Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks for all the responses! Much appreciated.

Hi Mozzers,

We are looking at expanding our analytical reporting for e-commerce. I want to know more about what customers are doing on the website and how we  can interact with them. For example, how many customers make X amount of purchases and what their conversion rate is etc. I've looked at More2 and I know Analytics can give me some of this data but want to know more.

Anyone have any software ideas?

Thanks,

Karl

Thanks Keri, good to hear!

Hi,

I currently have a Moz Pro account, if I was to downgrade to a free account am I still able to ask and answer questions on the Q&A area? Also, would I lose my points accrued?

As the others have already said, it largely depends on the website and how much work you put into it. If you have a good PR team and are able to generate some buzz around the product/service you offer then there is more chance of you gaining a higher PA and DA.

Don't get too hung up on PA and DA though, they aren't the be all and end all of the quality of the website.

Good luck!

Google still crawls and indexes "hidden content" but from a user point of view if you have to hide it then it probably isn't worth reading. From experience, we use some css to dropdown extra content when the client insists on it being there but it is too long.

If it has to be there then I don't think it will be doing any harm but if you don't need it then get rid.

Hi Oleg,

That's right, so the website scales depending on the device you are looking at the website on but there is also a /m/ version as well. So we should redirect the /m/ versions to the standard URL's?

Thanks again

Hi Mozzers,

A website I manage has a mobile friendly version of their main website and a /m version as well. I was wondering if anyone had any experience in the best way of handling this? Should we just get rid of the /m version and tag the mobile friendly version?

Thanks!

No, it would be for the whole page. It's good practise to have the canonical tag on anyway though

What keywords are you bidding on? It could be that you are ranking for the same phrase in both paid and organic and people are just clicking on your PPC ad rather than your organic listing.

Technically it is still a duplicate title tag, you just won't be getting penalised for it that's all.

What content is going to be duplicated? The reviews?

The best way would be to add a canonical tag to the website. You need to identify the main page the content is going to be on then add the canonical tag. For example, If you have 4 pages with similar content then pick the page that has more authority and canonicalise the others to that page.

Here's more info on the canonical tag https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

Ok, thanks for the advice.

Thanks Andy,

So bid on the generics and see what we get from it? Would you bother bidding on terms like "luxury..." and "designer..." as well?

Hi Mozzers,

I am starting a PPC campaign for a website that sells high-end products. The search volume for the generics is very high but I think the conversion rate on those will be quite low given the price of the products. Does anyone have any experience in doing PPC for high-end retailers and what type of keyword I should be bidding on?

Thanks!

A canonical tag tells Google that you are aware of the duplicate content that exists on your website and you are telling Google which page to count as the authority. Pages with a canonical tag WILL be indexed.

Websites with duplicate content can, have and will be penalised by Google, that is what Panda is all about. The canonical tag does fix this in the majority of times but if there is a way of removing any duplicate content then this is advisable.

Directories are unlikely to get you better rankings, many directories have been devalued in recent months. Given that many of them are freemium, you are better spending your time writing a great piece of content and reaching out to bloggers/websites to help you spread the word about your brand.

1. Always start with the onpage optimisation, without it your backlinks will mean little. Think more about site speed, URL structure and user benefit because this is what will give you a better conversion rate.

2. It is possible but as Gavo said below, it depends on how competitive the keywords are. Look at interacting with people on social media, follow them, look at how they would like to be connected with and do so. For example, if some influential in your industry is talking about a particular topic, put your spin on things and get a conversation going. This will help make you an authority in this industry.

What does your link profile look like without the websites that have been disavowed? Is it quite bare now? When we undertook penalised websites we carried on building high quality links to try and put the balance in our favour, have you done likewise?

It does seem odd how the message is no longer there and they are saying there is no manual action. Have you considered an algorithm penalty maybe? duplicate content? That's a possibility.

Hi Fred,

Sorry to hear about your problems, you're not the first and certainly won't be the last. In my opinion, your backlinks are looking quite spammy. When I look at your profile using Open Site Explorer there are quite a few directories in there and press release websites, both of which have been hit recently, devaluing the links from them.

It does sound like you've been hit with a algorithm penalty (because Google will tell you about any manual penalties in Webmaster Tools). Your anchor text isn't too bad as you've got the brand in almost all of them the websites that you have links on have very little authority and won't be helping you to rank at all. You need a content strategy implementing and to find some bloggers/website with real connections to talk to, that way you will get some brand exposure, put your service in front of real people who may actually use Martha's and in turn, help you rank better.

Google usually gives a message saying they've lifted the penalty, something like "previously the webspam team took action on your website but we've now lifted this..." Did you not get one?

