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Sorry, I am not quite following you. These are text links that would be created among different pages of text. In what context are you using the term "database"?

I am already paying to have a page edited a manually so I don't see how tables and databases come into play? Sorry for my non technical question.

Alan

Hi William:

Price point is $95.00 per page re-write.  Content exists but style is to be improved where necessary and keywords integrated into text. Tags to be re-written.

I have paid about $2,100 for keyword research and the creation of a keyword matrix in addition to the $95.00 per page. So my total exposure will be around $7,000 without internal linking.

In terms of the scope of work on each page, for example a page like: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods/downtown-manhattan/financial-district will be re-written to incorporate the following three terms: wall street office space, financial district office space, financial district office space rent, downtown office space for lease, office space downtown, downtown office space for rent, downtown brooklyn office space. Stylistically this page is not too bad.

Some pages like the home page (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) need editing must be re-written for conversion. Three terms to be optimized on the home page are Manhattan office space, new york office space, new york city office space, manhattan office space for rent, office space in manhattan, office space in new york, new york office space for rent, office space for rent manhattan, office rental manhattan, commercial property for rent, office for rent, office space for lease.

Do you think at the $95/page I can insist that the SEO firm provide internal linking?

Thanks! Alan

My Manhattan based commercial real estate firm hired an SEO firm. The company conducted a content audit, created a keyword matrix and suggested optimizing 51 pages for specific keywords. A specific price per page was quoted, which I understand and accept.

I was under thought that setting up internal text links to redistribute page rank and thereby improve ranking for competitive terms was included in the price. But this task was not included in their quote.

I really want to avoid getting nickeled and dimed to death. Should this cost be included, or legitimately is setting up the internal link structure something that is an additional expense? If this task is legitimately an extra, how labor intensive is it? A lit bit of extra time when re-writing pages or a completely different task that would be quite time consuming?

Also, I believe the flow of page rank within a site can have a big effect on ranking, so setting up internal links is critical. Are these assumptions correct?

For some background, www.nyc-officespace-leader.com gets 4,500 organic visits per month. Google Page Rank is 2 and the site was hit by Panda in 2012 but has partially recovered.

I would really appreciate some insight from the MOZ community. I do not want to pay too much or too little for these services. THANKS, Alan

Thanks for the response Jimmy!!

Site explorer is showing zero likes, when there are about 800. The MOZ program show about the correct number.

I am concerned that this will affect domain authority and other metrics.

When I enter competing domains in Site Explorer Facebook likes are shown, so I don't understand why they are not getting picked up for my site. Any ideas, anyone?

Thanks,
Alan

For some reason MOZ is not registering the number of Facebook likes my corporate Facebook page has. Over 700 likes have accumulated, yet MOZ is showing zero. It is strange because MOZ has picked up three Facebook "shares".

Does anyone have an idea how this issue can be corrected?

Thanks,
Alan

Hi Brett:

The domain is about 9 years old and that has value. Organic search volume dropped from 6800/month to about 3100/month after the April 2012 Penguin update. It has climbed back in the last five months to about 4500/month. So the penalty has atleast been partially lifted.

I never received a notice of penalty from Google. However my SEO firm believes that so many of the links are toxic (per "LinkDetox") that that some sort of penalty exists on the site. Google Pagerank has decline to 2 from 4 and Cemper Trust has also declined significantly. Strangely enough search volume has increased significantly in the last 4 months despite the drop in PR and Cemper Trust. Being that the site still performs, I really hope it is not necessary to move to a new domain and start from scratch!!!

Are you saying that submitting a disavow will trigger a manual review of my site? If so, this may be very good, as the content on the site is useful and unique.

In the scenario above, where the site still ranks for keywords, search volume has increased but Cemper Trust and PR have declined, do you believe recovery and improvement is possible? Note, I have never received any penalty notice.

Thanks,
Alan

Hi George, thanks for your response.

Actually, the content is high quality, unique content that is useful to the visitor. I have noticed that as new content is added search traffic increases.

Prior to the April 2012 Penguin update organic traffic was as high as 6800 visit per month, dropping to as low as 2800 per month. Search traffic is now about 4000/per month.

