Welcome to the Q&A Forum

hi,

Well done on getting your first link, it's good to see people using the right techniques in order to gain links. Looking at stats of a page is a decent gauge of the quality but I also recommend our clients to look at the website as a whole. When deciding whether your to get a link from a website consider the following;

1. Does your links and content match what is already on the website? It has to look natural and fit in with the theme of the website.

2. What are the other posts like? Do they look paid? if so then you may be submitting your content to the wrong website. Are the links followed or no-followed?

3. Are people commenting on posts? You want people to interact with your posts because that is how you attract people to your website.

4. Is the website pushing your content through social channels? Ideally you want this so your post gets maximum exposure.

If you consider these 4 things when you are looking to push your content then you should be fine. To summarise,check the website for these 4 things are you'll know how much traction your post is going to get. If it ticks 3 or 4 of these points then I'd say it was 2 hours well spent!

Good luck.

Well it sounds as though everything is in place then (assuming it is a 301 and not a 302 redirect). It may just be that they have picked a difficult brand name to rank for, which in that case, concentrate on building the brand and you should hopefully see the rankings sooner rather than later.

Hi Andrew,

When they changed their website, did the ensure that the necessary redirects were put in place so that any authority from the old website was changed to the new one?

It may also be worth checking for any penalties, algorithm or manual. Check Webmaster Tools for any messages to double check. Have they ever ranked for their brand name? Did they rank for their old brand name?

It could be, as the other 2 comments say, just be a lack of authority and quality links but it is definitely worth checking that redirects and penalties aren't having an effect because you could be fighting a losing battle if it is one of these problems.

Open Site Explorer gives you what you need. If you have a PRO membership with Moz then you will have access to OSE. Alternatively, if you have access to Webmaster Tools then this will also show you a list of links to the website. I would recommend using both really because you will see that both tools give you different URL's that the other might not show up.

Just to throw my two pennies worth in....guest blogging is on the radar of Google so if you are going to start writing guest blogs that have your link in the author bio at the end, be very careful! It leaves a very obvious trial that Google can use to see if you are over-doing it on the guest blogging.

Instead of guest posting, why not think of the problems that people have in stock trading and reach out to finance websites/bloggers. Think of a widget that you could create that would appeal to bloggers as this could be a source of links for months. If you get short of ideas then I'd recommend buying http://www.linkbuildingbook.com/ which has been written by Paddy Moogan. Great read!

Would it offer any benefit to your customers? If so then I'd say do it but if you are just doing it to try and pass link juice then I'd say avoid it.

No, this wouldn't work. I just looked at your backlinks in OSE and there are some really spammy links. You need to do a full backlink analysis and start to get rid of those directory links. Just look at some of the links that surround yours and you'll see why Google does not like these kind of link building techniques anymore.

Concentrate on getting rid of any of these types of links and start to create some engaging content that people will want to read. It takes a lot longer to create but it could be a source of links for many months and will help your website recover. However, it is imperative that you get rid of these links ASAP either by contacting the websites and getting them taken down (ideally) or using the disavow file.

Hi Peter,

I had a look at your backlink profile and there are more non-branded keywords than branded keywords so that will have set the alarm bells for Google. Every website should have considerable more branded links than keyword rich anchor text links because it is natural for someone to link to your website via your brand name or URL.

Yeah it is duplicate content. If the content is something you want to use, why not add your thoughts about the article and then cite the original as your source. Tweet the author of the initial content and try and get a conversation going, that will do more good than just copying the content

Unfortunately, crappy websites don't tend to get crawled often so it could be many months until Google recrawls the website. I'd put the websites in a disavow file as well just to be sure.

what about multiple ways of getting to the same product?

Hi Peter,

As Martijn said, if you can supply us with more info then we can help out. What is the website? When did this happen? what link building activities have been utilised on the website?

Hi Cyto,

Does that include your blog pages? If you have a blog, such as Wordpress, then it may be picking up the different URL's that each post may have. So for example, you might have the blog post in different categories which would mean the post is accessible from 2 different URL's

Hi Ron,

Whilst the pdf would give you minimal SEO benefit, if the magazine is reputable then you could use it as link bait. You could turn your post into a feature on your own website with things you learnt from doing the piece then reach out to blogger/website owners to link to your website.

