Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Perfect thank you!

I used to use the crawl test tool to crawl websites and it presented the information in a really useful hierarchy of pages. The new on-demand crawl test doesn't seem to do this. Is there another tool I should be using to get the data?

Hi

I am trying to get event tracking working on some mailto links on a website using Universal Analytics. I've read various resources as nothing seems to mention mailto links. Does it not work on tracking outbound clicks on emails? Thanks in advance.

One of my clients has just been hit with a Penguin 3.0 penalty. They have been subject to a negative link building attack for the last 5 months and despite my best effort it appears I haven't disavowed enough, someone was building a lot of links to them and all really low quality spam and a lot of forum profiles. They still rank for their brand, the site is in the index but the only rankings I can see are in Google Local.

My advice to them for the quickest way back into Google is to get a new domain and relaunch on this new domain. The challenge is, the domain they want to buy used to be used as a domain in the 'erotic video distrubution' industry. It currently has 17 backlinks from 9 domain and the anchor text is mostly brand related but I can see that 70 links have already been deleted.

I would consider this to be too high risk but would be interested to see if everyone agrees with me, it would be an awesome domain name if the history wasn't there!!

Penguin 3.0 was released yesterday, if you site has been affected by an algorithmic penalty then you don't get notification in GWMT. They seems to have been a lot of ranking changes.

Thanks so much for responding Jeff, I am still having issues with the website so if you have any ideas I would really appreciate it.

I am hoping someone might be able to help me, I am doing some work on a website. A new version of the site was recently launched and since then rankings have plummeted and the new blog pages are ranking better! When the new version of the site went live, the domain changed to the non-www version, plus an incorrect robots.txt file and we have never really been able to fully recover (both of these things were beyond my control!). The robots.txt file was corrected and some of the external links links changed to the non-www but there is a 301 redirect in place so changing to the non-www shouldn't have been the reason to drop the site out completely.

Before the launch of the new website, the site was ranking on the front page of Google for a lot of relevant keywords such as outdoor blinds, outdoor blinds Perth, cafe blinds, patio blinds, etc. The quality of the links is pretty bad and I am attempting to remove them before doing a disavow of all the really bad quality links but unless we were really unlucky I don't think it's the links right now that are causing the problem.

I have ran the site through numerous crawl tests, checked the robots.txt, there are no messages in GWMT, the pages are indexed but I have a feeling there is something wrong with the site that is stopping this site from ranking well. If anyone could give me any insights I would be really grateful. I know the site could be better structured from a keyword/ structure perspective but the site was ranking fine!

Thanks for taking the time to respond, I really appreciate your responses.

Thanks Christopher, all but one of the links are spam, and the one that isn't spam is an easy to get link anyway. All the links I have checked are on poor quality blogs, the blogs aren't in the clients niche, there is a lot of duplicate content and they are poorly written so that they don't actually make sense! Link building at it's worst!!!! Ahhh!

I am looking to take on a new client but when I looked at their current backlinks they have 420 low quality spammy irrelevant backlinks, all with keyword anchor text and no branded links at all. The site is still ranking well at the moment but I don't expect this to be the case long-term. Would you try and remove the old links and then disavow any that you can't remove or would you start again on a new domain? Not sure which way to play it!

Thanks!

Karen

I also like to think that a page should be designed to convert whether it's a landing page or a normal webpage on the same subject!

Not sure yet but would be really interested in seeing what other people think, I'm really not a fan of the change

Awesome, it's good to hear it's not going..

It's here- http://pro.moz.com/tools/crawl-test you have to keep the URL though as it's not linked to from anywhere in the site. Apparently it's not going anywhere but I am waiting for it go altogether Screaming Frog is similar but I prefer this tool.

Awesome thanks, hope it's days aren't numbered, it's a handy tool for one off projects!

Just checked the new Moz, am I right in thinking the super useful crawl test functionality has gone? I use it for existing sites to download all the title tags and meta name descriptions, is there more to come??

Set up a campaign on SEOMoz, this will give you an indication of some quick fixes, you can definitely do more with your title tags. Did anything significant change with the website around this time? It might also be worth using this tool http://www.panguin.com/ and logging into it through your Analytics to see if you were effected by a Penguin or Panda update?

