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Question - when you took them over did you get all three websites?

paragonbuildinggroup.com/, paragonroofinggroup.com and paragonpaintinggroup.com

There is some pretty bad duplicate content between the building group site and the roofing group site and with the sites interlinking as they do, I would say Google noticed pretty quick.

I know you are limited as to what can be done but I would say explain to your client that each website needs to have content relevant only to what that particular website is offering - no duplicate content.  If the building website wants to touch on roofing then link to the other website - that is fine.  Honestly, I would personally rather see all of this put together on one website with different sections for the different services - then the other domain names could just 301 to the relevant sections of the mother website.  Also - links.  the building group website needs them badly.  As far as what happened - there is no way to be 100% sure but I am guessing an algorithmic penalty - the way the three websites (that I found, there could be more) are set up could certainly look like an attempt to manipulate search results to the algorithms.  Honestly... it probably was an attempt to manipulate search results, an attempt by the last vendor.  Not a penalty for the duplicate content, mind you - but the duplicate content and interlinking etc... were probably signals that all added up to "hey, these websites are not following guide lines"  this was just a quick look though - I could be wrong.

Although I am certainly not saying that your proposed method is 'wrong' in the slightest... I would be more inclined to take advantage of the year's worth of authority on your old domain.

Surfboards and Paddle boards are certainly similar enough - it isn't like you are branching out in to game systems or lawn mowers.

I would create a paddle board section on the current website and optimize that section for the paddle board terms.

That is just me, though.  I see no issue with your proposed method except for having a new domain with no links and no time under its belt.

Cheers.

Without an in-depth look into your analytics the information you have provided leads me to believe the following is occurring since you specifically mention that you are not running any ppc ads.  When Google Analytics is reporting on source/medium the value that is shown direct / none of course refers to any visit that has been tracking that they could not identify a referring domain that started the visit.  There are numerous reasons as to why a referring domain can be lost for a visitor

1.Somebody really did type in the address or used a bookmark to get to your page

2.They clicked on a link in an email from a non web based email clients (typically Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc.)

3.The link was in a document

4.The link originates at a secure (https:) page and your page is not secure (http)

5.Spiders and bots were working from a list of URLs from a previous crawl (this one mostly applies to server logs, rarely to JavaScript based tracking)

6.Spiders and bots may be programmed to suppress the referrer information (this one mostly applies to server logs, rarely to JavaScript based tracking)

7.The visitor is using IE and the link to your site was in Javascript.  Javascript links to your site include those that open your site in a new browser window, or any kind of javascript redirect.  Many banners’ links are programmed this way.

8.The visitor is using IE and the link to your site is from within a Flash application (there are a lot of ways to do this in Flash so there may be exceptions I would always recommend adding a Ad Campaign tracking variable to any CTA)

9.Your landing page redirects to another page via a 301 permanent server-side redirect

10.The link was on an intranet or some other web site behind a proxy or corporate gateway that was set up to strip referrers from requests

11.The visitor has made changes to their browser that suppresses the referrer information

12.Another site has put your page content into an iFrame and coded the frame to suppress the referrer, in order to make it difficult for you to find out who is framing your content

I think you would be fine to change it so you have the correct spelling - just be sure to 301 redirect the old file name to the new file name after to change it.

Hello Shelly, I have never seen anything that lead me to believe that secure pages receive more inherent trust just because they are secure. A couple of years ago Matt Cutts was asked a similar question (SEL or SEJ... my memory is failing me on where I read it) and his answer alluded to the fact that they are treated the same, just pick one and stick with it. Besides that, I can’t remember the last time I noticed a secure page ranking high in the SERPs at all, if ever… admittedly, I am sure there are far less secure pages… Anyway, I do not believe a secure page receives more initial trust just because it is secure.

My two cents,

Vizergy

We have completed redesigns like what you have described (in your responses as well as your original post) and for one in particular - even with far better optimization in place after the redesign we had some rankings drop for a couple of weeks before rankings not only returned but improved over what they had been.  It was like the redesign was so drastic that Google pushed us back just to see what was going on - although I chalked it up to being the amount of time it probably took for all of the redirects to be recognized...

