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Martijn,

I shouldn't have called it a "secret weapon" because an ads.txt file is public.

My question is really that given that Google looks at everything, it would be surprising if the search algos didn't check to see if there's an ads.txt file on the site, and give that some weight.

Anyone else looked at this or tested it?

I know that the ads.txt system is designed to prevent ad fraud and technically has nothing to do with search.

That said, the presence of such a file would seem to be an indicator of overall site quality because it would show that a site owner wants to participate in a fraud-free system.

Has anyone ever tested that? If so, they don't seem to have published their results. Maybe it's a secret weapon that some pros are using and not sharing?

It could potentially be a problem if the newsletter has a link that is something like "view this email as a web page" and that link is searchable.

My suggestion is that you post the content on your blog first, and then create a link to it in the email so that it's clear that this is an email version of something that appeared originally on your blog. Then there's a chance that MailChimp link will be seen as a duplicate of your blog, but that's much better than your blog being seen as a duplicate of something else.

I wonder if that's it.

I forgot about that text, wrote it like two years ago. I'll scour through the site, see if I find any others like that.

I still wonder how this got on Google's radar. I just did a search for the offending phrase there "SEO improves" and I see a bunch of advertisers who are violating this rule on their home pages AND in the ad itself.

That is, how is it that I'm in trouble for two words on an inside page and another guy can advertise: "Guaranteed Page One SEO‎" and get the second ad spot?

See images below. And thanks in advance for any insights.

OK, here are two images. One is just the notice that's at the top of my adwords screen when I'm logged in. The second is the note I got from Google after I requested an appeal.

It's really mysterious. The part about SEO is the most specific they've gotten with us, and it still doesn't really make sense.

Any ideas are most welcome! I don't belong to any PPC forums because it's such a small part of our overall efforts, so I'd much rather get an answer here.

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OK, since you are the second person to ask, I will get some screen shots and post them here.

I guess that's kind of my question, but it's more like, "Why is it that we got singled out for doing something that lots of great and reputable companies -- such as Moz -- do every day?"

And thanks for looking at our site. I think the only place we mention SEO is in the video, so maybe that's what we need to change, but we make a claim that is much much milder than any of the SEO software providers or consultants.

I know! Something doesn't add up!

Yes, I'm 100 percent sure it's legit stuff from Google.

I think they reply to all requests for appeal, no matter the amount. I do think Google does not consider dollar amounts when deciding to suspend, and just goes off the rules.

And I understand that they don't want people gaming the system so they can't give advice that's too specific.

But I still just don't understand what's going on here.

The ads were pretty generic. Our most used was: "Customized, weekly blog posts to help you connect with customers."

The violation was for our landing page, which is the same as our home page: https://www.blogmutt.com. There's nothing there about SEO. The video does say that blogging can help you get found by people searching on Google, but that's way less of a claim than Moz or any of the other content providers.

So, that's why I wonder why we got flagged. We've had to kick out some writers because they were rotten writers, and I wonder if one of them was so mad that he reported our ads to Google and that's why we got suspended. We'll probably never know that, but that's about the only theory I can come up with.

That line is the only useful part of that email. The rest is just account details.

It is directly from Google as a response to our request for an appeal of our suspension.

And we do our own, we don't use an agency or third-party for our adwords.

It seems like Yoast won't find keywords when they are links, too. Go figure.

Anyway, use Yoast, but don't rely on it. If you know it's there and looks good for the reader, then that's all you need to worry about.

Don't worry about the links, especially at the start. Just keep blogging. Over time you'll get to where you figure out what resonates with readers and drives engagement.

You can use one log-in for multiple WP dashboards, but running two blogs out of one dashboard... Dicey. Even if you can find a plugin to do it just seems like you are setting yourself up for trouble.

And as for running the copy in both places, that seems dicey, too. You can do it with rel=canonical, but then how much is it really going to help. Personally I'd just do the blog in one place and then do a small summary of it on the second blog and link over to it so readers can follow that if they are interested.

First let me say that we don't care that much about Adwords. We were spending about 20 bucks a month and we never optimized it, tinkered with it, or cared that much. Business is booming for us just with organic search and referrals from happy customers. (We're a blog writing service called BlogMutt. Motto: We work like a dog to fill up your blog.)

But we just got suspended from Adwords. After multiple inquiries and multiple unhelpful responses, we got a note that said: "Please note that your website contains matter which states your site's SEO increases. Anything which relates to SEO is not allowed as per Google Policies. Please make appropriate changes to your website."

