Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hello Everyone,

My question is in regards to Schema and whether the it replaces the need for the conventional structured data NAP configuration. Because you have the ability to specifically call out variables (such as Name, URL, Address, Phone number ect.) is it still necessary to keep the NAP form-factor that has historically been required for local SEO?

Logically it makes sense that schema would allow someone to reverse this order and still achieve the same result, however I have yet to find any conclusive evidence of this being the case.

Thanks, and I look forward to what the community has to say on this matter.

Hello Mozzers!

I have been tasked with recovering a site from partial link penalty that was previous brought to my attention for this website www.active8canada.com. Upon reviewing the site backlinks and reporting info in Google webmaster tools, I found there was no penalty showing, could it have expired? We spent the last few months doing link cleanup as we recognize that there was some bad links that needed to be addressed.

We requested removal of all the bad links after spending time categorizing all of them. Targeting commercial anchor text and bringing those numbers back to acceptable levels. Following this we did a disavow of the bad links which could not be removed through requests.

We are actively building out additional content for the website as we recognize that some pages have thin content. We have earned some links as well to show some positive signals during the cleanup but have seen no change for better or worse.

My question is, does anyone else see anything else we could be missing here? Should I revisit links again? Some of the links we disavowed are still showing in our backlink reports, but I cross referenced our disavows with the existing backlink profile to try and get an accurate sense of the remaining links. We never saw a decline in ranks further after the disavow, so I'm lead to believe that the links we removed had little, if any impact.

I am a little hesitant to begin earning new links through content and partnership outreach as I still feel something is off that I can't quite put my finger on. It was previously confirmed that there was a penalty, but without that showing now in Google webmaster tools I'm grasping at any possible angle I may have missed.

If anyone had a couple minutes to spare to shed some light on this situation, it would be greatly appreciated!

I would suggest utilizing larger content marketing campaigns geared at the industry / vertical authorities.

At the same time, be careful to place too much weight on DA as a metric of concern. DA is a result of high level link and content strategies.

It is great for comparative purposes, and serves as a fantastic benchmark, but search revenue, CRO, acquisition and retention for your your audience is probably more important.

Considering the metrics that probably matter most to your business:

search revenue
leads
unique traffic
engagement
stickiness

Everything else is something you will checkout in the line of your favorite coffee shop, and probably nothing you need to spend a lot (read: more than the time it takes to get coffee) on.

Hope this helps!
Todd

Good questions, it's great to see that you have taken the time to carefully consider each step.

Ranking on a national level in organic SERPs is a much different cat than local.

Local SEO

The factors required to impact authority and visibility on a local SEO level involve, to name a few, proximity to centroid, correct (consistent) NAP citations for the business, positive reviews for the business, adoption of localized Title tags and copy, as well as many others.

However, those elements are guidelines, and the level of work and commitment needed to rank in each vertical at a local level is entirely dependent on the level of competition within that vertical X the the competitive level of the city.

National SEO

In order to rank nationally for targeted terms, you will need to build much higher overall authority, which loosely translates to higher quality (and potentially volume) of links. You rank well on a National level when Google believes that you are one of the best choices for the consumer Nationally. This means your audience is National, and therefore your link strategy, content strategy, social media strategy and mind map should all be geared at looking locally and sprinkling at various major cities - starting with your core city.

I wouldn't suggest removing or altering your G+ account or any of your local settings. You are simply telling Google that on a local stage you wish to be known for servicing businesses in a radius, or the consumers visit your business.

This account gives you stability and authority, acting as an anchor and proof / verification of a physical business. This is an important step in ALL SEO nowadays.

Focus on increasing the scope of your strategy, including your National targets, re-target your Title tags to reflect National cities / shorter tail, and work hard, and you should be able to impact that market.

Hope this helps,
Todd

AFAIK Google is not using rel="publisher" often as a signal in the SERPs, and doesn't seem to use that (yet) to display in SERPs. You should use your G+ profile for this with rel="author", if you wish to benefit from that increased CTR in the SERPs, and switch to publisher at a later time when Google shows clear signals of using this in the SERPs.

