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We are conducting a large-scale Penguin cleanup / link cleaning exercise across 50+ properties that have been on the market mostly all for 10+ years. There is a lot of link data to sift through and we are wondering how we should prioritize the effort. So far we have been collecting backlink data for all properties from AHref, GWT, SeoMajestic and OSE and consolidated the data using home-grown tools. As a next step we are obviously going through the link cleaning process. We are interested in getting feedback on how we are planning to prioritize the link removal work. Put in other words we want to vet if the community agrees with what we consider are the most harmful type of links for penguin. Priority 1: Clean up site-wide links with money-words; if possible keep a single-page link Priority 2: Clean up or rename all money keyword links for money keywords in the top 10 anchor link name distribution Priority 3: Clean up no-brand sitewide links; if possible keep a single-page link Priority 4: Clean up low-quality links (other niche or no link juice) Priority 5: Clean up multiple links from same IP C class Does this sound like a sound approach? Would you prioritize this list differently? Thank you for any feedback /T

Community, Has anyone here implemented rich snippets for clients/own properties and can advise how long it took for them to appear in Google Thanks

SEOMoz team, I am wondering that in the days of Panda and Penguin SEOs have an opinion on how to best link between international domains for a web page property. Let's say you have brandname.DE (German site) brandname.FR (French site) brandname.CO.UK (British site) Right now we are linking form each site on the page to the other two language sites to make users aware of the translated version of the site which obviously make it a site wide link which seems to be lately disencouraged by Google. Did anyone out there have any ideas how to strategically interlink between international domains that represent language versions of a web site? /PP

Team, I am wondering what people recommend as best SEO practice to inter-link to language specific brand domains e.g. : amazon.com
amazon.de
amazon.fr
amazon.it Currently I have 18 CCTLDs for one brand in different languages (no DC). I am linking from each content page to each other language domain, providing a link to the equivalent content in a separate language on a different CCTLD doamin. However, with Google's discouragement  of site-wide links I am reviewing this practice. I am tending towards making the language redirects on each page javascript driven and to start linking only from my home page to the other pages with optimized link titles. Anyone having any thoughts/opinions on this topic they are open to sharing? /Thomas

Hello, We have been doing some analysis around our backlink profiles for our sites and have been experiencing a massive discrepancy between what is reported as number of C class linking domains in OSE and the information returned in Google Webmaster tools. For a variety of sites OSE is reporting numbers < 10 for C class linking doamins while GWT shows >100 unique domains linking (we confirmed that the majority of these links are in different C classes) Is this simply a matter of the limited index size of OSE or could there be another explanation? It is interesting that the links that do show up in OSE a nearly exclusively sites that we own. /T

Quick question, Assume my keyword is the German soccer team "1.FC Nuremberg". What is the best URL design to target that keyword? domainname.com/1fc-nuremberg or domainname.com/1-fc-nuremberg Any thoughts? Does it make - even a tiny - difference? /Thomas

SEOMoz Gurus, I am wondering what our best implementation strategy shoul dbe around linking up the Facebook Like button on our pages. Essentially there are two options: A) Linking the button directly to the Facebook Page of the web site so every Like is actually converting into a Facebook "Fan" which can be messaged going forward through our Facebook page. B) Having them like the actual URL which might be more beneficial from an SEO and viral perspective as now a link to the actual URL gets shared on the Liker's facebook wall and it should also be easier to use that lIke for Google & Co. as it's tied to the actual URL not a random Facebook page given that search engines already convert those signals. Both approaches obviously have their benefits. Are there any common guidelines on what is a better approach to take from a pure SEO perspective? Thanks /Thomas

SEOMoz community, If you have followed our latest Q&A posts you know by now that we have been suffering since the last 8 months from a severe Google penalty we are still trying to resolve. Our international portfolio of sports properties has suffered significant ranking losses across the board. While we have been tediously trying to troubleshoot the problem for a while now we might be up to a hot lead now. We realized that one of the properties outside of our key properties, but are site that our key properties are heavily linking to (+100 outgoing links per property) seems to have received a significant Google penalty in a sense that it has been completely delisted from the Google index and lost all its PageRank (Pr4) While we are buffed to see such sort of delisting, we are hopeful that this might be the core of our experienced issues in the past i.e. that our key properties have been devalued due to heavy linking to a bad neighborhood site. My question two the community are two-fold: Can anyone share any experience if it is indeed considered possible that a high number of external links to one bad neighboorhood domain can cause significant ranking drops in the rank from being top 3 ranked to be ranked at around a 140 for a competetive key word? The busted site has a large set of high quality external links. If we swap domains is there any way to port over any link juice or will the penalty be passed along? If that is the case I assume the best approach would be to reach out to all the link authorities and have tem link to the new domain instead of the busted site? Thanks /Thomas

