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Diego, As Paul said, do not chase the page-rank. You can however get a better idea using SEOMoz Opensite Explorer.org's DA/PA (Domain Authority and Page Authority Score). Again, this is just to get a rough estimate on a relative score comparison between you and your competition. I hope that helps.
OMG, that does not look good. I completely understand. The best way in my opinion would be to add a noindex meta tag on these pages and let Google crawl them. Once they re-index them with the noindex, that should take care of the problem. However, be careful since you want to make sure that noindex tag does not appear on your real pages, just the AJAX ones.
Another option might be to consider the canonical tag, but then technically these pages are not duplicate pages, they just should not exist. Are you verified and using the Google Webmaster Console ? If yes, see if you can get some of these pages excluded via the URL removal tool. The best way is to add the noindex tag in my opinion.
You can try and sending the whois emails on each of those domains a polite or a C&D kind of a letter/email and see if they respond. If you have 500 such links, maybe 50 will get down and then respond to the request with the results that you tried and some of them were taken down, the rest they are not responding and there's nothing you can do about it.
For a lot of niche products / categories, it can be better. The rankings are dependent on multiple factors and although a site like wikipedia could be ranking for everything towards the top...similarly like amazon or pinterest or ebay and so on. The stronger authority domains do have that advantage, like a brand would. But then a niche product/category might have much better focused copy, a lot of internal links to this page from within the website, making this a stronger page.
Does that help and make sense ?
I agree with Robert. There could be multiple other factors. The search landscape has changed and evolved drastically in the last 10 years. And it will continue to. The economy adds to the competition because everybody is trying to get online and get a piece of the pie. You are definitely as the right place in terms of trying to figure it out. I would suggest getting an SEO Audit done as well as a competition analysis and create a plan for the next 3-6-12 months to regain your position, strengthen your domain, brand and do whatever it takes to get back on top. What it would take, depends on what your competition is doing. I hope this helps.
Chad
I just checked your website and no, it's incorrect. All pages of your website have the canonical set to the homepage, which is like telling Google to 301 redirect all your pages to the homepage. I would recommend to remove it/fix it right away.
The best bet is to have an alternate strategy in place to build content and authoritative links. There's always that little bit of risk of drop in rankings in scenarios like these, which is going to happen one day anyway. The question is what to do till then.
I would look at starting to add more content, strengthen the pages as well as working on the overall domain authority with brand links and citations etc.
Yes, it syre can be the optimized copy, internal links, theme of your site. So if your site is only about Widgets, you have 100 different kinds of Widgets and that's all you sell. In that case, all your internal links, categories are focused around Widgets. That gives you an edge if your other factors are strong, you could be ranking better then your competition, the stronger competition.
Also, the volume of links do not matter. In this case, you might have 10 Widget related links from other Widget sites, which the bigger competition does not have, making you a better suited site ranking for that term. This logic might be totally different for another term.
It might be just me, but if these are brand new videos, it makes sense to just add them as new videos and do nothing to the old ones. Your #2. "Add the new videos, and leave the old videos untouched". I'd do that.
Chad
It can't be added in the template file, hard-coded for it to be the same tag on every page. Looks like this piece of code was added in the header template file.
For homepage, default.aspx this code is fine:
However, on other pages, like http://www.tisbest.org/buy-charity-gift-cards.aspx, the canonical should be rel="canonical" href="http://www.tisbest.org/buy-charity-gift-cards.aspx" />
I hope this helps.
Saeed I'd suggest you scale it down to maybe 5 lenses about specific niches or maybe just 1-2. Too many links of one type, is manipulative link building. If there was no SEO benefit, would you still do it ? I would consider spending the same time in strengthening the content, internal links and or trying to acquire 2-5 high authority links or maybe just 1 high authority link, the kind of link that money can't buy....a pure natural link. The impact of that kind of link would be much more then the benefit of the 50 squidoo lenses and the possible risk.
Are they producing a lot of good content and the blogs are just the locations where that great original content which users are interacting with, is located ? If they look like they are there just for SEO, the search engines will catchup when they see patterns of artificial links. They just have a lot of other spam to catch-up with first :).
I would not look at that technique and start doing it yourself.
Robert
I completely understand what you are trying to do. It can and will work. However, I'd suggest you look into your current backlink profile and see if there are diverse kinds of links, natural links. Also, don't overdo any one kind of link building tactic. This is not a 100% Bait and Switch, but, I'll ask you this, if SEO did not exist, would you still do it ? Think of this as a Custom Acquisition and Brand Awareness technique while helping towards SEO.
