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lost a lot of rankings. 2 things have happened to my site over the past 2 weeks and I am trying to establish which may be the case:

1. My site has 30.000 links from a top news site (on main bar across all pages - not for SEO, it just happened). My site lost 3,000 links from this site last week, when they were doing some cleaning up, which means I still have 25,000+ links from them.

2. My site - job site - has published another job board's jobs so I get paid per click. This means ratio of my job vs external jobs is 1 to 5. So basically, I added last week 5 times more jobs that is already live on external site to get paid per click. In other words, my own site's unique content went down big time.

Which of the 2 is more likely to cause the massive drop in rankings since last night?

I run a job site - www.hawaiijobengine.com. Last week I incorporated jobs from Indeed.com (in order to make money every time a user clicks on Indeed jobs). Before, I had around 1200 jobs posted directly on my site and with Indeed's jobs I probably have around 4,000 jobs. When users click on the Indeed jobs they are taken to the employers website, application portal or other job board.

Question: is there a good chance Google will have crushed me on my rankings due to the ratio of unique content on my site now having dropped massive with the Indeed jobs incorporated? Is there a chance Google is just temporarily dropping me due to this and in 1 weeks time the algorithm will probably have worked out what is happening and get more back to my previous rankings?

good answer, Cyrus. I think the trust factor is probably more relevant than that 1% of users that may click. Other users will scroll and see those about, faq etc links and that ads trust and I think that is key why it makes sense to keep.

My footer links are well-organized, but few and they are About, FAQ, Sitemap, Terms & Privacy, which in theory are good for users to have access to throughout my site. However, if I know less than 5% of users click on those, that means very little user value. Will it help me from an SEO perspective to keep those footer links throughout my site or is the answer a clear "no" and I should only keep if the users benefit from having those links. Again, especially on my deeper pages with low PA, I am concerned about spreading the link juice on an already weak page....

About Us, FAQ, Site Map, Terms & Privacy - I know rarely viewed by users (at least on my website), so why keep in global footer across all pages, since one could argue it will dilute some link juice to more important pages?Why not just keep on homepage only? What is argument for having links to these pages across all pages on a site? Is there any SEO value?

I feel my meta descriptions are descriptive and fairly represent the info on each page of my site. However, Google frequently includes this "20+ items" in front of the snippet. I run a job site and each page list 20 jobs. What if I include a bit of coding in the Meta Description to include "Latest Jobs Posted TODAY's DATE" - since the jobs listed on the page will include a date. On each page there is also option to "Create Email Alert" and "save Jobs" maybe I should include writing about that as well?

I have read all Google's documents on the importance of making Meta Des relevant for the page etc, so any good insight how increase my chances of getting the meta des displayed in the SERP would be appreciated.

thank you, Kristian

In a standard article with 400-500 words my site got a back-link. However, within the article there are 4 other links pointing to other external content as well (so total 5 links within articles all pointing to external sites, and 1 of the links is to my site). All links are to relevant external content that is.

Question: wouldn't it be much more valuable for my site if only my site got a back-link from the article, as less link juice is now passed to my site, since there are 4 other links pointing to various sites from this same article? Or, is the case that given the other links are pointing to quality material it actually makes the link to my site look more credible and at the end of the day have more value.

Conclusion: is it that on one hand less links in same article is better from a link juice perspective, however, from a credibility perspective it looks more convincing there are other links pointing to quality content?

thank you, Paul. Good answer. Let me make sure I understand correctly: if I get a backlink from "blog.domain/abc" or from "domain.com/abc" that would have exactly same impact and link juice assuming the page "abc" in both cases have same page authority (let us just say it is a brand new page with PA 1) - is that correctly understood?

When I go to OpenSiteExplorer and enters "blog.domain.com" or simply "domain.com" - in both cases the domain authority is the same,  though I thought it would normally be different since domain authority will refer to the sub-domain "blog".

If you can share a few thoughts that would be appreciated

Will a back-link from "domain.com/abc" and "blog.domain.com/abc" have same value from an SEO perspective? Assume same article written on both sites. 
I have been told the bots look at the domain value and the only links from blogs that have less value are in case of comments. As long as the "blog.domain/abc" page includes a full article and not a blog comment then it counts fully for SEO. Is this correct?

A strong news site has an "archived.domainname" folder, where they have older articles listed. I can get a link on a page where there is a 4 year old article, which will be in this archived sub-domain. My questions:

1. Will Google view a link from a 4 year old article as less valuable. Will Google notice the article is 4 years old and find it odd why the page all of a sudden has a link to my site, and thus devalue such link

2. the sub-domain "archived" does that tell Google it is old and a link will be less valuable

thank you

Hi everyone,

My company is called "Hawaii Job Engine" - www.hawaiijobengine.com - and many sites that link to my site use my company name as anchor text "Hawaii Job Engine". I have heard Google may devalue a certain keyword phrase if used too often in anchor text. Does this mean I may, over time, get a poor ranking for the term "Hawaii Job" since that phrase is part of my company's name. Or, will search engines easily notice it is my company name and therefore it will not have a negative impact on rankings? Example: if the anchor text leading to my company's homepage is company's name 95% of the time (on authoritative sites) could this be an issue? I don't know the %, but just to establish if there may be in % levels to keep in mind.

thank you,

Kristian

thank you. A site is linking to my video on youtube, which is a video uploading from my youtube channel. I also have the video embedded on my website. Is my website getting any SEO value from a site linking to the video on youtube? Does Google see a connection between the youtube video and my website? Can I increase the chance Google sees such connection?

thank you

1. A site has a link to my site as one of their main tabs, which means whenever a user clicks through to another page within the site, my link - being a main tab - is there. This creates thousands of links from this site. How does Google treat this? Do we have a rough formula estimate. In other words, assume it creates 1,000 backlinks would the SEO value be around the same as if I had just 2 link total as a main tab, but on 2 different non-related sites? Or, does it actually count fully as 1,000 links?

2. Links from various sub-domains. Several .EDU's are linking to my site. Different schools within the overall same university. Example: nursing.abc.edu links to my site, but so does business.abc.edu. For SEO does that count as much as if I had links from complete non-related universities, or would Google evaluate that these links are related (since same main domain) and that will discount any links more than 1 to some extent? If discounted, then what do we estimate the discount to be?

thank yoyu