Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Gareth,

The one thing to be wary of with direct link selling companies is that the patterns left on their networks or members sites usually leave a footprint. There have been some pretty cases this year of link networks being completely removed by Google, for example:

http://www.potpiegirl.com/2012/03/the-sky-is-falling/

http://www.buildmyrank.com/news/its-been-a-great-run

Text link ads isn't a network per se, they act as a broken to introduce sites looking to sell links with Webmasters willing to buy them. It's all done through their own software, and they take a cut of a fee. There are two issues that I have personally with these sites:

1. As above, they leave a footprint. For one, when I land on a site I know a text-link-ads.com ad block when I see one, and if I can spot it then you can be pretty confident that Google can find a way to spot it too.

2. When a site is willing to sell text links to the highest bidder, you suddenly find yourself in very spammy company. Do you want a link to your site sat between a link to a casino and a link to a Viagra store? You're putting yourself in bad company.

Actually, as a third point; I often find the kind of sites that are willing to trade links are the kind that are willing to partake in shady SEO practices across the board. You don't want to be relying on links from a site that could get slapped by Google any minute.

I'm not condemning these services, as I know they can work. The problem is they are not really a viable medium/long term strategy, as you're really dancing with the devil. If you want a quick boost, then fill your boots, but if you are concerned about protecting the brand and reputation of your company (or your clients), then I would recommend going down a cleaner root.

The 'white hat' answer to this issue is to hire a professional link builder to go out and obtain you some 'natural' links - by this I mean editorial links on genuine websites that have been earned through outreach and relationships. It might sound like a slower solution, but this isn't necessarily the case as good quality link builders can make the process scalable.

This is a much safer option, protects you from being penalised by Google, and puts you in a much safer neighbourhood than dealing with link dealers.

The real beauty of this route (in my opinion), is that you get higher quality links and it actually works out a fair bit cheaper too.

I wrote an answer earlier in regards to what to look for when outsourcing your link building:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/reputable-link-building-company

And of course, if you want me to show you the kind of links that can be built, drop me a message

Good luck,

David

Hi Kristy,

The first thing to say is that Domain Authority is a third party metric, so unless you have seen a drop in your traffic then there should be no need for immediate alarm. Although DA correlates with successful rankings, there is still no guarantee that a change in DA will effect your rankings in any way.

The solution for your issue might be quite simple. In last months update the number of links in the index was around 50% smaller than the previous update. This meant that a lot of links that where contributing towards your DA score are no longer in SeoMoz's index, and can therefore not contribute towards your DA score.

In no way does this mean that these links are no longer in Google, as the Google index and the Mozscape index are two entirely separate entities and are in no way connected.

After this month's update, it has been noted that the index is even smaller than last month (albeit by a much smaller margin). If you read the Q&A entries following last month’s update you'll see lots of people asking the same question, and it was confirmed that the drop in DA was due to the smaller index.

I expect we'll see the same over the next week.

Personally, I saw my clients DA drop by an average of 3-4 points.

If your drop in score correlates with this pattern, then you have nothing to worry about at all. Especially if your traffic hasn't been effected.

Here are the details of the smaller update from last month:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/july-mozscape-update

And here are this month’s details:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/august-mozscape-update

If your drop in score doesn't coincide with this, then it most likely means that you've lost one/some links that were contributing to your overall Domain Authority score. You can get to the bottom of this by using the historical link date in Majestic to figure out what links where lost, and when.

If this is the case then you can either try and rebuild the lost links, or create some new ones. Or ideally, both!

Best of luck.

David

Hi,

By definition, the alt tag is there to give a description of the image for users who aren't able to view it (visually impaired users, or visitors with restricted browsers or speeds).

In regards to the search engines, it's an opportunity for you to tell them about the content of an image which the crawlers simply can't see. This gives you two opportunities; firstly to let the search engines know that the media content of your page is relevant for a search query. Secondly, images with a full description will stand a much better chance of ranking in image search, which can be a rich traffic source for you.

