Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi.

Our website has multiple subdomians and domain platform is wordpress. But we haven't submitted sitemap to Google. Is this Okay? Or it's mandatory to submit sitemap? Is submitting a sitemap gonna help us in ranking improvement?

Thanks for the answer & confirmation. What if we get back links from different social channels like tumblr, digg, stumbleupon, etc....

Back links from these social discussion forums hurt?

Hi All,

We can see now that Google rolled 2 unconfirmed algo updates this month and they are penalising spam links and sites which use Private blog networks; as said by some SEO experts. Do any sub-domains act as PBNs because of too much linking...like linking website pages from every page of sub-domains?

But as per the current SEO buzz,  internal nofollow leads of waste of link juice and we cannot preserve it. Moreover some suggests not to use nofollow internally.

Hi all,

If we have many non-important folders like /category/ in blog.....these will multiply the links. These are strictly for users who access very rarely but not for bots. Can we add such to disallow list in robots to stop link juice passing from them, so internal linking will me minimised to an extent. Can we add any such paths or pages in disallow list? Is this going to work pure technical or any penalty?

Thanks,

Satish

Hi,

Can you please confirm whether below kind of links hurt which are technically 403.

https://d2jbzoiok12mw2.cloudfront.net/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url

Thanks

Hi all,

If there are multiple sub-domains like abc.website.com, 123.website.com, etc...and if the top pages of website are linked from multiple sub-domains via top menu or footer links; will this hurts?

Will too much interlinking of few top pages of a website from it's sub-domains dilute link juice?

How many links ideally we can add to website from a sub-domain?

Thanks

Hi,

Is there any ratio between dofollow and nofollow back-links of a website? Do a website really need some nofollow back-links?

Thanks

Hi All,

I noticed that our website has lot of 403 errors across different pages using the tool http://www.deadlinkchecker.com/. Do these errors hurt website rankings?

Thanks

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the reply. So you meant you say that Google will take care of all spammy links and we really must not be using Disavow? Then what is the tool about? We can see many cases where SEO experts removing penalty of websites by using disavow tool by devaluing some bad links. (I am not speaking about paid links). How much Google can be accurate in devaluing all spammy links and not hurting any websites? Many SEO experts insists that Disavow must be used. I am really confused about newly generating backlinks and what to do with them?

How can you say if a link is a spammy? Any recent example? So as per your opinion we must use disavow.

So what happens when you keep on receiving backlinks from low DA websites? Does such activity improve ranking?

Hi,

Routine answer is: A link which doesn't provides any value. Tired of listening to this statement where we can see number of back-links been generated with different scenarios. There are still many low DA websites which speaks exactly about a brand and link a brand naturally. So, is this a bad link or good link? Let's be honest here. No one gonna visit such pages and browse through our website; it's all about what it's been doing in-terms of SEO.

Do these websites to be in disavow list?

Beside the context how a brand been mentioned, what are the other metrics to disavow a domain?

Expecting some real answers for this straight question.

If it's a low DA site and speaking about exactly our website- Good or bad? Vice-versa...high DA website mentioned website with less matching content. What is the proportion of website authority and content context?

Can we keep a medium DA backlinks with some Moz spam score?

Hi GR,

Thanks for your answer. But things doesn't really look transparent here. If really disavow is mandatory now; again the confusion goes with deciding whether a link is good or bad. As you said, if one website is getting bad backlinks and getting dropped in rankings, what sense it makes being penalised for no mistake from their end? As per your experience, how far tools like Moz will help to conclude about quality of link based on different metrics like spam score, etc.

Google once stated that even backlinks from porn sites don't affect a website. That's a wrong statement then.

Hi All,

So this is a obvious question now. We can see sudden fall or rise of rankings; heavy fluctuations. New backlinks are contributing enough. Google claims it'll take care of any low quality backlinks without passing pagerank to website. Other end we can many scenarios where websites improved ranking and out of penalty using disavow tool.

Google's statement and Disavow tool, both are opposite concepts. So when some unknown low quality backlinks are pointing and been increasing to a website? What's the ideal measure to be taken?

Hi All,

We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu.

Thanks

The actual reason why we opted for this idea is the way our website and sub-domains built. We have nearly 10 sub-domains with thousands of pages. These are killing us not to rank better with several issues like broken links, internal redirects, link juice dilution, etc. We cannot really control all the pages in sub-domains as they all have thousands of visits. So, I am thinking the other ways to influence the website rankings with same sub-domains. Can you please tell me how this gonna work. As I told in my earlier post, I will make sure this optimisation will look natural to the possible and doesn't affect usability. Finally, I would like to know what's the impact of bad sub-domains on website if they are not well optimised?

Hi Marie,

I have sent you private message here. Thanks for offering your help to look into our issue.

