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This is not a scientific answer and I am sure somebody can give you a more detailed answer, but anecdotally I still do it on all my websites as a best practice. I can't say I have noted a huge benefit, but it also does not hurt and helps normalize things.
I hope this helps.
You don't necessarily need to pay SEO salary for your outreach effort. I have a VA in the Philippines that does this for me. I gave them the outreach template and guidelines for who to reach out to, and they take care of it. If/when they get a response they forward it to me and I take if from there. This has worked pretty well for me - not just for SEO but for building business relationships - and is a lot more cost effective for small businesses like mine than hire an SEO company.
I hope this helps.
Thanks for all the response. I implemented the switch yesterday, so as of this morning the whole site is for https. We already had an SSL certificate for our payment area, so luckily it was not a cost issue. My concern is primarily the slowdown issue as AltecDesigh mentioned (we only have a mid-range server) and any drop in SERP, since essentially from what I have been reading this is like 301'ing to a new domain.
Here are the steps I went through. Not sure if they are the best option, but there were no step by step instructions yet on google so hopefully this will help people who are planning to implement it themselves.
1) Added the SSL certificate (in case people have not done this yet).
2) Implemented a site wide switch through my .htaccess file using this code:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
3) Went through the site, page by page with the Google Chrome developers console open. That help me find any errors. The most common ones were including images or external files through their "http" address. Tedious, but easily fixable by simply doing a Replace All on the files and replacing them with a "https".
**4) **Reported the domain change in GWT (which to me seems like an odd thing to have to do)
5) That was it. It took me one day to implement across our site with about 2000 pages. If it even helps a bit, that will be a worthwhile use of my time.
I also had to add a plugin to our wordpress blog since for some reason the .htaccess changes were not working for our blog in a subfolder. I will try to come back and update the results in a few weeks so other mozzers can see if this worked for me, or if they should avoid it.
Thanks again for all the feedback, it helped us make the decision. In general I actually like this move of Google (unlike many of the others they have done). Let's see if it makes any difference.
Good morning,
As many of you have read, Google seems to have confirmed that they will give a small boost to sites with SSL certificates this morning. So my question is, does that mean we have to switch our entire site to https? Even simple information pages and blog posts? Or will we get credit for the https boost as long as the sensitive parts of our site have it?
Anybody know? Thanks in advance.
Hi Jane,
Thanks for the advice. One question. I was under the impression that the rel="canonical" tag was for two pages that had the same content to let google know that the page it is pointing to is the original and should be the one to rank. Do you have any experience using them between 2 pages that have totally different content (minus the header and footer)?
Thanks again.
Hi Mozzers,
A quick question. In the last few months I have noticed that for a number of keywords I am having 2 different pages on my domain show up in the SERP. Always right next to each other (for example, position #7 and #8 or #3 and #4). So in the SERP it looks something like:
Now, I actually need both pages since the content on both pages is different - but on the same topic. Both pages have links to them, but page1.html always tends to have more. So, what is the best practice to tell Google that I only want 1 page to rank? Of course, the idea is that by combining the SEO Juice of both pages, I can push my way up to position 2 or 1.
Does anybody have any experience in this? Any advice is much appreciated.
Thanks Richard,
Sometimes it is the simplest answer that are the easiest to miss. I was thinking I would have to write a dynamic page, or something along those lines (I was a programmer before becoming a SEO). That is what I'll do. Thanks!
Good afternoon,
A quick question. I am working on a website which has a large page with different sections. Lets say:
Page 1
SECTION A
SECTION B
SECTION C
Now, they are adding a new area where they want to show only certain sections, so it would look like this:
Page 2
SECTION A
Page 3
SECTION C
Page 4
SECTION D
So my question is, would a rel='canonical' tag back to Page 1 be the correct way of preempting any duplicate content issues? I do not need Page 2-4 to even be indexed, it is just a matter of usability and giving the users what they are looking for without all the rest of the extra stuff.
Gracias. Tesekürler. Salamat Ko. Thanks. (bonus thumbs up for anybody who knows which languages each of those are) 
GWT sometimes takes a while to register the change. It just actually happened on one of my clients pages where there was a bug in the code made by the developer and they got 30,000 duplicate title and description errors. It was fixed about 2 months ago and while the errors have dropped to 2000 or so, it is still not at zero yet, so it does take some time depending on how often Google crawls the site.
