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Hi, Jeff,

Thanks for the response.

It's tough because the client is a little impatient....like a lot of clients that wan't to "get things moving" which is why I was thinking to start the content creation and outreach even though the current spam links have not been deleted/disavowed. However I see how this might not be the best option...

It would be really useful to know if the search engines still value authority links pointing to a site that has been penalised the same way as they value authority links to  a site that hasnt been penalised..

Look forward to your reply,

Hi guys,

I am currently conducting some SEO work for a client. Their previous SEO company had built a lot of low quality/spam links to their site and as a result their rankings and traffic have dropped dramatically.

I have analysed their current link profile, and have submitted the spammiest domains to Google via the Disavow tool.

The question I had was..

Do I wait until Google removes the spam links that I have submitted, and then start the new content based SEO campaign. Or would it be okay to start the content based SEO campaign now, even though the current spam links havent been removed yet..

Look forward to your replies on this...

Hi,

I wanted to pose a question

How soon do guys think itll be before author rank becomes a one of Googles major ranking factors?

From what I can see the way they have designed it signals that it is only matter of time, before they start using it as a major ranking factor...

And I have a question on Author ranks impact on the ability to sell a blog/site in the future. Surely if the blog is tied to an author(s) and the ranking of the site in the search engine is somewhat based on this authors author rank who is a part of the site/blog, then it becomes harder to sell the property if the author is not going to be a part of the property after the sale?.

I look forward to your responses on this,

Okay thank you.

I final question, in context of an example.

So based on the above, I would assume that, say someone was seeking a relevant guest post opportunity for a high quality piece of content that they had written. Whereas in the past they may have looked at a domains/sites PageRank to determine the authority/strength of a site/page when deciding which sites to reach out with the content piece, would now looking at the DA and PA of the domain/page respectively, be equally effective in determining the quality of a site, to ascertain whether it is worth reaching out to...?

Thanks.

Hi thanks for your response,

But what I was getting at was, did DA and PA scores take publicly available Page Rank information into account when compiling the scores?

Because if they did, surely the scores will have changed/possibly becoming less accurate as Google has now made PageRank data private, so that is one less factor that Moz can include in their scores for DA and PA?

Hi,

How much more important do you guys think that Moz's Page Authority and Domain Authority metrics are going to become now that Google has stopped giving people public access to a site or pages Page Rank?

And how accurate is PA and DA as a measurement in comparison to Page Rank..so for example if I was seeking a guestposting opportunity and saw a site as having a PR of 4....if I now looked to Moz's Page and Domain Authority metrics instead...would that still give me equivalent information on the strength of that domain and thus make a judgement on whether it will be a worthy site for a guestpost..

I guess what I am asking is, how close is now looking at Moz's metrics (ie. a third party company) to the info on PageRank that was being updated by Google themselves?

Also will the lack of updated public PR info from Google effect the ability for Moz to calculate PA and DA??

Look forward to your replies on this,

Hi,

I have a question regarding the power of internal links and how much link juice they pass, and how they influence search engine ranking positions.

If we take the example of an ecommerce store that sells kites.

Scenario 1

It can be assumed that it is easier for the kite ecommerce store to earn links to its homepage from writing great content on its blog, as any blogger that will link to the content will likely use the site name, and homepage as anchor text.

So if we follow this through, then it can be assumed that there will eventually be a large number of high quality backlinks pointing to the sites homepage from various high authority blogs that love the content being posted on the sites blog.

The question is how much link juice does this homepage pass to the category pages, and from the category pages then to the product pages, and what influence does this have on rankings?

I ask because I have seen strong ecommerce sites with very strong DA or domain PR but with no backlinks to the product page/category page that are being ranked in the top 10 of search results often, for the respective category and product pages.

It therefore leads me to assume that internal links must have a strong determiner on search rankings...

Could it therefore also be assumed that a site with a PR of 5 and no links to a specific product page, would rank higher than a site with a PR of 1 but with 100 links pointing to the specific product page? Assuming they were both trying to rank for the same product keyword, and all other factors were equal. Ie. neither of them built spammy links or over optimised anchor text?

Scenario 2

Does internal linking work both ways?

Whereas in my above example I spoke about the homepage carrying link juice downward to the inner category and product pages. Can a powerful inner page carry link juice upward to category pages and then the homepage.

