Hey, no worries, my pleasure!
Best posts made by Marcus_Miller
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RE: Page has a 301 redirect, now we want to move it back to it's original place
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RE: Are citations the way to go even if there is no Google Places listing
Hey,
Not sure if you aware of this but local search results do show up if you search this term: ‘web design in vancouver’...but hey thats not what you asked so lets get on with the answer:
Creating citations simply to improve your website ranking will work, but your on-page optimisation needs to be at its best. My first tip would be to fill every citation with as much detail as possible. Make sure you add photos and videos and have a unique description for each citation site, but remember to include your keywords in the description. The Name, Address & Phone Number (NAP) will need to be kept consistent to get the full benefit of creating these citations.
For on-page optimization, I can recommend a few small changes that can go a long way! My first step of advice would be to add a schema markup of your address into the footer of the website. A schema markup allows google to recognise the address as a formatted address, instead of viewing it as a piece of text. Another useful tip is to make sure you are getting the full benefit from your page titles. I tend to structure page titles like this:
target keyword | Business name
so for a web design company in vancouver called Funky web design, I would do something along the lines of this:
Web Design In Vancouver | Funky Web Design
Hope this helps!
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RE: Serp and visitor is dropping everyday, Any suggestion?
If you want to add me to your analytics I can give you some five minute feedback there if it helps.
marcus miller 1975 <at>gmail <dot>como</dot></at>
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RE: SEO plugin by Yoast messing up my title/meta description
If you are using the SEO plugin it allows various variables in the title templates. So, to use the page / post title and the site name you would use:
%%title%% | %%sitename%%
To use the title and the site description you would use:
%%title%% | %%sitedesc%%
If you wanted title, site name, site description
%%title%% | %%sitename%% | %%sitedesc%%
If you go to the help tag under the Titles & Meta's section you can get a full list of these variables you can get to customise your template titles.
But, the plugin also allows you to customise on a page by page basis in the page / post settings which is also really useful.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Local SEO Issue or Penguin? Or both?
Hey folks
I have a fairly complicated SEO issue we have been looking at for a few years now. There are two parts to this problem so would be interested to get the input of the community here and any experienced in Penguin and Local SEO issues.
I am going to have to change the names to protect the innocent a bit here as some of the issue relates to a competitor and a shared address.
History
My client originally worked for company A which we will call Events R us.
He then set up on his own at a new address and lets call his company Fantastic Events.
EventsRus never had a good website or SEO
Fantastic Events set up a great website and really focused on adding tons of relevant content for all the myriad event options available and subsequently did really well.
This is a few years back and they were also doing some article marketing on sites like ezinearticles.com to build links (1). As time went on they did get a bit carried away with these low quality links and were buying $5 spun content articles and other low quality links. They ranked really well for a few key terms.
There was a suspected local SEO issue as fantastic events used the same office as their fathers business called fantastic finance and the citations / phone number issues etc all had to be cleared up (2).
Fantastic Events and Events R Us remained friends and over time Fantastic Events moved to the same farm address as Events R Us so they could offer a wider range of services based on the farm (and ran by fantastic events) and to some extent run away from the address confusion with the same office and very similar name to the other fantastic finance business.
Events R Us wanted some of the Fantastic Events success and built a new website and largely copied the website of Fantastic Events - at times even lifting entire pages of content but certainly mirroring the structure of the site. Fantastic Events tussled with them for a few years over this and over time they updated the content but the structure and services and address all pretty much mirrored what was offered on the Fantastic Events site. (3)
Two companies - same address (it's a farm so whilst there are different barns I believe Google can only get as far as the farm gate so same address to all intents and purposes. Same services give or take. Events R Us was the older company overall by several years and was at the farm address many years longer than Fantastic Events (4).
Fantastic Events starts running a blog and adding regular, useful event orientated content. The first true team building blog out there as far as we could tell and traffic tripled over a six month period.
Penguin hits and Fantastic Events loses a lot of traction - this gets worse with Penguin 2.0. Both the homepage and the evening events page lose visibility and traction. The owner gives up on the blog to a large degree.
Subsequent clean up happens and is rigorous - all bad links are pretty much removed and the remaining elements are disavowed. (90% of it is actually gone by now). Penguin 3.0 comes and no recovery at all. Nothing. If anything it gets worse and the once strong blog is now losing traction.
Events R Us starts to do really well in search for exactly the same terms that Fantastic Events used to do well for. In particular one page ranks for exactly the same keywords and in exactly the same position (#1) as what was believed to be the primary traffic driver on the Fantastic Events site. It is almost like they exchanged positions and Events R Us went from nowhere to a strong footing with some national and local keywords and Fantastic Events fell from grace.