If the developer says they did it, I would recommend the first thing you do is simply check that they did it. Go to one of the pages in question, both one with capital and without, and do a view source on both to check that the rel="canonical" tag is there and is correct. Programmers don't always know much about SEO so they may be implementing them wrong.
As a simpler solution, why don't you just add a rel="canonical" tag to each page specifying the one you want? That should take care of any duplicate content issues.
I hope this helps.
Good day,
I am wondering if anybody here has done something like this before. I have a page in one of my sites that contains a number of different - but related - free resources. The resources can be sorted in different ways once the user is on the page.
Now I am starting an outreach campaign, and want to be able to send out custom URLS (which pretty much means they have different query strings after them like '?id=123' ) so that when a person clicks on the link to the page it brings up the stuff they are more likely to be interested in at the top. I expect - hope - that some of these people will put links back to this page as a result of this. Now all the links may be slightly different, but they will come to the same page and the content will look slightly different. I will make sure to have the rel=canonical tag in place.
Does anybody know if this would be in violation of Google Terms and Conditions. I can't see how, but I wanted to see what the experts here on Moz think before moving forward.
Thanks in advance.
Hi BobGW,
I actually have experience in doing exactly this for one of my sites. I created a free academic archive - in the same niche as my site - as link bait. My results were mixed.
I got quite a few new links coming back to the resource, and still do. The problem has been so far that the links are generally from low DA pages like blogs. There are exceptions as I did get a .mil and a few .edu links from it as well. Now, the traffic to the site definitely went up due to the new section as did social engagement. So, just for this it may be said that it was worth it.
But despite all of this, I have not seen any major changes in SERP (up or down) in the last 6 months since this section was released. It just seems like the "link juice" is not transferring in any meaningful way despite a pretty simply site structure. I have also not seen any marked increase in conversions on the site. So, while Google does not seem to be punishing the site for this section, it also does not seem to be giving it credit for this either (even though it ranks well for its own keyword).
In the end, it is as Andrew said, it depends on how much time and money this section will cost you. Based on the current success of this section on my site I would still say the 2 months to create it were worth it. I just hope that the SERP benefits will propagate to the rest of the site in the long term
Good luck.
Thanks Takeshi and CleverPhd. This is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for. Hiding the blank pages until there is content is actually pretty easy in this system so I will just go ahead and do that.
Thanks again.
I am writing an online application that among other things allows the users to search through our database for results. Pretty simply stuff. My question is this. When the site is starting out, there will probably be a lot of searches that will bring back empty pages since we will still be building it up. Each page will dynamically generate the title tags, description tags, H1, H2, H3 tags - so that part will be unique - but otherwise they will be almost identical empty results pages until then.
Would Google Count all these empty result pages as duplicate content? Anybody have any experience with this?
Thanks in advance.
Hi Dr. Pete,
That brings up an interesting possibility.
< start conspiracy theory>
Is it possible that Google is actually going through this summer of volatility to weed out the people who are not following their policy. By this I mean that every time they make a change, anybody who is doing even the slightest "grey hat" SEO runs to their site and gets rid of it if they can. I am guessing that with just this uncertainty alone google forcing people to clean their own sites.
People who are sure their sites are clean, there is nothing they can do even if they want to, so Google may figure that after this turbulence they can just eliminate this turbulence, run the previous algorithm from before the summer (or at least a more stable one than now) and the good sites will automatically float to the top since most sites will be "clean" again thanks to all the webmasters cleaning house all summer.
I am not a conspiracy theorists, nor do I play one on TV. 
Big changes in my rankings. For the first time in the last 3 months, this update is actually helping the rankings. So far, I have recovered most if not all of what I lost for Penguin 2.0 (5-20 positions). Of course, this may just be the google dance and I may loose it again by tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed.
This may be an easy questions, but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere and I never really looked into it before. In google webmaster tools, in the dashboard there is the section that says "How Your Data Is Linked". What does that refer to? Is that just using internal link anchor text, external link anchor text or a combination of both?