Some domain management companies let you do a 301 redirect of a domain to another domain...however they might only do domain.com to newdomain.com not specific/individual and customized redirects.
Well, it looks like you are redirecting your homepage to http://www.bharatdesi.com/hyderabad which to me does not make sense. Think of the user here first, SEO comes next.
All your city links in the footer work fine it seems. But if somebody gets to your homepage, it defaults to Hyderabad. If I were you, I'd just do a simple page with your logo on it on the homepage, with the links to the cities you have in your footer. That should do the job of being your homepage while your real homepage gets designed.
I hope this helps and makes sense.
Just use your links in those press releases like "Brand Name" linked to "http://www.example.com" and so on. You can also do plain links like http://www.example.com and so on. I hope this helps.
P.S. Any one kind of links, when you over do them, they become unnatural links. Specially when they become a higher percentage of your overall link profile.
We are basically discussing Video Optimization. Here's the thing. If you optimize your video with better titles, descriptions and it sounds like your descriptions already contain a backlink to your website. As Tom said, Embedding the video helps the video page (if at all), but not the site embedding it. In your case, it sounds like you are embedding it on the site that your video is linking to. So I agree with Tom. Answering your question directly, linking to the video (and embedding it) from other places on the web, helps your video page which in turn helps your money site if you are linking to your money site from the video. Just don't over do it. Too much of anything is bad. I hope this helps.
It depends how strong your domain authority is and how deep within a website that page is. If you are talking about the homepage, I have seen it vary from 10 minutes to 10 days, again..based on the strength and authority of the website.
I agree with Paul, 100%. Just do a 301 redirect and move on. As you said, it's dropping in the SERPS and there's really only type-in traffic and there's no SEO value of it's own. Minimal PA, DA. 301 Redirect and Issue Resolved.
I would not suggest doing a Press Release for SEO Only reason. Think about this from a user's perspective:
1. Is the reader going to feel he is reading a news or a advertorial ?* 2. Do you have something worthwhile to report via a press release ?* 3. If you were the reader, would you be interested in reading that PR ? And if yes, would you be satisfied after reading it ?
Next and the most important. DO NOT do anchor text links. After the several rounds of algorithm updates, those kinds of links don't help. If you really get a decent reason to do the PR, do it. But then, just link to the relevant page or your homepage with the name of the business / law firm. Don't do anchor text.
I know this kind of leads you into a total opposite direction, but with thinking about how many anchor text links, I can see where you were headed. I hope this helps.
Considering what's done is done and the point that your old domain is penalized, can you possibly do/try any of the following ?
1. Ignore the fact that those links are appearing in your backlink profile for the new domain. See whether this new website works/ranks.
2. If it doesn't (at all), can you possibly disavow those "article marketing" links for the old domain and do nothing at all for the new domain (since those links are not really linking to your new domain).
Coming back to point 1, what I'd like to ask is, other then seeing those links in GWT, are there any other red flags that you are seeing in terms of not ranking, any penalty messages, unnatural links warning on the new or was there any messages on the old domain when you got penalized ?
Is Google showing an old page title you used ? Something from DMOZ or Yahoo Directory maybe ?
What I think it could be is that Google is using snippets of text on your page to generate the Page Title / Meta description to make it more relevant to the keyword you are searching for.
Let me know what you see.
This is a very very common problem. What you need to do is step back for a minute and think of this not like a website, but like a real business.
Do a complete audit of your backlinks and clean up what you can.
Is this a wordpress based site ? What CMS are you using ? How were you able to get domain.com/sample and domain.com/sample.html be the same page ? Either way, canonical tag is the correct solution in this case. There's no need for a 301 and if you do 301 redirects, you are not really fixing the issue caused by your CMS System.
I would therefore strongly advise to use the canonical tag. That's the intended use of that tag.
Now, that's a good point Keri. Does that mean it "might" be coming soon ?
"there's not a category for looking at all YouMoz posts that have been promoted to the main blog."
Go to http://pro.moz.com/campaigns and click on** Archived Campaigns**. That should show you what's available inside your account. If you see an archived campaign and you have open slots, you should be able to activate it.
There shouldn't be any issue. The question I'd like to ask is, do you have a lot of outgoing links ? Is this a clients/testimonials/resources kind of a page ? Are you doing it for your users or for SEO reasons for the site gaining the link ? Worst case scenario, or if you are concerned, add a rel=nofollow.
In my opinion, your page is over-optimized for your primary keyword. I would look into some variant keywords you can optimize this page for. Here is what I see as "Over-Optimized" for that exact keyword:
Page Title = OK, could use some customization
Description = OK
Breadcrumbs = Exact Keyword along with the Exact Title Tag (Sort of okay, I'd say)
H1 Tag = Exact Keyword. As well as a Title Tag to your H1 Tag ? That's too much. That's clearly there for SEO and SEO Only.