A new website is built. All content is refreshed and bought up to date. Some light investment back in the blog. Some light link building is done around digital PR and infographics. Some initial movement in the right direction but overall this did not move the dial.
Certain pages on the site that used to rank are nowhere - looks very much like a page level / keyword level penguin penalty. These same pages rank great, often first on the competitor site (an exchange of positions to some extent).
Advice from myself and other esteemed consultants was to clean up, build some good links and wait for Penguin 4.0 to remove that eventuality. Also that the address issue could be causing some local SEO issue where Google believes the two businesses are one and has somehow merged the two with some local SEO filter or some such (same business with multiple websites at same address).
Penguin 4.0 comes along and no improvements. Events R us sit pretty.
Feeling is that the local issue must play a part here now that Penguin should be eliminated due to the extensive link clean up etc and there must now be some action to resolve this address / local issue.
Issues
- low quality links - but cleaned up 100% now.
- same business name and address as fathers business initially
- older business copied the structure and content of newer business
- moved to same address as older more established business with very similar content
- older business now seems to have taken all the exact keywords and positions the newer business used to occupy
- Penguin 4.0 and no resolution.
- Local SEO issue seemingly remains
Summary
So we are left in a difficult position. The business does not want to move. But if there is some filtering or merging going on here then how can we get around this? The client is likely collateral damage to an algorithmic component designed to stop single businesses having multiple websites. I know there are reports of this happening but I have never seen such a thing for an innocent business like this but the nature of the address (two separate barns on a gated farm) and the history and similarities between the businesses makes this difficult.
Things are somewhat desperate though - a move has to be made now. Even if that is a physical one. The client has considered a virtual address to take that variable out the picture but I have advised caution. I am even cautious about a change in physical address. Google has a long memory. If such a move was made at considerable expense would it help or would the other business retain
Is the best option a new start? New brand, address, website, services etc - cut all ties with the historic Fantastic Events brand and by association the Events R Us brand. This is not a recommendation I can quickly or easily make so would be really interested to hear the feedback on anyone who has come across such a multi faceted and complex issue before.
This is a tough one. We know what we are doing on the local front. We know what we are doing on the Penguin front. We know how to build links and authority. We are doing this work of the clock to help a long term friend / client get back to where they really deserve to be. The history is not spotty clean but the good work and effort far outway a short spell building dodgy links several years ago now. As an SEO consultant I don't want to advise for the company to rebrand and move offices at considerable expense but whilst I have a theoretical understanding of the issue how can we prove it and be sure this is the best possible advice?
Thanks folks - hope this at least makes for interesting reading. This is something of an edge case. A good business likely caught up in a filter designed to stop abuse.
Cheers
Marcus -
RE: Serp and visitor is dropping everyday, Any suggestion?
Hey Rafi
Okay, I had a quick look at your analytics and really, I don't see a lot to worry about here.
1. Your main keywords that send traffic are still doing really well
2. Your organic traffic is down around 19% this month and there does seem to be a gradual decline across some of your big keywords.
I think what you are seeing here is nothing more than some new competition in your space and I see several sites doing what you are doing and doing it pretty well.
My advice would consist of four main points
- start adding more varied content
- start thinking about building traffic from a wider range of keywords
- look at ways to re-engage with previous visitors (social etc)
- consider content that you can use to earn links or a link building strategy (content based - not something you just outsource)
Without doing this properly and anointing all the various algorithm updates I don't think you have a penalty as such - you are just facing some increased competition.
Forget about SEO almost, focus on content, try to have a broader focus, engage people who visit and bring them back, look at content you can use to build some buzz and links, look at content you can use to incite some viral activity.
Focus on your site basically and don't worry that Google is working against you.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
RE: SEO plugin by Yoast messing up my title/meta description
In Google Chrome:
1. Right click on the page in question and select: View page source
2. Search for <title></em> to see your title</p> <p>3. Search for <em><span><meta </span><span>name</span><span>="</span><span>description</span><span>"</span></em> to see your description</p> <p>Shout if you get stuck!</p> <p>Cheers<br />Marcus </p></title>
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RE: Local SEO Issue or Penguin? Or both?
Hey - thanks for taking the time to respond. I am pretty much of the opinion that a new address is the only option here but I am concerned that Google has a long memory about these things. Countless hours have been spent talking to the largely hopeless Google support staff by the customer but as this is an algorithmic thing the issue is going to go away.
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RE: Do you have to wait after disavowing before submitting a reconsideration request
In my experience, if you have this message again, you still have links they don't like. 35% of linking domains is not a great deal and as Stephen said, whilst Link Detox gives you a good starting place you really do have to audit these links in a brutal fashion.
You have 15000 external links from 2000 sites - that's a hell of a lot of links for a semi popular blog let alone a site that does not really publish any content that would attract links.
