Export the SEOmoz crawl report to Excel. The "referrer" field will show the URL of the web page which contains the bad link. Locate the link and either fix it or remove it. Those three 404 errors will then be resolved.
Posts made by RyanKent
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RE: 404 Errors - How to get rid of them?
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RE: Best way to address duplicate news sections within site
Alan, I appreciate your effort here. These are the sources I already shared
A complete summary of everything shared in those articles you quote:
1. It doesn't make a difference to google which method is used. When I examine all the information and analysis, it seems to indicate Google will index the content either way. How well that content will rank in Google is a different topic. There are reasons to keep content separate, such as when discussing topics unrelated to the main site, in which case a subdomain would be best.
2. Matt uses the directory approach, and he recommends for others to do the same.
AT BEST you can get that it is close to even with a slighter preference towards subfolders based on that information.
The Rand offers outstanding analysis as to why subfolders are the superior choice. Rand's analysis is in 2009, 2 years after the original articles quoted from Matt. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
The bottom line, it's up to you how much you care about your site and it's performance. Personally, I am a fighter. I also micro-manage website architecture because in many aspects, it is a one-time set it and forget it type of thing. Whether to use subdirectories vs subfolders, whether to use underscores in URLs vs dashes, etc. are things you do one time and then it is automated forever.
A detailed list of reasons supporting the subfolder approach has been offered. The DA, time, costs, etc. all support subfolders. If you wish to ignore all those strong, positive benefits and go with a subdomain then that is your choice.
Good luck.
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RE: HAVING A POPUP WINDOW ON HOMEPAGE AFFECTS SEO?
There's a creative idea Alan! You can have a bird move on the page after a few seconds and "land" on the content you wish the reader to see. The implementation would be key. Done correctly, it would be just a tiny bit of movement to catch a reader's attention. On the other hand, it could be done in an annoying manner as well.
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RE: Best way to address duplicate news sections within site
Alan,
We will have to agree to disagree on this one.
There is a ton of what can only be referred to as "SEO bullshit" published. When I quote a source it will usually be Matt Cutts directly, or Google, or a highly respected SEO who shares an opinion on a topic AND who offers very solid research to back up that opinion. In short, credibility is everything when quoting a source to support a given position.
You are quoting a site I have never heard of, alexander.holbreich.org. Is it just me? Do others know and recognize this site as a reputable source of SEO information?
The author's About page is a total of 4 lines of text. Line 1 = his name, Line 3 & 4 is where he lives. Line 2 = he has a degree in "Business Information" but doesn't even state where or when he received this degree. This web page is a solid example of a page that has absolutely zero trust on SEO.
I think it is great that you read various sources of SEO for ideas, but that is a big difference from depending on those sources as credible information.
If you want to quote, try the main source article. Doing such would add higher credibility to your position. I can agree there is a lot of confusion on this topic, but it is propagated mostly by pages like the one you linked which should probably never be read.
Using the source you quoted and some common ground I would share the following:
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Matt Cutts stated he uses folders "My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different."
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Matt Cutts recommended for others to use folders "If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site."
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Matt shared a specific example of when a subdirectory would be appropriate, and it is an example I had shared as well in response to the original question "A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example."
The above aside, one site is easier to maintain then two. There are lower costs all around (software, trust badges, SSL, etc). There is less time involved as well. All that time and money can be put into other aspects of SEO such as link building and creating great content.
Further, by combining your content into one site, all your content benefits from the higher DA of your site.
I hope you take the information I am sharing the right way Alan. My professional experience leads me to almost always use a folder unless there is a clear and specific reason to use a subdomain such as trying to separate out content which is not related to the main site. The difference is strong enough to where I would recommend for most clients who have a subdomain to delete it and move to the subfolder structure.
If you find a differing opinion, I would love to hear it. All I ask is for it to be from a highly credible SEO source who preferably shares detailed examples or logic to support the position.
