Great, thanks for that!

Hi Keri,

Status of ads is 'eligible' with quality scores of 10/10 for brand terms (trademarked) and related brand terms (not trademarked).

Any idea how the twitter person established "stuck in eligible status purgatory"?

Thanks,Davinia

Hi Stephen,

Have tested using the Adwords 'ad preview and diagnosis' tool as well as logged in and out, removing cache and on different computers - no change, always at the bottom.

Hi Don,

I don't know what to say.... I can't stop giggling. There is NO WAY you get a better CTR with ads appearing at the bottom of the page. Like you I also have plenty of data to back that up.

This issue continues to occur for one of my clients.

Perhaps consider testing on smartphones only - I'd imagine more people would see the whole first page of results on a smartphone than they would on a desktop. I'd also recommend getting your SEO up to scratch so you are placing top of page for organic listings and Google Places.

Will let you know if I find anything new......but am still scratching my head as well.

Davinia

I appreciate your time, thanks.

Ads only display in New Zealand so you won't be able to see them, but thanks for the offer of PM anyways.

Am using legacy but didn't think this would cause any problems as enhanced is geared towards mobile. But it could very well be the cause?

Keywords are position 1 for all and have viewed placement by 'ad preview and diagnosis' and it still appears at the bottom.

So, I'm stumped!

Hi Zach,

Thanks for your reply.

Quality scores on all keywords are 10/10.

I've been running these campaigns for a year and only seen this twice (both in last 7 days). So am wondering if maybe something has changed with Adwords?

Thanks,
Davinia

Hello,

I'm running a sale promotion on a brand only Adwords campaign (I have the only account with trademark authorization) and have noticed that my ads are appearing at the bottom of the first page on Google.

This happened last week so I split the campaign into three Adgroups and that fixed the problem but today I'm running brand only and there is no way to separate them.

CPC has also increased dramatically. Normally it's less than 10 cents and now it's sitting at between $2-$4.

Has anyone else seen this? Any ideas/advice on how to stop this happening? It's playing havoc with my CTR and conversions.

Much thanks,
Davinia

It makes them unique yes but you might want to add a little more. If search engines don't think your meta tags are a true representation of the page or if they are duplicated across the site then the search engine will choose whatever content it wants, and often this isn't a compelling introduction to the website.

Private message me your URL if you like and I can have a look and see if there are any additional automation opportunities for your tags.

First see if you can automate the meta descriptions so they are unique. So create a rule that changes one or two words. Easy to use terms for the rule would be things like product names, product models, product size, category names etc.

Or, if the pages are so much the same would canonical tags be possible? This will communicate to search engines which one page is the priority page. That way your duplicate or light content on other pages shouldn't cause any penalties.

oDesk is my recommendation as well, but you should always ask for a sample of writing before hiring anyone. I also specify 'English speaking' in the job title. For a safe option you should take the referral from Francisco, good price and recommended.

If you are wanting to save some monies you could always write it yourself and just have a SEO copywriter polish it up for you.

Add a permanent 301 redirect from your /index page and point to your root domain (i.e. non /index pages).
 - You need to do the redirect over canonical because it's a duplicate page/URL rather than a page with blocks of similar content.

Update all mentions within your website that link to the /index page so that they only link to the non /index page. With CMS's you'll need to look where things get automatically added, like links in sitemap, footer, breadcrumbs, the 'home' link and sub-navigation.You may need a developer to remove them if not accessible via the CMS.

Then your duplicate content issues will be gone.

First explain that without using the variations on the website it will be challenging but you are going to try some work-rounds that may or may not work.

You can add the variations to alt tags, title attributes in navigation, in the footer, try title tags and meta descriptions (not on the actual page but will come up in SERPs) and build external links with the variations as the anchor text.

You could also investigate schema mark up and if you can add the variations in there somehow and also look at Google+ and linkedIn which you can link back to the website.

You could try get an About Us page and make the content fun and engaging and also add the variations in there "john smith, also known as X and X, ....'

Good luck!

Go to the post, click edit and at the bottom of the page there is two radio buttons where you can select 'question' or 'discussion'.

It maybe that they are adding your website under the article in the 'related internet links' section. Set up a Google Alert and you will get emailed when links appear on the website; then you might be able to locate them.