In that 1 paragraph of copy, you have the same keyword in Bold, twice. The image with a good filename and alt tag is okay.
What I'd look into is, what are some other long tail keywords that you can optimize your page for. That would help you in 2 ways.
1. Remove the Over-Optimization
2. Help you rank for that low(er) hanging fruit.
Unrelated to this keyword/page, but overall:
You don't need the following tags on every single page:
I hope this helps.
Well, give it 2-4 weeks. Considering that, I would try to (I know it's difficult) to try and work on the other aspects of your business/websites. Build some more content/pages, optimize etc and see how the changes reflect in the SERPS.
I hope this helps.
I have been in SEO since over 10 years now. And have been attending Pubcon since 2004 in Las Vegas. I think I have only missed 1.
This year, I have been thinking of which conferences to attend and here are the options. I am looking for 1st hand experiences from people who have attended multiple conferences to kinda do a comparison.
Here are the upcoming conferences by date. I am only listing the US Conferences.
SES New York March 19-23* BlueGlass Los Angeles April 23-24* SMX Advanced Seattle Jun. 5-6* MozCon July 25 - July 27* SES San Francisco August 13-17* SMX New York | Oct. 2-4, 2012* Pubcon Las Vegas October 16 - 19* SES Chicago November 12-16* SMX Social Media Marketing Las Vegas | Dec. 5-6
Please let me know what conferences you have attended in the past and which ones of these people here are planning to attend ?
If it's great content, it might make more sense to keep it on your website. Some blog posting is okay, but too much of any one kind of links will only cause issues, both short term and long term. Think about Directory Links 5 years ago. Everybody got 500 Directory Submissions for $50 and so on, and those are the kinds of links people are getting Unnatural link warnings for.
So I'd recommend evaluating your link strategy and only build quality links, rather then faster links, instant approval links, focus on quality and user engagement vs quantity.
I hope this helps.
You have some great points already from Alan, Robert and Phillip. I would identify your competition as well as understand your customer. See where your target audience is and where they are. Look at how your competition is presenting themselves and getting in the face of your customer. All that you need to do is to do a better job then them. It's easier said then done, but it's possible. Think how Startup companies get to become well known. They provide a better service then somebody else.
Biance
I would add the .com in there for Branding reasons. However if your page titles and way over 66 characters, I'd leave the .com alone (not recommended). The question is, are you building your brand as Tripping or Tripping.com ? That should help answer the question pretty accurately :).
I hope this helps.
Is the URL generating a 404 / included in robots.txt as an exclusion ? If yes, you might want to check with a HTTP header tool to verify the correct 404 is being displayed. Maybe post details here. If nothing works, send a message in the Google support forum and that should do it.
Removal Requirements (https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=59819)
To remove a page or image, you must do one of the following:
Just look at the kind of keywords people use to hit your internal / deep pages from Search. Specially your brand keywords and you could target some of those. Just make sure you are not doing too many of the same kinds of links.
You could also do:
"My Brand Name" + Red
Red + "My Brand Name"
Red Widgets at My Brand Name
Red Widgets by My Brand Name
My Brand Name Red Widgets
Red Widgets Partial Brand
and so on.
If they need to be linked, you could do the nofollow as you have already done. I would also change them to brand anchor text. So in my opinion you are on the right track.
Next, I would go build some unique content on all the sites as well as some fresh natural, uncommon links from sites that are not related to you. Natural Links.
I would not worry about changing so much. These are not monster changes.
If you are just doing a redesign that does not entail any URL changes, I would suggest keep them as is.
On a side note, how are you ranking compared to your competition ?
You could potentially test 1-2 pages on your site, change _ to - and see if it makes any difference. And yes, you would need to do 301 redirects and that would pass most (not all) of your link juice. It can and still work fine. So before you do something like this on a large scale, test it on a small scale if you can.
It also depends on how much authority your site has in Google ? Do your breadcrumbs show up in Google SERPS ? And so on.
I hope this helps you come to the right conclusion.
Hey Chris, i agree with masdigitalmedia. Look at that SEOMoz recommended list. Look for somebody local in your area if you can and if not, at-least somebody who can visit you every once in a while.
If you have specific questions, there's always SEOMoz Q&A
Good Luck.
Ayite, think of Link Building as Brand Building. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts. You will have to come up with things that people would want to link to. Think of a combination of Link Bait, Infographics, Press Releases, Some Guest Posts and other misc links. Just a little bit of everything in your niche. Not too much of anything.