Best Regards,
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RE: HAVING A POPUP WINDOW ON HOMEPAGE AFFECTS SEO?
I agree with Simon. Prior to Panda pop ups had no effect on SEO. You can hear Matt Cutts share this directly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_0WI75X4U4
I would add that many users perceive pop-ups to be unfriendly, and in our post-Panda world it may be a ranking factor. I would suggest taking a close look at how users perceive the popup. Find a way to sit people down in front of a pc and get them to visit your site. Watch their reactions to the popups. If 2-3 of the react negatively then take that as a strong indicator and consider it surely is a negative user experience and could be a negative panda factor.
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RE: Best way to address duplicate news sections within site
I take a different view on this topic then Alan.
As Alan mentioned, the recent Google change sole effect is how links to sub-domains from the root domain visually appear in Google WMT. They have absolutely no ranking weight difference. Bringing up that otherwise irrelevant change during this discussion only serves to confuse an otherwise muddy topic.
With respect to the general subfolder vs domain discussion, as far as I have seen most of the "debate" ended with subfolders being the winner.
There are a couple situations where a subdomain would be preferable to a folder. One example is when a different, unrelated topic or product is being offered. Keith, you brought up the example of Google Maps. A few comments I would share:
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Google Maps is a different product then Google search. Really the main thing they have is they are being offered by the same company. The idea of providing satellite images and driving directions is really quite different then providing the best search results. These two products happen to be offered by the same company but if you think about it, they are really very distinct products. It would be the same idea if Ford created their own version of Sirius radio. Yes, the radios would be offered in Ford cars but the product is truly distinct of the cars and can stand completely alone.
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Google's site was set up years ago before this topic was analyzed to this depth. Many changes have been made over the years.
A couple great discussions on this topic:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
A quote Rand shared in a different article "99.9% of the time, if a subfolder will work, it's the best choice for all parties." I agree for the overwhelming majority of cases, a subfolder is preferred. There are some corner cases but normally speaking the subfolder is the preferred approach.
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RE: Optimizing for two nearly identical keywords.
My suggestion would be to first focus "Personal Trainer Minneapolis" with the title and H1 tag with the goal of earning a #1 ranking.
My recommendation is after you achieve the #1 spot, try adjusting the title to either improve CTR or to capture additional rankings on alternate keywords.
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RE: Canonical to another website?
Alan, to the best of my knowledge the article you linked is not correct. It has been reported that Bing does support the cross domain canonical. http://www.seomoz.org/q/does-bing-support-cross-domain-canonical-tags
I like most of the setup of your article but if I can share two feedback items:
1. There is not date stamp on the article. Personally I disregard any SEO information without a date stamp. In my experience 100% of quality sites offer the date stamp.
2. There is no link to or mention of the source.
I could always be mistaken but I wanted to share the information for discussion.
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RE: Best way to address duplicate news sections within site
the news pages list the story headline and the first 3 lines of copy. Do these summaries present duplicate content issues with the full story page?
No
With respect to the subdomain, what is the purpose of having the subdomain? It seems likely the best course of action would be to merge any unique content from the subdomain into the main site, then remove the subdomain. Your articles would benefit from the (presumably) stronger DA on the main site. Also your efforts would be reduced by allowing you to fully focus on one site rather then maintain two sites.
How does this subdomain benefit anyone?
If you insisted on keeping the subdomain, then yes the canonical meta tag would work.
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RE: Optimizing for two nearly identical keywords.
Google shows 1000 monthly searches for either of those two variations of the phrase. I looked at both searches and was surprised to see that much variation in the results. I would suggest optimizing your page for "personal trainer minneapolis" but if you can add other variations such as "Minneapolis Personal Trainer" and "Twin Cities Personal Trainer" throughout the page. Go for one longer but very high quality page as opposed to two separate pages. It will provide a better user experience and hopefully better ranking as well.
Make sure you have your Google Places page set up as those results are performing very well.