I am pretty sure that it is a combination of both, but I just want to make sure before making some internal link changes so that the most common anchor text is no longer "Prices" and "Sign up".
Thanks.
Hi,
I have recently started a project on one of my sites, working with a branch of the U.S. government, where I will be hosting and publishing some of their PDF documents for free for people to use. The great SEO side of this is that they link to my site. The thing is, they are linking directly to the PDF files themselves, not the page with the link to the PDF files. So my question is, does that give me any SEO benefit?
While the PDF is hosted on my site, there are no links in it that would allow a spider to start from the PDF and crawl the rest of my site. So do I get any benefit from these great links? If not, does anybody have any suggestions on how I could get credit for them. Keep in mind that editing the PDF's are not allowed by the government.
Thanks.
Just to add my 2 cents. I have seen the same thing as a number of people reported. No major hit - unlike with Penguin 1.0 - but on my primary site I have seem a drop in 1-4 spots for my keywords across the board.
Luckily, this is massive hit we saw last year in Penguin 1.0. The odd thing is however (and I don't know if anybody else has seen this) is that my sites that were hit by Penguin 1.0 seem to have recovered a lot. Many are back on the first page. I had not touched them in over a year.
My primary site I have has most of its links from very high quality sites in education since it is our niche. Top universities like Stanford, Harvard, etc but we have also paid for some ads - no follow - on some related forums. The links are no-follow, but they seemed to be showing up as links in Google Webmaster tools. My guess is that Google did not punish my site per-se, it simply stopped counting those links which should not have been counted in the first place.
If this is the extent of Penguin 2.0 it was not too bad for me. Nothing that can't be recovered from in a month of 2 of good SEO, and these kinds of fluctuations are to be expected. Of course if the roll out is still going on and the SERP shifts drastically again I may change my tune.
Good luck to everybody as we wait for the algo to finish its work.
Lightbulb half-lit...
Google+Local pages aren't assigned to a Google account? I'm still confused. Then why would they have said the thing about thinking about which Google Account you are using when you make a G+ page and that you may want to share it in the future...?
(I do appreciate your continued help!)
Call me slow, but it seems to me that if the Google Places for Business sign-up page says, "Tip: Before you create a business listing, think about which Google Account you are using. In the future, you may want to share this account with other people at your business," then I don't want to create a new Places page for my client's business under MY personal account, right?
The lightbulb ain't lightin' yet, sorry....
PS Maybe I didn't make clear: I just want to be able to sign them up for the Places page and manage it, Analytics, and WMTs for that same related domain. But the client owns and I want him to retain that ownership. Does that make sense?
Thanks, Chris, for the response, which prompts a few more questions:
1. You have these other companies in your dashboard because they gave you Manager rights? Or rather, how did you get them to be in your dashboard?
2. In my scenario above, I don't really need to touch the client's restaurant site too much, but I do need to start from scratch on his catering one, which he's decided to keep totally separate (different name, different address, different phone, different social media, etc.).
To set up his Google+Local page for this second, separate business, which way is most advantageous?:
A. Set him up a separate gmail account, set up the G+Local page for his business under that, as well as the Analytics and WMTs? or
B. Is there a way that from his primary/original email he could give me access to set up this second place, short of giving me the login to his peronsal email account? (Will being "Manager"of the first do it?)
Appreciative.
Client decided to keep restaurant and catering businesses completely separate, so he's gotten a suite number and a separate landline.
He already set up and claimed the restaurant G+Local/Places page using his personal gmail address.
I need to set up the catering G+Local page, but of course he's not crazy about giving me the login to his personal gmail account. But maybe, since they're completely separate businesses, I really should go set up hiscateringbusiness@gmail.com and start fresh with the catering page?
I also have an email address, contact@hiscateringbusiness.com, but it seems like Google never likes these.
How do you recommend that I set up the catering G+Local pages? (This would also presumably be for Analytics and Webmaster Tools for the domain too.)
Should I just start fresh? Can I even do it with a non-gmail account? Or will Google slap him for two unmerged accounts, even though they're for separate businesses?
(I've looked all over the place and it looks like that it's still true that he can't just change the email associated with the restaurant G+ page... no?)
