now -- touch wood.
Thank you for your replies.

My webmaster's trying (but struggling) to 301-redirect the non.www version of my site to the www version. He's following these instructions given to me in a response to an SEOMoz Private Question (ah, the good old days!).

So far he's 301-redirected the homepage but seems stuck on how to do the entire site. Any clues on what he should be doing?

Many people build custom sites and their SEO presence is just fine... it all depends on what you want out of a website.

Couldn't agree more.

I would avoid any kind of automation, "semi-" or no.

You have to submit to "good" directories but they make this easier
I don't believe that what few "good" directories remain out there are compatible with mass-submission software.

Links from press releases are worthless, says Matt Cutts.
Links from article directories are even more worthless, says Matt Cutts.
Links from directories? Less clear-cut.  SEOMoz publishes a comprehensive list -- but the jury's out on their effectiveness, with even SEOMoz staff claiming "that list is certainly not an endorsement".

When I search new homes developer st modwen in Google.com (no quote marks & I'm in the UK), this page from your site is at No3 and your homepage is at No4.

When I search st modwen homes, you're at No1. I'm no expert, but that doesn't look like being de-indexed to me.

Or do you simply mean your rankings for the term new homes developer have dropped?

Also, I don't understand this:  _buit we had no other option client was changing content on live site, so we had to noindex, nofollow. _

Dear SEOMoz

I don't know why/how this thread has been marked as "Question Answered" when it hasn't.

Thanks for your response, Peter. But I'm still as confused.

Surely, if SEOMoz cherry picks a shortlist  -- having applied criteria for inclusion, otherwise you'd have www.spamlinkdirectory.net and all sorts -- then puts them on a page headed "SEO Web Directory List" it must been seen as an SEOMoz endorsement (implicit or otherwise) of their SEO benefits. I could probably find 75-100 on that list (Web+social+local) that could be construed as relevant to my site. Would listing in them be a "terrible idea", given that I'm also using other link-building techniques?

Have you looked here?
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain-authority

FWIW, here's Matt Cutts making clear the "issue" of too many links per page is not an issue.

May i post the same content to different blogs? NO
and article directories NO
Is this cleaver/correct idea? NO

Don't go near article directories. Here's why.

There are 455 directories (212 web, 188 social & 55 local) on the SEOMoz list.
Presumably they are there because SEOMoz recommends them.

Yet common wisdom seems to be that web directories have negligible SEO benefit - see this recent SEOMoz Q&A discussion.
Matt Cutts advises against paid directories in this video (which >99% of them are)
In a private Q&A last  month a member of the SEOMoz staff told me a link to my site from this directory, which appears on the list, was a "poor link".

I think some better clarity in SEOMoz's guidelines on directories would be appreciated -- and I'd appreciate SEOMoz staff weighing in as promised when Private Q&As were ended -- especially as many SEOMozzers take most of what we learn here as near-gospel.

Oddly enough this is the third time this question has popped up in the past week or so (!)

I refer you to my previous answer:

Matt Cutts says: _Don't _no-follow internal links: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bVOOB_Q0MZY

Hi
So are you saying directories (even top-end ones such as Yahoo, BotW and Business.com) have NO benefit for organic search rankings?

If directories are so devalued, why does SEOMoz publish a directories list? 
Serious question.

This may also shed some light:

Oct 9, 2012 Keri Morgret On-site Community Manager at SEOmoz:

Another reason is that we just don't have the same size server farm that Google and Bing have. We could crawl all of Twitter and get nothing else crawled, or we could crawl some of Twitter, and some of the rest of the web. We aren't able to crawl all of the web, and we release a new index about once a month, so that's why you don't see all of your links or see them right away.

However, what we do offer that is different from Google and Bing is that we show you links for sites that are not your own, we add metrics about the trust and authority of the page, etc.

Matt Cutts says: Don't no-follow internal links: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bVOOB_Q0MZY

He also points out the "issue" of too many links per page is not an issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l6g5hoBYlf0

This list here http://www.seomoz.org/directories/local contains some good free ones.
Otherwise, I'm with Brian: the number of free directories outside that list worth submitting to can be counted on the fingers of one hand.