For both circumstances, the alt tag should be descriptive and a genuine reflection of the content of the image. A alt description of 'buy now' doesn't add any value to either your visitors or your SEO efforts, as it tells them very little.

I would recommend using an alt tag along the lines of 'buy button for the Blue Widget 2143'.

This gives visitors a full description of the image, as well as helping the search engines know that your site is relevant for the Blue Widget 2143.

This would also solve your issue of duplicate alt descriptions that are adding no value to your site. If you followed the format of 'buy button for the <product name="">' it would give you unique descriptions that genuinely benefit your SEO campaign.</product>

I definitely wouldn't recommend blocking the alt tags, this would be totally shunning a serious on-page ranking factor.

Thanks,

David

Hi Jon,

I do freelance link building for a dozen UK companies, as well as the white label link building for several digital agencies. Naturally, I'd recommend myself, however if you are shopping around the market then here are some points that I think it's essential to check prior to outsourcing any link building.

• Firstly, the company should be willing to disclose exactly how they go about obtaining the links, including showing examples of outreach and results. If they aren't willing to disclose this, then I would stay clear (would you really trust someone to represent your business without telling you how they intend on doing it)

• Also, as simple as it sounds, ask to see some example links they have built. I have found that a few outsourced link builders who preach the white hat quality links spiel, but then send you a list of footer links they've added to their own blog network. Again, if they are not willing to provide examples then I would avoid.

• Find out what metrics they use to determine a quality link. A worrying number of link builders still base link value solely on the score showing in the PageRank toolbar, which can deliver mixed results at best. Make sure they are using metrics you trust, or ask them to provide a few examples of sites they would target for your business, with an explanation as to why.

• Find out exactly who will be doing the link building. Many companies outsource their link building, so if you're arranging a contract with an incredibly knowledgeable and pleasant SEO, don't make the assumption that it will be them doing the link building for you. If it will be someone else in the company (or a sub-contractor) building the links, ask to see specific examples of their work.

• When you're agreeing on a contract, be very specific about what you expect in terms of quality and quantity of links. Ideally, pick a specific minimum number at a specific minimum quality (for example; they will build 15 links a calendar month at a minimum Domain Authority of 45)

• Ask them to take a look at your backlink profile and recommend the type of links you need, and the kind of sources they should be from. This will give you a great insight into their knowledge and philosophy of link building, and will hopefully give you some great ideas too.

This might all sound a lot to ask from a company, but remember they are going to be representing you and your brand, and to many Webmasters and Bloggers they will become the face of your business. You want to show the same level of thoroughness as if you were making a full time hire, and any link building company worth their salt will understand why and be happy to co-operate.

Best of luck with your search, and let me know if you'd like to see any of my work

David

Hi Dan,

Not necessarily, there are plenty of occassions when hiding content is valid. and actually adds value to the user especially with the rise in popularity of jQuery (some of the coolest transition effects rely on the display:none mark-up).

The real question is why you are wanting to hide your H1 tag? If there is a valid reason then you're not going to have any issues, however if you are hiding a keyword stuffed title for the sole benefit of SEO, then you could come into trouble.

For example, I know some sites use images for H1 titles so they can get the design quality they simply can't achieve with CSS, however they also include a written title to back it up. Technically verging away from the rules, but it's not going to see your site penalised.

The thing to remember is that a small thing like this isn't going to get you struck out of Google's indexed. If you follow their best practices but the occasion arises when it's necessary to bend the rules a little with a trick like this they are not going to outcast your site. It would only be a problem if it was part of a larger set of tactics that were violating Google's guidelines, and it was clear you are out to manipulate the search results.

