Google will only associated the anchor text to the first link discovered on a given page to a specific URL target. If the first anchor text is "golf" the second anchor text is irrelevant.
Posts made by RyanKent
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RE: Two Links, Same Anchor Text, To Same Page. Is There A Point?
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RE: Rank list of keywords by searches per month
You may wish to consider results by other factors such as difficulty, conversions, page views, etc. as well.
I would recommend the following WBF video: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/keyword-metrics-for-seo-and-driving-actions-from-data-whiteboard-friday
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RE: Duplicate Content
I would recommend writing each page uniquely. There will naturally be some overlap, but try to minimize it.
One idea, ask for someone else to write the article. A receptionist, a doctor's assistant, a groomer, anyone who meets the "intelligent life form" criteria and is familiar with the subject can write an article. You don't need to publish the article, but you can gather a different viewpoint and writing style.
Depending on your category and site layout, you could vary the titles as well. "Senior Wellness", Kitten Health", "Puppy Well-being", "Adult fitness".
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RE: Do sites on the same c-block and same server count as seperate linking root domains when linking to each other?
Hi Atul.
Based on your question I have spent some time trying to locate an official reply from Google on this topic. I was not able to find such a statement. Therefore, I modified my reply from "Google will discount links (from the same C-block)..." to "Google can discount..."
What we know for certain is Google is a very intelligent organization and they have entire teams dedicated to ensuring search quality is maintained. Google specifically wants to ensure links are independent in nature. Links from the same C-block is clearly an indicator the link may have been influenced and is not independent.
I would even go further and share it is common belief amongst SEO professionals that C-blocks affect links. The entire concept of "SEO hosting" is based upon offering hosting with different C blocks.
A great white board friday discussion on this topic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/which-link-metrics-should-i-use-part-1-of-2-whiteboard-friday
Rand shared in the above video "the best single metric, non-aggregated metric, that we've got to predict Google's rankings with correlation data is the number of Linking C-Blocks."
TL;DR - There is strong evidence which indicates C-blocks information is used as a ranking factor, but I was unable to locate any specific statement from Google confirming this information.
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RE: Robots.txt file
A good source to learn about the robots.txt file is here: http://www.robotstxt.org/
The robots.txt file is completely optional. I don't use the file at all on small sites.
The file offers a means to block crawlers which choose to honor the file's instructions from crawling all or part of a site. It also provides the location of a sitemap.
To that end, sitemaps are completely unnecessary for SEO assuming your site has proper navigation. Even if you choose to use a sitemap, you can offer the location via WMT rather then the robots.txt file.
With respect to blocking areas of your site, the primary use would be for CMS, forums, ecommerce or other sites where the software was limited and does not allow the site owner to use noindex on all pages.
As a rule, robots.txt should simply never be used except as a means of last resort. In my experience the file is overused by site owners and SEOs. One exception where I use a robots.txt is during a site's development when I do not wish the site to be crawled at all.
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RE: Duplicate Content Caused By Blog Filters
Your CMS will have a database. All links to your articles will be contained within the database.
The concept would be an additional field would be created in the database to separate out the actual URL from the public URL. The actual URL would be redirected to the public URL.
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RE: Has important is it to set "priority" and "frequency" in sitemaps?
Has important is it to set "priority" and "frequency" in sitemaps?
Google adheres to the protocol published on sitemaps.org. The details on those tags can be found here: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php
In short, the settings are hints, not directives. Google MAY consider or disregard the information. I do not place any importance on this information. A properly developed site does not even require a sitemap submission at all. The primary reason I submit sitemaps is the software which creates the HTML sitemap also generates an XML sitemap and it is a one-time setup to automatically submit the sitemap to Google and Bing. Otherwise, I am not aware of any real benefit of submitting sitemaps for modern SEO.
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RE: Do sites on the same c-block and same server count as seperate linking root domains when linking to each other?