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RE: Current Thoughts on Directories?
When you mention directories I presume you are referring to Link Directories as opposed to Article or other directories. Some examples would be DMOZ, Yahoo, Business.com and BOTW.
In the mid 90s, link directories were a helpful way for sites to be discovered. Search engines didn't exist and when they started, the results were low quality. People could visit a directory site, type in a topic and find a list of sites with information about that topic.
Fast forward to present day and most directories have absolutely no value. Generally speaking, the value of a link can be measured by how difficult it is to obtain. Free directories normally have no value as anyone can get a link. The pay directories offer no value since paid links are not trusted by search engines and therefore do not pass link juice.
That leaves two types of directories which have value:
1. Pay for review directories. Sites such as Yahoo directory, BOTW.org, Business.com charge for a REVIEW of your site. The fee must be paid in advance and is NON REFUNDABLE. The review is a quality check of your business and website. If you do not pass the review, your site is not listed and you are out the fee. If your site passes the review, you earn a listing.
2. Niche directories. Some niche directories require a fee for a review and others are free. The only general free directory I am aware of which usually offers value is DMOZ. There are directories which focus a specific topic such as Wines or Particle Physics which can be valuable. Other niche directories charge for a review or have various requirements which, upon meeting, your site can be listed. The BBB would one example while Verified by Visa is another.
As with most of SEO, there are many factors to consider when weighing the value of a directory. You can't just say "blogs are good" or "social network sites are good" as a blanket statement. It is their proper implementation as a strategy which has tremendous potential. Along the same lines, directories are neither good nor bad but the overwhelming majority of directories are bad for various reasons. SEOmoz has offered a list of quality directories. Please not the list is NOT perfect. There are some directories on the list which may not offer value, and there are likely some good directories which have not made this list.
There are tons of articles on this topic already on SEOmoz. You are welcome to use the Search function and you will find many opinions. I would suggest focusing the more recent articles first.
The most valued web directory is DMOZ as it's home page has a PR of 10 and it is has been specifically favored by Google in the past. Even so, there are pages in that directory so deep that Google doesn't even crawl them and therefore the links have no ranking value.
One sign of a quality directory: imagine search engines did not exist. Will membership in this directory lead to any direct traffic? If the answer is yes, it is likely a "good" directory.
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RE: Any ideas on how to leverage celebrity spottings for SEO?
Recently, a Hollywood celebrity was seen wearing a product manufactured by one of my clients. Any out of the box ideas on how to leverage this for SEO?
Absolutely. Acquire pictures of the celebrity wearing your client's product, write a high quality article on the topic then publish it.
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RE: Link from home page
It seems there is an issue with OSE so I can't see any link data for the site. The site you mentioned is clearly a spam site with links to "office cleaning London" and other links on it's home page which are completely irrelevant for a Carribean diving site.
I am not sure what you mean "they don't link out to anyone". I see many links on their site. I checked a couple and the links work fine.
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RE: Bit.ly URLs. Are they SEO Friendly?
The only issue with link juice is the normal concern with any 301 redirect. Some link juice will be lost, and it will be amplified if multiple redirects are involved.
Try this link: http://mz.cm/vr5WDE
The above link is to this Q&A. Use your mozbar, examine Page Attributes and scroll to the bottom. Notice the bit.ly url is a 301 redirect to this URL. That's what bit.ly is, a 301 redirect service.
Do not automatically assume all services perform the redirect the same way. Always check before committing to any service.
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RE: Should I Just Copy A Competitor's Backlinks?
I am unsure what DM is, but based on the context I am guessing Private Message? If so you are welcome to do such.
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RE: Web Page Refresh
What is the point of the refresh? It seems the sole purpose is to manipulate your metrics in which case that would be a bad idea. Do your users receive any benefit from this refresh?
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RE: Keyword Self-Cannibalization
In short, each page on your site should focus a single keyword or phrase. You can stretch it further but doing such dilutes your SEO efforts.