SEOMoz community, I wanted to get your guys' ideas around what I would consider an unorthodox but potentially effective approach: I am currently internationalizing a brandname domain by building up different CCTLD domains and assigning them to local server resources. In order to push the brand of the project, all international CCTLDs share the same root domain, however the main key word for each CCTLD is different. My question is essentially if it would make sense to configure the root landing page of each international project as http://www.<brandname>.<cctld>/<market_keyword></market_keyword></cctld></brandname> rather than the typical approach http://www.<brandname>.</brandname> This would allow me to get the market specific keyword into the landing page URL. The root domain would have a 301 redirect to the keyword landing page. Anyone has any experience with this approach? Does a true root domain URL get some sort of SEO bonus that would not justify the above approach or will the URL with the keyword in the path will have higher SEO power. Looking forward to your responses - even if its just projections/SEO gut feeling. Thanks /Thomas

Community, We are about to move one of our most popular country sub directories from brandname.com/de/.. to brandname.de . We have just purchased the domain so while the domain has been registered in 2009 the URL has zero domain authority. What is the best strategy to execute the move while being cautious about loosing too much organic search volume the subdirectory is receiving right now? Obviously it will take some time to build up DA on the TTLD so maybe it is a good idea to keep the country directory for a little longer and start on the TTLD with just a static landing page, place some links, wait until it receives some DA builds up and then perform the move. Thoughts? /TomyPro

SEO Gurus, There seems to be a tendency that whenever you need to optimize a project for a multi-word key phrase, lets say for example "hostels in boston" SEOs see it as a best practice to refelct the key phrase in the domain without dashes yet when being used in a directory/page name context dashers are being used? Does anyone have any experience to share on this topic what works better? From my experience using dashes has been quite successful in the past but I am questioning this approach for a new project I am about to start. To clarify the question, in your eyes what would work better for the keyphrase "hotels in boston" www.hotelsinboston.com www.hotels-in-boston.com Thanks /Thomas

Dear SEOMOZ Community, Our portfolio of around 15 internationalized web pages has received a significant, as it seems IP-wide, Google penalty starting November 2010 and have yet to recover from it. We have undergone many measure to lift the penalty including reconsideration requests wo/ luck and am now hoping the SEOMoz community can give us some further tips. We are very interested in the community's help and judgement what else we can try to uplift the penalty. As quick background information, The sites in question offers sports results data and is translated for several languages. Each market, equals language, has its own tld domain using the central keyword, e.g. <keyword_spanish>.es <keyword_german>.de <keyword_us>.com</keyword_us></keyword_german></keyword_spanish> The content is highly targeted around the market, which means there are no duplicate content pages across the domains, all copy is translated, content reprioritized etc. however the core results content in the body of the pages obviously needs to stay to 80% the same A SEO agency of ours has been using semi-automated LinkBuilding tools in mid of 2010 to acquire link partnerships There are some promotional one-way links to sports-betting and casino positioned on the page The external linking structure of the pages is very keyword and main-page focused, i.e. 90% of the external links link to the front page with one particular keyword All sites have a strong domain authority and have been running under the same owner for over 5 years As mentioned, we have experienced dramatic ranking losses across all our properties starting in November 2010. The applied penalties are indisputable given that rankings dropped for the main keywords in local Google search engines from position 3 to position 350 after the sites have been ranked in the top 10 for over 5 years. A screenshot of the ranking history for one particular domain is attached. The same behavior can be observed across domains. Our questions are: Is there something like an IP specific Google penalty that can apply to web properties across an IP or can we assume Google just picked all pages registered at Google Webmaster? What is the most likely cause for our penalty given the background information? Given the drops started already in November 2010 we doubt that the Panda updates had any correlation t this issue? What are the best ways to resolve our issues at this point? We have significant history data available such as tracking records etc. Our actions so far were reducing external links, on page links, and C-class internal links Are there any other factors/metrics we should look at to help troubleshooting the penalties? After all this time wo/ resolution, should we be moving on two new domains and forwarding all content as 301s to the new pages? Are the things we need to try first? Any help is greatly appreciated. SEOMoz rocks. /T cxK29.png