So in summary:

• If the trick benefits your visitors, then don't worry
• If it is solely for SEO benefit, then make sure everything else is whiter than white
• If it is part of a larger campaign to hide things from users but not Googlebot, then stay well clear

Thanks,

David

Hi,

In regards to the geo-targeting, have a read of this case study. To me it's the definitive guide to the issue as it goes through most of the options available, and offers a pretty solid solution:

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/territory-sensitive-international-seo-a-case-study

And if you are worrying about the white/black aspects of using these tactics, here is a great guide from Rand on acceptable cloaking techniques:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-cloaking-it-exists-its-permitted-its-useful

And finally a great 'Geo-targetting FAQ' piece from Tom Critchlow:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/geolocation-international-seo-faq

In regards to the other locations ranking that you don't think have been crawled, this is probably down to the number/strength of the links pointing at this sections. Google have stated in various Webmaster videos that a page doesn't neccessarily need to be crawled to be indexed (weird huh?), Google just needs to know it exists.

If there were plenty of links point at a page, Google would still believe it's an authoritative/relevant result even if it hasn't crawled the page content itself. It can use other signals such as anchor text to determine the relevancy for a given search term.

Here is an example video from Matt Cutts where he discusses the issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBdEwpRQRD0

Best of luck

David

Hi Liam,

There is always a natural delay between crawling and indexing, and it's rarely instantaneous. Although I can see why you'd want a news site to be getting indexed pretty quickly.

The one thing that stands out is from the example is the <changefreq>tag, which you've got set on 'never'. This is essentially for archived pages, and tells crawlers that it's low importance (even though you've given it high priority). Even if you're not intending to change the article, I'd still recommend giving it a change frequency of 1 month so you're inviting the crawlers to come and check it more often. Saying that, this doesn't mean that if you set the frequency to hourly that the crawlers would come back every hour, as they'd soon figure out that nothings changing.</changefreq>

Really I'd have your home and catergory pages on daily, the articles on monthly, and the static pages on monthly or yearly.

In terms of getting them indexed quicker after the crawl, this is just a case of establishing trust and importance from the search engines. They need to know that you have news content that requires a quicker indexed. You can gain this trust by providing regular, high quality pages. When their crawlers pick up that there are new pages going live daily you will see the index get quicker.

Depending what CMS you are using, it is also worth getting a script or plugin that pings the search engines with an updated site map every time a new page or post is added. I've done this through Wordpress and articles get indexed within 4 hours. Again though, it didn't start this way and it only got this quick once I was putting up 4 posts a week like clockwork.

Good luck.

Cheers

David

Hi Paul,

For the effort you would have to go through to get these links removed, you would be much better spending the time building new links that will boost your site whilst counteracting any links you think are damaging you.

Unless the number is in the thousands, I wouldn't worry about it at all. Go out and acquire some fresh, branded, links that will balance out your profile.

That said, if you are determined to have them removed, it will be a long hard slog with no guarantee that Google would play ball. There are a few ways to contact them, they would probably suggest using their product forums. However, if you want a quicker repsonse find some Googlers on G+ and fire them a message. A good chunk of their bonus is based on the success of G+, so they are all desperate to make it work. If you find the right Googler from the products team you might be able to get some answers.

Cheers

David

Hi Tony,

In that case you definitely wouldn't want to be using a translation plugin, as you want to have permanent static pages that can be indexed by the search engines.

If you want to geo-target specific countries with the multi-language content, then personally I would  suggest using mirror sites on localised TLD's.

However if you wanted to keep everything on the same site to leverage the domain authority, then I would suggest sub-folders rather than subdomains so yoursite.com, yoursite.com/es etc etc

Cheers

David

Hi Andrew,

This can be solved, you have a couple of options:

• Do you have Google Analytics accounts for these subdomains? If so you could register search console via GA and remove the subdomains from there

• Even if you don't have web hosting for these subdomains, as long as you have control over the main domain you can still take control of these subdomains. Is the core domain still under your control? If so you can register for search console via the 'domain name provider' option.

Thanks,

David

No problem, I feel for your predicament.

Let me know if you need any help with anything.

Thanks,

David

Does anyone have any experience with SVG image files and on-page SEO?