If your home page targets "my domain" then it should be the only page on your site to target that exact phrase. You would need to alter the phrase on other pages to avoid cannibalization.
If you are willing to share your domain name and the page involved we can offer more specific feedback.
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RE: Should I Just Copy A Competitor's Backlinks?
The best practice would be to be aware of your competitor's links and look for opportunities. Look for high quality pages where the competitor earned links.
Most blog commenting is very low value from a SEO perspective. If you are an authoritative member of the community which offers the blog, you are one of the first commenters and you share a quality reply with a link then it can have value IF the link is followed and the page is not stuffed with 100 other links. Most blogs which don't nofollow their links have almost no value as they are filled with spam and links.
You are presuming the site's links are the reason why they are outranking you and it is entirely possible the links are not the reason at all. If you would like more detailed feedback please share your site URL, your competitor's URL and a couple sample keywords where you are being outranked.
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RE: Bit.ly URLs. Are they SEO Friendly?
URL shorteners like Bit.ly are actually 301 redirects and work as such. You can enter in the URL then examine the page using the mozbar Page Attributes and see the 301 redirect take place.
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RE: Link from home page
I tried accessing http://www.regal-diving.com. It is not a valid address. Can you please type in the valid address so I can copy/paste it into a browser?
The Linkscape crawler which SEOmoz uses crawls the top 25% of web pages. Generally speaking, any other pages do not have much, if any, SEO value. Google does not even crawl 100% of web pages.
Linking out from your home page, or any other page, is a normal practice for most websites. There is nothing wrong with it whatsoever. You can visit the SEOmoz home page or that of most any site and there are often external links. It is a common practice to link to social pages, the website's developer, the website's SEO provider, etc. which are all external links.
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RE: How long will it take for the link analysis to be updated?
Linkscape, the data source for Open Site Explorer, was just updated on November 2nd. It is normally updated once/month but the SEOmoz team is working to enhance the process which can affect the update timeline.
The crawler sees the top 25% of webpages. It does not crawl 100% of the internet. For the most part, if the SEOmoz crawler does not see the link, it does not have much (if any) value. If you built the links prior to November, then they should be visible in the next update.
Bookmarking can be very valuable if the bookmark is used and visible. For example, if you get your bookmark to the front page of a site and it is promoted in any way. If you simply add a bookmark which is otherwise not used and located on a buried page, it likely has no value.
A Press Release which is offered by PRWeb or other reputable companies and is picked up has value. Some press releases are simply not seen or valued.
If you can earn links from quality, reputable sites then those links will be quickly found by Linkscape, and even faster by Google. Links from a site's home page, or links from a strongly reputable site from a popular web page are helpful. One strong link is often worth more then 100 random links. Go for quality.
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RE: How long will Google take to stop crawling an old URL once it has been 301 redirected
Google's crawler will always attempt to crawl any links it finds. If somewhere on the internet there is a link to an old URL and Google sees that link, it will never stop trying to explore that link. Each time it attempts to crawl the link, it will see the 301 and follow the redirect, but if you ever remove that redirect then the original URL will be seen.
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RE: Has anyone seen this kind of google cache spam before?
It's only a guess, but anyone who can cloak to set a webpage to appear differently for the Googlebot user agent can also restrict the cloaking to a range of IP addresses which Google normally uses. It would be sloppy not to do such because everyone has the ability to easily detect the cloaking otherwise, and the bad guys are trying to make that difficult.
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RE: Has anyone seen this kind of google cache spam before?
What tool did you use?
The problem is the tool likely spoofed the User Agent name, but not the IP address, so if the cloaking was well designed, it would present your test tool with the normal webpage while still presenting Googlebot with the hacked page.
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RE: How to best correct cannibalization?