I agree that it's active SEOers that appear to be hit, I have a few drops in a couple of rankings on client websites but nothing major. There seems to be some really odd results too which I wouldn't rate as good quality but local results but not in Google+ Local. My own personal site which I do very little work on has done well but I think this is also due to other sites losing rankings rather than my excellent strategy!!

I probably should have phrased my question a bit better, I am  using national keywords but seeing local websites but outside of Google+ Local listings. I am also seeing Google+ data being used for local results which I hadn't noticed before. Previously I probably didn't rank in the top 50 for the keyword 'SEO' and now I'm number 5 based on my Google+ page.

I'd pretty much echo Mike's response, it isn't really a link building company you're after..

Is anyone else seeing a big shift in local results since Penguin 2.0. I am logged out of Google, all personalisation switched off but my results are being personalised to my location for all results, not just Google+ Local results? I'm pretty sure penguin is bigger than 2.3% of queries or whatever was reported..

Yes I can see some changes in Google in Australia, some strange results though!

Thanks David, you're a genius  There is a robots noindex via the meta tag!!! Thank you so much I really appreciate it.

Thanks for the response and I don't think anything is overly simple at the moment I didn't do the 301 redirect but there are no pages of the old domain indexed anymore so it looks like that has been done OK.

Karen

I am working on a brand new website and really struggling to get the site indexed and listed for it's business name! I don't normally struggle and have got clients ranked for much more challenging keywords so I'm a bit stuck!

The site is a new domain and has been live for about two months. The business previously used an old domain and this has been correctly 301'd to the new domain.

There is no duplicate content with any other website when checked through Copyscape.com

Webmaster Tools has been set-up and verified and this shows the site is being crawled but in Google site:www.website.com.au shows no pages as being indexed.

Google Places has been set-up and verified, the site has also been added to local citation sites.

There are also a few incoming links from other sources.

Robots.txt is fine and has been checked.

Business name mentioned in the title tag, footer and throughout the site.

Does anyone have any ideas how I might be able to get ranked or is it just a waiting game? Or have I missed out something really obvious?? My last step is doing a crawl test to see if this brings up anything I have missed.

Thanks

Karen

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond, I saw a decline in traffic on Saturday so likely to be the latest Panda update. I just thought a penalty would result in a penalty for all keyword rankings not just some. I will try the reconsideration request, check out Majestic SEO links and see what happens and build more quality content in the meantime.

Kind regards

Karen

Hi

One of my clients has recently suffered a big decline in rankings on some of their keywords, going from positions in the top 10 to sub 50 for some of their keywords, but not all. Their website is still indexed and there is no link warning from Google. Some of their links from a previous link builder are dodgy and we have already tried to contact the other company for removal but to no avail.

Any ideas where I start? So far I planning to increase the branded anchor link and add some content as the site is fairly light on content. Is it worth doing a reconsideration request and mention the bad links incase this is the problem. Has anyone seen any particular good resources on what to do when it appears you have a penalty. None of my other clients have been effected by Panda or Penguin and although I have done some general reading I need to know what action to take and get up to speed FAST!

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards

Karen

Thank you so much, that is a great help!

User-agent: *

Thanks for your response.

Quick question, if this appears in a clients robots.txt file, what does it mean?

Disallow: /*/_/

Does it mean no pages can be indexed? I have checked and there are no pages in the index but it's a new site too so not sure if this is the problem.

Thanks

Karen

Can anyone recommend an SEO friendly Joomla extension to use for SEO on an existing website? I have downloaded sh404sef but I don't want to change my URL's and make them longer than they are at the moment. Any ideas?

Hi Peter

If you are working with a website that has a local audience make sure you are taking advantage of Google Places as well and adding the business to some local websites such as Yellow Pages, Start Local, True Local and Hot Frog. Make sure you use the same address in all instances and this address in on the website.

Also try Googling Australian Business Directory, Sydney Business Directory, 'Local town' business directory and also Pest Control Directory as it is good to get links within your vertical both industry and geographically although doing solely directory link building isn't the answer it's a good start and you may find some quality links this way.

I think you will have more success if you target more Australian websites than the more international list on Seomoz and wouldn't recommend the bulk submission option, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is!