I would also start with analyzing your competition backlinks and see how and where they got/get their links from. Try to get some of those kinds of links.
It's a slow and steady, painful, expensive process. But it works.
Spun content has no value for the user. I would therefore suggest investing time and effort in building value to the user. If you are able to do that, you will gain loyalty amongst your users. Depending upon the niche and nature of your website, your user's may share your website on their blogs and social media. They may also come back to your website and so on. That does what Google is looking for in real sites...sites that should rank.
Fabrizo
How big is your natural link profile ? How many affiliate links are we talking ? Do you get a lot of natural links ? Is this your own affiliate program ? Can you do some sort of a link shortener of your own ? EG:
http://www.MSLink.com/whatever/?affid=[affiliate_id]
that redirects to
http://www.merchantsite.com/products/product_page/?affid=[affiliate_id]
which then further redirects to your product page.
This way if there are future problems, you can change/remove the redirects from MSLink.com if they happen to be hurting you anytime in the future while maintaining full control.
I hope this helps.
If you only have 50 or do redirects that you have a list for, I would advise a 1 to 1 redirect. Ie.
domain.com/index.php/red_widgets/ is changing to domain.com/red-widgets/
There's no point in redirecting /index.php/red_widgets/ to domain.com/red_widgets/ which you know does not exist.
It would be wiser to just setup redirects directly from /index.php/red_widgets/ to /red-widgets/ without another step in between. I know that might mean you might not be able to do regular expression, but since you are dealing with 50 redirects only, it's not a big deal.
Regarding the number of redirects, I won't worry about 50 redirects.
Mark If you have had your category level or city/state level pages, whatever your architecture is, you'd see your detail pages getting crawled pretty quickly. Give it a week. I would also work on getting some deep links to your website. Google has mentioned several times, PR is a direct measure of how deep and how often Google crawls your website. So I would suggest working on building the domain authority and brand in terms of backlinks to the website. Other then that, as bstone81 said, generate sitemaps and sitemap of sitemaps and submit to Google.
All kinds of links, together make up a natural link profile. Never use any one kinds of links too much. When you do that, that's when the trouble begins.
I think of Link Building as brand building. What would you do if the Search Engines did not exist ? What would you do to get your website some traffic ? The answer lies within
I'd suggest using a rel="nofollow" in the link to you.
You are asking this question, which means you already know and I am presuming retaining the same URLs is not a possibility. Even if it's a slim possibly, I'd suggest looking into it further. If not, then as long as you can 301 each and every URL to the new target URL, you should be fine. I have seen a +/- 10% Dip in traffic and rankings (if any) and it all varies on the authority and strength of your website. If you say, you are ranking well with some traffic, it definitely has some strength and I would not worry about moving it as long as you are prepared for it, in terms of redirects and maintaining similar or better On-page SEO and Internal Link Juice. Typically, when CMS's change, so does the internal link juice etc and that can have an affect even if you do the redirects fine. So you need to do an Audit of what's before and after, how optimized is the after compared to the before and what does your competition look like (if any).
I hope this helps.
I agree with Keri. If you are doing it for branding or other advertising reasons, just have them include a rel="nofollow" inside the link. Also make sure the FTC disclosure is there.
I hope this helps.
Linda, if the content on the blog is going to be a very very targetted content for your website audience, I would suggest putting it on yourcompanydomain.com/blog.
Also see:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-on-a-separate-domain
and
http://www.seomoz.org/q/subdirectory-vs-subdomain
I hope these help.
Are you contributing to both the websites as an Author ? Do you have real content that is being authored/posted under your name on both the websites ? Do you have people that relate to both industries in your Circles or following you ? If yes, I wouldn't mind using the same G+ Profile. It's what's correct. That's what makes sense.
It's like if I am working for a Pet Supplies company for example and I am posting on it's blog everyday, but then at home I am also a Coin Collector and have a blog about it. They have nothing in common but it would still make sense that I am the author of both the websites since I really do contribute to both of them.
I hope this helps. Most of the times, it's a very easy answer if you try to think search engines don't exist. What would you do ? You get the answer and apply that. That's what is correct, right and the most accurate way of doing it.
OMG, looks like there are results all over the web with those links. See:
https://www.google.com/search?q=allinurl%3A%26tag%3Dvebidoo_com-21
I'd suggest you make sure yourdomain.com/randomurl.html contains a canonical to itself. That way, if somebody links to yourdomain.com/randomurl.html&tag=vebidoo_com-21, Google will ignore it. You can also add it as a ignore parameter in your Google and Bing Webmaster Console.
I hope this helps.