As has been mentioned, it's not all about SEO and what value a link has. You have to think of the long term effect and what knock on effect guest authoring for the magazine gives you. See if there is anything else you can do with them onsite, that may be something that is worth asking.

Google is very good at devaluing links nowadays so I wouldn't worry too much. If a company wants to conduct negative SEO against your website then they can't be a serious competitor because nobody in their right mind would waste time and money trying to get a competitors' website hit.

As Doug said, concentrate on creating some great content around your business/niche and then look at your outreach.

Just a little note to add to the other comments...

Doing backlink analysis on competitors is very tricky nowadays thanks to the disavow tool. For all you know, your competitor has disavowed these links and Google is no longer counting them which would explain why they are still ranking so well.

The example website you supplied is undoubtedly paid for posts and as they are not no-followed, the website is not going to be passing any benefits to those linking from the website.

Hi Ali, your link building tactics have got you the penalty, I'm surprised you didn't see this drop at the end of May when Penguin 2.0 was released. You need to act quickly and get rid of all those types of links that you have created and start to focus on non-automated techniques. Start to create content that your users and customers will find useful then look at influencers in the industry to share it with, that is your first port of call.

It is vital that you get rid of all those links (article, directory, blog commenting) because they are very spammy techniques.

You need to think about whether your site has been hit with a manual penalty or an algorithm penalty. If you have had no messages in WMT then it is probably an algorithm penalty. Panda is now part of all algorithm changes so you may have been hit by that.

One of our testing sites got hit by Penguin in May and we decided to test out if a 301 to a new website would work...it didnt!! It took just over 5 weeks for Google to catch up and the site lost all its rankings again. I was actually surprised it took that long to be honest, Google's algorithm is too smart for that so I would advise trying to fix any problems before you give up and start a new website.

Penalties will last as long as you have the problem. The issue here is, if it is an algorithm change then it is harder to figure out what is wrong. Whilst a manual penalty is worse, at least you know what to do in order to fix the problem. You need to look at any duplicate content issues you may have and if that is all ok then look deep into your backlink profile because it must be 1 or the other. If you show us your URL then maybe one of us could take a quick look and give you some more info.

I agree with Gary, you should definitely go through all your links and be really ruthless in terms of which are the poor quality links. Anything that is on an article or directory website you can probably get rid of (apart from directories like Yahoo, DMOZ etc) and submit your disavow file to Google.

If it is only your target keywords that have dropped then you have been lucky to escape a site-wide penalty but there is a good chance that this will be on its way so if you can clean up your profile sooner rather than later, it should help.

Whilst over-optimisation is an issue, it is more about the quality of the websites you are getting links from than the anchor text used. You could have a brand link and if it's a poor quality website, you are going to get penalised. If you haven't disavowed any links, I'd make sure that 90% of them were disavowed.

You've also got duplicate content on your website so I'd say you've been hit by a Panda refresh as well as Penguin. Type in "To assist clients in getting value from their businesses, we provide Business Critical Software and IT services within various industry verticals." to Google and you will see 4 different versions of your content.

You need to do a full backlink analysis ASAP and be ruthless in the ones you get rid of, if you wouldn't show the link to Google then it's bad. Use the disavow tool in Webmaster Tools then file a reconsideration request to Google with details of what you have done and why there were so many bad links.

It's a long road to take but if you want the website to come back into the SERP's then you are going to have to do this.

Good luck!

The first thing to consider is what type of penalty the website got hit by, if it was Penguin and 99.9% links built were spam then you can leave all your links and just take the content. If it was Panda then you can't even take your content and place it on the new/old website because you'd still get found. If it was both then don't even bother redirecting anything!

I'd question the importance of the website to any business if it wasn't worth spending time on finding ALL the spam links and fixing the penalty. The reconsideration request can take a while, you may have to submit 3 or 4 requests before it gets lifted. I know this can take a considerable amount of time, effort and money but it's got to be worth it to get the business back on the right footing. Put yourself in Google's shoes, they deal with these requests every day and have got a back log so if they see ONE link that looks spammy, then they aren't going to lift the penalty. Someone is going to have to sit down and look at your link profile manually!

