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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.
Cut the rope and run!
To build links you need high authority (mixed with some lower authority), highly relevant in context sites that suit your niche. Imagine how many thousands of niches there out there, now imagine that company has such a complex portfolio of opportunities it can cater for anyone who buys a 'package'. It's not going to happen! That would be like the holy grail.
You would be far better spending on time $200 for 1 single powerful link than spend $xxx + for the privilege of getting penalized.
You'd be better off investing time in:
Go into the Adwords account >> hit Help on the right >> you should have a phone link within Contact Us
Name, Address, Phone - you should provide comprehensive contact details. Part of your service could/should be to double check their details on their site and make sure it identically matches on your listing. Businesses are still lapse in this, or try to extend their address to capture more than one county, as if it will somehow do them good.
They also need to give you fresh new content about themselves, not some default directory description.
The simple answer is we cannot give you confident advice. We don't know what the penalty/ies were, or if they are manual or algorithmic - do they tie up to any particular dates. Then that is only the start of real identification.
Does the domain have authority, age and an element of good link profile?
Does the domain have on-site technical issues hampering recovery?
My take on the question is that if you do not know precisely what the problem is then starting a new domain there is every reason to suppose you may fall down the same hole again. If you do know precisely the problem then fix it and wait, build out new content, create excellent links back to the site.
If they are internal links you can have and do what you like. However the key is user experience. Have you taken a look at you analytics to see how popular the links are and the visitor behaviour with them? At a guess, if they look keyword engineered they can be off-putting.
This should go a long way to answering your question - http://moz.com/community/q/what-are-the-good-strategies-using-satellite-sites-in-seo
I would make sure you check the links in any case using something like Backlinkwatch.com, there might still be toxic links in there as well as the good link you mention.
"Changed it to : www.keywordhaha.com/app , www.keywordhaha.com/games, etc..."
Did you 301 existing URLs to your new URL structure?
Have you checked what is indexed in Google with site:www.example.com, or site:www.example.com/directory?
pagerank has no direct impact on ranking. It's just a tiny signal - a site with little pagerank can outrank a site with high pagerank.
In any case the rank you see is the public level which is never current and Google seldom does an update. I ignore pagerank.
If you have mod_rewrite enabled on your server you could try something like this in your .htaccess file:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.).htm$
RewriteRule ^(.) /$1.php [R=301,L]
You will lose the page to page 301 passing link value.
I would just point out to them the importance of maintaining/developing links at a deeper level in the site, even throw them a couple of example URLs if possible. If they don't get it, turn the table and ask them to explain how doing a name server redirect will maintain the internally flowing link equity.
Yes you are perfectly right. Any visitor will expect to land on a corresponding page, so they get what they want, there is trust and they don't jump of the site. I would have thought having information on the page relating to the domain change puts people at rest.
You'd do best by using ScreamingFrog to check any outbound links. If they don't exist don't worry about it.
I'm working on a site that had a very poor disavow file in place from a previous agency. I went through the link profile with a fine tooth comb and added a bunch more domains to the file. Organic traffic has gone up over 80%.
That is not our only problem and there are other factors to work on but the cleansing is reassuring even though we know the profile is pretty thin. But again that just goes to show quality always wins over quantity.
I would say there may be a whole host of issues hampering ranking but a dirty profile is a must fix, no matter the immediate outcome. I explain to clients that I anticipate a short term fall and why to set their expectations, then anything positive is a great bonus.
For me longtail keywords are purely more finely focused keywords cascaded down from the big money/focus keywords whatever they may be. So it doesn't matter if they are model related or how any words etc, they are just one way or another the closest thing you can get to a finer granularity exact match the next level from the big volume main keyword. I think the target is selecting the ones with modest competition and a search volume.
Has the mobile/skype link been set up incorrectly, not using the attribute? I'd check the source code to see what the link actually is. It should be something like -
All i'd add to the comments so far is to ensure you have a video sitemap as well
That page is indexed in Google.
I would give the following a good read
Domain Authority - http://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority
Page Authority - http://moz.com/learn/seo/page-authority
In summary:
"Whereas Page Authority measures the predictive ranking strength of a single page, Domain Authority measures the strength of entire domains or subdomains."
You need to focus on overall SEO, develop good quality links to your site (which is typically the homepage) and if you get a break you'll get some links to the directory your looking to link to which will further boost your directory. don't focus on the directory and forget the rest of the site.