A client is using them and it seems they use the title tag in the same way a regular image (JPG/PNG) would use an image ALT tag. I'm concerned that search engines will see the multiple title tags on the page and that this will cause SEO issues.

Regular crawlers like Moz flag it as a second title tag, however it's outside the header and in a SVG wrap so the crawlers really should understand that this is a SVG title rather than a second page title. But is this the case?

If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear about it.

Hi Moz community. Wonder if you could help us out with a baffling Analytics issue.

Are there any reasons why the _setDomainName() function in Google Analytics wouldn't track across subdomains correctly? We have been seeing visits to a subdomain come up as referral traffic, even after implementing the right tracking code.

Would be interested to hear everyone's thoughts on this. Thanks in advance.

Hi Kyle,

I feel for you, I've had similar discussions with people in the past and it can be a nightmare.

Realistically, the falling rankings should be all the convincing they need, however it seems like that's not enough for them.

From my experience, the key message to get through to people with the 'but we are getting links...' philosophy is that all links are not created equally.

Have you tried showing them the link profile of the industry leaders? If these contain genuine editorial links from relevant sources, it might be enough to convince them that good links to equal top rankings.

Good luck.

David

Hi,

In regards to keyword stuffing; yes it can be an issue in alt tags and personally I believe it is a spam signal to the search engines.

For example, a good alt tag would be along the lines of:

'A young couple stood in front of the Egyptian pyramids whilst on holiday'

However, you will find some people will stuff and go with:

'Egypt, Egyptian, Egypt Holidays, travel to Egypt, flights to Egypt, see the pyramids' etc

It's fairly easy for Google, and your customers, to see that you are trying to manipulate the rankings.

The alt tags should be a simple description of the image, however you need to be SEO savy enough to include your keywords as well.

In regards to your site; if your competitor isn't using alt tags on their buttons, then it's a fantastic opportunity for you to take the lead. It's difficult to tell you what would/wouldn't work, but if you work on the lines of offering a genuine description then you will be fine.

If your site is selling events, then it makes sense to explain in the alt tag that this is a buy button for X event on X date.

Again, with a little bit of code trickery you can have this created dynamically so it's on a quick job and will happen automatically whenever you add a product/event.

In regards to making words/phrases bold or italic; there is no SEO benefit or risk here so it should be simply down to what looks best and what portrays the information in the best way for your visitors.

Thanks,

David

At a domain level (and exact maths aside), yes. However at a page level (i.e within an article), then the link juice is evenly distributed across the links on the page.

It gets complicated when the other link strength factors are brought into it. For example if there were two links on a page, one in the article and one in the page footer. The link juice would be distributed 50/50, however the footer link wouldn't be given the same importance and strength as the one in the article.

This goes for your links in the article too. Although the link juice will be spread evenly, there are still other ranking factors that skew the importance of the links, such as the order and placement.

So the number of links you have in the article effects the PageRank distribution, but there are many other factors surrounding links. The main one that will effect this issue is the diminishing returns of links to the same website (e.g yours).

So if you have 4 links on a page they might get the PageRank spread evenly at 25% each, however this doesn't mean that they will all carry the same weight and value to your pages they are landing at.

Cheers

Hi,

It's not the answer you were looking for, but there really is no specific timescale to achieving rankings.

It depends on so many factors, such as competitiveness of your industry and the existing trust your website has established (is it a brand new site or a refresh of an existing domain?)

Google infamous 'sandbox' tends to prevent new sites achieving major rankings for 2-6 months, but again this can be very industry dependant.

It's entirely possible to achieve front page rankings in the timescale you are talking about, but there is in no way a fixed formula and there are so many contributing factors outside of the number of links you have.

Speaking of which, pumping your site into directories isn't going to be the answer to getting you the rankings you want. Directories tend to give you a minimal SEO value at best, however the majority are totally ineffective. Remember if earning rankings was as simple as submitting your site to 1000's of directories then everyone would be doing it and the playing field would be void.