Do sites on the same c-block and same server count as seperate linking root domains when linking to each other?
Google will can discount the links because they are all on the same server and C-block. Google views links as an independent endorsement of the target site. When links are created by sites on the same server, it is deemed likely there is a relationship between the sites which causes the links to not be independent.
Does this just show up as one linking root domain due to all of them being on the same server and the sharing the same c-block?
These would show up as separate linking root domains in the SEOmoz tools. If you are using other tools you would need to ask with the tool's developer to be certain, but all the tools I have worked with would show these as independent domains, which is true regardless of that domain's IP address or server.
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RE: Duplicate Content Caused By Blog Filters
Which CMS are you using?
The preferred choice would be to only offer your blog articles using a single URL. This may be possible naturally through your CMS.
Otherwise you need to 301 redirect all alternate versions of the URL to the primary version.
Most CMS' will offer a means to achieve this effect, often via an extension. I use Joomla as my preferred CMS and AceSEF and SH404SEF are two extensions which offer this functionality and are highly rated.
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RE: Broken Links and Duplicate Content Errors?
Hi Richard.
For the first issue, does your site have over 10k pages? I ask because I believe the crawler has a 10k limit and if you exceed that number any issues on extra pages can be missed.
Otherwise I would recommend inspecting your site in Google WMT. The idea behind any crawl reporting is to locate issues before Google finds them. Since you are just starting here, Google has likely already discovered any issues on your site. I have not found any broken links in WMT which the moz crawler missed so I trust the tool; however, I have not worked with IIS.
For the duplicate page issue, you should ensure only one version of each page is accessible. Determine which URL version is preferred, then either eliminate the other version(s) or 301 redirect them to the primary URL version. In the example you offered, I would suggest http://www.cylc.org/ is the cleaner, preferred version of the URL.
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RE: Which Survey Tools Have You Used? (or know of?)
Used by some large companies and SEOmoz.
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RE: Someone is redirecting their url to mine
I believe the link you wish to share is: http://usablelayout.com/articles/automatically-break-out-iframe.
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RE: Site Hosting Question
Interesting suggestion.
Will the IP proxy offer any benefit other then showing search engines an Australian IP?
What about page load speeds? I have worked with people from Australia previously and there are significant, measurable differences in page load speeds for a local hosted site vs a Euro hosted site for Australia.
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RE: Capital Letters in Title Tag, or not?
I would like to clarify what you mean by capitalizing each key word.
If you mean representing the entire word in capital letters such as MICROSOFT then, no. I believe Google has measures to prevent that action in AdWords. I would not use the method in title tags either.
If you mean MicroSoft or Microsoft where you capitalize the first letter of each word, then yes I would recommend that action for adwords, titles and even tweets. You are properly calling attention to the keyword which can be helpful for users.
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RE: Someone is redirecting their url to mine
I believe Sha's answer drills down to the root issue and addresses the original question best.
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RE: Site Hosting Question
Hi Fraser.
The question of where to host a site really comes down to the location of your target audience.
If this charity was the Red Cross which has offices throughout the world, then you can host the site anywhere and use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve page load speeds throughout the world.
If those who will benefit from and donate to the charity are mostly in Australia, then I would definitely host the site in Australia.
I can't share any personal experience for a host in Australia. I was recently in a similar position where I needed to locate hosting in another country. The steps I used to locate a host were:
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asked my current host whom I was very happy with if they had any offices in the other country, or any recommendation.
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check http://www.webhostingtalk.com/. They are the world's top site for web hosting discussions.
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gather a list of all your requirements. Think of your current host and anything you like or dislike about them. Think of technical requirements for any CMS or shopping cart. Consider how critical managed hosting or fast replies to tickets are for the organization.
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when it comes to pricing, shop around. I found the site which offered everything I wanted and had some extras such as green hosting and a 24/7 phone number for tech support. I then quoted my current pricing which including a sign-up special and the overall price was half of what the new host wanted. They price matched! This may be easier for you since this is a charity.