In 2010 and 2011 submissions were made to a few hundred low quality directories. As a result there are many toxic links pointing to the site, which I believe should be removed.

Content is useful, question is should that content be optimized with Yoast before we remove links?

Thanks,
Alan

Greetings MOZ Community:

According to site audit by a reputable SEO firm last November, my commercial real estate web site has a toxic link profile which is very weak (about 58% of links qualified as toxic).

The SEO firm suggests than we immediately start pruning the link profile, requesting removal of the toxic links and eventually filing a link disavow file with Google for links that web masters will not agree to remove.

While removing toxic links, the SEO firm proposes to simultaneously solicit very high quality links, to try to obtain 7-12 high quality links per month.

My question is the following: is it putting the cart before the horse to work on link building without optimizing pages (with Yoast) for specific keywords?

I would think that Google considers how each page is optimized for specific terms; which terms are used within the link structure, as well as terms within the meta tags. My site is partially optimized, but optimization has never been done thoroughly.

Should the pages of the site be optimized for the top 25-30 terms before link building begins. Or can that be done at a later stage. Note that my link profile is pretty atrocious. My site at the moment is receiving about 1,000 unique visitors a week from organic search. However 70% of the traffic is from terms that are not relevant. The firm that did my audit claims that removal of the toxic links while building some new links is imperative and that optimization for keywords can wait somewhat.

Any thoughts?/

Thanks for your assistance.

Alan

Dear MOZ Community:

In an effort to improve the user interface of our business website (a New York CIty commercial real estate agency) my designer eliminated a standardized footer containing links to about 20 pages. The new design maintains this footer on the home page, but all other pages (about 600 eliminate the footer). The new design does a very good job eliminating non essential items. Most of the changes remove or reduce the size of unnecessary design elements. The footer removal is the only change really effect the link structure.

The new design is not launched yet. Hoping to receive some good advice from the MOZ community before proceeding

My concern is that removing these links could have an adverse or unpredictable effect on ranking. Last Summer we launched a completely redesigned version of the site and our ranking collapsed for 3 months. However unlike the previous upgrade this modifications does not URL names, tags, text or any major element. Only major change is the footer removal. Some of the footer pages provide good (not critical) info for visitors.

Note the footer will still appear on the home page but will be removed on the interior pages.

Are we risking any detrimental ranking effect by removing this footer? Can we compensate by adding text links to these pages if the links from the footer are removed? Seems irregular to have a home page footer but no footer on the other pages. Are we inviting any downgrade, penalty, adverse SEO effect by implementing this? I very much like the new design but do not want to risk a fall in rank and traffic.

Thanks for your input!!!
Alan

Hi Nick:

Thanks for your perspective.

Our website traffic (my company is a commercial real estate brokerage firm in New York City) dropped 60% after the first Penguin update in April of 2012.  It recovered somewhat last October after the latest Penguin update after we eliminated repetitive, spammy footer links. The site was also redesigned last Summer.

The quality of the links was only reviewed last November by a SEO firm and a formal audit. The links were analyzed by Link Detox. About 55% are toxic. 40% suspicious and 5% OK. I have no stomach to risk my business with this terrible link profile. But I am trying to take a middle of the road approach. First step being to remove links from 113 domains deemed toxic by Link Detox. These domains all originate on the same IP address so they are mostly a link farm. The owner of the directories has agreed to remove them.

That will still leave me with some toxic links, suspicious link and a few good ones. So I am immediately going to hire an SEO firm for six months to build high quality links (monitoring their deliverables each month).  Only in a few months after we have obtained some high quality links will I start working on removing the other toxic and suspicious links. The objective will be to try to radically improve the link profile within a year.

I am also going to be adding blog content on a weekly basis and increase activity on social media to counter what I am realizing is an absolutely awful link profile.

In the last two years I spent more than $35,000 on web marketing and coding and ignored the link profile. BIG MISTAKE!!!

Out of 250 domains that link to my site about 115 are from low quality directories that are published by the same company and hosted on the same ip address.