The time you are spending submitting to directories should be spent earning yourself a few editorial links from genuine industry sources. These will be of much more value to your business.

Good luck with your new site!

David

Hi Sander,

Sitewide links, although not hugely popular with Google, do appear naturally in the link profile of quite a large number of sites, and you're not going to suffer any spam issues if these types of links only appear in moderation.

If one referring domain is sending links from hundreds of pages, then you're not going to have any problems. It would only become an issue if an unnatural proportion of your overall link profile was being made up of these site-wide links, as that's not natural.

It also depends on the type of site you're running, it's quite natural for Bloggers to have a higher % of site-wide links as they tend to be linked to via blogrolls, however this same % would look unusual for an ecommerce site.

In terms of benefits; sadly you won't receive the same link benefit of receiving 100's of unique links, in fact you'll receive no-where near this benefit. Essentially, as the anchor text, placement and style of the link is the same across the site, I would treat them as a single link.

Hope that all makes sense.

David

Hi Sarah,

I wouldn't recommend using iframes to deliver the product descriptions. From my experience, sites with small-scale duplicate content issues will consistently perform better than sites with little to no content (which your site ultimately would be if content was delivered via iframe)

There are a few variables that effect things, most importantly the volume of the duplicate content. If it's 8 pages, then I wouldn't consider this a high-risk problem. The solution would be to add as much valuable additional content as you can to these pages, whilst keeping the core (descriptions) content in place.

If I've misunderstood and the scale is much bigger, it may be worth considering an alternative solution. Rather than using alternate content delivery methods, I'd recommend putting your focus on adding additional unique content. Once of the simplest ways of doing this is encouraging (or manually adding) user generated reviews of the two similar products. This way your customers can compare apples with apples in regards to the descriptions, but there's plenty of unique and helpful information on the page too.

I hope that helps

Cheers

Keri is right, if you are going to be using an identical strucure on your new site and all pages are going to be carried across, you can use this redirect that will just transfer the old domain URL's to the identical new one:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain.com$
RewriteRule (.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

So the old url http://www.oldsite.com/best-red-shoes

Would automatically direct to http://www.newsite.com/best-red-shoes

Note; this is for an Apache server

David

Hi William,

The issue here is that these metrics only take into account a sites authority, they do not look at how relevent the page is to the users query.

So for example; if the user searches 'where is the best place to eat in Seattle?', the results in 2 and 4 might not be particularly powerful domains, but they may have pages containing great articles on the best restaurants in Seattle. On the other hand, site 6 might be a page on a powerful and well known domain, however the page may only have a loose reference to dining in Seattle.

Google wants to answer the users query in the best way possible, and sometimes the best answers come from pages and sites that haven't been around long or haven't done any active link building.

Building up trust and authority through links is only half of the battle, if your page isn't relevant for the search query it will struggle to break the top spots.

Thanks,

DAvid

Hi Caru,

Firstly, paying for advertising space isn't a problem with Google, it's what funds most web businesses, including theirs. The issue they have is with people purchasing links with the sole purpose of passing PageRank to manipulate the search results.

So in your scenario; paying for a premium classified ad to be seen first is just good business, and most sites will make these links 'no follow' anyway to give a clear indication to Google that it is an advertisement. Even if they don't no-follow, it will be pretty clear on any kind of manual inspection that you are paying for advertising rather than PageRank.

That's the gauge you need to use really, as without seeing each site you are talking about it's difficult to say. Have a look at each site subjectively, and ask yourself if you'd be comfortable in having a member of the Google Webspam team manually inspecting your link there.

If, like you say, it's purely for PageRank, then you might be setting yourself up for trouble.

It's a similar situation to directories. It's far too simplistic to say all web directories are dangerous, as some of them are genuinely great links from hand curated niche enthusiasts. It is the same with classifieds, there will be some great ones to be on for both marketing and SEO purposes, but there will be a great deal that exist solely for SEO manipulation and these are the ones you want to avoid.