If you are holding onto links as you think they are 'ok' or because they 'don't look too bad' then you may need to get a whole lot more aggressive with what you remove.
Also, just because you remove the manual penalty, don't expect things to be amazing afterwards.
An alternative approach to finding the bad links and getting them removed is to identify the good ones and consider getting them repointed to a new URL and starting again with a rebrand / new URL. It can be easier to get a response from the good sites than it can be getting a response from the bad ones.
Failing that get a whole lot more aggressive with what you remove.
Hope that helps!
Marcus
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RE: Registering expired domains
Hey Peter
It should, pretty much be like buying a new domain. The only caveat there would be if there was lots of negative equity, bad links etc hung on the back of the domain but if you have had a good solid look then I would not sweat that.
Additionally, when a domain has a new owner, Google claim they 'reset' the domain so any previous link equity, good or bad would be removed. I am not sure how well that works with Penguin etc but again, if they domain looks clean I would not worry about it too much.
Some useful further reading here:
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015966.html
Hope that helps
Marcus
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RE: Local SEO Issue or Penguin? Or both?
Hey Miriam - thanks for the input.
We have tons of experience with penalties - fact is the client has no bad links remaining. Zilch. They also have very little in the way of good links and unfortunately ranked predominantly on dodgy links. They do have a good deal more than the other company though that has seemingly been rewarded with their rankings. I agree it would not hurt to get a second opinion.
It's a tough one - it's all but impossible to diagnose with 100% confidence and it seems the client simply can't rank for the terms they want to. We waited for Penguin 4.0 as the final factor here and still no improvement.
Few quick questions
- have you ever seen anyone caught up in a local duplication filter who should not have been?
- if so have you ever seen anyone recover?
The client has moved address but my gut tells me Google has a long memory so I am unsure again if this will help (and certainly it does not seem to as of yet).
Tough one!
Cheers
Marcus -
RE: Rankings and search traffic fell off a cliff
Penguin can and often does have page specific problems. In fact, most often it seems the homepages of many sites are most affected and seemingly Penguin 2.0 does a better job of targeting inner pages.
I have worked with several companies who are still struggling to rank their homepage after Penguin yet can generate traffic to their inner pages.
Firstly, I would not jump to assume there are lots of problems with the site, perform an audit if you are unsure but don't make this as an assumption. Use known penalty dates to review traffic and anoint the analytics so you can get a clear picture of which updates caused the traffic drops for a quick and easy way to get more intel.
More often than not I am now advising people to just start over on a new domain and redirecting the old (not with a 301) to the new. This is painful, and many folks are holding onto domains but if clean up is not working and is not practical to continue down this route then a clean domain gives you a fresh start.
I have just had a quick look at the backlink profile in OSE and it does not look like your standard penguinised site though. Are you sure about the cause of the loss of traffic? Do the drops coincide with known penguin dates?
Really, the analytics should be your first port of call here and tools like this will help you easily map algorithm change dates to traffic changes: http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/
Then, investigate further from there on in. If links do seem to be an issue link detox is a quick and easy way to get a good grasp on what kind of links your client has.
Ultimately, it needs investigation but start with analytics, form your hypothesis and try to prove it and then feed back here.
Hope that helps
Marcus
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RE: Duplicate Page Content for sorted archives?
Annoyingly, the SEOMOz crawler does not yet take the rel=canonical into account so creates these misleading reports.
You can always check to see if both pages are indexed in Google to make sure they are only indexing the correct one to be sure
info:www.url.com/page.php?sort=x
info:www.url.com/page.php
Both should just show the main URL without the ?sort=x name / value pair and if so, Google is correctly referring the value of the sorted page to the archive home.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
RE: How much would or have you pay for a domain name?
Ha, well, I am back.
Been busy, busy, busy, but nothing works for letting off a bit of SEO steam like the Moz Q&A!
Oh, and I really want that Roger T-Shirt!
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RE: Rankings and search traffic fell off a cliff
Hey Mark, given the Panda correlation I would look at content issues first and see what we can dig up there.
So, the 60 second SEO audit:
1. I grabbed a chunk of content from one page:
"Female PE Teacher, Permanent - Bath - Pay to Scale Full time role paid to scale depending on relevant teaching experience Required for September 2013 Full time as in accordance with the Teachers"
Run that through Google and what do we see.....
Lots of listings for that exact piece of content - approx 40 reported. But, we hit the third page and we see:
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 21 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.No sign of your clients site though!
So, we open it up and look at the omitted results and there are now over a hundred results and your clients site is in something like 95th position.
Conclusions?
The client site is basically a conduit to other sites like totaljobs.co.uk and re-purposes content available in several other locations. Therefore, they are being filtered as they are not the originator of the content and they bring nothing new to the table.
