If there are links pointing to your old pages, whether on your site or from external sources, Google will continue to try to index them and return 404s. The best way to tell Google that these pages have moved is to add 301 redirects from your new content to your old content. This will eliminate the 404s and help you retain and link juice the old pages had.
Best posts made by TakeshiYoung
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RE: Google Site Extended Listing Not Indexed
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RE: Site dropping in rank even through there are more backlinks being added
I wouldn't remove any links unless you've determined that a site has been hit by Penguin. The way you can do this is by looking at the traffic history for the site, and see if there have been any drops that correspond to Penguin updates, or rankings drops that correspond to Penguin updates and the anchor text being optimized.
Otherwise, I would leave links alone, as any normal site will accumulate low quality links, sitewide links, etc. Just focus on having a strong & balanced backlink profile. 70 links is not a lot, and leaves you more vulnerable to low quality links throwing off your profile.
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RE: I need help regarding my new website.
Buying links can get you penalized. Don't do that.
Here is a great list of link building strategies if you don't know where to start:
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RE: How to choose the right keywords for 1name1day.com
"Domain name" is a pretty competitive keyword. Google is giving more weight to brands these days, so focus on building your brand and providing the best service in this space.
How can you make your website better than Godaddy? Why does your site deserve to rank above your competitors? How can you get people talking about your site?
If you can figure out the answers to those questions, a lot of your SEO will take care of itself.
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RE: Should I index my search result pages?
It can be a good way to drive long tail traffic to your site, it can risk a Panda penalty if you generate too many pages. Many sites allow their search pages to be indexed, and it comes down to your domain authority, number of searches being done, amount of unique content you have, and your risk tolerance. A safer approach is to simply log all searches done on your site, then create unique content around the terms that come up often, this can be a good way to identify good keywords to target.
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RE: My New(ish) Site Isn't Ranking Well And Recently Fell
First of all, don't panic. New sites fluctuate in rankings all the time, as Google tries to figure out where your site fits best in the SERPs. Penguin was mostly about spammy links, not on-page optimization.
Your site is relatively new and still doesn't have much content or links. Work on writing more content and building more authoritative links, and your rankings will improve over time.
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RE: Penguin Hit, Looking for some advice from Takeshi Young
Hi, it's possible. What do you mean by "It just happens to be the time when we removed a bunch of paid links"? When were the links removed in relation to the traffic drop?
I would take a deeper look into which pages caused the traffic drop. Look at the 30 day period before the drop and compare it to the 30 day period after the drop. Where is the majority of the traffic loss coming from? Which keywords? Penguin tends to impact the homepage or the specific keywords you are over optimizing.
In regards to paid links, Google has a very hard time detecting these unless you are being blatant about them, and you will typically receive a notice in GWT if you receive a penalty for it. Check to see if there are any manual penalties on your site in GWT. If not, chances are Google has not discovered that the links are paid (yet).
The main thing to watch out for with Penguin is low quality links (relative to your high quality links) and the anchor text of your links. With the latest updates, you want to keep your keyword anchor text below 25-30% of your total links. So if your ratio is higher than that, try to get that changed. And focus on building more links, because 70 is not a lot. The stronger your backlink profile is, the more resilient it is to spammy links.
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RE: Are microsites worthwhile?
Microsites can be a good strategy in many instances.
The main case if you want to create a small site around a single use like downforeveryoneorjustme.com. People will often link to small microsites like this because of the novelty, and social sites like reddit are more likely to promote the site if it's a standalone rather than a part of your commercial site.
Another use case for microsites is if you want to create a site that is off-brand from your main site. For example, you might be a law firm that wants to create a meme tumblr or a prestigious bank that wants to target an off-brand term like "cheap loans". A microsite in this instance can allow you to target off-brand terms or use off-brand tactics without impacting your main brand.
If you have the resources, building out a bunch of microsites can be a way of targeting microniches or taking up multiple listings in the SERPs.
Note however that building out microsites doubles the work you have to do in terms of web design, content creation, and link building, but the results can be worth it if you have the resources.
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RE: How much is Page Rank really worth?
Definitely use a tool like OSE or Majestic to take a look at their link profile. Where are their high authority links coming from? Are they hard to duplicate links, or something you could get yourself? Are they links that could be removed once the site is sold? Are there any spammy or blackhat links?