Examples of these directories are:

-www.keydirectory.net         -www.linkwind.com              -www.sitepassage.com

-www.ubdaily.com                -www.linkyard.org

A recent site audit from a reputable SEO firm identified 125 toxic links. I assume these are those toxic links. They also identified about another 80 suspicious domains linking to my site. They audit concluded that my site is suffering a partial Penguin penalty due to low quality links.

My question is whether it is safe to remove these 125 links from the low quality directories. I am concerned that removing this quantity of links all at once will cause a drop in ranking because the link profile will be thin with only about 125 domains remaining that point to the site. Granted those 125 domains should be of somewhat better quality.

I am playing with fire by having these removed. I URGENTLY NEED ADVICE AS THE WEBMASTER HAS INITIATED STEPS TO REMOVE THE 125 LINKS.

Thanks everyone!!!

Alan

Dear Moz Community:

Domain Authority for my site has dropped to 26. It was about 35 a year ago and has dropped to 26 a few days ago from 29 as recently as last month. In the meantime Google Page rank has dropped from 4 to 2.

Page authority for my home page remains pretty stable at about 37.

Strangely site traffic increased about 25% in early October after the most recent Penguin update, going form about 130 to 170 visits per day.

I ordered a web site audit from a MOZ recommended SEO firm last October. Since November we have focused on implementing suggestions in their audit.We have removed duplicate content from about 30 pages (our site is 500 pages), slightly modified the architecture of the site to allow better indexing of property listings (I run a real estate site), had a mirror site hosted by former developer de-indexed, added structured mark-up language and made some other minor changes.

The audit concluded that about 45% of the domains linking to my site were toxic, 45% suspicious and the remaining 10%. I have yet to take action to remove the bad domains and work on building quality links. But these bad links have existed for the last several years.

I would like to know if anyone has any ideas as to why the drop in my Domain Authority appears to be accelerating? Is this tied with my implementation of the audit suggestions or could it be something else?

I should mention that I have not engages in any social media for about two three months. From January to August I would tweet, Google+, Facebook regularly adding links to my site. Also I have been adding an average of 2-3 blog posts a month, with the exception of November where none were added.

How serious is this drop? Can I recover domain authority through link building? Would removing the toxic links result in a partial recovery?

My PR agency has suggested a question answer format be incorporated in my blog. They suggest a microblog with a single sentence question and an answer of about 300 words.

My blog currently has about 35 posts. I would like to ramp up blog entries to about one or two per week of these "mini blog" posts.

The format of the new blog begins as a question with the responses being paragraphs that do not use headings. My concerns are as follows:

1. No headings in an answer of 300 words will fail to provide Google with context regarding the content's meaning. Everything I have read about SEO suggests text be broken up in short sections and that it be divided by headings (preferably H2s).

I very much like my agency's concept for a question answer format blog. It provides very practical info for visitors. How can I use it in a manner that supports SEO best practices?

2. According to a reputable SEO firm that has been assisting me, Google does not consider a blog post of less than 600 words to be superior quality. They told me that  blog posts of 300 words, from an SEO purpose will not be a great helpful, that the content will not be rich enough to generate incoming links.

Is this really the case? What if this abbreviated content is very well written and engaging? If so, is 300 words sufficient? From the visitor's perspective I am not sure they would have the patience to read 600 words when 300 words is more than than enough to answer these basic questions. From a PR perspective I think the shorter content in a question answer format is superior at least for my line of business (commercial real estate brokerage).

3. If 500-600 words is the minimum word count, and headings are necessary, what is the best way to execute a question and answer blog format?

The purpose of this blog is to provide very useful info to my visitors while generating incoming links to that will boast my rankings.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!!!

Alan

No that is an interesting!!!

So assuming I can create content that is unique interesting and engaging, where should I post it? My website blog, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn an off site blog?

So  if I can create the content, how do I address the issue of optimizing and submitting to the appropriate places. Would an SEO firm add value in this area assuming they are pros and only engage in white hat?

Obviously I would prefer to allocate my budget to creating high value content and more of it. Which not hiring an SEO firm would allow me to do. But I don't wan to be penny wise and pound foolish.