Pros & Cons
Pro - It's content so can be sorted easily enough by creating unique content.
Con - there seems to be a lot of it
Your client needs to do a content audit and create descriptions of the jobs that add some value and uniqueness. Given how many other folks there are pumping out these same descriptions there is likely some opportunity there but the old model is broken and they have to bring some value.
Caveat - this was the quickest of quick looks but certainly, it seems there are no real mysteries here so just dig in and do some deeper analysis. I imagine the site might give copyscape.com a heart attack!
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
RE: Sudden decline in ranking
Hey Chris
Without a link or the keyword it's hard to give anything other than very general advice and this could just be a natural flutter. The SERPS are so volatile that fluctuations happen almost daily so It may not be a cause for concern and it may come back to near where it was in a short matter of time.
If you wanted to dig further, the obvious thing to look into would be the links to your site and specifically any links that used this keyword.
- Do you have low quality links with this anchor text?
- Could links have been devaluated?
- Could low quality pages with links on have been hit by the last panda update?
It is likely nothing to worry about but if you have done some lowish quality link building around this phrase then it may warrant further investigation.
Hope that helps and happy to look a bit harder if you can drop in the keyword and a link.
Marcus
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RE: How much would or have you pay for a domain name?
Ha, for sure! Good domains are like gold dust in some instances and I would pay 5x what they are asking.
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RE: Google Places listings showing for businesses in different states.
Hey Freddy
I think Vadim has pretty much nailed this but let me see if I can expand on that a little for you.
Most terms are not 100% specific and Google has to interpret what they believe the user is looking for. There is some context (location of searcher) but they don't have complete certainty in what the user is looking for.
Here is an example: When someone searches for 'marcus miller' I would like to think they are looking for me. Unfortunately, 99.9% of searches for 'Marcus Miller' are going to be for the super cool jazz composer / musician and not the super cool geeky SEO from Birmingham UK.
So, lets review this search term 'Crawford Realty'
What are the possible interpretations of this term?
- A business called 'Crawford Realty'
- Reality businesses in a place called Crawford
So, Google hedges their bets and shows the business called 'Crawford Realty' and a list of realty companies in the location called Crawford.
So, why are Google not showing your local listings here?
If the interpretation is for a brand name or a business type in a given location you are not fitting both of those descriptions. If someone searched for your business type + a location where you have an office then that would be a good fit for a localised result for your business.
So, if I search:
real estate Karratha
or
realty karratha
Then I find your local business offices in the local results as we would expect. On page two but they are there:
https://plus.google.com/116505937244694341152/about?gl=uk&hl=en
_Unclaimed I may add so there is certainly some work to be done here! _
Summary
Google has to take a search term and try to understand what the intent is beyond that term and the truth is 50% may be using the term to search for one thing and 50% for another. They have other elements of context such as searcher location but they attempt to serve up results that work for both sets of users. In this case I would imagine they believe that the higher percentage are looking for the business by it's brand name so you get the first listing.
Beyond that your business does come up on a location by location basis when folks search for the location + business area.
Hope that helps!
Marcusrealty location A
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RE: Sudden decline in ranking
Hey Chris Just to clarify: do you mean that the this is the best (or was the best) link using anchor text from an external site and it now no longer exists? If that is the case, then you could contact the site owner and let them know that they have a 404 there and send them a cached version of the page so they can fix their issue. Alternatively, you likely need another good link to get back to where you were. Hope that helps. Marcus
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RE: Has anyone had problems with thier google maps page after the google plus intergration?
Hey John, unfortunately, we could flip this question on it's head and ask, has anyone not had problems with the Google places Google Plus changes, in the UK at least.
The thing I am seeing though is that it seems to be settling down a bit and the duplicate google+ page that was created after our Google places page got shut down (and we already had a Google+ page) has been merged with my brand page so... it seems to be getting better.
Can you give an example? The business name or some such? Local is not my big area but happy to take a look and see if anything jumps out at me from the ones I have dealt with so far.
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RE: Street Address Not Appearing on Business Google+ Page
Hey Alan
We have some experience with this happening and have seen a couple of causes.
1. It was just a short running issue after some changes were made and it resolved itself after a couple of weeks.
2. It was a bigger problem due to a lack of understanding of the actual address.
#1 is self explanatory but in case #2 we have seen this where the client was in a new address or some kind of business park or location where the full address is not always in Google maps (gated business park or some such). We have also seen it in new business complexes - basically, addresses Google is not 100% sure on.
After much painful effort we have found a way to test and this may be a worthwhile process to go through to determine if Google has a problem with the address for your business.