Make sure you do a thorough analysis of the site's backlinks to make sure you're not getting a lemon. Also, PageRank can sometimes drop when a site is sold to a new owner, so be aware of that possibility, especially if you are going to be changing the site's content a lot.
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RE: Moving content from CMS pages to a blog - 301 or rel canonical?
Well, what do you think is the better experience for the user? Both 301s and canonicals will transfer (most) of your link juice. Do you want users to end up on your CMS or on your blog? Depending on the answer, choose the 301 or canonical.
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RE: I need help with a local tax lawyer website that just doesn't get traffic
Looks like there are a bunch of tag and category pages indexed in Google, which could be leading to duplicate content issues. I would consider noindexing these using the Yoast plugin you have installed.
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RE: Is linking out to different websites with the same C-Block IP bad for SEO?
As long as the sites are high quality (i.e. high pagerank/mozrank) I wouldn't worry about it. There is nothing wrong with linking to 3 sites in a post that happen to be from the same C-Block. As long as you're not linking to the same 3 sites over and over in a spammy or manipulative way, you should be perfectly fine.
There is also nothing wrong with getting links from 3 sites from the same C-Block. Happens all the time. As long as Google doesn't suspect that you own all 3 sites and are linking out in a manipulative manner, you should be fine.
Unless you are actively trying to do something sneaky like create a link network, C-Blocks should be the last thing you're worried about as an SEO.
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RE: If Anchor Text is dead, how do I target certain keywords?
Anchor text is not dead.
Updates such as Penguin may have penalized sites with excessive, unnatural amounts of spammy exact anchor text links, but as long as you don't overdo it, anchor text still matters a lot.
To optimize your site for specific keywords, make sure all your onsite optimization is taken care of: have you keywords in your title, URL, copy, etc. Then make sure your site is relevant to the keywords you are targeting, that will get people to naturally link to you with those keywords.
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RE: Sudden drop in rankings and indexed pages!
Don't panic, it's a bug related to the recent domain consolidation update:
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RE: How long after google crawl do you need 301 redirects
You need to keep those 301s in place as long as you have links pointing to the old site that you want to get credit for. If you can contact the owners of the sites that are linking to your old site and get them to change the links, you can remove the 301s. Otherwise you will want to keep them in place.
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RE: 301 redirect on Windows IIS. HELP!
This is the code you want to add to your /htaccess file:
#Options +FollowSymlinks
Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]redirect 301 index.html http://www.domain.com/
This will make it so http://www.domain.com/ is the correct link for your site.
This should not result in any redirect loops unless you already have redirects in place.
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RE: Would reviews being served to a search engine user agent through a noscript tag (but not shown for other user types) be considered cloaking?
We use BazaarVoice reviews for our ecommerce site too. What we do is right below the iframe reviews, we have a link that says "click here to see more reviews". When you click the link, it opens up a div with the html version of the reviews. So similar idea to what you are proposing, but less "cloaky" than a noscript tag, and it doesn't impact user experience much.
BazaarVoice can also do html reviews that are not iframed if you have a server that can handle server side scripting like PHP (which unfortunately our legacy Yahoo store does not).
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RE: Networking sites / paid links
Sounds like a decent backlink to me. There are directories like this in many niches (like findlaw.com) and they can provide a high authority, subject relevant link.
PR4 isn't terribly high, but depending on the cost of membership (and the other benefits of membership) it could be worth it.
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RE: Added the Review rich snippet and rankings have dropped?
How long ago was this, and over what time period are you looking at rankings?
Unless you were previously doing something deceptive, my guess is that the rankings drops have nothing to do with the rich snippets. Google's algo changes all the time, and rankings fluctuate all the time. It's easy to try to draw some kind of cause & effect relationship here, but likely the results have nothing to do with the rich snippet code (assuming you implemented it correctly).
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RE: Looking for live website examples of google adsense since panda update
This is a good article on adsense layouts with some examples:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/guide-to-ads
Bottom line, you want to keep your above the fold ads to a minimum and make sure that your content-to-ad ratio is high.
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RE: Is removing inorganic links a bad idea?
Have you received any warnings in Google Webmaster Tools or seen a drop in ranking for keywords that are targeted in the sitewide links? If not, I would not remove any links, as they could be passing link juice. If you ever receive a link warning, then I would consider disavowing or removing links at that time.
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RE: Would reviews being served to a search engine user agent through a noscript tag (but not shown for other user types) be considered cloaking?