The idea behind cannibalization is you do not want multiple pages on your site discussing the exact same topic. If the same topic needs to be discussed, then some slant on the topic should be established so search engines and users can differentiate between the two pages. Instead of making a second "Wedding Invitations" page you could focus on "2012 Wedding Invitations" or "10 Best Wedding Invitations".
This is where I pause for a moment and confess my ignorance. I have no idea what a "cupcake invitation" is, and my mother and sister aren't available to help. I google'd it and still am not quite clear on the concept. What's missing is the wikipedia page, which is a GREAT opportunity for you! Go to wikipedia, create a quality "cupcake invitation page" and include 2 links to your site, but try to include links to other high quality sites which discuss the topic as well. If you don't already have such a page on your site, you may want to make a "Man's Guide to Invitations". It can be a simple, one page article to help those who are not familiar with the terms and etiquette get by. Alternatively a glossary page could be offered. Make sure the page you link to from wikipedia is a very high quality page, preferable without ads and a "buy now" focus.
For this reply please allow me to replace the "cupcake invitation" with "wedding invitation". Using that category, you have some products such as "pink-plaid".
For your first question, it is up to you how to combine the category and product. The normal URL presentation would be category first followed by product such as /wedding-invitations/pink-plaid. That type of setup is generally easy to implement and well understood by users. You can create alterations but they often don't scale so well to other categories.
For your second question, I would suggest including the category name in the H1 tag. A "pink plaid" page in and of itself does not hold a lot of meaning. I presume you could have wedding invitations, baby announcements and other categories with a "pink plaid" page. You need to differentiate them by adding the category name such as "Pink Plaid Wedding Invitations".
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RE: How important are social bookmarking sites
I don't have experience with Diigo so if others can share their feedback it would be helpful. You also may want to ask as a new question if you don't receive a quality response.
I like the idea of social bookmarking. The problems are the same as search engines, too much spam and manipulation. If a group has a high quality editor who ensures results are spam free, there can be great value in finding lists of quality links.
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RE: What is the best SEO friendly CMS platform?
You are fast! I had just edited my reply and I think you read it before I made the change.
There is wordpress.com where your site is hosted by wordpress, and wordpress.org where you host your own site. Wordpress is a blog platform and, as such, it meets the definition of a Content Management System.
Some sites have extended the functionality of the software far beyond blogs, but you are right. At it's core it is a blog platform.
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RE: What is the best SEO friendly CMS platform?
Based on your description I would recommend WordPress. It is the most popular CMS in the world, has a few good SEO plugins, and requires less knowledge to get going with then other software. As with any software, the more you know the more you can do with it.
I should also add WordPress is primarily blog software but you can do other things with it. Other CMS software such as Joomla and Drupal offers more functionality, but they are significantly more complex.
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RE: & VS & - Title too long?
Google handles the ampersand just fine.
The & is an HTML escape character representation. Google will treat & in the title as a single character towards your title count.
I wouldn't call this issue a bug, but it is something the SEOmoz report could handle better. Perhaps you can suggest it as an enhancement request to improve the tool.
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RE: How long does it take for google see my new backlins and take an effect on my rank?
Alan is correct. To elaborate a bit, if you were to receive a link from the New York Times home page, google would see the link within an hour and your rankings could immediately benefit. The reason is nytimes.com has a PA of 99 which basically means it is one of the most important pages on the internet.
If you were to receive a link from a random page on an unknown site, or even a popular site but on a page which is deeply buried, the link may never be seen.
Crawlers move through the internet based on links. The amount of time for the link to your site being discovered is dependent upon how well the page containing your link is linked from other pages.
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RE: Triple listing in rankings
You are correct about the translation. It appears the page did not load properly for me the first time.
What page of the competitor are you talking about in point 3?
Point #3 referred to your site, not your competitor. "The cache of your VCA examen page is from Oct 29th..." You recently changed the link in the anchor text on that page, and it has not been updated yet.
what kind of anchor text would you suggest?
