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I know Cutts addressed this as a potential future update to the Google algo but it's driving me bonkers.. My primary targeted keyword has one of our competitors listed 4 times in a row on the top of page 2. Some of the pages have duplicate page titles and the content is relatively thin. The site has a PR of 2 and a DA of 35. Why on earth are they able to suck up a whole half of a results page?!?!?!

I don't know that there's anything anyone can tell me that will help, but if there's something I missed about this update please let me know.

'snot fair.

Company iPad or tablet device?

robots, crawl codes, redirects, other things. impossible to say without your domain.

While Mike is correct... c'mon. How would they ever know? This is a gray area that no algorithm in the world will ever identify.

In the state of Washington it is against the law for bars to give out free drinks no matter what. I was in a band for 10 years and we played at dozens of bars/venues big and small in the area. Guess what? Each and every one of them gave us free drink tickets. This is a law that is punishable by jail time. Much more serious implications than what Google is threatening you with.

What's my point? I don't know. Bending the rules can work sometimes I s'pose.

If I were writing these letters I would be polite, cordial, concise, and honest. Simple as that. Mention how it will be beneficial for both parties for a reason beyond a free night. Maybe don't offer a free night but a free dinner and breakfast instead.. More of a promo-package exclusively for reviewers if you're worried about Google's Guidelines.

--my thoughts

Can't they just go to a static "No Listings Available" page then?

Think marketing, not SEO. SEO is Marketing. Social media marketing is huge for all business/industries/service providers. These guys summed up the how and the why but I'm just saying... Forget about the link juice. That comes as a result of a kickass marketing campaign.

The good news is that when you get to dish out those high fives once again it will be all-the-sweeter.

Good luck! Build some quality relevant links and keep at it!! The tools here at Moz will definitely help you along the way.

Also keep an eye on things. Your SERPs are bound to dance for a few weeks before settling (somewhat).

Hmmm.. Well, if they aren't nofollowed then they definitely shouldn't be on your followed-only report. This is in Open Site Explorer?

Try running this report once more.. I usually don't have problems with what you're describing to be honest.

Yup! Totally typical.

Are you talking about the data in Open Site Explorer? Because yes, that data is refreshed once a month although the last index was updated yesterday...

Can you clarify what you mean? Sometimes sites will have 3 or 4 links to your page embedded and they will nofollow all but one. In this case you might get reports of both followed and no follow links..

I'm not sure I'm understanding you entirely though.. Sorry

• Not bad

• Benefit only comes from a usability preference. Do you think your readers would rather see it without the html suffix? Some people think so.. I personally don't think it matters at all but a lot of people will say "shorter is better." It also maximizes your compatibility should you ever change your format from an html to an active server page or something of the sort. (i think that's pretty rare though.)

• No you will not lose PA. 301s maintain link juice (for the most part.)

I'm curious what more people think about these PR sites. I know that they are supposed to be less and less effective but I see a ton of sites building links out like crazy from them and getting good ranking for their clearly anchor-text targeted keywords.

What do you all think? I know it's kind of a gray area even though Google is against it, but they can't necessarily count these as penalties right?... because there are actual bonafide press releases coming out of them?

Other decent DA PR sites, so that I'm contributing:

MarketWire.com
24-7 press release
SB Wire

The best possible thing you can do immediately is build relevant, quality content and gain organic links to said content from actual sites that your potential customers might be coming from. This will help you regain. I'm assuming you don't have any manual notices in GWT? Therefore this is easy enough. Your Domain Authority is low, you need more SEO work, and that starts with marketing.

But of course, as I always say, SEO IS marketing is SEO. I just launched me a blog where I rant about that for awhile, in fact. It even has a Finkle is Einhorn video, but I digress.

Well regardless of what type of server they are on, those URLs were generated by whatever program the previous developer used to create the site.

I would re-do the site or at least rename all of the pages. You can do a sitewide or page by page redirect in a Windows IIS Server. It's actually much simpler to do if you have server access (which is rare/impossible when using a 3rd party hosting provider but only time i've ever messed with IIS servers was running them in-house on our own server farms..)

Anyway, it's literally a setting in the domain itself on the IIS platform (which looks a lot like Explorer). You can contact the web host to do this, or if you're lucky enough to have access just google IIS 301 but be sure to note what version of IIS you are running. I was on IIS 7 for example and everything was much different than 9.

The longest/hardest part of this will be redoing all the links and renaming all of the pages. Quite the project. I think it'd be a great time to reassess the site as a whole.. not sure what is working well or not but might as well consider all of it at this point.