In a way, I think you answered your own question when you said 'some sites send us clients, many of them never do. We keep putting ads there because of their PR'

So when you ask what is the worth of these links, I would say very little. They are unlikely to pass any PR, and they could potentially land you in hot water in the future. How could you explain in a reconsideration request to Google that you advertised on a platform that you knew no one visited?

Another quick thing to remember is that there's diminishing returns on links from any single domain. So once you have got a link or two from a domain, whether great or spammy, there is very little value from a purely SEO point of view from achieving future links.

Thanks

David

Hi Enrique,

Firstly, the Panda update which you mention isn't penalty, it's an algorithmic updated that Google implemented with the general aim of reducing the number of poor quality sites in the search results.

By poor quality; they mean sites that have thin or duplicate content, sites that contain excessive advertising, and sites that are poorly designed or constructed.

If it is Panda (which it sounds like it could be considering the 18 month decline), a re-inclusion request won't help. This update is refreshed periodically (roughly every 4-6 weeks), so if you had fixed the issues on your site you would see your rankings return when it was refreshed.

The main issues to fix are generally around the quality and originality of the content, however depending how excessive your advertising is this might need to be addressed to.

There are some great resources out there for finding out if it is Panda that's effecting your site, and if so how to recover. My personal favourite is here on SeoMoz by Cyrus Shepherd:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/beat-google-panda

From speaking to many Webmasters, the one thing I have found is that the people that recover are the ones who are willing to take a critical look at their own website and really own up to it's weaknesses. For example, you say your friend tried excellent content, but by what standard was it excellent? His own standards might be very different than that of Google.

The best way to stay ahead of updates like Panda is by being your own worst critic, and constantly challenging yourself to make your website the best it can possible be.

David

Hi,

This isn't necessarily an OSE bug, it is mainlydown to the differentiation between the sub domain and original root domain.

For example, if the following domain existing:

mrdavidingram.tumblr.com

What you are saying is the domain is tumblr.com, and should be reported as a DA90+.

However sub-domains are classed as their own domains and not part of the original root domain, so if this sub-domain hasn't built any authority then it would be reported as a DA1.

So basically a sub-domain doesn't benefit from the power of the main domain and the links pointing at it, otherwise all tumblr, wordpress.com and blogspot sites would be massively authoritative and dominiating the search results (which would be a nightmare for users!).

So if you ever see a example.tumblr.com or example.wordpress.com; even though you can see the domain of the host site in there, it is still being treated as a totally unique domain and website, just as if it was example.com

I think the confusion has come down to OSE, as there does seem to be some inconsistency between how they report these sites. Some they will report as a unique domain (DA1 for example), but others they will give a DA of the original host domaing (DA90+). I'm not sure why this is, hopefully one of the team can shed some light...

Hope that helps.

David

Yeh you want at least 50% of your keywords to be branded, so I can see why you are having problems. The two prong attack should help you though, if you can get 20-30 links removed and build the same amount, the balance will be moving back in your favour.

The page that is ranking on page 3, is that the one with all the exact match anchor text pointing at it?

If there are no great links in there, it might be worth cutting your losses and sending a 404 for that page, and launching the same page from fresh.

If the dodgy links are at your home page, then it looks like you're stuck pushing for these removals (unless you're ready to up and move domains).

I'm always about pushing for new links rather than trying to tidy up old ones, but in this scenario I can see your hand is being forced.

Cheers

David

Hi Enrique,

Google don't give manual penalties for too many ads above the fold. Their manual penalities are for blatent violations of their webmaster guidlines, so things like buying links, cloaking or hidden text.

Although they recommend not putting too many ads above the fold from a user experience perspective, it's certainly not one of their terms and conditions and wouldn't be the cause of a penalty.

If you friend tried removing his ads and saw no recovery, it could be one of several issues:

• It might not have been the excessive ads that were causing his problem

• If it was the ads, he may not have removed them for long enough for the Panda update to be refreshed

One very important thing though; the ads above the fold issue and the Panda issue are the same thing.