Hope this helps,
Todd

I would recommend doing just what you suggested - utilize the first 152.

Hi Michael, best of luck. I am sure that you can get the site back to where it needs to be with some clever thinking and a reinclusion that speaks about how much time and effort you have put into the website in order to make it 110% compliant (even though we know it already largely is

Let us know how it goes!

-T

Hi Michael,

I can sense your frustration but business and marketing are unforgiving. And while I do agree with your sentiments the best thing you can do is be absolutely 100% thorough in your approach to the problem.

I would recommend running the Screaming Frog and Xenu and re-evaluating.

Here is a handy checklist that you can do through to ensure you are covering bases, if you have not already.

1. Run Xenu Screaming Frog and examine in detail. Look for any pages which have outlinks and scrutinize those outlinks and ensure they are nofollowed. Be sure to include all subdomains, even subdomains you believe are noindex at the robots.txt level.

2. Check page code on 20 random pages in each subdomain to ensure that there are not hidden bits of code you might be missing that contain an external link. Check CSS and javascript while you are at it just to be certain

3. Check GWT to ensure that there are no warnings or alerts as to any hacking or suspicious page activity.

4. Thoroughly audit any and all widgets to ensure they do not contain outlinks, and if they do, assess as necessary based on authority of destination website and relevance / commercial natural of link.

5. Ensure any business listings on the website are nofollow

6. Nofollow any links (for now) from any areas where you published articles (I noticed here that you do allow for this option)

7. Nofollow signature links in the forums, if they are not already. Nofollow profile page links in the forum, if they are not already.

When you run these reports and checks, make extensive notes of what you are doing. Google is looking to see that you have put exhaustive effort into the process. Since you have control over link on your own domain, the level of scrutiny is higher.

On a side note, some of your important business pages seem to be hanging up on an internal redirect. The about us and privacy policy in particular appear to have a closed loop redirect.

Wishing you the best of luck!

Best,
Todd

Hi Michael,

I would suggest running Screaming Frog and re-running Xenu again on the entire domain and all sub directories. Ensure that outbound links that are not editorial in nature (freely given and relevant to the user) have nofollow applied (even on sections where robots.txt are set to limit / prevent indexing). Every outbound link needs to be scrutinized. Nofollow first, ask questions later.

Take 20 pages in different sections and also hand check page code. Look for iframe injections or other unusual patterns or outbound links. Nofollow any outbound widget links, or if not possible, then remove those widgets.

Once done, develop the reinclusion.

Before reincluding be sure to be extremely thorough in your explanation to Google. Explain how the outbound links you had, you felt were editorial. Document and explain in detail how you have remedied the entire situation and comply with guidelines and understand those fully.

You might consider referencing this URL in the reinclusion request, which shows more proof that you are trying to clean up any possible areas.

Panda could still be influencing the website, but taking care of the manual penalty is definitely the right place to start.

Hope this helps,
Todd

Hi Michael, to start let's look at a few areas so that we have some supporting information

1. Can you confirm the message is "Unnatural links from your site"? What date did you receive this message?

2. Which directory has been deindexed by Google (url please)

3. When did you remove the links to your personal websites, and where were those links located in the website, and what were the topics that those websites represented?

4. Which penalty do you feel has been lingering for a long time?

Any other supporting information as to the history of the website (suspected penalties, ranking drops + those corresponding dates) would be helpful.

Good value, solid DA / PA and nice co-citation links with other authorities. I would recommend it.

Hi Imedia, thanks for explaining your situation. Hopefully I can be of help:

Inbound link profile

1. In terms of inbound links, my concern would be the quality type of links that can be 'pulled and re-plugged'. Generally, it is difficult to do this with links that are earned or naturally given, as they usually only relate to one client and assets and resources that client has (great web design, awesome guides, white papers, blog posts).

I would focus on first ensuring that the back link profile is natural and correct. Here is a great guide in my opinion to removing poor links and disavowing them. Remember to always first contact webmasters and request irrelevant and low quality links removed first. Google wants to see that you have acted on links.