Hope I'm being helpful...

I don't understand..

The client wants a new site, new domain, and a re-branding.. why wouldn't they/you move their existing established name and brand entirely over to the new site/new brand with a site-wide 301? They want to keep both brands alive? I can't imagine a scenario where this is a good idea. a re-branding is a re-branding. Ask Moz!

Where is my confusing coming from here?

you have inbound links from only 18 different domains yet you have thousands of links. This is alarming. I'm not sure how you can rank well with such tactics in the first place.

How long had you been ranking well before this happened?

Ooops - Mark beat me to it. Sounds like he and I are on the same page pretty much. I'd drop that old site entirely though. The CSS is broken and it looks awful. Just make sure those 301s are in place.

Well that's too bad. First off I find that very odd he would keep the old site live. I would yank that immediately after I 301'd my link profiles. If you have ANY incoming links that you find relevant or worthwhile you need to have those redirected to the appropriate pages on your new site. Yoast can do that.

Drop that subdomain. The Way-back machine is always there if you need to reference it, but also you should have it backed up locally just in case.

The sitemap isn't a huge issue, Google will crawl your site assuming there are a few links incoming. As for why your SERPs dropped, that could be due to any number of things. You've got some decent links coming in, but of course we could all use more so get to content building and promoting for sure.

You might want to look at what your old sites did differently in terms of keyword placement. Titles, Headers, Ratio, etc are all important. Just keep in mind it needs to stay natural while clearly being about your targeted keyword. This should be easy enough to do. If I'm writing about bankruptcy that word is going to pop up organically plenty of times. Just make sure it's in your URLs, H1s, Titles, etc. The Moz on-page reports can help with this.

This is all I got right now.. Hope it's at least a tiny help.

the forum you are posting on was created on the backbone of the software used to examine backlinks.

as per the rest of your questions.. you're on the right path. let's see how we can keep you moving along said path:

http://bit.ly/16NVY3R

Well those sites are definitely indicative of link-purchasing and black-hat SEO tactics. Couldn't say for certain but all signs point to yes. Might have a penguin algo penalty going on there.. Depends how many there are/how varied the anchor text is/how unlucky you happen to be.

Can you get to the previous site's Webmaster Tools to check for notices? Honestly if it's a Penguin issue you'd be better off ditching the old domain and starting fresh in this scenario and of course in my opinion.
(I do have some experience dealing with Penguin penalties, for the record..)

hey no problem and you can always post the domain if you want this awesome community to take a peek and offer their thoughts. might help you discover something you missed.

Could very well be Panda. If it's an algo-panda-penalty that won't carry over once the content is fixed and duplicates gone.

I gotta agree with Mike here. That said, I doubt this trend could stick around if it did return from an SEO standpoint especially.

I'm going to impose my own set of penalties on websites I hate. This type of site will be on my list of major offenders. The penalty is - I hate your site. Deal with it, internet.

It will only pass the "non-indexed status" if the reason for index removal was due to a penalty. Specifically Penguin. You need to thoroughly go over the backlink profile of the domain and uncover the real reason that the site was not indexed.

Misuse of canonical tags is no reason for Google to de-list a site. They've said themselves that they tend to ignore improperly used canonicals.

Check your backlinks, check Google Webmaster Tools for any messages of unnatural link penalties, look everywhere you can to uncover why this site was de-listed. If those links knocked it out of SERPs then 301'ing them will do that to the next site as well. Bottom line is you need to know what happened before you make that call, but poorly structured site optimization is definitely not the reason.

Couple questions -

1.) What makes you think it's "de-indexed?" Do you mean your rankings dropped? Because it's definitely showing up in SERPs. Check http://www.google.com/search?&q=wetherbyracing&pws=0  EDIT** - Okay wait do you mean it's been marked as harmful? Because that's what I'm seeing now. "This site may harm your computer" and a warning not to enter it upon following the link. What happened there?

2.) What/why on the banner ad? What makes you think this is the offender and what's the story behind it? Never had a malware problem so I'm curious how this went down.

3.) What sort of messages have you received in GWT? Care to share that with us?

Sorry I'm not being helpful and am just asking questions but I think some of those answers will help the community get you to the right answer.

I agree with Mike, although I think you'll find that using a tool like ranks.nl will give you an idea if you've gone too heavy with one or the other.