When users choose anchor text, there is a natural variation. On both your "vca examen" and "vca cursus" page almost every link is 100% identical. That simply does not happen naturally. This type of linking is a very strong indicator you created all those links.
Think about Google for example. There is nothing more basic then the Google.com page. If real people were going to link to it, you would see anchor text such as:
google
search engine
best search engine
and so forth. If you looked at the top 50 links and they are all "search engine" then those links are most likely manipulated. In fact, this topic made me curious so I went ahead and looked up Google's links. Take a look for yourself: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.google.com
That is how a natural link profile appears.
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RE: Building Links
The SEOmoz site is jammed full of articles discussing this topic. If I may suggest performing a site search: http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=link+building
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RE: Triple listing in rankings
I mostly agree with Zsolt and will add a bit more detail.
I checked Google.nl and see your /vca-examen ranked #2 and the vca-cursus page ranked #3. I do see how you are using internal anchor text to link to the proper page. I would suggest two changes to help clarify the internal issue on your site:
1. On your home page the content begins with "Met een **VCA **cursus bij VCAdirect...". Make the first use in content of VCA cursus anchor text to the proper page. I see the phrase is used in part 10 times on the home page and you do use anchor text link once, but use it the first time as it may be considered more important by Google.
2. You are using cufon for your header tag text. The way it is implemented on your site is such the cufon text is not recognized as text. When I used Google translate, the cufon text is not translated. The lack of translation indicates to me Google is not seeing it as text. Also when I do a "find" the cufon text matches are not highlighted. I would recommend replacing the cufon text with normal text.
3. You recently changed the anchor text on your pages. The new anchor text is correct, but Google has not crawled your pages since you have made the change. The cache of your VCA examen page is from Oct 29th and the anchor text is different. It is possible the page order issue will resolve on it's own during the next crawl.
With respect to your competitor's ranking, your stats are almost identical across the board with respect to PA, DA, mR, mT. Your backlink profile is very unnatural. Your top 40 links all use identical anchor text. That is a strong indicator the links are under your control and not independently offered. Your competitor has a similar issue but not as bad as yours.
Part of the problem is your competitor seems to have 1 strong page which is relevant, where your strength is divided among multiple pages. Because the page is in another language it is difficult for me to fully troubleshoot but that is a concern.
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RE: Site 'filtered' by Google in early July.... and still filtered!
Glad to hear things are progressing, even if it is a bit slow.
Your pages would likely be indexed a bit faster if they were linked from the home page. In a more typical situation, if you added a new location to your site there might be a "New Locations" block on your home page. In this particular situation it is more of a matter of being patient.
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RE: Perplexed?
Hi Max.
I understand your frustration and we have all experienced similar issues at times. A partial explanation would be along the lines of what RDK and Ressler shared with respect to the results being temporary. Google considers "freshness" of content as a ranking factor in their algorithm (QDF). It is not uncommon for you to have a rank in Google knocked down due to a competitor publishing new content on a given topic. Your ranking is normally regained after the QDF boost wears off.
To offer more specific feedback, can you share a couple examples of specific search terms where the other site is beating your client? I watched your video and see you are winning on the domain offpage metrics, but onpage and page specific results are huge and can't be ignored on any level.
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RE: Fixing the Too Many On-Page Links
The link you are sharing does not appear very well at all. I have looked at the site from two different computers using a FF and Chrome browser. The page is not user friendly at all and I suggest you take a closer look at the web design itself.
With that said, generally speaking you want to offer links to your most important pages, and to pages your users will likely want to see. Presenting over 100 links on a page is often not very friendly as there are too many options. It really depends on HOW you present the links. Some sites can offer 200 links on a page and present them in such a manner as to be helpful, but that is not usually the case.
In your case, please take a look at how the site appears in FF and Chrome, fix it, then better feedback can be offered.
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RE: How important are social bookmarking sites
One example of a real estate facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/JamaicaPlain
This page has over 4k followers and when information is shared on their wall, there is a decent amount of activity. This particular site doesn't post much, but it is a quick example I located.