It's the same algorithm update that is focused on user experience. It is nothing manual, and the only way to recover is to fix all the issues and wait for the refresh.

If you're fixing the site then that's a great start. With a bit of luck your new site will regain the rankings with your ads still in place, and then everyone is happy

Thanks,

David

Hi Van,

Unfortunately it's near on impossible to obtain a ranking position that will show universally for yourselves, your clients and their customers.

The best option you have is spending the time getting your customers to truly understand personalised and localised search, as well as the various methods of turning personalisation off. Once they understand this, they will be on board with the fact that the results they see will differ nationally/globally.

I work with a large number of clients on this basis, and they are happy with the logic. The know they can turn personalisation off (to an extent) using '&pws=0' or incognito mode, and to be honest these methods usually match pretty spot on with the rank tracking I'm providing them (probably because the rank checkers obtaining the results using these de-personalised methods)

Person A is always going to see different results than Person B, but if your clients can understand that the rankings reports are providing the positions the majority will see, then they should be happy.

As you mentioned, the main metrics should always be visitors and sales, but tying these to rankings is always a great way of showing the ROI of their natural search efforts.

Best of luck.

David

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your problems.

This could be a penalty, however I'd say it's more likely that it's the natural fluctuation you'd expect to see with a large scale move like this. I've never seen a major revamp like this have rankings settle within a few days, and I'd expect you to see similar fluctuations for the next month.

One question regarding the 301; did you redirect the old sites on a page level (e.g did you redirect oldsite.com/blue-widgets to newsite.com/blue-widgets), or did you just redirect the whole domain to the new home page? If you did the later, this would explain why you lost rankings.

However...

There are lots of rumours of another penguin update this week, so depending on the timescale it could be something to do with this. What where the link profiles of the previous sites like? If they contained loads of exact match anchor text, and a poor % of branded anchor text, then this could well be the issue.

There was also a Panda update recently, however if you are confident about the quality and originality of your content then it's less likely to be this.

Cheers

David

Hi Asaf,

If the core content is going to be unique (i.e the product descriptions), then you wouldn't  need to worry about duplication issues, and I would definitely recommend unique English url's to match the content.

From both a customer and a search engine point of view, it makes sense to have the url's in English, and to a unique destination that can be indexed.

If there are large amounts of duplication, you can always use the canonical tag, although it doesn't sound like it would be necessary in this scenario.

Cheers

David

Hi Matthew,

Sorry to hear about the problems you've been having.

On top of what you have already tried, I would reccomend these three actions:

1. Share some of your content on G+, it get's indexed really quickly and will get the crawlers back on your site

2. Use blog ping to send some of your top pages to Google. By doing this and step 1, you will usually get content indexed within 24 hours

3. Create a list of all the bad URL's (using the Chrome scraper extension will make this easy), and submit them to be removed via Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT > Optimization > Remove URL's). In my experience this gets URL's removed within a couple of days, although I am led to believe that this varies dependant on the site.

Good luck

David

Hi Samuel,

Unless your site is targeting a specific country, then leave it blank. Don't be tempted to point it at US or UK, as you will be essentially telling Google that your site is only relevant for those users, and you will see your international traffic dip.

Good luck

David

Hi Bilal,

There is no 'one solution fits all' solution for getting rid of these links, it's simply a case of visiting each site and seeing if they have a process to remove your entry, and if not contacting the Webmaster to politely request they do so.

Here is a great guide to clearing up your link profile:

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-to-create-an-excel-spreadsheet-to-remove-link-spam-post-penguin

I would suggest following this process to get rid of the worst offenders.

Personally, I'm a big believer in balancing out your link profile by acquiring new, authoratitive links rather than chasing to get rid of old ones. It seems a much more positive tactic to me, although it's not right in every scenario. With Google specifically highlighting you have got damaging links, it might be worth highlighting the most toxic ones and looking to have them removed, whilst at the same time looking to acquire new healthy links.

Good luck

David