Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Andrew,

If you can send me the domain I'll have a look at the DNS and see if there's anything that looks unusual. Drop me a message on here, or email me on david@bringdigital.co.uk

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

Yep - attached. I've redacted the title as it showed the client's name but would be good to see whether you think this is properly optimised?

lTsMcoJ

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.

We have a client that has received 100+ organic visits for the keyword 'airport transfers', yet the site does not rank in the top 100 search results for this keyword. We have checked that it is not untagged PPC traffic. Truly baffling. Can anybody help?

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

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.

That's how I got started many moons ago.

You're welcome Kristy, I'll have my fingers crossed that you see a nice jump up next month

Anything I can ever help with just give me a shout on here, or tweet me @mrdavidingram

David

Hi Gareth,

I've sent you a private message with some more details of link building services.

In regards to finding relevant websites, it's just a case of thinking outside the box. My primary work is for a kitchen appliance retailer, which is a generally boring topic, however we've build great relationships (and links!) by matching our products to industries such as interior design, eco/green sites, money saving sites etc etc

I've not worked with a client yet who's industry we can't match to an active online community, it just takes a bit of creative thinking.

If you want to let me know some more details of your site or industry I'll come up with some communities you can get in to.

Cheers

David

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

Yeh, I've just done some testing and it seems pretty random. Hmmm...

In terms of how the search engines treat it, the above is correct, but OSE doesn't seem to have a hard and fast rule. I wonder how much this effects the sites they are linking to?

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

Morning,

Yep, the first step I would take is suppliers, contractors, partners etc etc. Basically anyone you have a business connection with that has a website. A lot of these will simply be happy to do this as a favour, some will want something in return such a reciprocal link (if it makes sense, go for it). Some you might need to be a little smarter with and play a bit of hustle to get. One great way we got in with a couple of software companies we were using was to offer a glowing testimonal for their website. It was win/win, they got a great review, we got a great link.

When it comes to thinking of suppliers and partners, really be creative. Think about every aspect of your business, right down to the cleaners/caterers. If they have a website you want to be on there.

In terms of directories, I would generally say avoid, however there are a few big national ones that pass value, and depending on your resource there are usually a few websites and directories that curate lists of local businesses. For me, the big key when decided whether to use a directory or not is down to whether their results are indexed and ranking. Follow the directory through to an obscure business page (e.g outdoor supplies > gardening > landscape gardening > turf suppliers) pick on of the business on their and search for their name. If the directory isn't showing up in the first few pages, it's really not worth being on.

Regarding competitions; one benefit is the competition websites themselves, however the real win comes from the entrants. The blogging community are very active with competitions, and if you can think of a campaign that is particularly fun, engaging or has a kick ass prize, then you will see a lot of links coming from the blogosphere.

The other option (and in my opinion the quickest way of getting quality links) is through Blogger and Webmaster outreach. Make a list of 100 target sites and approach them. The good old days of simply asking for a link a sadly gone, but there are plenty of ways you can reach out that will result in a link (offer a guest post, offer an interview, form a partnership etc etc). It can be time consuming, although you can make this scalable and see lots of high quality links flying in fast.

Like you mentioned the answer you're going to get from a lot of people is 'make great content' which is pretty vague in itself. The logic behind it is if your site hosts great content, then it will naturally attract links and social shares across the web. There are many ways of doing this, from writing consistently good posts around your industry, to making infographics or videos with the intention of going viral. As a long term strategy, it's a great approach, but it is something that will need a lot of thought, time and often investment.

Best of luck.

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 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,

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 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 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 Igor,

Although keyword rich domains do seem to hold weight with Google, I wouldn't recommend going so specific as to include the location (itsupportla)

To me itsupport.net is a great domain name, it's short, it's professional, and it tells both Google and your users exactly what you do.

If you have that domain, then it sounds like a winner to me.

Saying that, if itsupport.com is available but only showing a parking page, it might be worth finding the owner via WHOIS and seeing what it would take to get them to part ways with it. I've had some success with this in the past, often the domains belong to people who simply never got around to finishing projects they started, and are delighted to let them go for a few hundred dollars.