Private message me if you want to discuss further

Okay, then when you check for your URL on the page how are you doing that? Do you search for your URL in the source code? It would be good to locate exactly where on the page the URL is placed and from there you will have a better idea of how it's getting put there, or rather where to investigate next! The link might not be obvious on the front page, it could be an image link etc.

Are you running Adwords?Could be paid advertising on BBC news website that is pushing traffic to your site.

In your traffic report have a look for that URL and filter by a secondary dimension of 'medium'. This will tell you if it is referral traffic or paid advertising. If it is referral then there is (or was) a link to your website on that page. If it is ppc (paid) then it is the Google Ads.

I'd supply clients with a glossary so that they have a point of reference. I'd also stick with your own terminology and explanation, I think it's important otherwise you will end up having one word that is used differently across multiple clients.

What you have written explains the three just fine. If you wanted to, in the directory explanation you could expand it and say that there are primary, secondary and niche directories with different levels of benefits.

Agreed, I'd approach this as a custom acquisition and brand awareness project as well. Especially given that the website would have a short life span and SEO is a long term investment.

If this was me I'd optimize the website for the competition name and use social networking to build awareness (ie. facebook, twitter, pinterest etc).

There is no SEO benefit in using meta keywords, however if you do use them and are keyword spamming (i.e. using more than 2-3 page specific terms) then you could be penalized.

I always recommend removing the tag completely from the website as it stops the client from spamming the tag at a later date and it reduces the amount of 'useless' code in the source code (Google likes a website that loads quickly!)

Completely agree with Eric. You need to get creative in how you approach your content. This website will help you locate blogs you can post on http://myblogguest.com/

Are the websites that link to your website thematically in-line with your website? It's good to get links that are related to your topic.

Hi Instvan,

What other things can it depend on?

Provided that we submit with all of the correct information (as per guidelines) and there is an editor on the category what else can make the approval take longer?

Much thanks,
Davinia

Seems like a bit of a stretch that there would be a negative impact, but if you are concerned why not create child accounts (individual accounts for client websites) and just link them to a master account (i.e. your business account). That way you can still access them all from one login (after you set up the child accounts).

My thoughts as well, just needed to double check! Thank you.

Great thank you.

Hi everyone,

What's everyone's thoughts on Dublin Core Metadata. These aren't tags I have come across before but a client site is using them. After doing some reading I am leaning towards removing them but would be very interested in the communities thoughts on these.

Much thanks,
Davinia

Thanks Chris, I'll look into this avenue.

I use hypens so that Google can recognise the keywords.

Hello.

I have a question about funnel visualization in Google Analytics where there is an eCommerce goal (i.e. add to cart, shipping, purchase) with the first step being mandatory.

Issue:
The amount of completed purchases reported in GA doesn't match the actual transaction figure via the eCommerce platform.

Question:
I was wondering if anyone knows why this occurs? I have a few ideas on why  however I haven't been able to locate any supporting evidence. So I was hoping to generate a few ideas from the SEOMoz community to help me investigate further.

Any ideas welcome!

Much thanks,
Davinia

I haven't used them but any company listed on that page has made high-quality, public contribution to the community (i.e. you have to be good at what you do, giving and I'd imagine ethical to be listed on that page), so they should be good.

It the page has already been indexed and you block via robots.txt file what you will most likely see in SERPs is a listing with no meta description (so just one line). I do believe that ranking placements will drop. If you want to remove from SERPs completely you need to use the noindex tag.

I would block by robots.txt file now while you work out how to add the noindex tag.

With the information provided it doesn't appear to be a fair exchange and the SEO benefit to you, I'm imagine, would be minimal.

Branding benefits and network opportunities are limited to a footer link - who's going to find that? How will it grab peoples attention? Why don't you have a whole page about your business with a paragraph of text, links and images - this would be better than a footer link (for SEO) and better branding and networking. Make sure that the page isn't an orphaned page (i.e. needs to be linked from main navigation or a high level page).

Check out http://myblogguest.com/ - it's a forum where you can request content (for free) by category and people will send you posts. I've used it a little and find it to be an overly good community.