Hi Keri:

Thanks for your response!!

Well i am writing the content and have a PR agency making it more engaging, incorporating a strong call to action organizing in order to create a piece which is very informative while at the same time being entertaining.

So would something that is written more skillfully create more quality links than an article created by an SEO firm, maybe being better optimized but not as engaging? DO I spend my budget on superb content or on good content by an SEO expert who may have a better idea of where to get links?

Thanks,

Alan

Greeting MOZ Community:

My site has 400 domains linking to it of which about 180 are toxic and 180 are suspicious according to a site audit from a reputable SEO firm. The SEO firm is offering link removal and link building services to remedy the situation.

My question is this: if I can create and post high quality blog articles on a very regular basis, will this in and of itself create high quality links to my site? If the articles are of exceptional quality can I post them elsewhere to earn quality links?

Does it make more sense to use my budget on paying a PR agency to create high quality articles and posting them on my blog or elsewhere rather than spending on an SEO link building campaign? Should I do both?

I plan on having the SEO firm remove toxic links and optimize content using Yoast. But I want to be careful about not wasting my budget if the links will develop naturally if I post the content online myself. I am more inclined to have an SEO pro work on creating links but why pay if I can do it myself.

Any thoughts?
Alan

Hi Thomas:

Thanks so much for your very informative response!!!

In fact the website is for my real estate brokerage business and the organic traffic is essential for new leads. Without that traffic my business is in trouble.

The SEO firm has assured me that removal the toxic and suspicious links will not cause a decline in traffic. They intend to request removal from each web master over about two months. Finally we will send a disavow request to Google for the remaining bad links. The process should be done in about 90 days. Simultaneously a new link building campaign will begin. First month to be mostly research but in the 2nd and 3rd month 5-10 quality links will be added per month. The SEO firm believes that this approach has little risk in reducing organic traffic. We will look at the link reports carefully before requesting removal so no good links are accidentally removed.

Only concern I have is how Google will evaluate the removal of bad links from 380 bad domains (out of 400 domains) and the simultaneous addition of 10-20 high quality domains over three months. So at the end of the process I will have maybe 35 quality domains linking to my site versus about 20 good domains now 380 bad domains (suspicious and toxic). The SEO firm has insisted that the site it self is very well implemented with lots of good content and that the bad domains are really holding it back. I hope they are correct.

Also, before link building they will spend the first month of link building on research. So nothing much will happen until the second month. I did pay for an extremely detailed (and well done) site audit which included a link analysis. So I hope I am not in a sense paying for this twice.

Also, I am being charged a considerable fee for the toxic and suspicious fee removal. A flat price plus a per domain fee for the removal. I feel since the audit identified the bad links a fair amount of the work towards getting this done is already complete.  I really wonder what is fair and customary under the circumstance. I do understand link removal is time consuming. I at times consider trying to to it myself, but for a task of this complexity using a pro is probably better.

Also, you had asked about the penalty. Apparently it is a Penguin penalty. At no point did Google ever send us a penalty notification via Webmaster Tools. And the penalty was partially lifted in October after the latest Penguin update. Traffic increased to 4,300 in October versus 2,800 in September. The SEO firm thinks this may be because a spammy footer was removed.

After these new details I would be very curious to hear if you think the SEO firms approach sounds reasonable and that I am going in the right direction.

Thanks so much.
Alan

Dear Moz Community:

I am considering hiring the SEO firm that conducted a web site audit for my company. The audit was very serious and thorough. Out of 400 domains linking to my site, the audit identified 40% as toxic, 45% as suspicious and only 5% as good quality.

The SEO firm believes the poor link profile is very much holding back organic ranking and traffic. I am considering signing a six month contract to have them remove the toxic and suspicious links and also, build new quality links.

Basically I have the following questions:

-The SEO firm hopes to build 5-10 very high quality incoming links to my site per month. Is this a reasonable number? They claim that quantity is much more important than quality.

-In the six month campaign, I will be paying for one month of research by the SEO provider before the link building kicks in earnest. In fact I will only get five months of link building despite paying for six months of service. Is this fair?

