The same is happening to a couple of our clients in their crawl errors. I think it must just be a bit of a bug... only happening with clients that use CMS though, not plain old HTML sites.
Posts made by SteveOllington
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RE: Meta description tag missing in crawl diagnostics
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RE: Targeting specific Geographic areas. Use 1 large.Com or several smaller country specific TLDs?
For me, one large .com everytime... hands down!
The benefits of the combined link juice, and authority, etc,... gained will far outweigh geo tld benefits.
Plus more usage data
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RE: Building a link building team
Sorry, reading it back it looks like I was a bit blunt when stating the issues. One thing I will say, judging by the number of other links on the blog they must have some pretty convincing sales people lol. But yeah honestly there's a tonne of other places out there that will get you some great links. I don't know how much it works out that you're paying them monthly, but there's some great SEO companies you could probably hire for a similar amount (maybe less?) who would do a good job with your link building. Half of the people on these boards probably run them lol. Check out the SEOmoz market place and get a few quotes... and don't forget, Distilled have just opened up a branch in the USA, and they're endorsed by SEOmoz so you can't go wrong there!
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RE: Building a link building team
Okay, based on that blog... before I say this, please get the opinions of others too as I'm aware I'm starting to sound too negative here... you're being taken for a bit of a ride.
That blog is spammy, irrelevant, full of links to random sites, contains dire content (probably dupe but haven't checked), looks like a domain purchased for it's old page rank as it doesn't fit the content, etc... etc...
That is far, far from a quality link and isn't worth 5 cents let alone $50.
Run a mile!! If that's what they've been doing, you could have achieved the same results for $50 one-off.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news
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RE: Building a link building team
Hmm, iffy. I think you're probably doing the right thing looking elsewhere (in my opinion). If you have low traffic (not saying you have) then a 50% increase isn't a lot, plus, how much of an increase in conversions are you getting would be the more important question.
All I mean is, if you're in a field that's not competitive, you started off low with no rankings, and they got you a few low value links which bumped you up to having a couple of okay ranks, which are driving some "not-so qualified" traffic, then that's not worth $50 per link. You could have done that yourself pretty easily, or employed someone at $10 per link.
But...
If you've got some good rankings out of it which are driving good, targeted traffic due to those links then great
Edit Also, how many other links are there on these blogs going to other sites, are the blogs spammy? Care to share one?
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RE: Why Do People Send In Fake Form Submissions?
Sorry, that's what I mean. Captcha programs are ineffective much of the time against Xrumer. For other software there's services such as decaptcha, beatcaptcha, etc.. some services read the screen and take their best guess, some use actual people in what I can only imagine are sweatshops to enter captchas manually for you, but Xrumer doesn't need that stuff. It's smart, it learns... and many who use it combine it's knowledge with files so that it learns even more.
That's what I mean, the only way to stay ahead of it is your own personalized captchas (ones that alternate).
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RE: Why Do People Send In Fake Form Submissions?
I would place my money on Xrumer and other such software... we get it loads too.
Some might even be hack attempts with SQL injection but probably not too often.
Xrumer is pretty good at beating captcha's (I've heard lol ;p), so you'll need to define your own actual questions if you want to stop it... i.e. "What colour the sky?" is one, but it's learnt that and others like it, so you need more personalized ones. The best are "What is the first word on the homepage of this site?" as of course it can't guess that, and it can't follow the instructions to go find out
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RE: Building a link building team
I hope they're good links then. $50 is cheap for a great link, expensive for a worthless one... do they not provide anything so you can see the value of the links?
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RE: How to resolve Duplicate Page Content issue for root domain & index.html?
I'd check it with some other software too... i.e. Raven Tools free trial or something, that will tell you if there's canonicalization problems... of course I'm not advocating Raven Tools over SEOmoz tools (I'm a member here and not there for good reasons), I just think best to try a few different tests before deciding if it's a problem. There might just be an issue with the SEOmoz campaign tool for the moment, which I'm sure they'll fix as soon as they realise.