ActiveRain is the social network specific to real estate. Otherwise if you created a twitter account and shared tips, specific listings people were interested in for a given niche, and so forth I can see that twitter account growing into a large following.
There is definitely huge potential not only from a pure SEO standpoint, but from a marketing perspective as well. Just today a friend shared on Facebook he moved into his new house. He shared pictures, talked about the first time buying experience and so forth. He didn't go into details but if he did, he could promote his real estate agent, loan company, title company or any other aspect of what he liked or disliked about the experience.
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RE: How important are social bookmarking sites
How important are social bookmarking sites
Responses to such a general question will likely be highly variable in nature. There are some websites which gain almost no benefit from social sites, meanwhile there are other websites where social sites are a huge direct benefit to the site's success and profitability.
There have been many articles written on this topic. The most important points I would share are:
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It is important for you to control the social site usernames associated with your niche or company. What happens when another person or company begins sending tweets or publishing facebook pages with your company name on it? A lot of confusion may be created in the marketplace. It is very important to at least control the social accounts directly associated with your business.
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Simply owning a social account is not likely to provide much of a benefit to your business. It is possible a few people will learn about your business simply by having the account, but the overall effect will be small.
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If you own and actively use the social accounts related to your business, and you successfully encourage your site's users to engage in activity, the benefits are huge. There are some sites which have built entire stores on Facebook (as an example) where they earn a significant amount of sales directly on facebook. Twitter has been shown to drive a huge amount of traffic to websites. Some studies show social influences are stronger then any other factor, including links.
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RE: Is DMOZ listing important
Is DMOZ listing important"Important" is a highly relative and variable term. A DMOZ listing can be helpful and add to a site's credibility, therefore it is desirable to obtain if you can. The process of applying is relatively simple and should involve under an hour total effort. Sometimes you will apply to a category which has a response editor and you can be accepted quickly. Other times you will apply to a category with a bad editor where you can't get in at all, or the process can take 6+ months. You have absolutely no control over the process. Even if you get in, your link may be on a page which is not crawled because it is buried so deeply.
Summary - if you offer a quality website, I would always apply for a listing in DMOZ. Once you apply, I wouldn't recommend spending more then 5 minutes per month checking on the application status. Just apply and move on.
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RE: When searching for high quality links, in a niche area such as real estate, does page rank factor into a search or is page / domain authority the most important factor?
Phillip's explanation are the thoughts I was trying to express.
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RE: When searching for high quality links, in a niche area such as real estate, does page rank factor into a search or is page / domain authority the most important factor?
When searching for high quality links, in a niche area such as real estate, does page rank factor into a search or is page / domain authority the most important factor?
Any metric is a source of information and can potentially be valuable. It is also possible to manipulate most metrics; therefore, it is often a good idea to compare metrics for alignment. I recall looking at a site last week with a DA of 8x but their PR was 3. Clearly the site boosted their links with a lot of low quality links. OSE recognizes the links but Google clearly devalues most of them.
Whether you label it intuition or your spidey-sense, you should have some relative idea of a site's quality after a brief analysis of the site. Does the site have trust badges? Is the site involved with niche-based authoritative sites? Using the real estate example, is the site part of any official real estate networks such as the National Association of Realtors? A list of many such real estate organizations can be found here: http://www.csus.edu/obe/links/organization.html
Ultimately you should understand Google does not measure or offer any consideration to DA and PA. On the other hand, I personally find those metrics as very valuable tools to help me quickly gain an idea of a site's importance. With that said, you definitely need to gain an idea of whether those metrics have been manipulated.
A final thought. Pretend search engines did not exist. Where would you look to gain links? It's a whole different mindset which should lead you to the high quality links you are seeking.
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RE: Including spatial location in URL structure. Does subfolder number and keyword order actually matter?