-Is the removal of toxic links and the development of 25-50 new quality links and enough to improve ranking and traffic over six months? The site currently receives 4,000 visitors from organic search results per month.
Note that at the moment the site has only about 20 "quality" links. I would hate to exhaust my budget after six months with no tangible improvement!

I would very much like to hear of anyone's experience or input regarding reasonable expectations regarding hiring an SEO firm for link building campaigns.

Thanks!!!
Alan

Hi Marie:

Thanks for your very thorough response.

My site dropped in rankings in April 2011 and never completely recovered. I had a site audit and they really stressed the urgency of removing toxic links to my site.

For the first time I looked at links using Majestic SEO and noticed that most are from low quality directories and many have the same IP address. Also I have seen Domain Authority on MOZ drop from 38 to 27 in the last year. Page authority at the moment is 38.

The audit (from a reputable MOZ approved SEO vendor) found the site to be pretty good technically (unique content, fast download, no Google or MOZ errors, etcetera). I think they checked the links with software, not manually.

Regarding the Google penalty, I never received any sort of written notice on Google Webmaster Tools.

The SEO firm is confident they can remove around 60% of the toxic links. They in no way promise to remove all. So from what you are saying, even if a few remain I may be in trouble. Furthermore they are not at this point addressing the "suspicious" links.

I'd like to point out that there are only 445 domains linking to my site. Would it be possible to overcome the penalty by building thousands of high quality links over time? I am also concerned that removing these links before adding new ones will really cause my traffic to drop (I receive about 4,000 unique visitors via search each month).

Is there any kind of action that I can ask the SEO provider to take to ensure they will be removing the bad links? I would hate to spend $3,000 and find the site still penalized by Google for bad links.

One last thing, I am particularly concerned by your last paragraph. Are you saying that it is very unlikely that Google will lift this penalty no matter how many new links are built of how many bad links get removed; that the domain my domain is in a sense "blacklisted"? That since the links were never very good, Google will never remove the penalty? If that is so, there is no sense in investing in link clean up.

THANKS,
Alan

Well, OK looks like I need to bite the bullet....

Is there an objective way that I can identify toxic links, that I can detemine if in fact they need to be removed? The SEO firm has identified  45% of incoming links as "Toxic", 50% as suspicious and 5% as healthy. There are a total of 1,500 links coming from 450 domains.

About 130 have a Majestic SEO trust flow of zero and a citation flow of zero.  So they don't look great.

While I don't want to be too skeptical I am concerned that the SEO firm may want to generate revenue when perhaps it is not necessary to remove these links.

Alan

I get it,  however there are varying levels of complexity and there is software such a link detox that can simplify the process.

Is this out of the league of someone who is not an SEO pro but is tech savvy?

Link building, development of content strategy, local SEO, link removal, duplicate content removal can quickly add up to tens of thousands of dollars or more. Need to do what I can myself so I can invest in services that add the highest value.

Thanks,
Alan

Recently an SEO audit from a reputable SEO firm identified almost 50% of the incoming links to my site as toxic, 40% suspicious and 5% of good quality. The SEO firm believes it imperative to remove links from the toxic domains.

Should I remove toxic links before building new one? Or should we first work on building new links before removing the toxic ones?

My site only has 442 subdomains with links pointing to it. I am concerned that there may be a drop in ranking if links from the toxic domains are removed before new quality ones are in place.

For a bit of background my site has a MOZ Domain authority of 27, a Moz page authority of 38. It receives about 4,000 unique visitors per month through organic search. About 150 subdomains that link to my site have a Majestic SEO citation flow of zero and a Majestic SEO trust flow of zero. They are pretty low quality. However I don't know if I am better off removing them first or building new quality links before I disavow more than a third of the links to the site.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Alan

Hi Jen:

Recently an SEO audit from a reputable SEO firm identified almost 50% of the incoming links to my site as toxic, 40% suspicious and 5% of good quality. They are of the opinion that it is imperative to remove the toxic domains.