2. If you want to rank in Google Local: Build local citations. Darren Shaw from Whitespark has plenty of fantastic knowledge published on the Internet and on his blog. Mike Blumenthal is also highly qualified in local.

3. I would recommend staying away from anchor text in press releases altogether. My take on press releases is that the value of the link is really directly proportional to the quality / newsworthiness of the story itself. Great stories are shared and linked to, improving the social signals and engagement signals and inbound links to that piece. Using exact match anchor texts in press releases is probably not necessary and might be working against you because it makes it more difficult to assess over-optimization issues if they happen.

Try and ensure any exact match links are in natural, editorial content, so that you can try to rule out which particular pieces might be counting for and against you when diagnosing over optimization and position drops.

4. Also linking internally with Exact Match can do double damage to rankings if particular thresholds are reached. Because Google updates its complex algorithm a lot, it is difficult to understand what those thresholds are. You might consider utilizing a different internal anchor text in this situation and testing it over a long period. You might also consider changing the press release link if possible. However, it is important to understand that changing links can also send signals to Google that can cause ranking flux (commercialize anchor, effect in SERPs, change in anchor = another net change)

A safe bet for internal links is to rarely use exact match internal anchor text, and opt for natural text, mixed brand and mixed commercialized text, and anchor to text that isn't commercial at all (click here, buy it here, learn more here) Focus on building internal links that are driven from content within the website that is well linked to.

In my opinion this also should apply to inbound link anchor text profiles as well, but you will want to study the top 10-20 competitors in this niche (with a close eye on 1-2-3) in order to better understand both individual and aggregate anchor text usage.

Hope this helps!
-Todd

If you can, implement a "snippet" mentality where you write unique content in at the top of those categories, and then provide the links and a short excerpt under each link below (in the case of blog posts)

This often helps eliminate problematic duplicate content issues. I would recommend at least 100 words of pure unique content for those category pages above the blog posts to start.

If the new pages are fantastic content, this will only help.

They will likely attract more inbound links if done well.

I would focus on ensuring that the link real estate (taxonomy, navigation) doesn't change in this case if you want to retain the rankings you have.

If the new pages are sub categories / children of the current pages, then link down to them from those pages, and back up to the current pages in breadcrumb (which will further reinforce those rankings)

Hope this helps!

If the product will be coming back, I would direct those platforms to simply notify the user on the product page - while keeping the product page indexed.

If the product is not set to return, redirect to a similar product.

Hope this helps.

Nothing can physically remove them but the webmasters that own those websites, so:

1. You need to craft a well organized pitch email that doesn't offend the webmaster, and asks them politely to remove the link. Bank on this taking at least 3 total emails, and in many cases, you might get no response.

PM me and I can send you a script or two that has been effective for us.

2. No too can remove those links for you externally.

Hope this helps!

One possibility is that the level of competition in the us insofar as domain authority and inbound links for competitors is much greater than in the UK.

Another possibility is that you picked up a good UK based link, which drove up those rankings.

Has the site always been targeted in GWT to US?

Agree 100% with David and Fredrico. Noindex, follow your tag pages.

Strengthening the home page with inbound branded links, and mixed commercialized / brand links from editorial / high quality sources builds authority, which as Perfect007 mentioned, distributes 'weight' throughout the website.

This improved domain authority tends to move relevant associated topics within the website up in rankings more than non-related areas. For example, the more tightly knit the homepage is to the categories that comprise it, the more inbound link building to the homepage impacts those pages.

At the same time, link building to strategic inner pages moves the needle as well, and reinforces authority to associated related sub categories and 'sister' categories in the website.

As a basic rule of thumb, competition being equal - the further apart your inner categories are insofar as relations, the more authority you need to build at the base level (root, homepage) in order to move inner categories forward.

Hope this helps.

This is likely happening because Google is determining that

Hualalai Resort

is a variation of your brand name, Google tends to try and use signals to determine the best title, and somewhere along the way it has picked up signals utilizing that phrase.

What is the official brand name of the company itself?

It is relatively easy to build enough high quality citations to the website utilizing that name, and structure the pages of the site to reinforce that, so that you can influence that title selection.