- Google the zip code and address and see how it is formated (exactly) in Google / Google maps and make a note of this
- Google around some other local businesses and find some that are as close as possible and have the standard red map marker and address in Google search when you search for their business / brand name
- Format your address exactly as Google returns it and ideally as other successful businesses
- Log into the places for business page manager
- View the dashboard for the business and click on edit the address
- Update the address so it matches the format Google is using and save the changes
For a few clients we have had with this problem this has resolved the issue - not overnight but if Google likes the address and it matches what they return for the zip / postcode and for other local businesses who are not having this problem you are a lot closer to resolving this.
Often when this is the case (and for a lot of other address problems) if we log into the places control panel, click to edit the address and then try to save it (without making any chances) Google will throw an error stating it does not understand the address. So, clearly, there is an address problem. You can try this yourself but I would still follow the process above either way but it can provide some further confirmation that they had a problem with your address and/or formatting.
Obviously, if your NAP across all major and minor citation sources uses other variations on this address you are going to have to resolve that as well and you are going to have to do a full citation audit and then look to resolve those issues.
Step 1 - get your address perfect on your local listing
Step 2 - ensure your NAP is consistent across all citation sources (start with the big ones first)I wrote an article about NAP consistency which also has a guide covering how to do a citation audit here:
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/noise-trust-nap-consistency/Hopefully this will resolve your issues. The address may fix quickly and in our experience you may see a visibility bump almost instantly (days) or in some cases in can take months (we have seen up to 6 for address problems to fully resolve).
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
RE: Sudden decline in ranking
Hey Chris
You have pretty much nailed it and you do have no access to that page however I would try one thing.
If you check that page it is still indexed in Google:
info:www.pressreleasesworld.com/team-building-auckland-how-to-choose-your-partner/
So, you could contact them and tell them that a page that clicked on in the Google results generated a page not found error on their site. If you can get this message to the right person they may well fix this.
Not to say you would not want to push on with other link building anyhow but... this could be the best of both worlds.
It does not always have to be technical.
Marcus
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RE: Anyone have any experience with freelance graphic designer sites?
Odesk is half decent as the people have profiles, reviews etc.
Have you ever been to TK Max store? There is some great stuff, but it's kind of hard to find and requires some real rummaging around. Well, ODesk is kind of like that, there are some great people on their, but be prepared to spend a few hours looking!
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RE: Street Address Not Appearing on Business Google+ Page
Hey Alan
Possibly. As you have likely noticed, there are so many potential factors here it always requires some experimentation.
To answer a few of your points:
1. I don't see why you can't have two businesses at one address as long as that is totally legit and they have different names and phone numbers.
2. Look at how your neighbour has his address configured and make sure yours matches that format (if that is working) and that matches how that is laid out in Google maps etc. Then, do a citation audit and make sure you look at any historic variations in your name, address and phone number and update those lisitings. The link in my original post above outlines a structured way to approach this.
3. Will Google take time to show the address - yep, for sure. They may even show it, then not show it again, and then show it again. It's choppy waters in the local ecosystem but if you are sure you have everything correct and have audited external listings then just wait it out a while (2 weeks) and it should be okay.
Hope that helps!
Marcus
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RE: What to do with 302 redirects being indexed
Hey,
Adding /co/ to your robots.txt will sort this out long term and you can remove these pages (or at least hasten the removal of them) in Google Webmaster Tools.
I have seen this approach before where a 302 page is used as a proxy to do some processing and then forwards on to something else. Not ideal from a Search perspective as this is a temporary redirect being used in a permanent situation.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
RE: A forum on your primary domain name (implications)
Hey
If you consider what a low quality page actually is
- tiny amount of content
- no content
- spammy
- near duplicate
- external duplicate
- internal duplication created by CMS
- etc
Then, really, a forum post should not really be low content as it should be relatively unique due to the various inputs from different folks.
That said, I don't see forums doing so well as they may once have done and you do need tight moderation for it to be effective.
Really, I would try to think of this outside of the SEO mindset and if it adds value for your visitors AND you can handle the inevitable management then it should be a good idea. If you are adding it purely for search and landing pages, then some smart blogging may be a better option.
Hope that helps
Marcus
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RE: Company name in title tags for lesser known brands - yes or no?
Hey Anthony
I am not sure there is a 100% consistent answer here. I like to use the company name / brand in the page title as it helps to build recognition. That's not to say some pages would not work better with the title tag being used to promote a specific offer. I am thinking landing pages, lead gen pages etc.
I would think very standard pages would benefit from the branding; blog content benefits from the branding; offers, landing pages, lead gen pages etc may work better with a deal.
As ever, needs to be reviewed on a case by case basis but certainly room for both approaches.