OSE doesn't operate in real time unless I am very much mistaken.  I believe it crawls and updates every week... or maybe month... so you could have had those links when they last crawled but have since lost them.  Or... I am wrong.. and if I am wrong I have no doubt that I will be corrected

Would it be possible to just add the new property to the old page without removing the old property?  Just add the new one above?

Sorry if this sounds stupid but the old page will already have trust etc...

I'm sorry if I am giving bad news but 'some good links' just doesn't mean much.  What do your competitors have?  How relevant is your content?  There is just a lot more to it than links.....  give some more info and we can all look in to it.

If, as Collin says, you are not in to deep you could change them and 301 the old to the new and then going forward you could just use the new format.

Hi Steve.  Yes, SEOMOZ offers OpenSiteExplorer, it is actually the tool we use here at Vizergy to track our link building efforts.  If you click in to the Research Tools section you will find it in there.  With that said, you certainly want to watch your link builder's progress to make sure he or she is not doing any link building that will hurt your rankings (bad directories, buying links etc...).

Good Luck!

We had a sub domain website (very small... four or five pages) that was blocked via the robots.txt file for two or three years.  When we decided to have it indexed I did just what you did; fetch via GWT and clicked the button to add it to the index.  This worked and then the next day... or maybe two days later, it was gone.  I did this a couple of times...

It didn't hit the index and stick for two weeks.  But since then everything has been just fine.

Wouldn't it be logical then that if Google is doing it.... you don't have to?

Perhaps some page out there on some other site that is relevant to safari users links to some old page of yours that you accidentally 301'd to this page?

Hello Tuan,

It is important to remember that the PR you see is just toolbar PR and is not the internal PageRank that Google uses in their ranking formula – no one has access to that.  Their Toolbar PR is high because of their large number of backlinks and content.

In looking at the website you provided the URL for, I see that there are dozens and dozens of completely unrelated, almost random looking, links in the website’s footer.  You do not want to be associated with this website – it will get noticed if it hasn’t already.  It is obvious that they sell links; this is exactly the type of thing Google looks for when hunting for link farms.

Hope this helps,

Vizergy

I completely agree with activitysuper and I would strongly recommend taking care of your URLs. Also, your canonical tag is set to the dynamic looking URL and I don't know if that would be best for you.  I think for best results you are going to need to obviously start some link building (I would keep it clean - big Penguin is watching!) - many of your images have the same alt text (your business name) - you might consider setting up some internal linking throughout the site to help spread the authority you should begin to gain - just standard on and off page stuff as well as the technical optimization that AS pointed out.

I agree about trusting Cutts, however I believe this one to be true

I wouldn't bother with design element only images; borders, backgrounds etc... only actual images of something you can describe.  I would also stay very far away from just adding keywords to the alt attribute.  If the images are relevant to the page's focus just describing the image accurately will help a great deal.

When you deleted the pages did you 301 the URls to relevant live pages or did they return 404 errors?  Did the deleted pages have a lot of links going to them?

I agree but that has to be it.  You could also try compiling a list of the links you never asked for (the spam sites) and going to Google spam report form and explaining everything in the 'additional information' field just to get this in front of someone on the spam team.  I did that for a client either it helped or it was a huge coincidence but their rankings were back in a little less than two weeks.  No promises, but it seemed to work for us.  The report is here https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1&hl=en and I just clicked on 'Paid Links' and then just explained EVERYTHING (I know these arent paid links, my clients weren't either, but it was the only link related choice.

There could be, I am not sure.  The company I work for did some sort of a trial so I could play with it for a few months and give my COO feed back before they entered in to a contract but I don't know if the trial was free or just at a lowered rate.  We use it in an agency setting so we have many slots we can move clients in and out of - if you are just getting it for one website it is probably much more affordable.

Good content is informative, relevant, non-keyword stuffed and grammatically correct content that is written for human readers not bots/spiders.  If you are writing a good article, you should never have to worry about how many times your targeted terms appear, they should just happen naturally and the surrounding text will support the term(s).  Blurbs that relate more to another article or page or citations to a website where more information can be found should be used as anchor text for links to that article, page or website etc...

There is no "trick" I am aware of, as a matter of fact I would say to stay away from trying to trick the search engines at all, ever.  As far as text amount mattering, I suppose it can but you should only concern yourself with the quality of the information you are providing, when that is your goal the amount should be perfect.