Thank you!
Hi pbhatt,
As I mentioned, due to my fear of the "Google Slap", I do all the SEO on my businesses myself. And just to clarify I have multiple VA's with them. Depending on the VA they do different things. But some of their primary tasks are things like answering my customer service emails, some reporting duties, sending out invoice, simple website updates, research tasks among other things.
The best place to use a VA in my experience is for tasks that are respective but need a human decision making (i.e. you can't get a software to automatically do it for you). For example for the emails, I have some canned response, but it needs to be personalized each time (nothing looks worse than a canned response that does not even answer a clients question). I know some people who also use WP that use their VA's to update their e-commerce site inventory, and another that is having them do convert old scanned PDF documents into eBooks and HTML pages. Pretty much anything that can be done via a computer or a phone they can do.
Ok, it is starting to sound like a sales pitch so I will stop. But hiring a VA really was a turning point in my business so I do tend to preach about them. The other good thing is that most of the companies - WhitePicket.net included - do not require long term contracts. So you can try them for a month and if you don't like them, you can just end it.
I hope this helps.
I agree with what Baldea says. SEO is a full time job, and if you are the only person doing it, as well as running your business, then you really won't have time to do it. I am also like Baldea in that I am usually the creator, manager, seo, etc of my online businesses, at least at the beginning.
I know it is not exactly an answer to your questions, but this information may help A few years ago I had my first successful online business, and I got to the point where I was spending all day on customer support, so I did not have any time to grow my business (which included doing SEO). At that time I read the book "4 hour work week". If you have not read it, I highly recommend it. There they mentioned something called Virtual Assitants. I was desperate, so I gave it a shot, and boy did it change my life. I know how a a staff of VA's taking care of the time consuming stuff, while I spend my time on Marketing and SEO (with the turbulence in SEO these days, I would not want to outsource the work to anybody cheap, and I still can't afford the real pro's).
I don't know if this is a step your business is ready to take, but it may help. I personally work with WhitePicket.net for my VA's (for full disclosure, I do have a relationship with them) but there are other ones out there. Just look around and find one that suites your needs.
I hope this helps.
Got it! And gosh, thanks so much for the time to write out all the detail!
A related question: What about the social media aspect? Can he keep the two together, at least from an SEO perspective?
Or will Google not like it if his catering business site links to his restaurant social media accounts? (Or is it simply a question of his not getting the "juice" from Facebook, say, for his catering site if his FB account references the restaurant only?)
Again, so appreciative of the guidance!
Hey, that's a nice offer!
I finally got the chance to ask the client about it today and guess what? It isn't found by the USPS because they don't deliver there! (We're talking about some weird anomaly in the USPS system, because this is north San Jose, in Silicon Valley! But the client said it's true.)
So now I'm definitely thinking just to roll with the one Google already likes. I think you and Bryan agree...?
Thanks both for the responses!
You're welcome
So you mean that if he keeps the catering site separate, he should not only hide the (non-restaurant) address from Google and show only the service area, but also he should NOT publish that address -- even if it's different from the restaurant -- anywhere?
How would he ever locally optimize the catering one, then? Or wouldn't he?
Or did I not understand correctly?
My client has a site already listed on Google+Local under "5208 N 1st St".
He has some other NAPs, e.g., YellowPages, under "5208 N First Street". The USPS finds neither of these, nor any variation that I can possibly think of!
Which is better? Do I just take the one that Google has accepted and make all the others like it as best I can?
And doesn't it matter that the USPS doesn't even recognize the thing? Or no?
Local SEO wizards, thanks in advance for your guidance!
Yea!! I was hoping you'd answer, Miriam.
I tend to think the catering is really part of the restaurant's brand in his case, but of course ultimately this is up to him.
What do you think about the role of his social media accounts? Could he still keep everything under the restaurant or do you you recommend splitting that too?
(Does Google care that links from his catering site link to the social media accounts of his restaurant?)
A client has two businesses out of the same address, same phone: an eat-in restaurant and a catering service. He has a separate website for each.
He’s dying to optimize the catering, although long-term wants to optimize both.
