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The rule of thumb is to try and keep below 100 links per page as well as trying to limit the amount of site wide links.
Check out the crawl section in the pro campaign - they have a warning if you have to many on-page links. That would be a great starting place to check.
Great share, not sure how i didn't stumble over this in my research 
There were a lot of questions and data on this a few years back and nothing terribly recent so i wanted to get the discussion going again and see if any new data has been published.
Is hosting your website on a shared host like Godaddy or Network Solutions going to hurt your rankings because their holds a chance that you could be on the same IP as spammy websites?
My gut feeling is no primarily because almost 90% of the worldwide web is on shared hosting but i do not have a lot of data to back it up. Id love to hear some feedback.
Cheers - Kyle
This has happened to me in the past, make sure when you are setting your filter you have everything set correctly to get your full link profile. Make sure you have the inbound links tab selected and your filter is set like this:
Show "all" links from "only external" pages to "pages on this root domain" and "show links ungrouped".
The biggest issue is making sure you have it set to root domain, if not you will only be pulling the backlink profile to your homepage. Let me know if that did the trick, if not i would submit a help ticket to help@semoz.org. They are normally really responsive!
Regards - Kyle
I just finished going through this process with a client and i assure you 100% of your effort should be in disavowing and removing links BEFORE adding new backlinks to your site.
When Google reviews you for reconsideration they do not look at how many new links you gained but instead if you removed the bad ones that got you there in the first place. I would suggest talking to Marie Haynes on the topic - she is a great asset!
Cheers - Kyle
Redundancy is bound to happen for websites that are very targerted for an individual product or service. Without knowing the specifics i would suggest to target the short tail or more difficult terms to higher level pages like a home page or top level page. While creating longer tail or easier to rank for terms for the deeper pages.
For instance if you are selling Ski Jackets on your website. There is a very good chance that the keyword "ski jacket" is going to show up on every page whether you like it or not. However if you target longer tailed keywords the deeper you get the better, like "womens ski jackets" or "thermal ski jackets" etc.
Keep in mind these are all guidelines not rules.
Hope this helps!
My suggestion is to use one analytics profile per domain to keep from having any inconsistencies and possible issues with the tracking code. As for tracking each of my campaigns or sources separately i always use Google's UTM link tracking:
http://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en&topic=1032998
You just simply add the URL you are using for your campaign and then tag each asset accordingly. From there all of the data will automatically be populated under Traffic Sources > Campaigns in analytics.
Hope this helps!
Wow, thank you so much for all your guys help!
I just spent all day digging through the full link profile (combined from GWT and OSE) and i have more than doubled my domains in my disavow list. I have been surprised by the amount of domains that have simply expired over the course of this project.
Also, thank you for the pointer on hosting the process files on Google docs for the reconsideration, i was wondering where i would keep that!
I'll keep you all up-to-date as well as contribute to a blog post if you guys would like too.
Thanks again - Kyle
Hey Marie - thanks for the details, i will let you know what else i find!
Do you think this type of microblogging URL would be considered spam:
http://olcine.com/index.php/steffcolbere
Should i disavow these sites as well?
Marie, thanks for the tip on the total disavowed, i am currently in the process of downloading my link profiles from OSE and GWT to look over it again.
As for communicating i haven't submitted a document saying who i have contacted, how would you suggest documenting that? Do you have an example document to share?
Nick, what did your request look like when you got approved? An specifics you can share?
Thanks for the pointers on # of links in GWT, I will dig in deeper and see the trends over the last few months. As for the reconsideration request, do you have an examples of what people submitted that got approved?
Highland, yes we have utilized it quite heavily with submitting over 40 different FULL domains not just urls.
I just don't think that is the right move, we still hold rankings for other pages, it just seems to be keyword/page specific some how
I have been in the process of trying to get past a "link scheme" penalty for just over a year. I took on the client in April 2012, they had received their penalty in February of 2012 before i started.
Since then we have been trying to manually remove links, contact webmasters for link removal, blocking over 40 different domains via the disavow tool and requesting reconsideration multiple times. All i get in return "Site violates Google's quality guidelines."
So we regrouped and did some more research to find that about 90% of the offending spam links pointed to only 3 pages of the website so we decided to just delete the pages, display a 404 error in their place and create new pages with new URLs. At first everything was looking good, the new pages were ranking and receiving page authority and the old pages were gone from the indexes. So we resubmitted for reconsideration for the third time and we got the same exact response!
I don't know what else to do? I did everything i could think of with the exception of deleting the whole site.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Regards - Kyle
Hey Rand - any chance you guys are still going to note the changes that happened?