I have never been asked to describe "Good Content" before; this should prove to be an interesting discussion.

I don't believe that non-specific YET naturally built links will ever hurt you.  Obviously they will never help quite as much as industry specific links but the fact remains that they are not spam; they are real, honestly built relationships.  I would not spend one second worrying about those links.  I would also, however, not spend lots of energy or time building more if there are more relevant links that you could be spending your time trying to build.

I would probably do my best to dump those spammy .edu links though.  But that's just me

Cheers!

Hello Mozers.  It has been a while

OK - I run an open site explorer report, toggle over to 'Linking Domains' because I am more interested in the number of actual websites that link to my client rather than the number of links my client has (and of course what websites are linking) and although I have been doing this for years there is one little thing I am a bit confused about.

The report shows (from left to right) the 'Linking Root Domain", the "Domain Authority" for the linking domain and then the 'Number of Linking Root Domains" for each 'Linking Root Domain"  My question is (rather stupid, I am sure) is the number of linking root domains for each linking root domain the number of websites linking to them OR the number of websites to which they link?

1. I wish I could accurately place this on a scale for you.  In my opinion I would consider this to be white hat.  You have no intent of manipulating search results here - this is completely a usability issue and this is the obvious fix.

2. Yes, I certainly would

3. yes, I certainly would

We use AWR and I highly recommend it.  And yes, the domains and numbers of keywords are unlimited - we have several hundred clients loaded - also, its accuracy is comparable to any software we have used - and we have used a lot over the years.

Hi Michael,

From my experience a sub-domain isn’t going to benefit much from the main site’s authority therefore needing a major link building campaign of its own.  I would say, if this is going to be a one page per franchise project rather than multiple pages of content, you might be better off with the sub-folder. That would allow the page to benefit more from the authority the main site has already gained.

I am not saying you won’t need to build links but I believe the necessary work would be less.

My two cents  Cheers

I have heard many times over the years that Google does not crawl/index secure pages... however, when performing a inURL:https search in Google you will see that this is certainly NOT true; they not only crawl, they index.  So, if it is being crawled and indexed I would say there is a very real chance that it could cause a Dup issue.

I would set up a canonical tag to be safe.

That makes perfect sense.  Thank you very much

copyscape.com  You will have to do each page individually but it works well.

It could be that SEOMoz hasn't updated their index since you started ranking page one.  I could be incorrect (and please, anyone, correct me if I am) but I believe they work off of their own index that updates periodically rather than using Google's live index.

I completely agree.  I have had very similar projects.  Good luck!

View the source (Ctrl U or right click and select "view source") then hold Ctrl and hit the "F" key to bring up a search box that will search the active document - in this case the source of the web page you were viewing.  Type in<a href="" and="" click="" next="" over="" until="" you="" have="" looked="" at="" every="" link="" that="" makes="" up="" the="" navigation="" or="" possibly="" not="" them="" if="" they="" are="" html.=""  the="" html="" for="" a="" is="" <a="" etc....<="" p=""></a>

<a href="" and="" click="" next="" over="" until="" you="" have="" looked="" at="" every="" link="" that="" makes="" up="" the="" navigation="" or="" possibly="" not="" them="" if="" they="" are="" html.=""  the="" html="" for="" a="" is="" <a="" etc....<="" p="">Does this help you?  I assume you are afraid that the links are JavaScript?  If you are wondering if it is Flash you can just right click on one of the Navigation links on the website and the box that comes up will say "Zoom In, Zoom Out..." etc...</a>

Yes and more than anything, learn from your successes and mistakes but don't get caught up in "well this worked for that client so it will work for this one" things change, different techniques seem to have different levels of effectiveness depending on the client and their market etc...  Nothing will teach you like experience will.

Agreed.  IMO the domain should be the Brand.  Sub-domains or directories for different locations makes perfect sense and flows well just be careful with duplicate content.  Don't just copy all of your content over and change the city or state.

Call me crazy but I still find myself using Google Trends to compare different iterations of like phrases.  It also gives related search suggestions...

Is it possible that the 301s actually don't have much to do with it?  Or perhaps that doing this drew algorithmic attention to the website?  In going over your website I, like others before me, couldn't find any reason for you to get knocked back so then I ran your site (the new one) through open site explorer and it seems the majority of your links are blog comments and most of those are on blogs that are in genres unrelated to what you do.  It could just be that Google isn't giving you the credit for these links that they used to.  Just a thought.