Good luck.
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RE: What is the average response time for Reconsideration request
Actually I will correct my original response.
On Mar 22, I filed a reconsideration request. The site involved had received a manual penalty from Google which had previously been confirmed by Google in writing.
On April 2nd, I received a response from Google via WMT titled "We've processed your reconsideration request".
The response stated "We've now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it is in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don't find any problems, we'll reconsider our indexing of your site."
Immediately upon receipt of that message, I was able to find the site had been added to Google's index.
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RE: What is the average response time for Reconsideration request
I have only filed one reconsideration request this year. It was a 3 week response time.
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RE: The system shows duplicate content for the same page (main domain and index.html). Is this an error of SEOMOZ?
Aaron, your SEOquake extension is adding data to each of your replies which makes them very difficult to read.
I have viewed your responses in FF and Chrome. Please remove the extra content from the replies.
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RE: SEOmoz LDA tool experience?
We need to recognize the LDA tool is not part of the SEOmoz toolset. It exists in the SEOmoz Labs toolset. The page title clearly indicates it is part of the "SEO Research and Testing" area. The tool even clearly states "The tool is in flux. We say that about all of our tools in labs, but this time we mean it. Please continue to send issues to ben@seomoz.org".
Rand even went further to explain how the tool's lead developer moved on to Google, and further development has been delayed until the end of the year.
Based on this information, your last reply seems rather unfair. Perhaps you might reconsider your position on this topic.
With the above noted, I see the LDA tool as having great potential and hope work continues on it, or another similar tool which offers detailed content analysis.
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RE: What's the best blogging platform?
I have seen this question asked numerous times both on SEOmoz and other sites. The overwhelming consensus is Wordpress is the world's number one blog platform.
WP is the most popular, has the most websites using the software, the most extensions, the most active support forums, etc. WP offers plenty of templates so you have a huge variety of options and they are relatively inexpensive. If you require higher levels of technical support, it is not difficult to find a WP developer.
Can anyone give me some advantages or reasons to move to a different platform?
With the above understood, I investigated about a dozen CMS solutions earlier this year so I could determine which content platform would work best for me. My desire was to learn one platform which could meet all my needs. I desired the best solution irregardless of cost or other factors. I decided to go with Joomla and am happy with my decision.
Joomla is probably the 2nd most popular blog platform. It is also open source (i.e. free) and has many extensions, an active support forums, plenty of templates, etc. The biggest drawback for Joomla is it has a lot higher learning curve for admins and developers then WP. The biggest advantage is it offers a lot more flexibility to do many more things besides blogging.
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RE: How does this domain have a valid pr8?
Google has clearly and explicitly stated numerous times to disregard PR.
The last time toolbar PR update was in June. The site you are referencing is for sale. The site could have been part of a network of linking sites 3 months ago, and since the domain is no longer used and the site is for sale the links could have been removed or altered.
If you are focusing on PR of unused domains, you are thinking about black hat SEO. If you spent your time and energy trying to improve your content, the user experience and to earn backlinks and social mentions, your site will perform better in the long term. Even if you managed to acquire a site with a high PR and 301 the links to your current site, it is entirely possible Google will have wiped all the site's value before you add the 301. Even if you get away with it at first, in all likelihood it will be a very short-term gain.
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RE: Will having image lightbox with content on a web page SEO friendly?
I agree with your assessment James.
Before I accept this information I would like to ask if you are aware of any other similar examples of lightbox use on a page with better stats? The DA of this page is only 31, and PA is 1. I would like to rule out the idea Google may crawl deeper if the page was deemed more important.
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RE: Page title getting cut off in SERPS even though it's under 70 characters?
I am not able to confirm the issue you are describing. I have looked up multiple pages with titles of lengths between 65 - 70 characters and they appear completely in SERPs. I suspect the issue you are reporting is specific to a particular character in your URL. I understand you shared there are not any special characters, but there must be something unique about your URLs which cause this problem. Google fully supports longer titles then you are able to achieve.