For the moment, Google only knows this restaurant and his only social media presence is set up as the restaurant as well -- thus the links to his social media even off of the catering site link to his restaurant accounts.
I think he has two options:
1. Really do separate them. Get a different address (suite # or use his home address?) and phone. Set up new, separate social media. Register both, separately, at all the directories, etc.
2. Merge them both into the restaurant site and have the restaurant offer both eat-in and catering. Have some pages on the site optimized for lunch and others for catering, with the home page saying both.
Register the one domain with all the directories, social media under the restaurant, but with a description that includes both lunch and catering as services offered.
Variation on #2: Continue to have Google show the address, since it’s a restaurant, but add the “service location” area to show as well, for the catering part.
My questions are:
1. If he kept the two websites separate, would hiding the address and just using a “service location” area for the catering one keep Google happy?
I mean, could he keep the same address -- although I suppose he’d still have to get a new phone -- and set up the catering entry to show only the service area? And if he did that, would Google not merge them then?
In directories, though, he’d still be listing both the restaurant and the catering separately but under the same address, so maybe this is a silly scenario anyway. What do you think?
2. Which option would you choose?
3. Are there any other better options?
4. In the #2 scenario, if a directory allows registry under one category, would you choose “restaurant” or “catering” -- or sometimes one and sometimes the other?
Thank you for your insight!
Hi Mememax,
Thanks for the feedback. The reason I am leaning towards redirecting to a sub-page is two-fold, and maybe it does not matter, but here it is.
The first domain was branded under a totally different brand name. Not a EMD, simply another brand. So, I was concerned that google may not like that most of the links coming back to the new domain homepage did not have anything to do with the old page (as far as branding is concerns). I can however make the sub-page mention the old business and how we are related, thus making it more relevant.
Protection from the google algorithm. In the off chance that google does not like the 301 and penalizes the page, it will be much easier to recover from a penalty on the subpage, instead of having to recover from a homepage penalty.
The benefits may be a bit less than a homepage link, but the risk is also much less. Thanks.
Hi guys,
A quick question. I have a client who has an old business website that had some great links (Forbes.com, CocaCola.com, etc). The problem is that he knew nothing about SEO and let the hosting expire. He still owns the domain, but the site is no longer listed in Google. He did no SEO, so I am not worried about being hit by any artificial anchor text penalties, since the links are as natural as it gets.
So my questions is, would there be any benefit from 301 redirecting that site to his new business?
The new business is in almost exactly the same niche as the old site. I am thinking of 301'ing to a sub-page which will refer to his past venture with the old business, not to the homepage of the new site.
Thanks in advance for your help.
I know the P (phone) matters too, but what about the A (address)? Amber, how have you decided which is the address (especially street, suite #) format that Google likes most?
Thanks for the name info -- helpful!
Canadian client with a suite number in a shopping center.
Does it matter if the NAP is the way it's displayed on Google Maps? Canada Post (or in the US, USPS)?
Or does it only matter that all the citations are as similar as possible to one another?
Canada Post says:
400-3033 IMMEL ST
ABBOTSFORD BC V2S 6S2
But if I look that up on maps.google.com, it defaults to:
3033 Immel St Abbotsford, BC V2S 4L3, CanadaAnd the client does not appear in the list of about 20+ businesses at this address.Which should I use for Places (and I assume any other citation)?
Hi,
I was wondering if anybody had some advice on what to do for deep link anchor text in the post penguin world?
For the homepage, I am going with almost exclusively branded text with only small variations once in a while. For the deep links I was thinking of doing a mix of branded text with some additional text such as:
"My Brand Name" + Red
or
"My Brand Name" + Blue
Does anybody know if this is the best way to go, or is there any other advice? Thanks in advance.
Also, if I am not mistaken Google said that if you disavow a link it would most likely take a few weeks to months for it to start happening. Since the new functionality is only a few days old, I doubt anybody would see results yet.
Sort of glad to see this post. I thought the problem was on my end. I tried the Keyword tool a few days ago and it did not do anything. Now OSE is not working. Hopefully one of the Seomoz staff can give us an update soon so we know what to expect.