Yes, we manually bulk upload the HTML reviews every couples weeks or so to keep them fresh. We also had BV noindex the review.subdomain so that it wasn't competing with us in the SERPs (have them add a noindex tag in the header as well as your Google Webmaster Tools verification code, so you can instantly deindex all the pages).
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RE: Ranking a specific inner page for a specific website
Link building is still the way to go, here is a good site with a lot of ideas:
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RE: Home page rank for keyword
If the ranking dropped around a Penguin launch, then it could be a Penguin penalty. What does your anchor text profile look like? With the latest updates, anything over 30% is considered risky, although you might get a little more wiggle room since the keyword is your domain name.
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RE: Modx revolution- getting around index.php vs. root duplicate content issue?
You can try a canonical tag in the header:
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RE: Are there different tactics to optimize for Bing vs. Google?
Bing doesn't really have an equivalent for Panda or Penguin, so some of the tactics that used to work in Google (which will now harm you) can still work in Bing. Both sites take into account similar ranking factors but have different indices and different weightings for the factors. I like to think of Bing as being 1-2 years behind Google in terms of sophistication.
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RE: Would reviews being served to a search engine user agent through a noscript tag (but not shown for other user types) be considered cloaking?
Yup. Once you have the GWT verification in the header, you should be able to deindex the entire subdomain instantly.
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RE: Posts and Page linking
Linking from posts within your own site should be fine, as long as you don't overdo it. Use your common sense when linking out from your posts, but 2-3 links per post from an average blog post should be fine.
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RE: Home page rank for keyword
This could be because your homepage is being penalized for over-optimization, but your contact page doesn't have any spammy links, hence it still ranks for "balloon" based on the strength of your domain. Likewise, if you over-optimized for "balloon" your site may be penalized for that keyword, but "balloons" is a separate keyword and you may still rank for it.
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RE: Modx revolution- getting around index.php vs. root duplicate content issue?
The canonical tag should take care of the duplicate content issue. When you do a site: search of your site on Google are multiple versions of the same content showing up? If not, then the canonicals are doing their job. It could just be the case that SEOMoz's crawler just hasn't re-crawled your site yet (it can take a few weeks).
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RE: Certain Pages Not Being Indexed - Please Help
Where are these pages being linked from? If you want these pages indexed, you may want to try making them more prominent in your site's navigation and architecture. Listing them in a sitemap can help them get discovered by Google, but actually linking to them from your site will have much more impact.
Also, I notice that the site is only pagerank 2, and already has 5000+ pages indexed in Google. Google limits the number of pages it indexes for sites based on their pagerank, so you may want to consider improving your PR so Google indexes more pages from your site.
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RE: Would reviews being served to a search engine user agent through a noscript tag (but not shown for other user types) be considered cloaking?
BV does provide a newer format for their reviews, if your server allows server side scripting such as PHP. I believe it's called "Cloud SEO". This is the simplest solution.
If you can't run PHP, then I would recommend talking to YourStoreWizards (http://www.yourstorewizards.com/). They provide customized solutions that can automate the data pulling and updating process.
As far as reviews.mysite.com, you want to get that de-indexed as soon as you get the HTML reviews on your site. Otherwise, not only will the subdomain compete with your main site for traffic, bu tall the reviews on your site will be seen as duplicate content.
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RE: The Race for Backlinks
Don't be tempted to follow your competitor's lead and acquire lots of low quality links, because Matt Cutts recently announced that they will be releasing a major Penguin update later this year. Don't throw away longterm growth with short term tactics, unless you're willing to lose it all.
Here is a great list of link building strategies if you're short on ideas:
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RE: Home page rank for keyword
I'm not a Penguin-recovery expert, but it is possible to recover from the penalty. I would continue to reach out to the site owners who are linking to you and disavow any spammy links in webmaster tools.
You might also want to focus more on longer tail keywords like "balloons UK", "where to buy balloons", "balloons cheap" etc that probably convert better than a broad term like "balloon" anyway.
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RE: Can you redirect from a 410 server error? I see many 410s that should be directed to an existing page.
The 410 error isn't generated until the page is loaded. The code in htaccess will redirect the crawler to the new page before it has a chance to load the old one.
It's just like if you have a page that doesn't exist, that generates a 404 error. By adding a redirect in the htaccess file, you can point crawlers & visitors to a new URL and not generate a 404.