Here's another:

http://www.w3schools.com/web/web_glossary.asp

http://grab.by/nXKk

The key David is in:

1. Brainstorming
2. Paring down / filtering potentials
3. Testing potential campaigns if possible (pre-promote, test the waters for response rate)
4. Create said content
5. Massively promote and outreach, share in SM
6. Feedback and analysis.

Like any campaign in marketing, it's all about planning well in advance, due diligence and small, incremental tests. I like to think of each of these campaigns as a "lean campaign" - to borrow the concept from many including Eric Reis.

Small testable campaigns allow you to pivot and change quickly if the results are not there, or there are assumptions that were made (hypothesis) that turned out to be less accurate than initially considered.

Hope this helps!
Todd

Hi David, start with this monster of a curated / expertise document

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

Here's a sense of the metrics and links it has picked up.

http://grab.by/nXJw

This was developed by expert link builder Jon Cooper - who ironically shares a lot of great ideas himself about accomplishing the said tasks

I think that speaks for itself?

Send me a niche, and I can guarantee I can find you at least one good example of a well-done piece of content designed to create engagement, shares that has attracted inbound links.

Hope this helps,
Todd

Hi Steve,

"Thank you! automated here means the API service which we are purchasing (IE: Flight schedule), we also add up more useful information to make it unique, so we strongly believe that the content is not only unique and useful to readers."

I found find it VERY difficult for anyone to present a way in which this data above, described, can be unique.

Sure, it can provide some value, in the same way that sport scores are updated on lots of websites.

But does the content really provide value? Value means adding commentary, editorialism - something more - to what is already standard.

If the concept is large enough, you might be able to pull some higher authority links into place, giving the project lift and wheels in organic results, and then strategize on further ways to build.

I would be focusing initially on pitching the value of the site to older style websites and ancient directories, locating those through research and competitive back-linking. In fact, you should be prospecting and researching / bucketing this data now.

At the same time, start creating stellar new content, publishing often in your blog so that the percentage of "truly" unique content is increasing daily.

Hope this helps.

I use Myseotool.com, and it is simple and cost effective (for me)

Hope this helps!
~Todd

I would never advise a sitewide link. It's a primary metric in my determination in paid links.

Additionally, a sitewide link is not contextual, and can drag the wrong co-citation metrics into it. (if there are other somewhat unrelated links in that same section)

I would suggest:

1. Writing an incredibly awesome post that will resonate VERY well with that audience
2. Pre-promote the post if possible in order to determine some support and / or test whether it will "fly"
3. Ensure the post is stellar. Use the 21 types of content guide by CMI to ensure it is awesome and fits those criteria.
4. Ask this person to publish, promote in their SM. Promote in your SM.
5. Outreach to further influencers and site owners in that niche and ask them to link to that post.

Hope this helps!
~Todd

Hi Roxbrock, can you pm me your example?

Thanks,
Todd

In general, high authority websites are able to rank inner pages better. If you have a smaller budget for content development, then you should consider focusing on the home page to rank for this phrase and other clustered (related) phrases.

Also, if the company itself is purely about web design primarily, then this is advisable. The only time I advise an inner page ranking is when the company offers this as a service, and has high authority / ability to build high authority relatively quickly, driving that inner page up to top 5 positions.

Otherwise, it is always more difficult, by nature, to rank an internal page over a homepage (root domain) for competitive terms such as yours.

Hope this helps!
~Todd

If the inner page only has these links pointed at it, and a considerable number, you might consider recreating the page with a new url, manually outreaching to webmasters to re-point natural, editorial links.

It's difficult to shake these types of links, and so far disavow, at face value, doesn't seem to be the answer in my opinion.

I think the valuable from the release is 100% dependent on the quality of the news / material.

If the release is shared and one high end media company picks it up, it's possible that their copy of the content trumps all other publications including the original release itself.

When this happens, then the value can of course be significant link-wise.

However, its best to focus on releases as a tool in the toolbox with a specific marketing purpose as opposed to link building.

I've tried it, and it's reasonable. It allows for pretty good detailed scoping of backlinks and buckets those into good, suspicious and toxic.