Perhaps a compromise. Can you share the URL and search term used on one of these other pages which are being cut off under 60 characters?
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RE: Page title getting cut off in SERPS even though it's under 70 characters?
As I shared above, it entirely depends on the title.
Without looking at the actual information involved it's kind of like describing a list of symptoms to a doctor. "I have a headache" could be nothing, could be a brain tumor. We need to see the "patient" i.e. the web page and keyword, in order to properly diagnose the issue. Otherwise we are guessing blindly.
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RE: Page title getting cut off in SERPS even though it's under 70 characters?
I don't wish to side track this thread but I have worked with Zoo and to the best of my knowledge you can change the titles just fine.
Zoo > Blog > Items > Name is the article title
On the right side Config > Page Title is the field to control page title
If you have an example of what you feel can't be done, feel free to e-mail me: Ryan@Vitopian.com and I can take a better look.
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RE: Page title getting cut off in SERPS even though it's under 70 characters?
If you can offer an exact keyword search and URL, we can probably offer a conclusive diagnosis.
A possibility is one or more of the characters is being converted to a character which cannot be displayed properly. This type of conversion requires multiple characters to represent the single character (i.e. replacing with %E1 so it takes 3 character spaces rather then 1).
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RE: Where can I post jobs at?
SEO jobs can be posted in the marketplace.
I would add your offer seems to be for a computer programmer (CS degree required and 5+ years of very specific knowledge required), not a SEO job.
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RE: Too many on page links
Tried to set up my campaign to look at the root domain, but it said that my website is set up as a subdomain automatically converted this step of the process to "subdomain".
I believe this would be due to either the root domain being redirected to the subdomain, or there not being any content on the root domain address. If another mozzer does not offer a definitive answer, try contacting the SEOmoz help desk for more information.
When you say "choose" one version of my site, do you mean as far as what SEOMoz crawls? Or are you suggesting I make a change to the site itself?
The site itself. You have one website and it's content should only be available via 1 address. Think of it this way. You can create a website at the address "mysite.com". Next, you create another site at the URL "www.mysite.com" which is an exact duplicate of the "mysite.com" site. This is exactly what you have done. You can even repeat the process further and create subdomains such as "www1.mysite.com". Each subdomain is a duplicate of the main domain and causes confusion for users and search engines alike. Resolve this confusion. Choose ONE way to present your site and remain consistent.
The blog is, I believe, set up as a subdomain (with www.blogs.aerohive.com) and it is hosted by a third-party.
The URL "blogs.aerohive.com" is indeed hosted elsewhere, but the URL "www.blogs.aerohive.com" is hosted at the same location as your main site. It is a mirror of your main site. Remove this subdomain.
I am trying to understand what was set up correctly or incorrectly within SEOMoz and what can fix and what I can fix with my website
Presently there are two major issues which need to be resolved. Both issues are with your website itself, not the SEOmoz tools. If you have managed hosting, the easiest step is to call or open a ticket with your hosting provider and make two requests:
1. Add a 301 to redirect all non-www traffic to it's www equivalent
2. Delete the www.blogs.aerohive.com subdomain
You should be able to copy and paste the above two requests and paste it into a ticket. Your hosting provider should completely understand what actions are necessary.
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RE: What is wrong with this site
Hi Atul.
Shelly offers a great response and gets a thumbs up from me. A few points of feedback to add in addition:
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the site is currently duplicated. It is available in both the www and non-www URL format. This major issue needs to be addressed
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The site is social with facebook. Add google+ and twitter as well.
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Social sharing can be added to each and every "product" which in this case is the papers.
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For the home page, I dislike seeing index.php. It is not helpful to users nor search engines. Which URL looks nicer to you? http://allkindofessays.com/index.php or http://allkindofessays.com/
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The GoDaddy SSL certificate is fine, but the "SSL Certificates" text underneath it is totally unnecessary and I would remove it.