Hey, aren't you the tutor I had in my SEC usability course?
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RE: Drop in non-branded organic search April 1
I can't explain the reason for the drop, but if you want to get it back up you need to get some more links for the individual pages. You've got some great links into the domain, plenty of domain trust and authority, but the pages themselves such as /teach don't fair so well. This means they'll get passed link juice internally but they certainly do do with more external links coming in, and with keyworded anchor text at that (though don't over-do it and make it look unnatural):
Currently, for that page you have: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ciee.org%252Fteach%252F/a!anchors
It would be well worth you changing the anchor text on internal links too. i.e. at the moment, it's just "learn more" from the main link on the homepage.
I'd use the campaign tool on here and run a crawl test too, whilst the site looks great... it seems problematic in many ways (gut feel from a brief look), I wouldn't be surprised if you got a lot of crawl errors back in the report.
Maybe take a look at Rand's stuff on keyword cannibalization too, your page titles have many similar keywords in. i.e. "Teaching English Overseas" on pretty much every title for each country. Whilst there are different keywords in the titles too, I don't think this would help... maybe "Teaching English in <country>" would be a better option.</country>
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RE: ScrapeBox
There can be massive negative effects.
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You'll annoy a lot of blog owners, some will report you for spam
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You'll get tonnes of worthless links from worthless blogs filled with other spammers, therefore connecting yourself to some iffy neighbourhoods
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You'll end up with lots of links that have your same anchor text keywords in from one link type... blogs. This will look unnatural for your link profile
My view: It used to work, not so much anymore... might still work a little but there are risks, especially to your brand.
Panda seems to have diminished even more the value of low quality links, and low quality links is what you'll get with auto linking software. This brings down the benefits while the risks stay the same.
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RE: All seo reports
You've posted this under analytics, and SEOmoz tools, so I'm not sure which reports you mean... keyword rankings? or traffic reports? etc...
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RE: Why Does This Website Rank?
Yeah not counting the links to the domain, the page alone has many from articles, PR sites, and they've done social media stuff for it as ping.fm is in the list. Again that's link building having been done for the individual product page, then of course you get all the backlinks to the domain itself, i.e. the homepage which passes link juice internally.
The question should be more like, why wouldn't they rank?!
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RE: Link building ideas for dentists?
Some crazy, lesser known facts about teeth... funny, interesting, surprising, and with imagery
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RE: Service Keyword in URL - too much?
Ah, now that's a question! As far as I WAS aware it was always best to go for a "flat as possible" structure (so minimal directories). BUT... I've recently been informed (on these very boards, and from a very experienced pro) that it no longer matters as long as the linking structure is good, so there's plenty of links from strong pages, such as the homepage pointing in... so it will get crawled no matter how deep.
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RE: Service Keyword in URL - too much?
Alan, you've made me think of a question myself on that... you know the whole rule about not having too many hyphens in a domain, well how much of that extends to the rest of the URL/path after the initial domain?
Not sure I worded that very well. I mean, as we know, www.thing-blah-flip-flop.com is bad... and www.thing-blah.com is okay, but what about: www.thing-blah.com/flip-flop-give-a-dog-a-bone-is-this-too-many-hyphens-in-this-part-of-the-url-after-the-domain.html
I know there's tonnes of it about, but does it matter?
(Sorry to hijack the question lol, I assume it's still relevant though).
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RE: Service Keyword in URL - too much?
How many is too many? I mean you don't want a directory per page or anything.
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RE: Service Keyword in URL - too much?
Yes definitely!
I assume if they're all landing pages then you wouldn't be targeting each page with the same keywords anyway, as that would be massive canibalization. You want to just assign 2 or 3 keywords to each page, then have one of them in the URL (the main one).
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RE: From page 3 to page 75 on Google. Is my site really so bad?