Using backlink tools you could do this without a tool like link detox, but if you are an agency or Professional SEO that handles a considerable number of sites this is helpful.

It also allows you to export links into disavow format, for the ones you have already contacted for removal and have had no response from.

Hope this helps!
Todd

Hi Dealblogger.

I think the best overall way to improve on your situation is to develop more authority and trust.

On a well-balanced website that is increasing in traffic with low bounce rate and improving overall metrics, building more inbound authority links can significantly move all core keywords forward.

I would be sure to setup authorship at the blog, connected to your G+ profile, fill out the profile 100%, and then search for influencers in your immediate and related niches that would consider publishing your content. The next step would be to develop content for your audience that you can also pitch to other thought leaders in your immediate and connected industries.

Hope this helps,
Todd

Be an expert in your niche, and contribute to the community. And ask yourself

What pain points do consumers in this industry experience?
What content could be refreshed and / or curated in this industry?
How can you contribute your expertise to add value?

Asking yourself these questions will help you develop content ideas, which will, in turn, potentially yield inbound links if you can build great content and share it with industry influencers.

Hope this helps
Todd

In my experience you will generate more consistent inbound links to the root url - http://www.consumerbase.com/index.html - if you were to use that as the root (canonical) url and do the following

1. Ask anyone linking to /index.html to link to http://www.consumerbase.com/
2. Once completed, 301 redirect /index.html to http://www.consumerbase.com/

Ask yourself this: how often do you see someone refer an audience to http://www.consumerbase.com/index.html?

There rarely, do - out of convenience and ease of use / standardization.

So, for sharing and for ensuring that all inbound link weight is organized at only one canonical url I would suggest you consider using http://www.consumerbase.com/ at the root.

All other pages can use use .html just fine.

Hope this helps,
Todd

I agree with Nakul - if they do not have great content and great inbound natural links, they can potentially do harm to your main website.

It is worth extensively evaluating the situation before proceeding.

Hi Carla,

FWIW Google Feedburner will probably be discontinued now that Google Reader has.

I personally don't think there is much value to the link given either.

Hope this helps!
Todd

I would recommend basing disavows / removals on:

1. Relevancy of Linking Website
2. Paid Link Assessment (How does the website tend to link to external websites?)
3. Social Engagement of Linking Website
4. Overall Content Quality Assessment
5. Inbound Link Assessment (if necessary)
6. Domain Authority

This way, as both Chris and Egol mentioned, you probably will not run into the risk of removing a link that could grow to be powerful down the road.

Low authority links from highly relevant websites where the link is natural (editorial in nature) and in content that is high quality are perfectly find (and good)

Hope this Helps,
Todd

Hi Mnkpso,

Google often shifts the impact of each element / factor in terms of how they are applied to both local and non-local results.

However, that being said, experience shows that distance from the centroid does in fact play a role in local search engine rankings. David Mihm, one of the foremost experts in Google Local, has cited this here, in his study.

Additionally, we find that there is a correlation between the physical address distance from centroid and ranking.

It is important to note that distance from centroid is only one metric, and although a valuable and important one, in and of itself cannot entirely influence results.

Hope this helps,
Todd

Hi Fabrizo,

This makes sense.

If this is the case, I would focus on using as much meta data as possible, and not text in the form of sentence and paragraph structure from other websites. Let the user comments and reviews, for now, form the bulk of written text, and then when you can add your unique text this will help.

This way the percentage of duplicate text in the form of sentence structure is reduced. It's not a permanent fix, but might help in the meantime as you build those unique write ups.

You see this concept in product specification sites, and in real estate meta data listings.

Hope this helps,
Todd

Fabrizo,

You will want to ensure that there is an adequate amount of editorial, unique content driving each of those pages on your website. Aggregating content is great, but Google really wants to see your personal interpretation / review / opinion on that set of information, so think about ways in which you can potentially generate unique 200 word "final thoughts' or reviews / editorials on each product internally.

Hi Christoffer.

Start by taking a snapshot of your inbound links using a range of tools including Open Site Explorer.