Hope that helps
Marcus
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RE: Question spam malware causing many indexed pages
Hey
You can use the URL removal tool to expedite this and it is one of the few times that Google actually recommends you do so: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1269119?hl=en. Likewise, the URLs will eventually fall away but it can take some time.
The most important thing here is to ensure the site is 100% protected going forwards and does not get reinfected. The pharma hack often has three backdoors in WP itself, a plugin and often the database. These can go for months without being called and suddenly, the site is reinfected again and they are getting better all the time at making this harder and harder to clean up.
This is worth a read:
http://blog.sucuri.net/2010/07/understanding-and-cleaning-the-pharma-hack-on-wordpress.htmlWe often also see a second degree payload with some black hat SEO and outbound links on the site so even when you get rid of the main problem, you may have a few small residual problems. I would suggest an SEO audit, some pro active security and at very least review the outbound links from the site to make sure they are all legit (Screaming Frog is your friend here and it will show external links + linking page).
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
RE: Installing WordPress on a site OR just adding a blog page on the site - Which one is better and why ?
WordPress is way more than blogging software and is a fully fledged content management site that you can use to manage your entire site.
I can think of lots of reasons to use WordPress for the site + blog component in one package and hardly any to use one CMS for the main site and then another for the blog (doubling up your work).
- Use one system (WordPress)
- Make sure it is optimised (Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin a good start)
- Have a blog category in a subdirectory /blog
Ultimately, unless there are very specific requirements then I tackle this from a 'are there any reasons NOT to use WordPress' for this site perspective.
So, less work, great results, ease of publishing, a wealth of extensions and plugins and a generally out-the-box SEO friendly platform make for a fairly convincing argument.
Hope that helps
Marcus
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RE: How do I not mess up a national seo strategy? All advice appreciated in advance!
Hey Chris
The main issue here is going to be authority - you could structure this perfectly and still see no dice with ranking these location / service pages. Factor in no location signals and this could be super difficult.
I would look to learn from the sites that already rank well in terms of structure and if the client is gung-ho to do this despite all the caveats then set up a few locations and get some ranking data.
You can then at least get an idea where these pages will sit. Remember though - we have no location signals so you are basically ranking these as location pages and all the unique content in the world will likely not get you over the authority hurdle here.
Ultimately you have to start small, do some testing and measure as you go.
Hope that helps.
Marcus -
RE: Why is On-Page showing canonical wrong?
Hey, I have just ran that page through the on page optimisation tool and it comes back with no errors, perfect score as it happens. Think it may have just been a bug when you ran it through or some other small problem as it certainly seems fine now.
Marcus
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RE: Changing the anchor text of a big amount of links at once is bad for SEO?
Hey Sebastian
Probably a bad idea and I would tread very, very carefully with this.
Maybe worth reading this:
http://wpmu.org/wordpress-penguin-google-matt-cutts/
And then this:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update
And then this:
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/seo/anchor-text-ratios-and-link-building/
If these are all sitewide links and you are thinking of loading them up with optimised anchor text to do better for those terms then you may well end up doing the very opposite.
Hope that helps
Marcus
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RE: Agency VS Freelancer: Industry rates for a GOOD link builder
Hey. I have followed and read Eric's advice for years. He is an old hand. I am also unfortunately. His Link Moses newsletter is well worth the subscription fee. So much of this comes down to strategy and I am sure a consultation with Eric would give you enough direction for 12 months.
Hope that helps.
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RE: Page title getting cut off in SERPS even though it's under 70 characters?
Hmm, not entirely sure, can you provide a link?
I have seen something a little odd recently with page titles. We are working on our new site, was going to use Joomla and the Zoo CCK but unbelievably, whilst they have a really cool blog system built into Zoo, you can't set page titles so all article titles are the same and it uses the blog title.
But, we are seeing google take the article titles from the H1 and create it's own title tags from these to return the page in the results with a good, clickable title.
Obviously, we are going to change this and go back to Wordpress as it's a dealbreaker not being able to set page titles but the behaviour we have seen from Google in this instance is interesting.
So, sorry, waffling, are your page titles exactly as you have put them? Is it trying to add anything? Do you have any special characters or anything that is causing problems?
I have just done a bit of a random google and I can see lots of page titles getting cut off at around 58 characters in where the page title is longer than that. Lots of other full titles seem to be coming in at around 62 so there must be a slightly earlier breaking point now. Doing a bit of googling it looks like you can get snipped at anything over 64 so I would just work on getting them a little shorter.
Hope that helps!
Marcus
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RE: Trailing Slashes on Home Pages
Hey Alex
There is a good overview of this here:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/to-slash-or-not-to-slash.html
Outside of the homepage, a slash url and a non slash URL are regarded as two seperate pages so are technically duplicates. Now, Google will generally deal with this but it is not optimal (which is what we are all about eh) so you should make a call and either go / or no / and then 301 the other version to the default.