I would have thought G wouldn't be keen on that sort of thing anyway, just based on what's acceptable in Ads for Adwords, they don't like stuff like !!! there so they're bound to see it as spammy in a title too.
The site is hardly what you'd expect for a professional corporation or anything but I've seen far, far worse in terms of spam with good rankings lol... mind you, that was before Panda, maybe it's more stringent on that front now.
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RE: Service Keyword in URL - too much?
I'd check others' opinions too, but mine is option 1 without dupe service keywords for the win... why must every page have that same keyword at the end, are they all landing pages you're optimizing?
Anyway, if option 1 without doing that then it's not spammy as far as I see and do, it's descriptive, allows link architecture to map site architecture... and you've got your keywords in there. Gets my vote, but yeah I'd wait for clarification or disagreement from others on that before taking any action
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RE: From page 3 to page 75 on Google. Is my site really so bad?
"The title tag itself is kind of spammy with 3 exclamation points"
Oh, didn't notice that... tabbed browser windows and laziness to look at source code lol.
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RE: From page 3 to page 75 on Google. Is my site really so bad?
Well, the on-page isn't that heavy on ads and it certainly doesn't come across as that spammy... maybe a little but only to others who know what affiliate sites look like. You said it was new, so my bet would be the same as what other have been posting on here with new sites lately... that you had a honeymoon period where G put you up as a fresh new site (maybe to see if you get a lot of usage, links, bookmarks, etc...) then chucked you back to where it deems is right in terms of trust and authority. I could be wrong there but... that's my best guess.
Also, most of your incoming links look a little spammy (though relevant spammy at least). I'd get some more, from a more diverse set of places, with diverse anchor text.
Maybe
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RE: Do any of you regularly use expired domains?
I wouldn't call it unethical unless you made a habit of it with loads of sites, all providing no value. It's never worth focusing on micro-sites, but if there's a couple there, might as well use them
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RE: Do any of you regularly use expired domains?
Yeah I'm totally with you on that, I wouldn't bother buying a bunch of domains to build sites with, all to link in... Google will know anyway, it'll spot a footprint one way or another. I'm just thinking for the sake of not wasting an already owned domain... would hate to think of it sat there doing nothing when it could be doing something, even if that something is tiny lol.
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RE: Do any of you regularly use expired domains?
Ah yeah I don't believe in micro/satellite sites, etc... but even with zero incoming links, as long as the domain is indexed it still has some value to pass no matter how small.
It's not about building micro-sites though, it's just plopping something on a domain and getting a link off it, I'm not suggesting link wheels, or putting SEO time and effort into the other domains, just using them as you have them.
Existing domain + template site + 10 mins of writing content and slapping a couple of images on, submit a sitemap and wallah... 20 minutes and you've got a link off a homepage of a relevant content site that admittedly is low value and on the same server but it's half an hour, and you never know... the site could grow naturally into being trusted, etc... by itself, including with age.
With the speed you could knock it up, and at no cost, I just think sure why not... it can't pass zero value unless it's not indexed or the link is nofollow. Value will be tiny but could grow with no work based on just age of domain.
I can't watch the vid yet as I'm at work right now.
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RE: Link Building Question
Yeah I think you might be looking to hard at directories if the cost is that high... I wouldn't spend half that on them myself. You'll probably find that most of those directories aren't worth the dosh.
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RE: Why aren't links to my site showing up in open site explorer?
Is there something going on with OSE? I've been noticing a lack of links being shown that I know would normally be, with linked to, and linked from sites indexed, and plenty of time passed for updates.
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RE: Do any of you regularly use expired domains?
If you already own it and it's not costing you anything, why not?! Better than having a domain sitting around and doing nothing. As Donnie said, if it's hosted in the same place then the links won't pass much value, but not much is still "some"... and some is better than none
I'd do it, just for the sake of it, it won't hurt as long as there's nothing spammy about it.