The fee for toxic link removal is about $3,000.I would prefer to save the $3,000 but would prefer not to take the risk of screwing up my ranking if this is a complex procedure best left to SEO professionals. My assumption is that link removal will involve  identifying the toxic domains, requesting removal and eventually submitting a Google disavow request.

Can I do this myself or is there a big risk of screwing it up? Assuming it is safe for me to remove toxic links, would anyone suggest  software of tools for doing so?

Thanks so much.
Alan

Hi Jen:

That is very helpful, thanks!!

The one point I did not understand is the last one one regarding checking to see if the c-blocks are varied. Could you please elaborate.

Also, do you think it would be risky for me as an amateur to do this on my own, that link removal would be better left in the hands of a professional? I am working with a reputable SEO firm, but they are requesting almost $3,800 to identify and remove approximately 225 domains that have toxic links to my site. If I use a professional SEO firm I would probably want to conserve my resources for link building ($2,500/month). But I don't want to be penny wise and pound foolish. So do you think I could disavow bad links on my own?

Also, would you suggest any software of tools for doing so?

Thanks so much.
Alan

Greetings Moz Community:

Recently I received an site audit from a MOZ certified SEO firm.

The audit concluded that technically the site did not have major problems (unique content, good architecture). But the audit identified a high number of toxic links. Out of 1,300 links approximately 40% were classified as suspicious, 55% as toxic and 5% as healthy.

After identifying the specific toxic links, the SEO firm wants to make a Google disavow request, then manually request that the links be removed, and then make final disavow request of Google for the removal of remaining bad links. They believe that they can get about 60% of the bad links removed.

Only after the removal process is complete do they think it would be appropriate to start building new links.

Is there a risk that this strategy will result in a drop of traffic with so many links removed (even if they are bad)?

For me (and I am a novice) it would seem more prudent to build links at the same time that toxic links are being removed. According to the SEO firm, the value of the new links in the eyes of Google would be reduced if there were many toxic links to the site; that this approach would be a waste of resources.

While I want to move forward efficiently I absolutely want to avoid a risk of a drop of traffic.

I might add that I have not received any messages from Google regarding bad links. But my firm did engage in link building in several instances and our traffic did drop after the Penguin update of April 2012.

Also, is there value in having a professional SEO firm remove the links and build new ones? Or is this something I can do on my own? I like the idea of having a pro take care of this, but the costs (Audit, coding, design, content strategy, local SEO, link removal, link building, copywriting) are really adding up.

Any thoughts???

THANKS,
Alan

Hi Marcus (or anyone in the MOZ community):

Further complicating my effort to get my street address listed on Google+, I share the same suite with another real estate broker.

There are two companies share the same suite number, street number, city, state and zip code. The other broker recently set up a very basic web site and is listed on Google+ as well as several other local directories.

How would Google deal with two very similiar businesses sharing the same suite. While I have a much more elaborate website established in 2007, my colleague is listed in more local online business directories.

Could these factors be contributing to not having a street address listed on Google+?

Thanks,
Alan

Hi Marcus:

Great post!!

I logged into Google Places for Business. Noticed that under Services Areas and Location Settings I had "Do not show my business address on my Maps listings" checked.

I unchecked it. Now on Google places my location shows on the map.

Googling my company name and going to my company Google+ page and the address still does not show up. Is there something I have to change there to get it to show? Or is it a question of Google taking some time to reintegrate address info? Is there anything I can do to expedite the process?

Thanks,
Alan

I run a local business in New York City, a commercial real estate brokerage.

My firm has both a web site and Google+ accounts, one Google+ account for me personally and a Google+ account for my business.

Under address my Google+ account is showing New York, NY. It is not showing a street address.

Similiarly when my business name is entered in the Google search bar, my web site is the first result, but under address (directly to the right of a black dot with a grey circle around it) "New York, NY" with the phone number beneath it appears. No sign of my street address.

My business is registered under Google Places and we have entered the correct street address.

Any ideas on how I can get Google to display our street address? This is obviously very, very detrimental for local SEO.

Thanks,
Alan

My real estate web site was migrated form Drupal to Wordpress last July. The ranking have dropped a lot since migration. One of the things we changed is that we have added two carousels to the home page. Most of the text is below the carousels. Is this bad for SEO?