I agree, Alan.  No matter how hard you try it is going to carry some level of dup - you would be better off trying to target all 10 locations on the main services page than trying to re-spin the same 750 words.  Your first suggestion is the approach I would take as well.

In going over your site really quickly I would have to say that you are a victim of Panda.  I would suggest tightening up your page focus and not being so broad in your titles.  Also, you do have some duplicate content issues that Google may take as an attempt to manipulate the search results.  here's an example: - http://copyscape.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shuttlefinder.net%2F

I would suggest an on-page overhaul.  I am not, in any way, saying anything bad about your site, it just needs a Panda compliant clean up

Good Luck!

A few years back the powers that be (or in this case WERE) here where I work decided that my department would go from 'Internet Marketers' to 'Online Acquisition Marketers'... it was horrible.  No one understood what it meant and we found ourselves explaining our services far more than we ever had to in the past.  Needless to say... it didn't last.  We are back to 'internet marketers'.  It is simple, people already know what it means - or if they don't the meaning is fairly self evident once you hear it.  Just as in all things, simplicity is best.  That was the lesson learned around here.  In my defense... I hated even saying 'online acquisition marketing'... just sounded weird...

The only tool I know of that does this for you is BrightEdge.  Otherwise doing it manually is probably the best way to go.  If there are other tools out there that do this I have no doubt someone here will know of it.

Yeah and I guess if it was a penalty you would have received an email - Google is being all transparent now.  This is an odd situation you have.  maybe you should kill the 301 just to see if the old site shoots back up.  Weird, my friend... very weird.  I wish I could be of any assistance but I have never seen this before.  Good luck.

Hi Cyril,

As an SEO that specializes in hotels, and has for years, I thought I would share a bit of experience with you.  I can not stress the importance of On Page SEO in our industry.  Links are, of course, important, but On Page can not be ignored.  I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty of quickly going through your site and I have some suggestions that I believe will help you to achieve the rankings you are looking for.  Each page of your website should have a clear and definite focus i.e. the focus for the hotels page should obviously be French Quarter Hotels etc... the page's focus needs to be reflected in each page's Title, Description, alt text, H1 and all through out the content.  No pages should have the same title or description (they all appear to be the same right now).  Unless you are using the keyword tags for internal reporting (we do) you should drop them.  If you do use them clean them up (right now the terms in them are far too broad and there are far to many).  Internal linking should be structured to flow for the user etc... just basic stuff.  With your current link profile and the age of your site a good on page clean up should be all you need.

Good Luck!

I hope that is the case  Thanks for responding.

High high PA and lower DA is simply because the DA is an average of each page's PA (at least that's how I understand it).  It may not be quite that simple with certain page's weighing more in the average but I believe that is the simplest way to look at it.

In my personal market it is very hard, if not impossible to get links to any page other than the home page so I use very thought out internal linking structures to spread authority throughout the website.  However, I do not believe I have ever seen a website who's Home Page Authority was not considerably higher than the over all DA - for instance, the site I am working on right now has a DA of 59 and a PA (on the home page) of 65 while the PA of one of the internal pages is 43...

Tricky.  Here is my take.

Google, as I am sure you know, recommends responsive design so all 'versions' of a website operate under the same URL. https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details

However, it is very clearly stated "...serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device"

I read that as "Don't hide anything"  They want the SAME html being served so I take that to mean all of it - not some.

Could you compromise and make it an H2 or H3 and just set the CSS to show that particular tag as a small sub-header on the desktop version, but a bigger more prominent header on the other versions?

If they were, and still are, indexed in Google just do a site: search

Where I work we provide both template and custom solutions with templates being, obviously, more affordable.  Although we do very well with the customs our templates sell far more and of those there are, of course, templates that sell better than others.

We have never had any issues between websites that decide on the same templates.  Never.

Due to my practical experience with different properties using the same templates I have to say that I disagree with the assertion that the html and css (and jquery and everything else) that goes in to the template construct would be considered duplicate content.  I have always believed, and still do, that "duplicate content" refers only to the subject matter that is published on the website.  Nothing else.