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RE: Tagging URLs Linkbuilding and anchor links
It's fine... Google offers a URL builder tool itself, and of course Google Analytics is where you might use tracking like that... it knows it's just tracking code
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RE: Link Building Question
Directory submissions are not black hat... and they needn't cost you anywhere near that. There's a bunch of good directories out there, free ones that are fairly decent too. The only ones you should pay for in my opinion are BOTW, Yahoo Dir, and JoeAnt. But I wouldn't even bother with them, I never do... just go for some very relevant free ones that aren't spammy
What did you do for your link bait, and how did you promote it?
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RE: Wrong types of questions...
Hehe, I promise I'm not making fun, I just can't resist quoting that Ken Robinson video on TED Talks whenever somebody mentions two types of people:
“There are two types of people in this world. Those who divide the world into two types, and those who do not.”
lol.
But yes, you're totally right. I didn't realize it until you mentioned it but there are some questions (certainly a tiny minority) where people just want to be told exactly where to get links, etc...
I reckon I've been guilty of that myself with some stuff though, if I'm truly honest. I think sometimes I'm just aware that others may provide a fast answer where I cannot. Not so much with SEO, but our developer guy Nick suffers that stuff from me all the time. I hate code, can't do it... so on the odd occasion when something codey comes up I think "Well I could sit here all day and figure it out by noon, or I could just ask Nick"
But then, swings and round-a-bouts, my colleagues do the same to me for SEO.
Anyway, off-topic but now that I mentioned the TED Talks I feel I have to post links in case any of you haven't seen them... some of the most incredible stuff in the existence of the web:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html
You simply must all trust me on this and watch them, mind blowing!
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RE: My new site experienced a sudden drop in Google rankings
That's why then... Get a few links & you'll be dancing again
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RE: My new site experienced a sudden drop in Google rankings
Some would call it the "Honeymoon Period"
This may help: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/google-sandbox/
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RE: Building a mobile site.
Or... just don't bother!
Make your original site mobile-friendly and dump the idea for a whole separate site. There really is no need, .mobi or otherwise.
Plus, then you'll have to sites you have to get links for, when you could combine all those links into one site and get more bang for your buck.
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RE: Link Churn - where have all my links gone?
Hmm, now this is why I don't put too much effort into measuring the numbers of incoming links. The ones that are counted in some places, aren't counted in others, and the numbers skew the value as people think in terms of quantity rather than quality... then there's the fact that they jump up and down like Madonna's pants anyway.
I tried a whole bunch of different ways before concluding we don't yet seem to be of an age where we can track them, at least not to any level of reliability or significance for taking actions on them.
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RE: Hiring an SEO company
"Ironically searching on Google doesn't seem to produce the right results :-("
OUCH!!
We're nice and high on G for "SEO Company" or at least we were until a couple of days ago when we suddenly got zapped back to 11th
I know what you mean though, some of the highest results are there through monstrous levels of spammy links, and I would be dis-honest if I said that when we were in 5th the other day there were no such links involved on our part (sorry people, I'm well against it but we did have a little dark period at one stage).
I think you just need to ensure that when they say they're an SEO company, that means they cover all of SEO, not just a shred of it (which some do). The suggestions people have given on here are known to be awesome so I'd get on their quote forms
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RE: Wrong types of questions...
That's a good point actually. I have to admit that until using the SEOmoz dashboard, I didn't put nearly enough focus onto crawl errors as I should have done, but now with the crawling tool making the issues nice and clear for me I use it and get a lot more of that side of things covered for our clients.
I don't find the questions frustrating though, I don't mind answering the simple questions... I just think it highlights that there's still only a small portion of SEO that's understood or even been made aware of by the bulk of people, who don't realise there's so much more.
I think you're right though, the dashboards and tools out there will change that in time, with people seeing there's far more involved and it's much more exciting than they might first think
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RE: Can backlinks negatively influence your ranking, or worse, cause a penalty?