My-wardrobe.com is a big one. They were featured on CNN international in their show about bosses. From what I saw on the show they did a lot of charity work with young entrepreneurs in a program sponsored by Barcleys... that may be how they got the link.
As they say, networking is key. I hope this helps.
Or you can link back to the original article with a rel="cannonical" or if you want to be 100% sure just make it rel="nofollow".
I did not notice any noticeable change across any of my sites. But it may take a few days to notice. Good luck.
Definately seeing the same thing here. I have moved from #1 to page 3 and back again (and everywhere in between) multiple times in the last few weeks on a number of my pages. I have actually stopped trying to "fix" anything since there for now there does not seem to be any pattern to the recoveries or drops. Sometimes pages I work on change, while other times pages I have not touched change.
The worst is when my page is beat by broken or blank pages. They usually do not last for too many days, but it has happened a few times. Very stressfull.
Hi,
This could definitely be penguin if your traffic went down after April 24th or after the 1.1 update (don't remember the exact date, but it was about 2 weeks ago). I had a number of sites have a simalar drop of a few positions from 1 to 8 or 9 or some such. Some have come back over the last few weeks others haven't.
Based on what you have said, your link profit is fine, so my guess would be that google simply discounted some of the links back to your site. By this I mean that some links that it used to count as good links it no longer counts as good links. That would explain part of the drop.
As for your competition who has a much worse link profile than you beating you, all I can say is I feel you pain. I am also being beaten in one of my big keywords by a page with awful design, spelling and grammar mistakes all over the place and no back links. For now, I would say just be patient. Google is going to be fine tuning things for the next few months - I still see big changes every week in the SERPs in my field. So taking drastic measures now may do more harm than good.
Good luck.
Hi Bibiana,
Actually, I am the competition (own the business) But hey, nothing I am telling you is a secret and there is nothing like some good competition to make me more motivated to work.
If you are interested, send me a Private Message here on SEOmoz and we can talk more. We may be able to help each other out. It we collaborated a bit it could help both of the businesses out.
Saludos y que tengas un buen día.
I also have had to deal with this in my sites. In most cases, I actually go with the norm that the language is based in. By this I mean that if the page is in English, even if I am using a Spanish or French word, I tend not to use the accent. This is primarily because based on my statistics - I have been doing multi-language SEO for my sites for over 5 years - most people do not have their keyboards configured to make accents.
So, if somebody was looking for information on:
Mexico
It is much much more likely that they would put that in google instead of:
México
Most non-tech people would struggle to figure out how to put an é, ñ or a ö on U.S. keyboards.
Of course there are some places on your site that you need to put the accents, especially if it is something like language education where they expect it to be with an accent, but otherwise I do not put them. Of course, if you have your entire page translated into Spanish or French, then put the accents in the correct places because there they will be expected and the searchers will probably look using accents. As you probably know, an accent in Spanish, French, etc can change the entire meaning of a word.
I hope this helps.
P.S. Hola desde Querétaro.
While I have no experience with this specifically with regards to SEO and ranking, I do have a development server. If you don't mind me asking, why is your development server public? Usually they should be behind some kind of password and not accessible by search spiders.
If you are worried that that is the problem, just make the entire site noindex and that should get it out of google eventually. It may take some time however.
Good luck.
All my sites are in multiple languages - including french - and I have seen much better results when I translated the file names into French instead of leaving them in English. So for example I have found that:
www.mywebsite.com/bonjour.html
performed better for relevant French language searches than
www.mywebsite.com/goodmorning.html
This has held true for me in all the languages. Even in Chinese and Russian, I write them out with latin characters and it seems to make a difference.
I hope this helps.
Hi Egol,
Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate your insight.
I forgot to add that I am actually seeing this more for my long-tail keywords. Luckily not for my primary keywords where I am still ranking pretty well (#1 for most). But the confusing part is that the sites I am being beaten by don't seem to be optimized for these long-tail keywords either. In fact, one of the sites is only 3 months old and a lot of his content is stolen from other sites.
But not to whine, I know this is part of the game, I just wanted to know if this was something other people were seeing as well in order to make a game plan. I am still planning on being in a holding pattern for about 2-3 more months to get more info on Penguin. But every little bit helps.
Thanks.