Honestly from my experience, a naturally-written site about a main keyword that happens to be the subject will have said keyword appearing at about 1-2.75%

This includes bold, alt, title, url, ahref, everything.. all weighted differently by ranks.nl which is a great tool.

But use it as a secondary means. Read it first, like Mike said, to make sure it sounds human.

Lots of great resources here: http://moz.com/help/pro

good catch on the body tag. not sure that would cause google to ignore all else but i'd be curious to know this..

As for the lack of redirects, I didn't mean to imply that this would be causing the site to not be indexed. I meant that as a separate issue I noticed when briefly researching the site.

Just wanted to clear that up. Nonetheless, it should be dealt with. While Google can differentiate which site to index, it most definitely splits up your link juice and causes diminished PR/DA.

One last thing.. Consider this for your search query's URL: http://www.google.com/search?&q=camilojosevergara.com&pws=0

The &pws=0 at the end is very important for any SEO who wants to see real SERPs

Okay couple things here:

1.) This site does not have any redirects in place. There are essentially duplicates of ever page existing for the www and non-www versions respectively. This is a problem that should be addressed immediately.

2.) What are the target keywords? Because looking at the shady back-link profile it would seem that this is a site that sells Propranolol without a prescription. There are TONS of backlinks coming into this site with that in the anchor text. Did your client ever use this domain for something else or buy it from someone else?

3.) Check Google's Webmaster Tools. I'm willing to bet that there is a unnatural link penalty notice sitting in there. Penguin will hit a site like this, but usually won't remove it entirely. This site looks like it has a manually imposed penalty looming. It's a bit of a disaster and if it were my site and I were the photographer I'd consider finding a new domain name and starting over.

4.) Out of curiosity, when you say "we have a customer.." what exactly do you mean and what kind of business do you work for? What is your specialty? That I'm just wondering to satisfy my own curiosity and you're welcome to disregard this question.

Hope this helps.

Yeah that's definitely a duplicate content issue you're facing.

However, did you know that each of your pages have this little tag right at the top of them? name="robots" content="noindex" />

...Seems like it's already done.

Well now I'm confused on the problem.. If the issue is duplicate content then the answer is definitely to block them with robots and/or use a rel=canonical tag on each.

However, the Google notice you are referencing has nothing to do with duplicate content notices to my knowledge.

There is always a way to improve your content. Filling out a form auto-generates a page, per my understanding. Great. Have it auto-generate a better looking page!

-my 2 cents. hope it's helpful.

I personally prefer spacing them out in somewhat of a recognizable pattern in an effort to develop readership.

Whatever you do though, don't just pump out a new article because you have only done one so far this month and you think you need two. Make sure the quality of the content is top-notch first and foremost. Think to yourself, "if I were my target reader/viewer, would I find this interesting? Would I want to share it with my friends?" If the answer is ever no then trash it and move on!

Hope this helps..

What Google definitely does recognize is the exact services you are considering. Google's webspam team developed Penguin specifically to target sites that have subbed out SEO to blackhat organizations. What you are describing is exactly what they are targeting.

Don't do it! You WILL be sorry.

Why not improve the pages, instead?

If Google says they are low quality, what makes you think any viewer will stick around? Bet the bounce rate is exceptionally high on those pages, maybe even site-wide.

Always remember to design pages for readers and not Google. If Google tells you your pages suck, they are probably just trying to help you and give you a hint that it's time to improve your site.

OSE does a good job but is not complete.

Consider mixing it with ahrefs.com or Majestic.. always GWT but that won't work for competitors backlinks.

(although honestly I'd worry less about what directories you're linked from and where your competitors backlinks are coming from and more about what kind of engaging content you are able to pump out)

The other option is just hop on your GA and compare data manually. The Moz tools are pulling this data from there anyway.

I haven't had my data refreshed yet since 5/26 so I couldn't answer this but I would contact support.

Regardless of whether you choose blog.domain.com or domain.com/blog you should definitely keep your blog on your personal domain. This is where you will have the best opportunity to create new and engaging content on a regular basis.

Ideally, your blog content will be popular on occasion and other people in similar industries will tweet and/or share your link in one way or another. This will gain you backlinks and bring traffic to your domain. Better they point to and land on your domain than wordpress.com.

Tom nailed it.

You won't be Penguined by this practice necessarily.

Maybe if you went out and got a whole bunch at once from low authority sites with the same exact match anchor text... Then maybe. But chances are if you're doing this it is not relevant or beneficial for the potential reader.

When in doubt always ask yourself, "will the reader ever need this?"