Rand your response is exactly what i am seeing across all of my campaigns in SEOmoz. #1 listings maintained, listings in the top 5 grew a bit, listings in the top 10 maintained, but anything beyond that REALLY dropped.
Would someone on your team be able to release a post explaining this so we can share it with our customers? It is really hard to explain this rather complex situation.
Thank you in advance!
Rand It looks like across all of my accounts since you guys made your updates that my ranking results have fluctuated quite a bit. Not to the point that i would think that i am being penalized or an algorithm update but to the point that they now match other rank tracking software that i was hesitant to move toward?
So my question is, did you guys change how you get ranking results? Is it now more accurate than your old model (taking the top 10 and top 50, combine them, then de-duping the results)? This would be something very important to let your customer base know since it would effect how we explain the changes to superiors or clients.
Thank you in advance - Kyle
Rand just ran a few tests and they seem to be working! Thank you for continuing to follow up on the progress!
Hey Rand, just checking in. It looks like as of yesterday morning (11/29) all of my new ranking data has finally populated!! Still seems like the keyword difficulty tool isn't responding? Any word on the status?
Thank you in advance - Kyle
Thank you for your reply and hard work over the holidays, Rand! Hope you still had some time for food and family!
I agree, i demoed all of them and none compared to what SEOMoz has to offer IF they could get back to being reliable.
Rand thank you for the long detailed reply. It is great to know you guys are working hard on the problems. It is just a rough call paying $200/month for a tool set that just isn't cutting it. I rely on your software's data to run the SEO portion of my company.
I logged on this morning and campaigns that i setup a week ago STILL do not have ranking results and the keyword difficulty tool STILL gives me an "unavailable" error. I guess the saying stuck between a rock and a hard place really hits home. I need the data you guys provide yet you can provide it.
Every other tool i demo (SERPs, Raven, WebPosition, etc), their ranking results just don't match up to what SEOMoz displays? How can so many companies serve up different results?
I want to start off with stating that i am truly an advocate of SEOMoz and the great stuff they have done for the inbound community that we all know and love. I've been an active member since July 2010 and a paying pro member since December 2010. The software has always been monumental in helping my clients achieve their goals.
However, in the past few months i have received nothing short of buggy unreliable software. The keyword difficulty tool never returns difficulty results. The Adwords data has been gone since i can remember. The rank tracker tool is successfull close to 1 out of 5 times. OSE is updated terribly slow compared to competitors. Plus, I have had to write emails to get my campaigns to be manually refreshed to see new ranking data. I have simply missed deadlines because my data is always delayed or missing from the software. Am i an anomaly here? does anyone have these problems?
I have been researching some new tools as a replacement but i have yet to find anything as robust as the old SEOMoz. I'd love some feedback.
Cheers - Kyle
That's really neat - I saw it and was pretty blown away. Some times the big guys at Google make some stupid moves but this was definitely a beneficial one toward end users.
Okay, anyone else notice the resent UI launch in the Google SERPs? I was planning a trip to visit a friend in Dayton, Ohio and used the query "things to do in dayton oh" and i got a really neat points of interest bar and city stats.
Anyone notice anything else neat with the UI change? Seems like some good stuff for local possibly.
What search engines did they drop in?
Did you make any updates to the site at the time of the drop?
Unless you received a link spam notifications in your Google Webmasters tool i would highly suggest NOT submitting a reconsideration request. Do your homework first.
Run through those five steps and you will have a LOT better idea of what is going on with your link profile instead of simply submitting a request that will take a long while to hear back from.
Cheers - Kyle
I may need a little more information to answer completely but my short response is this.
What is the reason for the update? Solely for SEO purposes or migrating to a new site?
Cheers - Kyle
Adam just gave you two great resources.
Also as a disclaimer in no way does the use of SEOMoz's tools make your site rank better in search engines. These tools were created to give you reports to tell you if you site is ranking and the reasons why you are there. Then the blog, webinars, WBF, etc are created to give you strategies and tactics to increase your rankings.
What do you mean by having flash video SEO friendly? By its nature video isn't indexable because there is no text or content for the search engine spiders to crawl. Can you give more details on what you are doing so we can give more feedback?
Do you have any examples of indexed videos?
Cheers - Kyle
Jenny, here is a full list of post were rand and other SEOMoz associates talk about the updates to the mozscape index (which powers OSE and the pro tools):
http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=mozscape+update%3A
In regards to your question of what is mozscape here is another great resource:
http://www.seomoz.org/help/what-is-mozscape
In regards to your last question, it sounds like it was a blend of you losing some links and the mozscape fluctuations. Always take OSE data with a grain of salt, that information is simply to give you insight to trends in your link profile. Did your domain authority drop or stay the same during the changes?