Sort the links by the following:

1. Relevancy, on a scale of 1-10
2. Quality of site, on a scale of 1-10.

The prime candidates for removal are:

-Sites with low DA / metrics, low inbound links and low social metrics
-Sites with low quality overall, or sites in which the prime purpose appears to be advertising before providing good content to the consumer
-Sites that are completely irrelevant to your business.

Start with the worst offending links.

You will inevitably need to start emailing off to those webmasters in order to ask them to remove your link.

If in doubt, it's best to leave a link, or find a qualified consultant here at the Moz that can assist you in the analysis process.

Best of luck!

From my experience, the value of a second link is very low in comparison to the first link found on the domain.

The link given credit used to be the link with the highest value metrics page (inbound links to a page, pagerank, etc) but I would argue that now the best link is probably the one on the most relevant content page, in a natural editorial way, where the page is closest in clicks to the homepage.

Hope this helps,
Todd

In terms of links and link profile diversity, I recommend you study the top ten competitors in your niche, with a close focus on the top 3. Consider their backlinks, quality and diversity.

A competitive link histogram is helpful in fully visualizing the types of links that competitors have:

By anchor text
By DA (domain authority)

We generally create a minimum of two, one for each of those areas, and then study then.

This gives you specific averages with which you can focus on more closely in your campaign to shape it closer to naturalization, or get a better picture on what Google wants to see in your specific niche, or what is working.

Also, be very sure to rule our on-site and / or other issues at the same time.

Hope this helps!
Todd

I wouldn't expect search engines to view them negatively, as long as the image provider is an authority (like Shutterstock is)

If you are concerned about the issue, you can always nofollow those attribution outbound links, just to be sure.

Hope this helps.

I find My SEO Tool is a pretty good lightweight version for small clients or small volume consultants.

Odds are along the way that if the site is authority than it has picked up a good link or two to those pages. I would always 301 redirect to the most appropriate fresh page, unless the content was not evergreen (newsletter, paste events that are not relevant to the company and they no longer need to archive that information)

Hope this helps.

Hi David, I feel your pain. This type of problem is more common than you might think!

Fortunately there are steps we can implement to help curb the effects.

1. You need a copy of the old website. This is probably available at old.toughtimeslawyer.com so that you can revert to the old website, or check for errors. So while they should have noindexed that domain, it is helpful to have it. I would recommend asking them to noindex it now.

2. You will need to map the old pages to the new, and then apply redirection and / or 404, depending on the page in question. For now, I would simply 301 redirect the old pages.

There are two ways to go about this:

A) Ask the developers to match the old urls on the new website. This is preferred, because it then means the same url is being used and no redirection needs to take place. I would ask them this first, but if they are not able to do this then:

B) Apply a 301 redirection schema to redirect old pages to the new corresponding pages on the new, live site:

Depending on how many pages you have on the site (sites over 100 pages you might consider using tools for assistance) you will want to create an excel which maps

Column A - old URL
Column B - new URL which now holds this information

Your job is to match the old content on the old subdomain with the new, live content.

Once this is completed, and triple checked, backup everything and then ask the development company to apply 301 redirection from the OLD urls to the NEW urls. This passes some of the link weight, age and authority over to the new url, and tells the search engines to place emphasis on the new urls for content.

3. Once completed, I would run the following checks (or hire someone to help you with this)

-Redirection check (ensuring those redirects are correct by checking header responses)
-Broken links check on the new website
-Navigation and internal links check

Depending on the gravity of the design change, this might not completely restore rankings. Ranking in Google based upon a myriad of factors, and site quality and layout is one of them. There is much more to the overall process, but the information above should help you resolve the current issue as much as possible.

Changing designs is a complex process and should be always proceeded with caution.

Once you make the changes, I recommend a period of about 2 weeks to monitor changes.

Hope this helps!

Hi guys, I see this as well for a client we have in a competitive space.

It's a little difficult to understand, because it tends to apply to only particular pages of a domain (please check by using site:yourdomain.com and view all titles)

There seems to be no correlation at all.

It could be a conversion / click through test for Google.