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RE: Does having a page that ends with ? cause duplicate content?
Google does treat pages with parameters as separate pages. The best way to avoid this is by not linking to pages with no parameters like example.com/page? Redirecting something like this would be tricky, so I would recommend just putting in a canonical tag in the header for parameter pages that don't significantly change the content of the page.
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RE: My website is coming up under a proxy server "HideMyAss.com." How do I stop this from happening?
What query are you searching for? The website comes up fine for me.
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RE: Meta Title Tags
Putting your keywords in a different order will be seen as unique titles by Google. Word order matters a lot and can completely change the meaning of your title.
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RE: How to optimize on-page for a large service area?
An "areas served" is probably the best approach, since you don't want a big spammy footer that is present on every page (remember, every link on a page lowers the value of every other link on a page). You can highlight a few of the larger/most popular areas in your sitewide nav, but I would avoid linking to every single one of them.
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RE: My website is coming up under a proxy server "HideMyAss.com." How do I stop this from happening?
That's very frustrating! I've never had a problem with HMA specifically, but that script usually works.
You may want to try searching for things like "break out of frame proxy" or "break out of frame php" to see if anyone out there has come up with a better solution.
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RE: Trading Backlinks a good idea?
Trading links with other quality sites in your niche is a great way to get links. Just make sure the sites you're linking to are high quality (not spammy, have pagerank, aren't using shady link tactics). A quick backlink check of the sites using OSE or Majestic is probably a good idea.
I usually like to put together a "Partners" or "Resources" page where I add all the links from people I trade with:
http://www.salsabythebay.com/resources/
Hopefully you can use the initial link exchange to begin a relationship with some of the other players in your niche, so you can collaborate on other projects too, like guest posting, interviews, etc.
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RE: Can hotlinking images from multiple sites be bad for SEO?
You are definitely missing out on image traffic by not hosting your own images. Plus, hotlinking is poor netiquette since you are using someone else's bandwidth without their permission. If the images are copyrighted, then you could be hit by DMCA requests which can negatively impact your SEO.
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RE: Schema markup in SERP in s ome languages but not in English. Any suggestions?
Having semantic markup doesn't guarantee that Google will display rich snippets in the SERPs, it's up to Google to decide whether rich snippets would be useful or not. If it is showing correctly in the testing tool, then the code is fine, it's just up to Google how to display your content. Schema.org is probably the best semantic markup to go with at this point, and it's supported by all the major search engines.
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RE: Assessing the true value of a backlink
I tend to focus my time & effort more on the links that we can obtain, rather than trying to analyze the value of a link a competitor has. It's impossible to tell whether hidden links or other black hat tactics are propping up a competitor's ranking, but historically speaking, sites like that eventually get penalized (even if it takes Google a few months or years to wise up).
I look at competitor backlinks sometimes to see if there are any tactics they are using that might be useful for my own sites, or other link opportunities, but aside from the occasional competitor analysis, it's a better use of my time to develop new link building campaigns for our site.
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RE: Dofollow vs nofollow for place listings?
As long as you are not linking to spammy sites, I don't see why Google would penalize your site for linking out. You should only nofollow the links if they are low quality sites (in which case, why are you linking to them?) or they are competitors and you don't want to pass them any link value.
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RE: Duplicate Page Title Crawl Error Issue
Having both www and non-www versions of your site accessible is definitely a duplicate content issue, as Google looks at those as different sites. If you have access to your .htaccess file, here is the code you want to add:
Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^barefootparadisevacations.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.barefootparadisevacations.com/$1 [r=301,nc]This will redirect non-www versions of your site to www.
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RE: When crawls occur - when will my links show up in Open Site Explorer
I believe SEOMoz is updated around once every two weeks. Google is constantly crawling sites on the web, and the frequency depends on your PageRank, how many links are pointing to your site, and how often your site is updated.
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RE: Is buying traffic from Internet traffic club harmful to rankings
Don't see how it would impact rankings one way or the other... the amount of traffic a website gets isn't a ranking factor.
It does sound like a shady service though. People use services like these to increase the views on their ads (CPM) to defraud their advertisers or increase the view count of YouTube videos which can impact YouTube SEO.
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RE: Internal Linking Questions
I usually put it in the navigation on the site I build. It's accepted convention to link the site logo to the homepage, but it's also helpful to have a link in the navigation clearly marked "Home" for less tech-savvy users.