The homepage should resolve on both and 200 for both and not redirect to the non slash. The browser will generally remove the slash on a root URL.
This is from the above link:
Rest assured that for your root URL specifically, http://example.com is equivalent to http://example.com/ and can’t be redirected even if you’re Chuck Norris.
If you are using a CMS there are usually plugins or configuration options to enforce a slash if that is your preferred option.
The big deal here is to
A - be consistent
B - 301 the alternative to the preferred for crawl optimisation and to ensure no daft duplication issues crop up.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
RE: Agency VS Freelancer: Industry rates for a GOOD link builder
Hey
I think there are only like a handful of really good, all round link builders out there. Sure, some folks may get good at building links in a specific niche or sector but it can be tough to know every potential avenue.
Another problem we tend to see at the agency I run in the UK is that folks want absolutes:
- we want 10 x links from DA 30 domains per month for £1000 (or whatever)
But, the best link building is often a form of digital PR. So it can be a bit lumpy. Certainly, you can go out and find 10 sites that accept guest posts and hit the proposed metric, but are you getting any real big wins like that? How valuable are those links that are just so easy to get?
Likewise, you really want to get your strategy dialled in first. That is, have something that really deserves to be linked to. If you can create that linkable asset then it makes the link building process so much easier. If you don't have linkable assets then it could be that is the first step here so make sure the agency or freelancer can help in that regard (or go back to the drawing board).
There is a good overview here of how to start with the value for your link building efforts (by me - as a disclaimer).
:http://searchengineland.com/organic-traffic-link-building-small-businesses-269353
If you want the best check out Eric Ward:
http://www.ericward.com/evaluation.html
He can put you a strategy together and give you the direction. With the strategic elements in place you can then better understand what component parts you need to run that strategy. Not cheap but if you want to win big then... start with a solid strategy and layer your link building tactics over that.
So much of this depends on the current situation and marketplace. So you need some form of situation analysis. Are you in a crazy competitive space? Is the competition low end? The price you pay will need to consider the difficulty of the task at hand.
So... lots of moving parts but I certainly hope that helps.
Marcus
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RE: How much constitutes duplicate content in your opinion?
This post covers all the different types of duplicate content in some detail:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-content
I have never read anything else that is as informative and clearly explained as that post.
Read it and be enlightened!
Cheers
Marcus -
RE: Trailing Slashes on Home Pages
That is certainly my understanding - the homepage is a special case.
This pretty much details it in full:
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RE: Homepage Hogging Too Many Keyword Ranks?
Hey Phil
I have had a quick look but to make life easier could you possibly supply a few pages with the keywords you would expect them to rank for? We can then provide some direct feedback rather than generic advice which hopefully you can take and put into action across the site.
Cheers
Marcus -
RE: Does Domain Mapping Leak Link Juice?
Hey Abi,
That sounds kind of wacky and really, you can get hosting so cheap, I would just grab some hosting and save yourself some potential problems.
what if content gets indexed on:
http://lockcity.co.uk/fuelsos/ &
http://fuelsos.co.ukThis could cause duplication issues etc
Also, you could simply just run this as a service page on your main site so you could just have the content on:
http://lockcity.co.uk/fuelsos/
Certainly, there are benefits from having one site instead of two in terms of the scope of the work you have to do.
If you do want a separate URL, then I would spring for the hosting and at around £3.00 a month from a bunch of reputable UK providers really, that is going to serve you better than a redirect.
Just my thoughts!
Marcus
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RE: DUPLICATE PAGE VIA ONPAGE SEARCH
Hey
If you already have category pages with these products on and then individual product pages then really, this is just thin, duplicate content so the best approach is likely to just no index these pages or canonical them to something else more relevant.
Give this a read:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-contentSee what content type you have and act accordingly.
Hope it helps.
Marcus -
RE: I went CDN and now Roger is ticked off?
Hey David
can you post a link to your page and highlight some CDN content?
Lots of sites use a CDN for assets and don't have these kind of issues and certainly don't use a 302 system to generate the URL.
If you look at Unbounce and their noobs guide the main site runs on www.unbounce.com but the assets are on what I assume to be their CDN which runs on assets.unbounce.com.
If you were to look at one of the common cloud vendors like say rackspace.co.uk then you would just get a web ready URL that returns your content via a standard HTTP 200 OK response from the most local cache of the content.
I worked on a site recently that used rackspace and it seemed like a pretty solid solution and certainly there were no 302 redirects.
Post a link though and happy to take a quick look and see if I can't feed back a little more else maybe consider using a different CDN!
Cheers
Marcus
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RE: What is the best way to remove and fight back backlink spam?
Hey Matti
In a nutshell, if it is really bad, then start again on a new domain.