For example, say the blogger who liked the kite stores blog content piece linked directly to the blog content piece from his site and the kite store blog content piece was hosted on www.xxxxxxx.com/blog/blogcontentpiece

As authority links are being built to this blog content piece page from other bloggers linking to it, will it then pass link juice up to the main blog category page, and then the kite sites main homepage?

And if there is a link with relevant anchor text as part of the blog content piece will this cause the link juice flowing upwards to be stronger?

I know the above is quite winded, but I couldn't find anywhere that explains the power of internal linking on SERP's...

Look forward to your replies on this....

You raise some very strong points there.

I especially liked the point on if the eCommerce site is in a niche area that not that much can be written about, then it should be easier to dominate that niche by producing all that content the niche requires.

I guess Google has finally caught up with the manual link tactics many eCommerce sites have been deploying for a long time. And by manual link tactics, I mean them actively going out there and building links on free properties (web 2.0 profiles ect) and so on.

And I agree with you on the fact that content has become the cost of doing business.

A final point one your last comment above, I feel the reason why many eCommerce sites feel they have no real other choice other than PPC, is due to the fact that although PPC costs, it provides them with the predictable traffic they need and is more metrics driven  - which I suppose appeals to eCommerce site owners whos primary goal is conversions, whereas producing content plays on the need to be more creative and strategic, so may not appeal to many of them quite so much.

But you also addressed this issue , by saying that they could very much hire the best bloggers they can, assuming they are an eCommerce site with the financial resources to do so. For the eCommerce sites that do not have the financial resources to have link worthy content produced, to them the companies/individuals that are offering hands off manual automatic link building campaigns, are still very attractive.

Hi everyone,

This is my first post here, and absolutely loving the site and the services.

Just a quick background, I have dabbled in SEO in the past, and have been reading up over the last few months and am amazed at the speed at which things are changing. I currently have a few clients that I am doing some SEO work for 2 of them, and have had an ecommerce site enquire about SEO services. They are a medium sized oak furniture ecommerce site.

From all the major changes..the devaluing of spam links, link networks, penalization of overuse of exact match anchor text and the overall encouraging of earned links (often via content marketing) over built links, adding to this the (not provided) section in Google Analytics, and the increasing screen real estate that PPC is getting over organic search...all points to me thinking on major thing.....

That the search engine is trying to push eCommerce sites and sites that sell stuff harder toward using PPC and paid advertising and allowing the blogs/forums and informational sites to more easily reclaim the organic part of the search results again.

The above is elaborated on a bit more below..

POINT 1

Firstly as built links (article submission, press releases, info graphic submission, web 2.0 link building ect) rapidly lose their effectiveness, and as Google starts to place more emphasis on sites earning links instead - by producing amazing interesting and unique content that people want to link to. The fact remains that surely Google is aware that it is much harder for eCommerce sites to produce a constant stream of interesting link worthy content around their niche (especially if its a niche that not an awful lot could be written about).

Although earning links is not impossible for eCommerce sites, for a lot of them it is more difficult because creating link worthy content is not what eCommerce sites were originally intended for. Whereas standard blogs and forums were built for that exact purpose. Therefore the search engines must know that it is a lot easier for normal blogs/forums to "earn" links through content, therefore leading to them reclaiming more of the organic search ranking for transaction and non transaction terms, and therefore forcing the eCommerce sites to adopt PPC more heavily.

POINT 2

If we add to the mix the fact that for the terms most relevant to eCommerce sites, the search engine results page has a larger allocation of PPC ads than organic results (above the fold), and that Google has limited the amount of data that sites can see in terms of which keywords people are using to arrive on their sites, which effects eCommerce sites more - as it makes it harder for them to see which keywords are resulting in sales. Then this provides further evidence that Google is trying to back eCommerce sites into a corner by making it more difficult for them to make sense of and track sales from organic results in comparison to with PPC, where data is still plentiful.

Conclusion

Are the above just over exaggerations?

Can most eCommerce sites still keep achieving a good percentage of sales from organic search despite the above?

if so, what do the more niche eCommerce sites do to "earn" links when content topics are thin and unique outreach destinations can be exhausted quickly.

Do they accept the fact that the are in the business of selling things, so should be paying for their traffic as opposed to normal blogs/forums which are not. Or is there still a place for them to get even more creative with content and acquire earned links..?

And finally, is the concentration on earned links more overplayed than it actually is?

Id really appreciate your thoughts on this..