If the www.websitename.com has bad links and poor content, then why 301 it? I know you are doing it for the customers but you could just put a banner on the homepage saying you've moved to www.website-name.com.

I would stick to the local SEO strategy but think about contacting influential bloggers from around the area, maybe look at Yorkshire and even Lancashire because people will be willing to drive a couple of hours to a nice hotel. I know you won't be able to target those location keywords onsite but in terms of your outreach, it may be better for you as people in Derbyshire won't necessarily be looking for a hotel there.

Whatever you do, don't go down the black hat road, Google is far too smart for that now and you WILL get penalised. I'm assuming you have done a backlink analysis on the competitors to see what links they have, well don't forget they could have disavowed these links and they would still show up in OSE etc so don't believe everything you see when it comes to backlink analysis.

I'm not a huge advocate of PPC, even with the (not provided) problems we are having, but you it would be interesting to test a PPC campaign out to see the response and you can use these results to help you in your SEO campaign.

I thought that'd be the case! trying to get the developers to create unique pages and try and keep a similar/same design, not sure if it'll be too difficult though. Thanks for the advice though, fingers crossed we'll find a solution.

Hi Schwaab,

Thanks for the reply. Google hasn't cached the new pages.

For example, the old page is http://www.teapigs.co.uk/customer/pages/matcha/what-is-matcha and the new content sits on http://www.teapigs.co.uk/tea/matcha_shop with the different tabs. Are we going to have to make them actual pages with static URL's for them to be crawled and indexed? Got a feeling we will!

All the points made are great and I'd just add one more thing...look at the average length of the blog/website that the post is going on. Like EGOL said, on Moz, most posts are around 1000 words so that's what you should aim for but for another blog, they may want something longer or shorter. Match the content and length to the blog it is going on, that way you are adding value to the blog and not just blogging for links.

Hi Andy,

I'd be totally ruthless with your link audit, even if 1% of you thinks it is spammy, disavow it. In fact, if it isn't driving traffic then disavow it, what are you going to lose. The question to ask yourself is would you be happy to show the link to Matt Cutts? If not, then get rid.

We heard from Google recently that they are not allowed to open any files that are sent to them for security reasons so, for me, going through the effort of contacting webmasters and sending Google files with emails etc is pointless. I know they say you should be we have stopped asking because it gets you nowhere and you haven't got the time to wait for replies. I'd just get some numbers and info together about what you have disavowed, why there was these links in the first place and what you have done to remedy it. Obviously, if you can get them taken down easily then do so.

Stop building links until you have the penalty lifted! Don't look at the anchor text used to justify whether it is a good or bad link, look at the relevance to your website. I even disavow 404 and no-followed links if I think they are spammy.

Good luck in the recovery!

Totally agree with Devanur here...there is no need for any site-wide link. If there is a link between the two websites then I wouldn't take them off but i would no-follow the link.

Hi Mozzers,

Happy Friday! I have a client that has created some really nice pages from their old content and we want to redirect the old ones to the new pages. The way the web developers have built these new pages is to use hashbang url's for example www.website.co.uk/product#newpage

My question is can I redirect urls to these kind of pages? Would it be using the .htaccess file to do it?

Thanks in advance,

Karl

The thing with the disavow tool is that Google doesn't necessarily count all the links you submit as bad. If they think you have submitted a link by mistake then they will ignore it. That is why people are encouraged to get them taken down rather than just use the disavow tool. There is no point submitting a reconsideration request if you haven't had an unnatural links warning, if anything you are just drawing attention to yourself!

I agree with Lynn, 3-4 weeks is nothing and in those weeks Google can often change your position in the SERPs. If you still haven't seen anything in a couple of months then something may be wrong. Start working on your local brand awareness in the first stages of your strategy, then start to monitor local versions of your keyword (service in X), they are the most likely keywords to rank first.

http://www.advancedwebranking.com is the tool we use. It is free for 30 days for you to trial it.

If you have got a large website with 100's or 1000's of pages then you can prioritise which pages Google should see first in your XML sitemap. Your HTML should sit in the footer of your website and is important to have because it should increase the speed at which Google sees all your pages on the website. I always recommend having both XML and HTML

Thanks Shane,

The website is hosted by an external agency but we are going to be hosting it on our server. Do I give the agency my IP address or is there something specific I need to ask them to do?