What I am seeing with a few people I am helping is that where the site has had historical results, but is now penalised, attempting to clean up if the back link profile is pretty rotten (90% + placed links) is a pretty tough gig.
There are some tools out there that are proving useful and the pick of the bunch would be:
- rmoov
- Link Cleanup and Contact
- Remove’em
These all have pros and cons so you will likely want to use all of them.
Additionally, you will want to make sure the site is worth saving and likely invest some time and effort in generating some honest links through some solid content marketing. Maybe build some kind of free report or something specific to the site that you can use to do some outreach based link building. Do some blogging, invest some time and effort in the quality of the site.
Additionally, if you have a penalty, be prepared to put in a few requests and if you intend to disavow, be thorough.
With some experience here, you also have to ask yourself - what are you trying to save? If the answer to that question is that you are trying to save some spam links that still seem to be working at the moment, then, seriously, start again.
Without a link and some research it is hard to make a call but know this, it is a tough job to remove bad links and unless you have a link profile where there is something worth saving, then a new domain is likely the fastest way to sort out this mess and make sure you don't get hit again when they tighten up the link penalties down the road (you know it's going to happen).
There really is no generic answer here and every situation is different but be sure to know what you are getting yourself into before you undertake this and do an honest review of the site, the content and the links to make sure this is a battle you can win.
This is a good read:
http://cyrusshepard.com/penalty-lifted/
Hope that helps buddy
Marcus
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RE: Page Title
Hey Colin, I much prefer a good branded or descriptive title so this:
Nile Cruise | Leading ABTA & ATOL Bonded UK Nile Cruise Specialist
Is way better than this: Nile Cruise | Nile Cruises | Nile Cruise Bargains
If you wanted to cover those phrases or words you could always try to work them in to the title in a more natural way say something like.
Nile Cruises & Cruise Bargains - UK ABTA & ATOL Cruise Specialist
That is a super quick example but it works in many more of the words and phrases in a non spammy way. Sure you could do better!
Also, with all the changes in search of late (penguin, panda etc) then don't assume the hack was the loss of your rankings, it could be the natural moving target nature of search or one of many other causes. By the way, what are you using that is getting hacked so often? WordPress? There are options to easily toughen it up and just going that little step extra is usually enough to put off most 'hackers'.
Hope this helps
Marcus
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RE: Website not ranking for noncompetitive terms
Hey Marcus
Marcus here!
Well, the site looks okay but it is behaving as if it has a search penalty. There is something I have been discussing with a few folks working on penalised sites and generally, if you search for a block of text from a penalised page with double quotes it returns the page, without the quotes, nowhere to be found.
"You will only pay for the private treatment you need and want" - returns the page
You will only pay for the private treatment you need and want - nowhere to be found
Now, this is hardly science but it is something that I have seen replicated across many penalised sites and it also seems specific to a given page that has an algorithmic penalty meaning that if we try the same thing on a non penalised page then it returns as a result as we would expect.
There are two big obvious algorithmic penalties broadly relating to on page and off page problems and it seems you may have a dose of both of them.
Penguin - Check your backlinks, they are very anchor text heavy and highly unlikely to be natural, editorial votes.
Panda - Your content seems to be duplicated across several other sites.
I would imagine several things have happened.
- Site was built by a company that makes dentist sites and it uses generic content across all sites
- Link building was done to improve on the poor ranks and that has just made things worse
In a nutshell you need to do the below:
- review all the content and make it unique and informative (feed it through copyscape when this is done)
- clean up the nasty link profile (look at rmoov, link detox and removeem)
- ideally generate a small amount of high quality links
This is algorithmic, so it is better than a manual penalty so you just need to ensure you get the site all fully compliant with the google guidelines.
Some recommended reading:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-content
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/seo/anchor-text-ratios-and-link-building/
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
RE: Ranking for competitor brand terms
Yeah, this is kind of crazy in most cases and if you are doing this for a client, this is where you have to put your 'I know what I am talking about' hat on and tell them this is a bad idea.
Why is it a bad idea?
- It will be difficult
- a high percentage of any traffic you get will just bounce
if I search for SEOMoz then I want SEOMoz. If I search for BowlerHat (my site) then I want BowlerHat. These are navigational search queries, the user is trying to find something they know exists so if you manage to somehow persuade google you should outrank the brands themselves for these terms in this brand driven SEO landscape (hint) then it will likely be a huge waste of time anyway.
Of course, there are always exceptions, maybe you sell an official product more cheap than the official supplier or some such, but if that is the case, look for search terms that more closely map what it is you offer.
So, to recap, go to your boss, throw a bucket of ice cold water over him, slap him around the face, and tell him to give you a more achievable and worthwhile task - or else.