Keep in mind if you are pulling these stats from OSE or the pro tool that the amount of domains and URLs differ each time they update the mozscape index. So the total amounts may change depending on the variations from those two months.
Have you noticed this change with your competitors sites as well or is it specific to only our site?
Have you tried submitting a new XML sitemap in Google Webmaster tools?
They are able to index elements in flash that are using "dynamic text" rather than "static text". This is very similar to an unflattened PDF vs a flattened PDF.
http://oreilly.com/flash/excerpts/seo-for-flash/creating-optimized-flash.html
However, in no way would i suggest using flash for an entire website it is not only bad for search usability but for usability as well. Just think of all the mobile audiences that you are ignoring
Cheers - Kyle
I started with guest blogging. It worked great to get some nice targeted back links but also kept you in the practice of writing. Another not well known trick that i found is that scribd.com still offers followed backlinks if your documents reach a certain number of views.
Cheers - Kyle
"To get them going, I would do the research and come up with ideas and topic summaries for them to then write from. "
Chris i really like this idea! I have always done this kind of backwards. They would be writing articles then i would assist in targeting them and then run outreach. Perhaps i'll try this to keep showing my value.
Thanks!
Oh the troubles of agency side SEO... i wish i could transfer to in house
These are some great tips! I know you cannot share your internal documents but just to pick your brain a bit more, what are somethings you commonly include?
I normally try to keep to this structure (along with ranks/traffic/conversions):
With all my other clients it worked great but with this client it just keep on building up to what i planned to do and the actual trickled off since we could never get anything published?
Hey Mozzers,
Recently i have been working with some larger corporations and i have quickly found that publish new content is a nightmare. Whether re-writing current content to be more targeted or getting brand new content published on their blog it goes through an insane approval process something like this:
With this crazy process i have barely gotten 5-10 pages of content approved and live since the launch of the project. Now I am getting the questions of why we aren't seeing any results.
The quickest and most direct answer is - we aren't publishing any new content! But you can't always blame the client.
Does anyone have any suggestions, approaches, or strategies to help slow moving clients speed up? Perhaps other techniques to show your value other than publishing new/targeted content?
Cheers - Kyle
I am actually going through this exact issue with a client right now as well. My hypothesis is that Google is not determining/penalizing us based on the keyword that is used in the search query but where the large amount of exact match anchor text is pointing.
Essentially i believe the penalty is at the page level. So a few weeks ago i began running the following test that is something kind of like this:
If my hypothesis is true then your new page will begin to rank as it's authority rises. This is at least what i am currently testing (only a few weeks into it). Hope this helps out!
Cheers - Kyle Chandler
Instead of blocking them with robots.txt (which isn't very effective), try using the canonical tag instead.
For instance, a URL like this:
http://wwww.testdomain.com/page.html?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=Banner&utm_campaign=Campaign
You could add this canonical tag in the head:
With this solution you don't have to worry about losing quality links OR having your query tracking show up in any of the major search engines.
Cheers- Kyle
Okay - anyone else read about the new tool release from Bing especially the disavow tool? Very cool - id love to hear some chatter on what you guys think!
Here is to hoping Google will follow suit!
Cheers - Kyle
The link tracking is using a 301 redirect so 99% of the juice will be passed along to your page. As Jason said OSE has a slight lag with updating their index. Try out http://www.majesticseo.com/ for additional link information. In my experience they tend to update their fresh index more offten.
Good luck - Kyle
You would never be penalized for having to many links on a page unless it is being done for a spammy/deceptive reason (and after reviewing your page - you are obviously not).
The reason SEOMoz marks it as a "warning" is because it is something worth knowing for two major reasons:
So once again, it is nothing to worry about but something to be aware of. Keep focusing on the great content you are publishing and less on the minutia of technical SEO
Good luck! - Kyle
As long as you have the correct syntax and it is all in the of the document there is no negative or positive effect on the positioning of the META elements in regards to SEO.
As for the best META elements to include for an SEO benefit - that would be your title and description tags.
Hope this helped! - Kyle
I understand the ideas behind testing but what about documentation? Do you supply a written plan with goals & outcomes ahead of time or just guess and test along the way?
I guess to help clarify I work for an agency and would need to present the approach to a client for approval rather than working in house.
Check out this page, about half way down in the article: http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm
They cover both dynamic query pages and pages with spaces.
Good luck - kyle