Thanks,
Alan

Are you saying that if I use a carousel the text should be above it??

My real estate web site was migrated form Drupal to Wordpress. The ranking have dropped a lot since migration. One of the things we changed is that we have added two carousels to the home page. Most of the text is below the carousels. Is this bad for SEO?

Thanks,
Alan

Recently I verified authorship for my Website. So the image from my personal Google+ account appears in search results.

My website has a Google+ social media button. Should the link point to my corporate Google+ account or to my personal Google+ account? What is more credible from Google's point of view? What are best practices for this issue?

Look forward to hearing from the MOZ community.

THANKS!!!
Alan Rosinsky

Hi Michael:

301 redirects were implemented. Some 404s occurred in the weeks after the launch but they were redirected.

Thanks,
Alan

Prior to my website redesign and relaunch on July 10th, our domain authority was 33.

301 redirects were implemented properly. Out or 600 pages, about 200 URLs were modified.

Domain authority has dropped to 28. Rankings are terrible. Conversions are awful.

What does the domain authority drop mean? I have noticed in the past that a drop in domain authority tends to coincide with more a drop in ranking and a drop in the quality of visitors.

The site is www.metro-manhattan.com

Thanks,
Alan

Hi Chris:

Thanks for your response.

301 redirects were implemented properly. The redirects were to pages that contained the same content as the original ones.

Previously out of 50 target phrases maybe 15 were in Google's top ten ranking. Now maybe 3 are.

You are probably right, no going back need to focus on improving the Wordpress site.

Thanks,
Alan

Thanks Chris:

The URL is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com

On an positive note the following is pretty good:
-Code validates
-Site speed is fast

The following is weak:
-Yoast has not yet been uses to optimize for keywords on the vast bulk of the 500 pages
-The way CDN on Amazon has been set up, Google only sees photo filename as alphanumeric tags. Also, I can't edit more than the first ALT tag of photos. The ALT tag repeats on each photo. More than 800 of 1100 images have yet to be indexed. Out of 290 property listings, 110 have yet to be indexed. CDN (Amazon) was supposed to be an improvement. It is turning into a nightmare. DOn't know if it is contributing to the drop in rank.
-My developer did not use useful ALT tags in the header. My name is used for two images. Very wasteful use of SEO real estate.
-In terms of general design, it looks aesthetic but I don't think it is clear to the visitor what they need to do. Very weak design. A nightmare, and an expensive one at that!!

Am I missing something really obvious about the site?

THANKS!!!
ALAN

After redesigning my old Drupal website and launching a new "improved" Wordpress version the new version is performing badly. Ranking is poor and conversions don't occur. I realize that my new design is bad (no call to action, poor structure, text heavy). New business inquiries have ceased. The site contains 450 pages.

After spending $25,000 and a year of my life I see the new version is not an improvement!

What would be the effect of reinstating the old version of the site and doing 301 redirects back to it? Would the old rankings be restored?

I need to decide whether I should revert or focus on fixing flaws in the improved design.

Any thoughts??

Thanks,
Alan

Greetings Moz Community:

About 280 pages of my 650 page commercial real estate website are listing pages. Each listing page contains between two and five photos, each with a corresponding ALT tag.

My developer has set up the labeling of the ALT tags in the following manner. I can create a label for the first photo, but each subsequent photo automatically gets the same label plus a number tagged to the ALT. Like this:

alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent"
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent - Photo 0"
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent - Photo 1"
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent - Photo 2"
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent - Photo 3"

Is this method neutral, positive or negative for SEO? I am concerned that this manner of labeling ALT tags might risk triggering a duplicate content penalty. In early July I migrated the site from Drupal to Wordpress. We  changed the URL structure (adding a sub-directory) for the listings at that time. Google is refusing to index about 100 listing pages. Any chance the ALT tags are contributing to Google's reluctance to index the URLs?

I might also add that images are hosted on Amazon's CDN.

A sample listing URL is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/278-21st-street-flatiron-loft-for-rent
Note: (/listings/278) were added to the URL in July, representing the listing sub directory plus the listing number.