Oh I'm sorry I didn't mean to assume your existing content was weak. What I meant to say was now it is time to build MORE content and get links. Create things that people will want to share with eachother and that will gain you links in a natural fashion.

This, in a nutshell, is what I mean by "time to market!"

This is weird. Why would you want an iFramed version of a website..? Also, what difference does it make where the employees email addresses reside? They could be at dogsled.com for all anybody cares!

I agree with Chris yet again. 301 that bad boy and be done with it. REL=CANONICAL does NOT pass link juice. So definitely don't use that as a fix. It would help with the duplicate content issue and prevent any Panda penalties, but a 301 would do that while passing link juice...

Maybe you could elaborate on why a 301 is out of the question?

I agree 100% with Chris here. I've seen this happen myself.

As for what you should do - Build content and seek links! That's the answer here, for sure. You need better content and real relevant non-spammy links going to your site. Time to market!

Couple things here I think might help -

First off, holy cow the methodist flag page had an entire narrative for a meta description. This is not causing your problem but you should definitely fix it. It's like... way too long. Shorten that up.

Second, what's up with all the javascript embedded internally in each page? Assuming by glancing at it the scripts are all the same, why not just make a js file and drop it on the directory and link to that with a script src tag in the header? Seeing as how Google does parse through this JS more and more, this could be affecting your crawls but also it's just dirty and a bit of a mess. Surely it will clean your server up this way and make things a bit more efficient and manageable. It might even help with duplication issues.

As for why it's recognized as a duplicate... The majority of the content is a duplicate for sure. The small amount of body that changes is not enough to keep Roger from thinking it's a duplicate. I think Roger is a bit touchier than Google's bots but it's still probably a good idea to think about how you can add content to make each page a bit more different. Even if you can change img alts or something that is repeated across each page to something specific.. this will help your onsite optimization at the same time by balancing out your keyword density.

That's a place to start. The src files of your html is miles long. I'd start there.

I'm still thinking about this.. I'd continue building links myself and see what happens.

The one thing I definitely wouldn't do is start disavowing. Make an attempt to remove the links yourself by contacting webmasters before doing this. And then still be sure you actually have been penalized before using the disavow tool. That thing makes me nervous...

Yikes. So this happened recently? Say, right around 5/22 ish?

If so, my conclusion has to be a Penguin hit. Have you received any messages in GWMT?

I'm not sure why you'd be Penguined. I just took a peek at your backlink profile and it looks pretty solid. You have a high PR and a decent DA. Although I'm surprised your DA isn't higher with a PR of 5. I see sites with a DA of 49 and PR of 2 all the time... This is confusing to me.

I'm sorry I don't know what to say but I'm curious. Please keep us posted on your findings if it is Penguin related. It would mean there is some other factor that I have yet to consider going into this algorithm..

Hmmm... glancing briefly at your link profile I'm not sure I could classify this as a Penguin Penalty. Especially with the SERPs dropping back in April. I understand it got worse post-penguin but still... Your link profile isn't too deep and you don't have thousands of weird bizarro-links coming in. Relevant blog commenting and social media will definitely not affect your site negatively.

There's a chance you just need to pick up your SEO efforts. Maybe the algo updates bumped up other sites that have been gaining more links than you recently or something of the sort. I'm not sure but I feel like you just need to get back on top of your link building efforts in a truly white-hat fashion and see what happens.

Sorry I'm not sure I'm being very helpful here.

Ugh. Glad you cleared it up. Your demeanor comes off a bit cross, however. "please dont say obvious stuff." --? What does that even mean? I was asking what you meant in my original post. I'm still unsure as to where I am right now.

In any case, the answer to your question is: No, it's pointless. Delete it and move on.

I doubt it hurts (maybe could be considered cloaking but most likely not, right?) but it certainly doesn't help so why have it?

Stick to your title tag and get on with it. There's a reason web developers and SEO minds alike are forgetting this meta tag even exists.

In the future, if we don't know what tag you are talking about we will probably just ask for clarity like I did here this time. The best way to avoid that is to make it clear. A lot of people mistakenly refer to the Title tag as the META TITLE so it can get confusing. Thanks and good luck!

Cyrus has you covered here. I'd say you got Penguined and the fact that it coincided with your posting here was coincidental at best.

Just to further clarify, posting links on the moz q forum does nothing as they are all automatically given a nofollow tag.

Sorry to hear about your troubles. Contact that SEO who did the poor quality link building and see if you can get login names and passwords to remove those articles.

You guys, where am I?

Where am I right now you guys?