Best of luck

David

Hi Igor,

The quality of the domain extension will only play a minuscule role in your overall SEO efforts, so it's not something that should keep you up at night. However, you should take note of the following points:

• If you are looking at localised TLD's (.us, .co.uk etc), you will essentially telling Google that your site is primarily directed at that country, and it means you could struggle to rank elsewhere. I would therefore suggest always using a multi-national domain (.com, .net etc) if you intend to market your site globally

• From a user point of view, a more recognisable domain extension indicates more trust in a site, and correlation data suggests that Google reflects this in their algorithm. By this, I mean that if a user looks at your domain and thinks 'that looks a bit spammy', then it would be justified to think that Google would think the same.

This doesn't just mean the domain extension, but the domain as a whole. There are occasions where people are so desperate to get a .com they get a ridiculous domain that no one would trust.

Look at these domains, which seems more trustworthy:

www.your-product-online-4u.com

**www.yourproduct.net **

You want your overall domain name to be short, memorable and as clean as possible.

Although people will generally trust a .com over a .net, don't make the mistake of sacrificing the entire domain for a better extension (as it the example above)

Thanks,

David

Thanks Jarno

Hi Parvesh,

Although not perfect, the best way to find localised keyword usage is combing the data from the keywords tool with Google Trends.

For example, if you find the search volume for 'beauty salon', you can then see how this volume is divided across the subregions and cities across Australia. Here is an example:

http://www.google.com/trends/?q=beauty+salon&ctab=0&geo=au&geor=all&date=2012&sort=0

Sadly this data isn't too specific, but it's a great way of getting an indication of what Cities the search demand is coming from.

Another way is to lookup keyword + location in the Google keyword tool. So rather that search for 'beauty salon' you can search for 'beauty salon Melbourne' 'beauty salon Perth' etc

Again, this will give you a strong indication of how the main 'beauty salon' search volume is divided across the country.

The only real way of getting the cast iron data, with no interpretation required, is to actually run some test campaigns through AdWords and see the impressions data for each region. This will give you the exact information, but will also mean you'll have to dip your hand in your pocket (which can get expensive dependant on how many regions/Cities you want to cover)

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,

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

Blue Widget 2143 was just an example product, without knowing what kind of products you sell it was the best I could do. If you sold soccer jerseys, your alt tag could be 'buy button for the 2012 Manchester United home shirt'. This would pick up more search traffic, as well as make your website more accessible to customers. The whole point of the alt tag is to provide a description of the image you are displaying. 'Buy now' tells neither Google nor your customers any information, and you are missing out on a great opportunity to please both. Depending what language/CMS your website is built on, you will be able to insert a bit of code that dynamically creates a suitable alt tag depending on the product. So whatever page/product template currently instructs the alt tag to be 'buy now', would instead instruct a dynamic name to be generated along the format of 'buy button for <product name="">' Cheers</product>

Blue Widget 2143 was just an example product, without knowing what kind of products you sell it was the best I could do. If you sold soccer jerseys, your alt tag could be 'buy button for the 2012 Manchester United home shirt'. This would pick up more search traffic, as well as make your website more accessible to customers. The whole point of the alt tag is to provide a description of the image you are displaying. 'Buy now' tells neither Google nor your customers any information, and you are missing out on a great opportunity to please both. Depending what language/CMS your website is built on, you will be able to insert a bit of code that dynamically creates a suitable alt tag depending on the product. So whatever page/product template currently instructs the alt tag to be 'buy now', would instead instruct a dynamic name to be generated along the format of 'buy button for <product name="">' Cheers</product>

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 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

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

No problem, I feel for your predicament.

Let me know if you need any help with anything.

Thanks,

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

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

Fair enough, if there's loads then you might have your options narrowed down.

Are they pointing at the home page or individual url's? If there are any url's that have tons of the dodgy links pointing at them, it might be worth killing them with a 404. Google went on record last week saying that any links pointing at a 404 will be discounted, so would be a good option for something like this.

Even if you go down the route of removing the links, I'd still recommend working to build up a stock of decent branded links at the same time.