Hi Robbie,

If the URL's are remaining the same then that is the first thing, you won't have to worry about redirects etc. Make sure any blog posts that you have will remain the same as well and also any RSS feeds you have.

You'll want to know how easy it is to add/remove pages from the CMS and how easy it is to edit pages. If you've got an e-commerce website then look what happens when products become out of stock etc. I

If the URL's are staying the same then you haven't got much to worry about really, it is just functionality really. If you are moving to a new server then there are issues like speeds and uptime to think about but that's a different ball game!

Totally agree with everyone here. I wouldn't, under any circumstance, pay for a link to be removed. I was reading a blog post written by Google the other day about it. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/new-notifications-about-inbound-links.html

Matt Cutts says in the post "In a few situations, we have heard about directories or blog networks that won't take links down. If a website tries to charge you to put links up and to take links down, feel free to let us know about that, either in your reconsideration request or by mentioning it on our webmaster forum or in a separate spam report. We have taken action on several such sites, because they often turn out to be doing link spamming themselves."

Google are good at spotting these types of links and not counting them especially if there is a strong backlink profile. I'd just disavow at domain level.

As Tim said, if you are comfortable at looking at links and deciding whether they are good or not, then use opensitexplorer and see what links are pointing to your website. I think asking him for links is good to test whether he is keeping track of them or just building 000's of spammy links.

can you post an example of the links that webmaster tools is showing?

Have you checked in the source code of the website? It might be in white text or something. If you have a well built, well optimised website with a range of good links, negative SEO doesn't normally work. Google is very good at knowing when to not count a link and I'd just concentrate on building more good links because this will negate any effect that negative SEO would have on your website.

Hi Nicholas,

This does seem to be strange and it looks like he is conducting some black hat SEO (dark grey at best!) on your website. Ask him for all the links that he has built to the website, if he says "that's impossible" then stop using him immediately because that is normally the reaction a black hat SEO-er will give.

If he does give you a list of links then have a look at them and ask yourself whether they match the content of the website they are on. If you are unsure, copy and paste 10/15 onto this post and I'll have a look at them for you. How old is the website?

You're not using a geo redirect are you?

If not, then it does seem like you have had an algorithm penalty (assuming there isn't a manual notice) on WMT.

Hi Egol,

do you think it would help if we took down the US website?

Thanks EGOL,

I've asked them to remove all those types of links and asked how they were being created. So, just to confirm in my mind, the rel=alternative hreflang tag is implemented correctly?

Thanks EGOL,

Really appreciate the advice. Those pages then, should I 301 them to the proper product page?

I've mentioned the link at the bottom but, surprise surprise, they seem to ignore that one!

Thanks for the reply Egol,

The problem is, there are a few ways that a user can get to the same product. There is a canonical tag on each page that points to the most authoritative version of the page.

The web company has put a geo-target redirect in place so that people from the US see the US site and people from the UK see the UK website. This isn't causing a problem is it?

In addition, do you think if we took down the US website, our UK rankings would come back quicker? Or is the damage already done and we need to wait it out.

Thanks again!

Hi Jane and Egol,

Still no luck in the recovery of our UK rankings

The websites in question are www.teapigs.co.uk and www.teapigs.com. I think the tags have been implemented properly but I was wondering if you would be so kind enough to have a look for me?

Thanks in advance,

Karl

Hi Jane,

The tags have been implemented about a week ago but nothing has really improved yet. The UK website has been up for about 7 years and had quite a lot of authority so I'm surprised I haven't seen anything notable yet

That doesn't fill me with confidence! I'm hoping in the next week or 2 we'll see things improve. We've had to ramp up our email, PPC and social over the last week but it's obviously hampered organic as we ranked on the first page for 30/40 keywords and they've all gone. I think the Panda refresh hasn't helped either and it couldn't have happened at a worse time! I guess it's just a case of keeping an eye on things and praying that Google see the tags sooner rather than later.

I'll let you know when (please God let it be when and not if!!) our rankings return, might be a good YouMoz post!

Hi all,

I had a client that recently released a US version of their UK website and put it live without informing me first! Once I saw it (about 3/4 days later) I immediately asked them to include the rel=alternate tag onto both websites. However, in the meantime our UK rankings have all gone and it seems as if Google has just kicked the UK website. How long will it take for our rankings to return to normal?

Thanks for the advice,

Karl

Just a quick question, the client in question, in their wisdom, decided to put the US website live without telling me and our UK rankings have dropped significantly, do you think the tag will start to fix this?

We are going through the same thing at the moment and have opted to use the rel= alternate hreflang=x tag. There is more info on it on this Google page for you https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

Hi Gary,

thanks for the help, as a UK website, we primarily want to rank in the UK but we obviously want to rank in the US. By making the .com website (which is brand new) is this likely to affect our UK rankings or should they be unaffected?