I Look forward to hearing the opinion of the MOZ community!!!

THANKS!!!
Alan

On July 10th my site was migrated from Drupal to Google. The site contains approximately 400 pages.

301 permanent redirects were used. The site contains maybe 50 pages of new content.

Many of the new pages have not been indexed and many pages show as duplicate content.

Is it possible that there is a site map issue that is causing this problem? My developer believes the map is formatted correctly, but I am not convinced.

The sitemap address is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/page-sitemap.xml [^]

I am completely non technical so if anyone could take a brief look I would appreciate it immensely.

Thanks,
Alan

|   |

After launching my redesigned website (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com)  Google ranking has dropped significantly for competitive keywords.  The previous version of the site and the new version both have approximately 450 pages. My website developer was careful to implement 301 redirects.

Monitoring Google Webmaster tools it shows that Google has picked up a quantity of duplicate content. More than 950 pages or shown in their index while my site only has 450 pages. There are also certain pages which require canonical which tags my developer is in the process of implementing.

The relaunch was July 10. My developer is of the opinion that this fluctuation in ranking is normal and that it will take Google about one month to reindex the new site and remove the old pages from the directory. Is this accurate?

Anyone have any ideas on why my site has tanked in Google's search results?

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,
Alan Rosinsky

Hi Ryan:

The site is actually www.nyc-officespace-leader.com

Thanks,

Alan

Thanks Darin!!

I have requested the crawl. Hoping I get the report within a few hours.

Regards,
Alan Rosinsky

Thanks!!! Good answer.

Alan

Greetings:

I have just updated my site and would like to run a crawl immediately. How can I do so before waiting for the next MOZ crawl?

Thanks,
Alan

Greetings:

Companies such as Shutterstock often require that buyers place credit attribution on their web pages when photos you buy from them appear on these  pages..

Shutterstock requests that credit attribution links such as these be added:

Songquan Deng / Shutterstock.com

Do these links negatively impact SEO? Or do search engines view them as a positive?

Thanks,
Alan

I am in the process of migrating www.nyc-officespace-leader.com from Drupal to Wordpress and my developer is of the opinion that it is not necessary to implement silos to achieve favorable ranking for competitive keywords.

I know a lot has changed in the last two years with Panda and Penguin. Is it SEO best practices to implement silos in the course of the redesign? Will this make a significant difference for SEO?

Thanks,

Alan Rosinsky

My commercial real estate web site is being migrated to Wordpress from Drupal.

Is it advisable to place  dynamic content that will use taxonomy under "Posts" ?

Listings will be changed every few months and there could be anywhere from several hundred to several thousand of them on the site.

Developers have given me different advice. One has been adamant that listings and neighborhood pages (there will be about 25 neighborhood pages) should not be in the post section which is to be strictly reserved for blog entries.

The last thing I want is to create a site structure which is unfriendly to SEO!!!!

I would very much appreciate the perspective of anyone proficient with Wordpress and SEO.

Thanks!!!
Alan Rosinsky

My commercial real estate  web site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) allows visitors to search for office space listings. The site sources listings through a third party and they are displayed in an i-frame. The i-frame directs visitors to listing pages such as: http://listings.nyc-officespace-leader.com/getspace.mpl?sp_id=A0173921&cust_id=offspldr

Atleast 10,000 of these pages have backlinks to my site.

My question is the following: Could these tens of thoudands of alpha numeric URLs be detrimental to my sites ranking on Google after the Panda/Penguin updates?

SIte traffic dropped from 7,000 per month to about 3,300 after the April Google update. Rewriting content for dozens of  pages and adding a blog have only somewhat mitigated the negative effects of Panda/Penguin.

Could Google be viewing these links from the third party lisitng provider as a negative when they viewed these links as a plus before?

Any downside to removing the third party links and  parsing these listings from landlord websited and displaying them as part of my site with their own URL, title tag, description tag? Obviously the new URLS would not be alphanumeric.

If these links have not caused the drop in traffic last April, what could be responsible?

Thanks in advance for your opinion!!!

Alan