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On your home page the sidebar has "Subjects" and the exact same links and subjects are shared in the main page area. I would suggest one or the other but not both.
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Shelly mentions a XML sitemap but I would recommend an HTML sitemap for users, not XML. The XML sitemap is great for search engines, not users.
Good luck.
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RE: Inter-link Optimization for Pages
Hi Matthew.
I think you have the right idea and thought process. Interlinking pages is very user friendly and a solid SEO strategy. Links in content offer more value then links in navigation or footers both to users and SEO. This strategy also provides link to many pages in your site which otherwise are not part of your navigation.
The greatest part is the links are offered based on popularity. Links in navigation and footers are always there. Even if not a single visitor comes to your site, those links are always there on every page. Proper internal linking as used on wikipedia only appears when a topic is discussed. The more it is discussed, the more links and vice versa. This strategy allows much better management of your site's precious link juice.
Does it all depends on Page Authority?
How frequently and deeply your site is crawled always depends upon your PA/DA. With that said, your links in content will be given the highest priority and that's another great part of proper internal linking. As long as you keep things helpful to users and reasonable, I would not have any concerns. Review your navigation/sidebar/footer links to ensure they are all necessary. If so, I would continue with your plan. I hate to throw out a number because there are many factors to consider, but I would not recommend going too much about 140 links unless your PA/DA was strong.
Can i go inter-link crazy on 1 year old legitimate site?
Site age is not a factor. 1 day or 15 years old you would use the same linking strategies. I hate to endorse anything with the term "crazy" in it. I would say you can use interlinking in a similar manner to wikipedia. If that's what you call crazy, so be it.
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RE: The system shows duplicate content for the same page (main domain and index.html). Is this an error of SEOMOZ?
If you are seeing this error, the most likely cause is your site isn't redirecting the index.html page to the / page. If you have a site which offers two URLs which provide the same content, it will be considered duplicate content by search engines. The best approach is to properly redirect to the preferred URL.
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RE: How long after a URL starts showing a 404 does Google stop crawling?
Google's crawlers follow links. As long as links exist, those links will be crawled, even if the link generates a 404 error. They could choose to follow known 404 links less frequently, but they will still make attempts to follow the link.
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RE: Too many on page links
It seems a subdomain was created for your site and errors were made in the process.
If your main URL is www.areohive.com and you decide to offer a blog as a subdomain, the recommended name would be blog.aerohive.com. Your main site is located on the "www" subdomain and the blog would be offered on the "blog" subdomain. It is unnecessary and a bit confusing to keep the www prefix with another subdomain as happened with http://www.blogs.aerohive.com/.
Your subdomain is currently set up as a mirror of content for your main site. Both URLs you shared are valid URLs with identical pages displayed and a header code of 200 is returned. This duplication should be resolved immediately.
Upon further checking, I just realized your site is set up with a blogs.aerohive.com subdomain, and it does show unique content. Therefore the necessary step is to remove the www.blogs.aerohive.com subdomain.
Another major SEO issue involving duplication is your site is also available in both the www and non-www form of the URL. http://aerohive.com and http://www.aerohive.com are both valid URLs which display content and 200 header response codes. This issue should also be fixed immediately. Your site has backlinks to both versions of the URL.
Choose one version of your URL, the www or non-www version, then be consistent. 301 redirect the unused version of the URL to the main URL. This step will consolidate your backlinks and improve your ranking. Next, review your entire site to ensure all links consistently use the chosen URL format. Also check your social sites and signatures to ensure they are updated as well.
Once the above major issues are resolved, we can then loop back to the linking issue. Relatively speaking, it is a much less important issue.