Thanks again,

Karl

Ok, thanks for the help. I'll have a look into it and see what it says. The .com website is up now and they are hell bent on it staying! I did recommend having a /US but they preferred the .com!

Anyway thanks for the advice!

Thanks Chris,

So would you implement the rel=alternative href=x tag then?

hi mozzers

I have a client that has just released a .com version of their .co.uk website. They have basically re-skinned the .co.uk version with some US amends so all the content and title tags are the same. What you do recommend? Canonical tag to the .co.uk version? rewrite titles?

The thing is not to worry because it can be hard to grasp at first but once you start to hear the same terms mentioned then you'll start to understand it better. Moz did this some time ago that's worth a read http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development

Concentrate on making your title tags unique, descriptive whilst containing 1/2 of your keywords you want to rank for. There is a plugin called SEO for Wordpress that is ideal. You can edit your meta descriptions there too. Make sure you have a page for each service/product you are offering and ensure the content for these are descriptive and unique.

The canonical is the right way of setting the website up. When we take on an E-commerce client that has products accessible via multiple URL's is to Google which one has the authority, so if you are looking at product X then google it and see which URL Google is giving the authority to, look at the path then canonical all other variations to that path.

Hi Mozzers,

I run a website that has some buttons on the homepage. These URL's are not unique as they are accessible from the nav bar at the top of the page. I want to see the conversion rate of the homepage buttons. Is this possible?

I currently use Crazy Egg to see how many people are clicking on the buttons but I want more information as I'm sure whether they are converting.

Thanks,

Karl

The page may have been penalised, is it over-optimised or have too many keyword rich anchor texts pointing to it? If let me know the website and pages, I can have a look a bit deeper into the issue.

Whoever gave you that advice is an idiot and is clearly inexperienced in the internet marketing field. However, EGOL is right that, to find out why they outrank you, we'd need to know a lot more about the industry you are in, what your website/your competitors websites are like.

Just a quick question, what have National Geographic and Wired Magazine got to do with payday loans? Obviously I haven't seen them but if they are just random links then I'd count them as spammy even though they are on highly authoritative websites. If you look at the distribution of anchor text as well it is heavily weighted to keyword anchor text links (payday loans) rather than branded links.

Exact Match Domains took a bit of hit as well so the benefits that the website would have received from having an EMD would have been devalued. I'd say to work on building some quality and relevant links because the website is lacking in them.

Personally I'd no-follow them, you don't want them to pass on any ranking factors so no-follow the links if they are driving traffic. If they don't drive traffic then get rid of them.

Moosa is right though, you need to use other tools aside from WMT because that doesn't show a complete list of links to your website.

Hi Lukin,

Firstly, sorry to hear your website got hit. You aren't the first and certainly not the last! The first thing to do in order to try and recover is to be completely honest with the links that were built. If you had an external agency build links then ask them for a full report (you should already have this but not all agencies do this as standard) on what has been done. This will allow you to understand the kinds of links that have been built.

In my opinion, no tool out there is good enough and whatever info they give you, you have to check it anyway. The process to recovery is a long one because the only way is to manually look at every link to your website and analyse whether Google thinks it is spammy or not. Depending on the size of your link profile, this may be considerably time consuming but, unfortunately, it has to be done.

We have managed to recover websites and whilst we used to try and get them manually deleted first then disavow, we have managed to recover websites without deleting a single link. Google WILL NOT open any external documents that are sent to them so sending them stuff probably won't help much. We are very stringent with the links we disavow and sometimes there will be links that you can't even find that are holding you back, however, Google should tell you the types of links that are harming you and you can look deeper into them.

I'd say use as many tools as you can to see as many links to your website as possible, so use WMT and OSE and any others you might have access to. Once you have a complete list of links, ask yourself "Would I show my profile to Matt Cutts?"

It can be a long process (from 4-6 weeks to 6-12 months) but if your website is worth keeping then it is worth the time and effort spent.

All the best,

Karl

You also have to consider whether the company has disavowed these directories. If the website has had SEO done on it for many years then there is a good chance that directories formed a major part of their strategy, however, with the disavow tool in play now, those directories may well have been disavowed recently and they will still show up on their linking profile in OSE. Just a thought for you to consider.

It is true that some local and niche directories are still beneficial even in today's SEO market so don't discount a directory straight away without looking into it further.

If you are referring to the anchor text links at the bottom I'd get it removed. They look extremely spammy and is probably doing you no good whatsoever.

Ask them to remove the link but if they refuse to or you don't get a response, use the disavow file.