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I have had this problem on 2 sites.  Can't remember the plugin, but it was a PITA.  The problem was the configuration where by default the visitor had to opt out of not storing data.  so no cookies and no tracking.  The plugin settings had to be reversed so the visitor could opt out, so cookies are kept by default and everything tracked.

A 301 redirect is the header response sent when a page does not exist or not required and the redirected page is loaded instead.  Typically a 301 redirect is created when a page is taken down.  A 301 redirect is not bad for a site.  Redirect chains can be bad - so 301 to 301 to 301 etc.

What you want to look at is if you have 301s in your menus, homepage or main content linking to main pages.  These links should be either removed or updated to the new URL.  There should be no 301s here, it's good housekeeping.

A backlink is an link from an external site linking to a page on your site.

.../category-green/some-product.html
.../category-brand/some-product.html
.../category-widget/some-product.html

.../some-product.html clean URL should exist and the canonical tag within the top three URLs should be pointing to this clean product URL. The 3 above can be crawled and indexed, but the canonical is assisting Google in understanding which is the correct product URL.  A product can rightly exist in multiple categories.

If the platform is such that a clean product URL is not possible (urghh!), then a strategy needs to be developed to choose one of the category/product URLs as the canonical.

My preference though is to have a category structure and all product links coming from those category pages are clean product URLs in the first place, with self referencing canonicals.

If it is an image URL that is being proliferated with spammy backlinks, you can do one of the following, based on the links actually being harmful:

1. Rename the image and replace it in the post.  But only if the existing image has no SEO value, real traffic coming in to it etc.
2. Set the image URL to noindex, only if the image is not organically useful.
3. Add the culprits to a disavow file.

The way I prefer is to have multiple optimised categories that a product rightly sits in, but the actual product URL is clean with no category in the URL.  The page canonical is then self referencing.

If that is not possible and the product URL/s contains the category path, like on Shopify for example, then it is ok to have the product URL canonical set to the clean product URL without category structure.  But that only works if that clean URL actually exists (in Shopify it does).

The .co.uk domain is already geo-targeted to the UK, so unless you are targeting other countries/languages

The head office happens to be the e-commerce store.  Then there are actual physical stores that sell the same products physically.

So we do want visibility for 'HQ' as the main 'entity'.  Yes if anyone has a problem they contact the shop or HQ/e-commerce store.  So with that in mind I still need clarification of the schema to use.

Hi Alan,

"Most  503 error links are from low quality directories, so I would disavow anyway. "  Yes if they are low quality non-human edited then yes i'd disavow.

"We would disavow the majority of our links in one shot. Any risk of doing this?" If ranking is impacted by a toxic link profile then disavowing only 75% of them will not recover you 75%, probably nothing.

"Is there a reasonable chance that our ranking would improve significantly by disavowing these links? How long does it take Google to process the disavow? Is there a way of checking if Google has actually processed the disavow?" How long is a piece of string.  The timeframe depends on how long it takes Google to crawl the toxic links.

Will this improve your rankings?  I don't know is the simple answer.  The best bet is to take the links on merit and disavow the ones you know are clearly toxic, manipulated etc.  But soon as you mention improvement it makes me wonder if you have had a hit on organic traffic.  If that is the case and it was around Sept onwards you may be looking at a broader E-A-T issue so disavowing would not resolve the bigger issue.  That's pure guesswork but you get my point.

I don't know anyone who has any significant success with requesting links to be removed, other than sharks trying to charge to do so.  You could argue that the 'good' sites will help, the poor sites ignore/charge, but it's a bit too much time and effort to use that signal in any way.

Mick

The first way is not to spam your keyword on here.

I think the most important aspect of your question is to not trust a tool.  The tool might flag domains/URLs as spam or manipulated links but the most important thing is to manually inspect each domain.  I have had reports from tools where the domain in question is actually not a problem at all when inspected.

If you are getting 404, 403 or 503 error messages the links are gone.  You wouldn't be penalised by Google for these because they no longer exist.  There is no need to disavow because they don't exist, but you wouldn't be causing a problem if you did.  The potential issue is that those header responses 'could' change back to a 200 found.  I'd be inclined to monitor them at this stage and add to the disavow if the status changes.  A 503 header is a maintenance response so that may come back and you would want to check what you'd be disavowing, as the link may be good.

With regard to disavowing all the links.  If you have a toxic link profile you have an issue you need to address and resolve as quickly as you can, so if you determine there are 100 toxic links/domains you will want to add them to the disavow in one hit and hope that you have captured them all.

But please be aware that if some of the links are just a bit spammy/low quality then Google looks like it takes the view to ignore those links anyway.

Some things you need to manually check are:

• the relevance of the link
• the quality of the content
• the anchor text (e.g. have you got exact match, close match anchor on multiple dubious quality posts)
• the ranking of the page/domain
• the placement of the link on the page (e.g. is is a site-wide footer link).
• the quality throughout the domain
• is the link paid for but dofollow (e.g. are there signs on the site that content can be somehow 'purchased', advertorial)

What are you comparing to - if not Etsy what do you believe should be first position?

Etsy has a very high domain authority, a large link profile and social footprint.  The keyword is in the URL, the meta title and in content so for me it is a perfect candidate for grabbing pole position.  It also has a good volume of reviews.

I think it really depends on your blog, the market and what you want to achieve.  A tight niche could be very lucrative if you become the authority.

Say a keyword has approx 100 searches per month and you rank well and achieve a sale/signup/commitment per month from that.  Then there are 30 other search terms with similar volumes you can rank for.  Is this valuable to you?

If you are selling 'blue widgets' at £1 per widget and a typical customer only ever buys one or two then your niche blog may not be worth your efforts.  But if they are repeat purchasers then again that changes the landscape.

Generally speaking if you have site-wide do-follow  links (typically footer) I would switch to no-follow immediately. If you are purely inter linking your portfolio Google is likely to spot those links are there trying to game the system.

Even if those links are offering real value to the visitor I would set to no-follow, but the way you describe that does not appear to be their primary purpose.  What context and how do they appear on the page?

Also you say that you have been hit.  Was this a manual penalty or an algorithmic penalty?  So you are fighting the right fight have you compared your analytics with the algorithm history dates?

Would you prefer to browse a site that is flat in terms of just providing static one dimensional information, or a hot site that is offering external resources and links to further information to give you the best experience possible?   Always think of the user experience.  Google probably knows that if you add links out within your content and in context to external authority sites you are attempting to give value to the visitor.  So if you do link out don't use no-follow, as you are telling Google you don't trust the sites!

EMD is not by itself enough to cause Google to take action.  The key is the quality of the content and value to the visitor.  Typically Google is after EMD sites with thin or poor content, affiliate smothered etc.

This is a very useful article which I hope you find of help - http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/what-is-a-c-block-ip-address

yes agree - set as no-follow.

I have not delved deeper but running the site through Screaming Frog you have a massive amount of malformed URLs that have 301 redirects - example: /summer-2013-belt-testing-requirements//

So it looks like you have an internal rewrite issue creating double slash that you then need 301s to correct.  You need to check your settings and htaccess file to troubleshoot the core problem.

Everybody will direct you to the foot of the page to take a look at recommended companies - http://moz.com/community/recommended

For all new content it is important to get indexed fast.  There is the scenario that if your site is crawled infrequently another site may get that copy indexed first and by default is viewed as theirs.  So with any new content I would post on social media as quickly as possible - G+, Twitter etc to get noticed and to mark as yours. G+ author attribute will help.