Let me start off by sharing the description of the "Minimal Subfolders in the URL" metric from the On Page report:
The quantity of subfolders in a URL appears to correlate to rankings. URLs with fewer trailing slashes perform better than those with more. Additionally, search engine representatives have recommended that excessive, subfolders in a URL string may be a signal that the page is very deep in a site's structure and may be less valuable/worthwhile to crawl, index and rank.
Your On Page report, like many SEO tools, seeks to call your attention to possible issues on your site. There is a correlation to more folders being an increased number of clicks away from the home page. If that is a concern on your site, then the warning is valid. If that is not a concern, you can disregard the warning.
There are other reasons to shorten your URL structure other then rankings. Click Through Rate can be affected by URL appearance. It has been clearly shown users wish to know the URL of the page prior to clicking on the link. Your current URL cannot be seen completely in SERPs. I performed a search in Google.com for the URL path you shared, "/trails/Canada/British-Columbia/Greater-Vancouver-Regional-District/Baden--Powell-Trail/trail/2". Notice the result URL? It is cut off and you never get to see what is presumably the most important part.
Of your ideas, I like your preference the best as a URL structure, /trail/ca-bc-vancouver/Baden-Powell-Trail.
Whatever your decision, there is absolutely no need to stuff every keyword in the URL. mysite.com/baden-powell-trail works just fine. If the extra folders make sense for your users and site, by all means use them. I would advise against adding any keywords to a URL in a pure attempt to influence rankings.
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RE: What do you do to get a few quick lnks
Any and all quality links would be helpful.
Every new site is different. A real estate agent's sites will obtain links from different sources then a site selling vitamins. A car insurance site will receive links from different sources then a fashion site.
Why was the site created? There should be a slow, thoughtful response to that question. The right answer should be you are either filling a need that others are not serving, or you are doing it better / faster / cheaper then others. There are many thousands of websites covering real estate, fashion, vitamins, etc. Whatever your niche, ensure you are not just another site because no one needs site #14212 covering the same topic. Do something great with your site then let the world know about it. You should find people WANT to link to your site. If they don't, you either didn't build your site well, aren't filling a need, aren't providing quality content, or something else is wrong.
directory pages are kinda slow you can wait months for your submission.
I think you are likely referring to low quality, free directories which you are probably better off not submitting your site to. The quality of those links are very low and often pages are not even indexed. If you submitted to a high quality directory and received a listing on an indexed page, it would help.
When launching a site to google.com where can you submit it to get a few quick lnks to be enough for indexing and startup?
Google will naturally visit your site's main domain simply because it was registered. You can submit a sitemap also to help trigger an initial visit. After that, the indexing depends on the depth of the site and it's popularity (i.e. links).
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RE: Page Rank is different from google search
When I use Google.ae the same page appears as the first result for "flora grand". The 3 results above the listing are the paid results and your site appears as the first organic listing on the page.
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RE: Page Rank is different from google search
When I search on Google.com for "flora grand" the first result is: http://www.florahospitality.com/dubai-flora-grand-hotel.aspx
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RE: Prevent mobile site from appearing in the sitelinks of desktop search
Adding the "noindex" meta tag to the page will stop Google and Bing/Yahoo from indexing the page, and it will cause them to remove the page from the index if it has already been added.
It is important you remove the block from the robots.txt file because the search engines wont crawl the page to see the changed meta tag while it is blocked with robots.txt.
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RE: Page Rank is different from google search
Hi Shebin. I am not clear on your exact question.
I use the ranking tools to check each page of our site.
What is the exact name of the ranking tool you are using?
It return page rank 1 in US, UAE, and UK region
In the US, UAE and UK region of what? Of Google? Another search engine or tool?
Toolbar PR is only updated once every 3-4 months and therefore is not helpful for many SEO-related measurements.
when I try to search it in google it doesn't appear.
I searched Google.com for "Flora Grand Hotel Dubai" and your site is the first result. I also tried searching "Flora Grand" and your site is still the first result.