Now, we don't say your site's SEO increases with BlogMutt. What we do say is what everyone says, that blogging is a best practice for any modern marketing effort. We certainly are less clear about improving search rankings than, for example, moz.com. Why is it OK for Moz, but not for us?

Don't get me wrong. I think Moz should be able to continue advertising. I'm just wondering how we got into the Adwords crosshairs.

Any thoughts?

For strategic reasons, Boston would be better.

I like your idea, though.

Good point, but I'd check references, etc.

Hmmm. Tough one.

That's an interesting idea.

I could just go on craigslist or someplace and say, "I was going to pay $500 to newswire or someone to distribute my press release, but I'd rather pay a person. Send me a proposal about how you'd send out this press release (I'll send you the early version) and the best proposal will get that $500, and the prospect of more work in the future."

Not sure where I could post that, but maybe it's worth doing.

Thanks!

Hey, I'm not doing this for a quick-and-dirty way to boost SEO. I'm doing this because I really think it's news and I want the world to know.

If that's the case, does PR Newswire or one of the others help?

That's a really good point about the news value of the release.

I think this news is big, but I've had trouble getting reporters to write about us. The reason for that is that we are a blog writing service. We pay writers to essentially ghost write posts for our business clients.

The reporters, already feeling besieged, think that we are somehow degrading the world of writing, so they don't like to cover us.

Our news release addresses the question of the treatment of our writers, so that's why I'm hopeful we'll get some traction with this news release.

There are some entry level plans that you can do for a few hundred dollars, and there are some new players, too. PressKing seems interesting. They say they send stuff to 20,000 publications, who knows how true that is.

We've never sent out a press release before using one of the services, and thought it might finally be time. Then I saw that Google seems to be calling services like PR Newswire out.

"Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites."

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

So, is it worth it to spend a few hundred bucks to distribute a press release, or am I better off just publishing it on my blog for my blog writing service and promoting it all the regular ways?

That link goes to a godaddy holding page...

I did go and search "is " and google suggested "Is Daniel Tosh gay?" I've never heard of Mr. Tosh, but there you have it.

So I went through the alphabet, it's actually pretty funny:

"Is Anderson Cooper gay?"

"Is Brenda Song pregnant" (I've never heard of her, either.)

"Is croup contagious?"

Then the one about Mr. Tosh, and after that "Is Darrenn Criss gay?" (I don't know him, either. Jeesh, I must be old.)

And on it goes with lots of questions about people being gay or pregnant. O was my favortie, "Is oatmeal gluten free?"

Is it possible for that to actually work? I really doubt it.

It seems like Google would figure it out after a while that only people in India are behaving that way, and given that Google localizes results it would only help in India.

Also, how can you be sure that the MTurk people are actually doing what you ask? They aren't providing you a product, they are just searching in some specific way. Every time I've used MTurk I've gotten work product that shows the minimum possible amount of work. If I used them for something that I don't get back I wouldn't have any trust that they are actually doing it.

I just don't want to annoy the writer, and it looks like it's a sitewide policy. They don't link to anyone in the body of their stories that also appear in the paper.

On their blogs they have outbound links, so for SEO reasons it's clearly much better to be covered by a blog that's part of WSJ and not by the paper, even though the paper is the most widely circulated in the world.

D'oh! That's brilliant, and now I'm kicking myself that I didn't do that.

The editors there may not have gone for that because they can see that our name is Blogmutt everywhere else, but it would have been worth a try.

I'll try that for sure next time.

I don't disagree with any of the other answers, but I have to say the target should always be 250 words. Any less than that, and basically you don't have enough to say to warrant a post.

What I've found is that if I'm struggling to get up to 250, it means I need to think about it more and then when I come back to it I blow past 250 easily.

We had this great, great thing happen which is that the Wall St. Journal quoted me in a story about contract workers. The story (here, and my blog about it here) was awesome, but it had absolutely no link. It got the name of my company right, but the only link comes in a comment that I wrote, and that is on a separate comment page that has not shown up in my Open Site Explorer, or any other tool that I can see for inbound links.

Is there anyway to help Google to understand that the Blogmutt that the WSJ wrote about is the same as the Blogmutt.com on the internet?

I don't imagine there is, but I'd be interested if anyone has any ideas.

Thanks in advance,

(First time posting here)

-Scott