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RE: Too Many On-Page Links
I would recommend not removing any link which is useful to users. Don't remove a link in an effort to satisfy a SEO tool's warnings. The tool simply determines "too many links" as any page with over 100 links. It is possible to have a very successful page with 200+ links. There are many factors involved including the page's DA/PA and the useability of the links.
In summary, review your links and remove any links which are not helpful to users or otherwise are unnecessary. If you go over 100 links and get the warning, disregard it. You have investigated the issue and taken the appropriate action.
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RE: Too many on page links
If you can offer a link to the page, we can be a lot more helpful.
Based on what you shared all I can offer is the software looks at the <a>tags on the page to locate links, and apparently 140 were located. Links include all the links on the page include the site's navigation links, footer links, sidebar links, image links, social sharing links, etc.</a>
<a>You may also use the "Highlight Links or Text" icon located on the MOZbar to locate various links on a given page.</a>
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RE: Too Many On-Page Links
Hi Don.
Think of your link juice as plumbing for your house. Your site has x-amount of water pressure coming in to your home. The links are pipes you create which allow the water (link juice) to flow throughout your site.
Each time you add a new link, the water has to come from somewhere. A tiny bit of water is taken from all the other links on your site so it can flow to the new link. One part of SEO is to ensure all pages on your site are linked so you don't have any island pages. Another important part of SEO is link optimization.
When you provide 50 sidebar links a relatively equal amount of juice flows to each of them.The question you need to answer is, are all those links worthy of an equal amount of attention? Ideally you should maximize the number of links to pages which are highly relevant to users such as "related articles" or "most popular". You can also increase links to your best selling products or services.
Perform some analysis to determine which links are not helpful. As an example, if you offer links to archived articles from 2010 which are hardly used, consider removing those links.
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RE: OSE High Domain Link Total
Why does OSE report such a high domain link total in the SERP overlay underneath each result?
The tool is including all of your internal links which is skewing the numbers. I haven't looked at the total # of links information is quite some time. I filter it out in the way you might filter out noise in a loud room so you can listen to the person to which you are speaking. Perhaps others can comment as to whether or not they find any value to the total # of links offered by the search extension.
If you look in OSE at "The Garder Advantage" category page you will notice about 20 links. Then check each of the 4 sub-categories from that menu item and each of them have about 20 links. You add them up and it's 100 links right there. If you include all of the internal links for the site and combine that figure with the external links, you should arrive at the 610 figure.
My suggestion is to focus on RDs (linking root domains).
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RE: OSE High Domain Link Total
Can you share the URL involved? Or another URL with a similar issue?
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RE: Anyone heard of...
I think Stephen was referring to the part about the "SEO Godfather".
I have never heard of the company and the site doesn't impress me, but I prefer to set that aside and focus more on exactly what actions they would perform.
My suggestion would be to as for 1 client reference. Look at the client's site and do your own SEO analysis based on your knowledge and experience. One of their services is to write blog articles. Perhaps ask to see a blog article they wrote. Examine the article's content, links and social sharing.
Keep in mind when you hire someone to do SEO work on your behalf, it often comes down to one person who either performs the work, or coordinates the work being done on your behalf. Prior to entering any agreement or paying for services, speak to that individual and ensure your needs are being met.
I recall you have had challenges with Google Places. Ensure the person you speak with addresses your concerns. You are clearly an intelligent and capable person who has tried to perform SEO and have encountered some challenges you wish to overcome. Be sure to mention those specifics as that is what is driving you to seek SEO assistance.
A few things that cause me to not care for this site:
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the copyright on their home page is from 2009. Too picky? Probably.
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http://www.tawfi.com/2011_01_01_archive.html scroll down to the article titled "SEO Packages for your Website". It is horrible content writing, and a low quality link. Perhaps this article was created without the company's knowledge, but I would guess it was created by the company.
If you desire to go with this company, take a look at another site which is clearly the same company but offers different pricing packages: http://www.seogodfather.com/seo-packages.php
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RE: Page and Domain Authority and other bits
I always though guest replies would be ignored by Google, is this the case?