Hi Mozzers, happy friday!

I'm moving a new clients website from a really bad CMS to Wordpress and wondered what I need to do to do this, get the A record of the old programmers? If someone could do me a checklist that'd be great!

Thanks!

Hi Lily,

I think the first thing you need to do is a full back link analysis because it sounds as though you may have been hit a little with the Penguin/Panda updates. Have a look through your links and be really strict about the ones that you know are quality and get rid/disavow the others. That will give you a good starting block.

The next thing is, what are you going to do with this fresh content that you are producing? You need to find websites where it will add value, it doesn't necessarily have to be about the ping test but it adds to your credibility in the industry. Make sure you have your Google +1 account setup. There has been a lot of talk about it recently with Moz directors getting a bit of negative comments from Matt Cutts but it will definitely help to have a G+1 account up and running.

Thanks Phil, I've used join.me in the past when trying to show clients reports etc so I'll give that a go.

Why not spend your time and money on improving your own listings and content rather bidding on competitors names? The CTR is going to poor whatever you do because it isn't really what the customer is looking for.

I've had the same issue with a few pages of a clients' website. I've also heard that it may be the title that is used in DMOZ.

Have you tried to spell it with "ae" rather than with the umlaut? So it will read Schallpegelmessgeraet. Not sure if Google Germany can read umlauts and I'm guessing with the problems you are having, they may not be able to.

Personally, a stay as far away as possible from it. Use your money on activities that are going to actually drive traffic. If the website has been penalised then there will be no benefit to get from the links, and I imagine those links are going to be very spammy.

Hi Mozzers,

Wanted to pick your brains on something...we are going to give all our clients an update on the industry and want to invite them all to a webinar. Although I've done a few before, I've never set one up and wondered if anyone had any advice on what platform to use etc?

Any recommendations would be brilliant!

Thanks in advance,

Karl

I've never seen this happen before, is this something that you've experienced in the past Jonathan? Seems very odd!

Hi Matthew, welcome to Moz!!

Have you done a Google Places listing for the website yet? If not, then this would increase your visibility for "electricians grimsby". I'd look at expanding your keywords as well, you could go for "electricians in yorkshire" too.

Find some local directories as well, this is the reason they exist. Just did a quick search and found this one www.localelectrician.co.uk. If you are going to submit to directories, just make sure that the page the link is going on has been cached recently or it won't be worth it.

I think it would be worth adding the "priority" attribute in your XML sitemap. That way you can tell Google which pages you want to be crawled as priority. Remember, Webmaster Tools is not a live update of what Google sees, in some instances, it can be a couple of weeks behind.

Just looked to see if **http://inlinear.com/design/ **was cached and it was cached today about 5 hours ago.

I'd agree with Matt, it has to be other keywords that you are not tracking that must be struggling. What about seasonality? When you compare year-on-year, is the decline the same or out of sequence?

I've had to deal with a few clients that have been spammed by someone. In 3 out of 4 of these websites, it has had no effect on our rankings because we had a strong back link profile anyway. However, with the other, as it was a new website, these links ended up accounting for about 30% of the total links which ended up having an adverse effect on our rankings.

I'd disavow all the links and then try and get in touch with the webmasters of the website. I know you are meant to try and get them all taken down first but you should do both because it could take you months to get them taken down (if you can get a response at all). I take it you've not had a message in Webmaster Tools? If not then its an algorithm penalty rather than a manual penalty. I'd use as many tools as possible, Webmaster Tools, Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs etc to get a comprehensive list of links to your website and then start disavowing them....just be 100000% sure they are bad links!

I'd agree. I think the reason is because there are so many boxes to tick nowadays if you want to have good rankings in the SERPs. Google is looking deeper into every website now (after Penguin 2.0) and this is clearly having an affect on how quickly websites are ranking for keywords on deeper pages.

On the flip side, whereas rankings would jump around quite a lot in the past, as Google as delved deeper into a website, hopefully once a new website has its rankings, there shouldn't be too much fluctuation which is great as you can put some budgets, strategies and plans in place.