Stripping it back to the bone the basic rule is that you violate Google terms by purchasing links. It is not an instant Google hit if you do, but you kind of move into death row and take your chance.
Because you don't always instantly suffer a penalty doesn't mean that you should follow any advice that seems like a quick fix. I would stick to here or the other main marketing sites to get a concrete base of what is ethical, what works and what doesn't. That's not to suggest you shouldn't implement your own strategies but they should be built on that concrete base.
"Also, the bounce rate on these referrals was over 50%, compared to a site average of around 20%, so the web visitors didn't enjoy it either."
That's a good point - how do visitor view the links.
In my experience fixing all technical issues, making sure all redirects are properly in place and doing some link building then the site should recover well, even 2-3 months later. I rinse through and through on the technical side.
The issues start coming to the fore when content is killed, keywords are changed, directory structure is changed. You know how it goes.
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:
When you redirect A to B, B does not equal A, but rather inherits some of A's authority.
You will need to further develop the link profile of B with other mixed authority linking domains in order to improve it's own domain authority. I wouldn't get hung up on pagerank, it's never current and only a contributing factor to overall domain authority.
I would use something like Open Site Explorer to gauge the overall domain authority and work from there.
Going back to your question the only way to retain that domain authority (in part pagerank) of A is to not 301 to B. But I guess that if A has been bought out they want it to disappear into the main pot.
yes, if the date of the cache is prior. So I would suggest disabling javascript in the browser reload the page and see if the expected text is displayed. If not that's what Google misses.
...and yes Google should show all the text in the cache version (text only) if the cached version is subsequent to your amendment.
This is down to your link profile and dreadful spamming. Here is one instance on a forum:
Why has God rigged things for all of us to for more here http://watchwrestling.co end in hell thanks to Satan�s great God given deception powers?
You need to seriously cleanse your link profile, disavow, and start working on some good quality strategies to develop links on high quality sites - and wait. I would guess you have been hit by the Penguin refresh that's been running for a few days.
Attributes and their corresponding values can be in any order within a tag.
Having a self referring canonical tag also helps eliminate duplication issues if the site produces query strings appended to the URL. There is no ambiguity as to which is the "real" URL.
It is a classic spam link. It's on an unrelated site, with a link stuffed in the middle of nonsense/rubbish. Without trying to sound harsh any site doing this deserves to be penalised.
Take time to look at and learn:
I would then revisit the links you have created and ask yourself the question "why this not good for seo?"
I would also check you have not got a spike of URL parameters becoming available. I recently had a similar issue and although I had these set up in GWT the crawler was actively wasting its time on them. Once I added to robots the crawl level went back to 'normal'.
Yes Martijn is spot on.
The format is language-country not language_country.
To back up what Kyle says, yes there has be be relevance. The primary driver should always be does it add value and offer something that the visitor is looking for, rather than trying to shoehorn spuriously connected content onto a site. If it's not related in a positive way it will look manufactured, and probably be on a lower quality site. As soon as that happens you move across to join the penalty crew and take your chances.
"Check your robots.txt, meta noindex, and other exclusions to make sure you are not blocking your own content (once you are live)."
Yes, this is far more common than people like to admit. I'd also add it can be useful to use the Fetch and Render function in Webmaster Tools to check what Google can see once live. Occasionally robots.txt needs a tweak to stop blocking a particular resource.
"Other SEO's have never had a problem with this arrangement, but this SEO claimed what they do is secret and for no one else to see."
Run a mile!!!
This is a good point. I am working on a group of sites on wpengine. So dev was using something like name.staging.wpengine. When they went live the directories etc switched to the live domain but scattered throughout the site within the content the URLs remained the same. ScreamingFrog is your friend.
The right format means ensuring everywhere online that your business appears the address is identical. The same goes for the telephone number.
So for example
Acme Ltd
Some Street
Bigtown
AB1 XYZ
is not the same as
Acme Ltd
Unit 1
Some Street
Bigtown
District
AB1 XYZ
or
Acme;
Some Street;
District;
AB1 XYZ
How that is coded into the html is not so important as long as the text is crawl-able and presented in an address format.
Unless you can be sure that you have been actually hit by a penalty (manual or algorithmic) I would also take time to look at:
1. Google update collateral damage - your link profile could be full of devalued links which takes time to filter through.
2. on-page SEO is weak - page load speed, chained 301's, possibly indexed duplicate tag/query string pages etc etc (i've had over 50% improvement on organic traffic ensuring this area is spotless and as optimised as possible)