Guest replies are definitely not ignored by Google. Sometimes you can perform a search for a term and the result will lead you to an article where the search term is only located in the user generated comment section of the page.
Our competitor sells clothing but has a reply on a CSS site? Would this be worth doing like this or is it a waste of time?
I would suggest working to obtain as broad of a link profile as possible. I like being linked to from credible off-topic sites such as a CSS or graphic design sites for two reasons. First, if it is a follow'd link it offers at least some value and serves to broaden the site's link profile. Additionally if my client's site looks so good it is being mentioned on web design sites, I know the overall design is good. Of course there is the corner case where you are being called out for bad design, but I'll let that topic go
In short, receiving mentions or links from design and other off topic sites is nice, but should not be a focus for your link building efforts unless your site is related to those topics.
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RE: Page and Domain Authority and other bits
What other methods do you suggest?
A couple suggestions:
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publish the content on your site then promote it. You can use social media, commenting on active blogs, forums and other means to promote your content. You would then get full credit for the article and build your own site's user base.
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publish the content on sites which accept articles without charge.
You also need to understand how easy it is for those sites to completely manipulate their stats. Traffic stats are very easy to manipulate, as are DA and PA. You need to evaluate the site's real value yourself.
I looked at the first site http://urban-gear.com and I would definitely devalue that site (i.e. consider it's true DA as lower) based on it's link profile. When using OSE to view a site's link profile I recommend using the following four filters: Followed + 301, only external, pages on this subdomain, group by domain. Using those settings I see the following:
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The site's strongest link is from weiderprohomegym.info, but that link is actually gone as the site's domain registration expired.
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The second link is from feeds.feedburner.com/nerdlike and appears to have been deleted as well. I cannot locate the link.
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The third link is nofollow'd but the fourth link is real and I can verify it. The PA is 48 on the page, which is a big drop down from the 67 PA of the first site.
When you remove a site's top links, if the site does not have a very deep profile there can be a big drop in measurements such as DA/PA. Unless this site has earned new, strong links it's rankings will drop noticeably.
I looked further and cannot find support for the quality of the other inbound links. The 4th/5th/6th linked sites offer social media and user comments but NONE of those articles have even a single user comment. Two of the articles have ONE tweet (which may have been by the author) and no other social signals. Not a single Like or +1.
I can't dedicate the time to investigate the other sites, but I found exactly what I expected. The first site's visible link profile is very weak and does not even support it's low DA.
With respect to the USA links, if you have a UK site targeted to UK readers then the US links will be foreign and not offer the same value as links from the UK. If your site is e-commerce and you do not offer prices in USD then the link value will not be the same as other UK links.
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RE: Blog On Domain Or Off?
My feelings on the topic are mostly black and white. If your blog is on topic for your website, it should be on the site. If your blog covers other topics not related to your site, it should be on a separate domain.
Locating the blog on your main site offers the potential benefits of higher DA for both your blog and main site.
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RE: Page and Domain Authority and other bits
Now my problem is, how do I know if its a good site to not only list an article on, but to pay for it as well.
Without looking at the site I can tell they are NOT good sites on which to list an article. Why? Because good sites don't charge you for permission to publish your content.
There can be exceptions such as a PR site who charge to distribute your article to particular news fronts. Otherwise you simply should never pay to publish content in this manner. It is black hat SEO and Google may already be aware of the site. If Google is aware, they will devalue the links so even if you see PA 10 & DA 10, you are actually getting 0 from the site. If they are not presently aware the site is selling links, they can become aware of the issue at any time in which case you will pay for the links now and later the links will be devalued and you will wonder why your rankings have dropped. When you have 1000 links you wont be able to tell which links have been devalued with a reasonable amount of effort.
Even if you were going to actually pay for a link, the DA of that site is way too low for consideration in my opinion. Try other methods to get your content noticed.