Dejan's answer on this thread will help you with this question: http://www.seomoz.org/q/any-recent-discoveries-or-observations-on-the-official-line-of-incoming-link-penalization
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RE: Can you have too many badge links?
I would have thought it would be possible but not likely, I wouldn't let it deter me from using the badges... SEOmoz has badges
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RE: Tags and Keywords
That's a nice site
I wouldn't worry too much about the H1's, etc... but maybe get your keywords into the content a bit more. You'll probably need to increase the amount of indexable content on their slightly in order to do that.
Have you tried using the campaign tool on here (SEOmoz)? That's really the best way to go for getting your on-page right.
Then I'd focus on getting more great quality links from great places
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RE: URL in signature of discussion forum post
And that's not to mention the automated software that creates profiles and then spams signature links in forums everywhere with generic posts.
I'm with EGOL, no need to add an inventive for that stuff in here.
Having said that, I think it would be cool if Authority ranks, or Guru ranks or something were given the ability to have sig links. It's not like any spammer would stick around that long to get there.
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RE: Wrong types of questions...
Yes there's some incredible experience on here.
I know exactly what you mean, it's all about the on-page at the start. My first learning experience of SEO was the lynda.com learning course. That was all about the on-page. Then I went on to do more research and found that it was pretty much all stuff like that.
I think the on-page might just be easier to write about too, so people choose that to make up the bulk of their content, with a little on off-page. It's not until you get on here and start looking properly at analytics segmentation that you start to see how much more there is to it.
I agree though, I guess it makes sense to start at the easy stuff... it just seems like many SEO's out there (not on these boards) seem to plateau at that point and stop learning any more.
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RE: Wrong types of questions...
"I post to learn and want to hear other opinions when I am wrong"
Love it! Same here!
For me, the best way to learn is from getting something wrong and then having that pointed it. Which is probably the main reason I love this forum so much. So many people with sooo much knowledge and experience that way surpasses what I know, so submersing myself into that can only result in more knowledge for me
It's like they say, the best way to get better is to be around the best... this is clearly that place, and I've been getting better since being in here.
The questions being the wrong type don't bother me, especially as I know I was asking those same questions not long ago... and still do of-course, as the answers are still important to know. I am just curious about how it is that SEO has such a smokescreen as to what is important, and why it always starts off at that same place for everybody before they figure out the rest of it. I think Alan answered that perfectly with the phenomena being due to the influx of SEO's and the volume of "fundamentals only" resources out there.
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RE: Wrong types of questions...
"is this phenomena due to the fact that there are new people entering the industry all the time, or is it just that not enough clear information exists that's readily available?"
I think you hit the nail on the head there! I used to think it was all about just those other things too, not realising how much deeper the rabbit hole went, and that was of course due to both having just joined the industry, and find that all the information out there was pretty much just about the on-page optimization and a little about links. It seems that very few resources when you're looking to learn cover more.
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Wrong types of questions...
I've noticed something in the forums.
Many people are asking the wrong types of questions with regards to SEO and having success with their sites on it.
This is understandable since many of the questions being asked are by those who have only just got in to SEO. But it does show that the emphasis of the industry must still be very much focused on getting links and changing META data, etc... with little mention out there in all those resources of what actually matters.
Thankfully, the questions are answered with people explaining that the wrong questions are being asked, and that it's not just about random traffic gained through rankings for general keywords.
Do you think that in time we'll see an evolution of the questions, as awareness grows, moving from questions of how to rank to questions on how work out the best KPIs to measure, and how to action strategies for improving them?
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RE: Page Rank and offline sites
It doesn't matter. PR means nothing, zero, zilch
It's your MozRanks you want to watch, not Page Rank. True Page Rank (as in what Google really thinks) is not shown to any of us, but is likely fairly close to what MozRank shows. The Page Rank you see for your site is meaningless and doesn't reflect true PR in any way.