Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Did you try "building great content"?

I too would like to see a MOZ Local in the UK - come on guys, come to the UK!

I agree, the best way would be to use 301 redirects.

You will lose some benefit of links, but you will gain this with better internal linking that you can get if you setup Wordpress correct.

I do not think it is a good idea to no follow ALL outbound links, but It seems like a lot of big websites (like Yell) are doing this now.

I have been doing some research into the heading structures of some of the top selling online stores in the UK. One thing that has come to my attention is that many of them do not have H1 elements on their homepage. I am presuming that because they are targeting their own brand on the homepage that they feel no need to have a H1??

Examples are:

http://www.boohoo.com/

http://chainreactioncycles.com/

http://www.jdsports.co.uk/home

Some of them even use the logo as a H1 such as http://www.missguided.co.uk/

Does anyone think that using the logo as a H1 would have any negative effect from a search engine perspective?

Look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Hi

What your saying has two ways of looking at it.

1. Adding new pages that target the or similar same keywords as the ranking pages will dilute those rankings as google will not have the one focused page to rank anymore

2. Adding new pages that dont target the same keywords will help rankings of the current pages (aslong as not targeting same or similar keywords) as google loves new content.

So with the above, if your going to create new content, dont go for 400 new pages all at once, try and create '2nd tier' pages that help support some of the '1st tier' pages which are ranking.

For example, say one of your ranked pages is a product page selling 'red dog collars' ranking for the the keyword 'red dog collars' - you could create a new page called 'how to correctly fasten a collar to your dog' which talks about this product in general terms - then you simply link this new page to your ranked product page thus achieving two goals in one go!

Hope the above makes sense and helps clarify your question!

Prioritise, prioritise prioritise!

First of all you have two options:

1. You throw a load of money at it and hire some great copywrites to write great unique content for all product pages and you look at fleshing out the blog posts.

2. You de-index using the 'no index, follow' tag all the pages which have weak/thin/duplicate content until you have new unique content ready in which case you remove the 'no index, follow' tags one by one.

If you decide to do option 2 then thats another topic but here is a great resource to get you started:

www.seobook.com/how-free-your-e-commerce-site-googles-panda

Hope this helps!

Hi Tom

Thanks for your repsonse.

Interesting you mention the data is pulled form Bing as I noticed a small disclaimer underneath the results box:

• Search Volume data is collected from the Search-based Keyword Tool via the Google AdWords API

Totally agree, would rather have upto date data than a 12 month overall average with estomations etc.

I also agree on the Fresh Web index as this also gives some great insights as well as the Google Trends facility too.

Cheers

Hi

Just been having a play around with the Moz Keyword Competition Tool and noticed that the reuslts given in terms of exact match searches is different from the data in the actual Google Adwords keyword tool even though the Moz tool pulls its data form the Google Adwords index so technically should be the same right?

Was just wondering if anyone else had noticed that or if I am missing something.

All you help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

Do yourself a favour, stay away from this out-dated and damaging technique!

Create some amazing content on your own site/blog......examples could be how to reduce insurance costs when leasing a van or the best vans to hire for home removals etc etc.

Make your content the go to source for that particular problem then start contacting other webmasters of similar (non-competitor) sites to share/link so their readers benefit!

The game has changed a lot from when you could buy 50 articles from Indian SEO firms for less than £20 and churn out for links from low quality sites!

Hi Lewis

No, you will be fine if you amend the anchor text, I would just make sure that you change the anchor text to a more 'long-tail' phrase.

For example, instead of 'roller banners' you could change to something like 'for cheap roller banners in the UK' - main thing is, you get keyword in there padded by generic text.

Hope this helps

I would also add that its a great way to establish positive relationships with blog owners when it comes to potential guest post outreach.

I agree with EGOL, why focus on what these low-level spammers are doing, wouldnt it be better to focus on the BEST content you can create for that clients target customer and aim to make your client the BEST company in that industry?

Great Content = Great Traffic = Great Customers = Great Conversion = Great Profits = Great Client.....it really is that simple!

Hi Philip

Stumbleupon is a content syndicator not a content hoster so it has no issues with duplicate content (much like Reddit and the now il-fated Digg).

Cheers

I agree EGOL, my thoughts exactly!

Yes I agree with BeardCo, that smacks of unatural linking if you ask me (directories normally put links in sidenavs and footers if they have been 'paid' for which is really bad).

You could contact the directory and ask to have the link solely on yor profile page, that way it will be one link from, with one anchor from one domain which is alot more natural than 2k links with same anchor and same domain!

Just my view!

Hi Marie

Good post you made however I would add more from experience of cleaning up a Negative SEO camapign that the disavow is the only real weapon you have against these type of links.

100,000's of low-quality, spammy links built using automated tools cannot be removed overnight, especially when the suspect sites they are linked from conveniently have no contact or whois details to follow up on.

Whilst I agree in part that spammy low-quality wont hurt a site in small numbers, large amounts of these links will and disavow is the only way forward to deal with them hence why I advised previously to do proper research on what links are harmful and what are actually OK before submitting a final disavow file.

I agree with people going overboard with the Disavow tool though, ive heard some stories of people trying to disavow their whole backlink profile which is just madness in my eyes and begging for Google to get suspicious!

Good to see you are starting to see a recovery. Keep us posted how the disavow process goes!

Hi John

Not a silly question at all, thats what the SEO MOZ Q&A is all about!

With regards to your query, as I see it, when you upload a second disavow text file with the links removed that you feel are good, Google will just take the latest version of the Disavow tool into account therefore not de-valuaing the links you class as good.

One word of discretion though, I wouldnt keep playing around with the disavow file, just spend the proper analysis time, make your final selection, upload and monitor your rankings over the following days/weeks/months etc to see if it has an effect.

Hope this helps!

Some great responses here and although I agree with contacting webmasters first and requesting manual removal of links, I think its good to mention what to do if you are hit with a negative SEO blast where all the new links are from spammy blog networks and de-indexed domains etc where conveniently, there are no contact details on site or with WHOIS.

In this case, its probably better going down the disavow route using caution and common sense before submitting final disavow file.

Thanks for your offer Craig.
We are trying to find someone local so that order to build our in house SEO team.

There must be some of you in the North West that could be interested?

I'm looking to hire an SEO Expert in North West England.

We are only a small web deisgn company (less than 10 staff) and have more SEO work than we can handle at the moment.

Is there anyone looking for a job in Norh West - UK ?

Cheers,

Darren
www.nwonline.co.uk

Hi Alan thank you for your response yes I presumed that would be the case however when I ran it through the seo-moz on page analysis tool it stated that the only issue on the category page was self self-cannibalization and keyword stuffing!

Thanks for your response!

Hi, I am creating an e-commerce website and will obviously have a number of category pages i.e. T-Shirts. Each category then has a number of products with the word t-shirt mentioned in the name i.e. red t-shirt, blue t-shirt. Now obviously I would like to search engine the category page with the keyword t-shirt but how do I go about avoiding keyword stuffing as well as self-cannibalization?