If you want any help with the project, let me know.

Thanks

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 Matthew,

I don't have any experience of the tools you mentioned, however I run some fairly large blogger outreach campaigns and I would wholeheartely recommend the tools from Buzzstream and Raven Tools.

Both are great for finding, approaching and managing link targets. They both offer 30 day free trials too!

Thanks,

David

Yes, technically they each pass 20% of that pages link juice.

However, things get a lot more tricky as the importance of the links vary on things like order, and page placement. i.e the value of a link in the footer of an article doesn't carry as much weight as a link in the first paragraph etc

Thanks,

Ah, now your right in regards in link juice distribution on a single page. It is literally divided by the number of links, so 5 links would get 20% each, 100 links would get 1% each.

In this sense, there is technically no limit in how many outbound links you would have to your site, although obviously there would be some spam signals hit after a while.

So if you have three seperate pages you want to share a single external page's link juice, then you can work on the basis it will be split evenly. But again, the more it is split the less benefit you will see come through to your pages until there is practically null.

The rule of diminishing returns applies to the number of links that are individually benefiting you from a single domain. So from a pure SEO link juice point of view, there is no more benefit in having 8 links coming from example.com than having 3 links.

Cheers

To be honest though, I think my example above is a bit too excessive. Somewhere in the middle would be more accurate (100/50/25) with a steep drop off after that.

To be honest though, I think my example above is a bit too excessive. Somewhere in the middle would be more accurate (100/50/25) with a steep drop off after that.

Yes, sadly it diminishes a lot steeper than that, I will have a dig around and see if I can find some study data.

Sadly, only the boffins at Google HQ know the exact figures.

Cheers

So this isn't the exact maths, but for arugments sake:

The first link gives you 100% SEO benefit

The second link gives you 25% SEO benefit

The third link gives you 5% SEO benefit

The fourth link gives you <1% SEO benefit

After that, there is no additional SEO benefit of received links from that page.

I'm not taking about link juice distribution, I'm talking about the actual SEO benefit each link with provide you. That's why you will always here SEO's tell you the first link is the most important, and why people only tend to put a couple of links in a guest post or article, as there is really very little value after that.

Looking at it from a purely SEO point of view (so not consideration for branding, advertising or other general marketing), you want to be getting links from lots of unique domains rather than lots of links from a single domain.

Of course if you had 50 links coming from say the BBC there would be other benefits such as the amount of traffic you'd get and the brand association, but if you're looking at it from purely an SEO link juice point of view then there is no real value after getting a couple of links from the same domain.

Cheers

David

Ah sorry, I see what you mean.

The amount of links you place on a single page will have diminishing returns, so the first is valuable, the second less so, the third less so. After a while there is no additional value at all.

Personally, in that scenario again I would look to use 2 or 3 links, one branded in the footer and one or two in the article body (again, only if they made sense and fitted in naturally.

The main thing to consider in that scenario is the wishes of the Webmaster you're working with. Some only want you to use a single link in guest content, other are of a 'more the merrier' philosophy (although you still don't want to go link crazy).

2-3 is good for the user, good for the Webmaster, and good for your SEO

Cheers

David

Hi Gary,

Just so I'm clear, you mean if you had xcompany.com and then xcompany.blogspot.com, how many links per blog post would you send to the main domain?

If that's the case, yes I'd recommend using the same rules and treating it as an internal blog.

If you don't mind me saying, I'd never recommend hosting a blog externally from your main site unless it's completely unavoidable. Is there no way to integrate both? The easiest way is to just host Wordpress in the subfolder of your main site, and match the theme to your main brand.

Thanks

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 Gary,

I tend to use 2-3 internal links in a 400 word article as a rule of thumb, although there is going to be no harm in using more if the article calls for it (i.e you genuinely need to reference several sources on your site)

On the other hand, you don't want to be forcing links into articles just to meet a 3 link quota. If there is genuinely no relevant reference or keyword uses that sensibly links to another site, then don't try to force the issue.

Try to think of it from a users point of view, i.e when reading this article does the link make sense, and would it be a logical and positive path for a visitor to follow.

Cheers

David