Alternatively you could try www.odesk.com which is a website where you pay for resource (people bid on your job so it's a cheap alternative). I've had good and bad resource from there so when hiring just be sure to ask for a sample of their writing first.

No doubt the left hand real estate will be used for Google's benefit, time will tell if it's for paid search or for semantic results (which keeps a user on Google longer rather than them heading off to another website for information).

The more content above the fold would most likely affect CTR of the top three ads, but if it's more ads then perhaps it will also make the first page ads more accessible for high cost keywords for clients with medium to low budgets.

It hasn't been rolled out in New Zealand yet.... but I'm sure it's coming!

I believe that all links are seen as 'leakage' but by having a nofollow it shows that you aren't trying to spam or sell links for the sole purpose of link building.

Nofollow seems like a good option for you.

While link building I have come across a website that will only dofollow paid links and nofollow unpaid links, when i questioned them (just for my own information) they said it was to give more benefit to the paid links over non-paid but they wanted to keep the non-paid because they offer value to the website visitor.

Not sure of a tool that would do this but can't you just spot check the website making sure to check a few URLs from each directory. Or, can't your web developers run a report to tell you which URLs have a redirect on them - then just sort through the ones that have two URLs and go to the same page.

Best practice is that every page has one H1 header followed by a series of H2 and H3 headers. And, where possible these headings should be in a hierarchical order within the source code.

I'd approach it  like this:

'course name' + Course

6 weeks learning 'secondary keyword targets')

So it would look something like this...

Veterinary Nurse Course

6 weeks learning about animal care & pet health

Hi Rafiqul,

I recently saw the same issue with one of my clients and the reason was that the 404 error page wasn't a true 404 error page, it was a 404 soft error page (which means the http header response code was a 200 OK meaning it's not a 404 - remember that a page can look however you want but unless server-side is using the correct header response etc then it's not a true 404). This page explains it better http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=181708

Davinia

Looks like people in New Zealand also want to conserve weed - of the illegal variety. However when 'searching in NZ only' we are only concerned with how to destroy the everyday weeds from our gardens.

Whats your linking profile like for this other keyword?

Why don't you private message me your URL and I will take a look for you

Hi Helen,

Check out the SEOMoz Beginners guide to links http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links there is some good points on there where you can learn about anchor text and keywords. Remember links need to appear natural so change up the keywords used in anchor text.

To be honest it's not overly easy to break unwanted links. First ask the webmaster to remove your link, or perhaps the link is attached to an account (try get access then delete it), if all else fails you can Disavow a link http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.nz/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.html

Just remember, link building requires a long term strategy and commitment. I opt for a little bit of link building all of the time. To help manage all those links I use Raven Tools, it's good but is a paid service.

Have fun!
Davinia

If you have these links as part of the navigation, or a sub-navigation then search engines are going to be smart enough to know that this is navigational and not an attempt to manipulate results. So include all of the 6 links on all 6 categories.

If you have a navigation that includes all of the links and then you are adding additional links to the body copy of the page then it would be a good idea to be mindful of what you are including. My favorite approach to this is to have a paragraph of permanent text with links going to the other pages (2-3 max). The link will be near words that are relevant and makes sense to a user (because don't forget its best to write for humans before search engines).

Just be mindful that this is only one activity, to boost rankings you need to build quality external links to each of the 6 category pages as well as implement on-page SEO copy.

Good luck,
Davinia

Hi Helen,

DoMiSol has already explained the difference of external vs internal but I just wanted to add that given you have stated you have 3,000 external links yet you aren't ranking very well perhaps you need to spend some time doing more link building aiming to get quality links that are thematically in-line with your website.

In my experience 3,000 quality links to your website would be good for rankings so perhaps you need to take a look at the links that currently point to your website. If you are connected to a link farm then this is bad and will affect your rankings. Start looking at WHO is linking to you, then HOW they are linking to you and decide if that link needs to be removed or updated (with keyword targeted anchor text).

Good luck,
Davinia

Hi Nick,

They are using schema markup on their reviews (AggregateRating <a class="attribute-value">- http://schema.org/AggregateRating</a>

This is why the ratings occur in SERPs.

Have a read of this page
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170 and then research on from there.

Good luck and private message me if you want to discuss more.
Davinia

Great thanks Matt!