Landing pages will be created for same long tail keywords. And these will not be more than 6. These are like our product features as well long tail keywords. So I think this is OK to Google. Anyhow these will be interlinked naturally in website. But I am not sure we can add to top navigation menu as it confuses more. Footer menu links will not be really noticed by users and only thing I am more into is how it helps in SEO? Do these repeating pages on footer menu influence our rankings for those long tail keywords?

Let's say there is a website(domain) and couple of sub-domains (around 6). If we optimise all sub-domains with "keyword" we want our website to rank for.....like giving "keyword" across all page titles of sub-domains and possible places which looks natural as brand mentions. Will this scenario helps website to rank better for same "keyword"?

How can these sub-domains do really influence website in rankings? Like if the sub-domains have broken links, will this affect website SEO efforts?

When we cannot rank for multiple keywords; can we try creating landing pages for some long-tail keywords and put all such landing pages at footer menu to rank for search queries? Will this helps and sound spammy to Google?

Our website is 15 years old. Recently we have redesigned our website. Our h1 tag is not pulling up our website on top of results but h2 is making it. Surprised to see this.

Even I search for exact h1 tag heading from our homepage, it's (homepage) not been showing up on TOP of the results. Other websites with partial match of search query are ranking above us; why this is happening? And other website with same text as normal paragraph is ranking on top. But not out h1 tag from homepage? How come normal text of unrelated website is ranking above h1 heading from homepage of own website?

HI John,

I replied to Patrick.

"Why Google is not stopping them.....": What I mean was, Google claims that they will take care of any bad , low quality or spammy links pointing to us to make sure their they don't affect us. But it's not happening in our case as few links can impact rankings and they did. Is Google really accurate about this?

Thanks,
Satish

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for the detailed response. I have experienced this with couple of links few times, where one or two links are affecting our rankings. I have clear figures and proofs for this. These links are triggering the algorithm or vice-versa. Moreover it's not really taking weeks for such impact. I can see in days.

Thanks,

Satish

It happend to our website. We have seen major ranking fluctuations for our website because of one back-link. What kind of links those can be? Why Google is not stopping them even though they claim that such back-links will be taken care of?

Hi,

We have created a new page on our website for same keyword in slug but the page is not showing up for same keyword even combined with website name:

website.com/keyword is new page and not listing on top of results for exact search query "website keyword". This page is listing as 3rd result and other pages are making on top even they don't match with page title, h1 tags and URL.

This new page is indexed. How long it'll take to Google to adopt this? I don't think it'll remain same forever. Is there anything we can do from our end?

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

We are more interested in folders than different TLDs. In this case, how we gonna feed other pages of website to other language visitors?

For french, they will land on example.com/fr/ and if they browse to other pages, should all other pages must have French? If so what's the way to present "French" content to them? Just an auto-translation? Or French written content? Any best example site you can refer?

HI,

We would like to include multiple languages for our global website. What's the best practice to gain from UI and SEO too. Can we have auto language choosing website as per browsing location? Or dedicated pages for important languages like www.website.com/de for German. If we go for latter, how about when users browsing beside language page as they will be usually in English

Hi Marie,

Thanks for such detailed answer.

Actually I have recently disavow a website from which 74 links are pointing to our website. So that domain must be crawled post my disavow for the impact. Right?

I wanna share our experience with related to back-links. Our global website has visitors around the globe. We been inversely ranking in India and US when we reclaimed and removed links from few domains. In more detail: We dropped in India and Improved our ranking in US when we reclaimed some back links and we dropped in US and improved in India while we removed those redirects. So it clearly mean that one or few links can trigger the algorithm that our ranking fluctuated for more than 15 positions. So such few or more suspicious back-links might be pushing us down. In this scenario, we can use Disavow undoubtedly if we know such links. We never received any manual action but not sure about manual penalty or silent penalty, but definitely we dropped post recent Penguin update where some of the back-links are real culprits. Hope I shared some useful information to you.

Thanks,

Satish

As recent Penguin update makes quick move with backlinks with immediate impact; does Disavow tool also results the changes in few days rather than weeks like earlier? How long does it take now to see the impact of disavow? And I think still we must Disavow some links even Google claim that it'll take care of bad backlinks without passing value from them?

Actual scenario here is, we been looking the same statistics for almost an year. As I shown in above screenshot, only one link been listing when we click on the domain but number of "Total links" are in thousands. We have many domains link this. What we do to get updated with accurate linking ?

Hi,

I can see in my search console that a website giving thousands of links to my site where hardly only one back-link from one of their page to our page. Why this is happening?

Here is screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/VleUf

These posts are neither in main menu or footer menu. We show recently added posts beneath the most recent blog-post. Not related, but they will go in different categories like marketing, sales, all, etc.

Hi,

One of our blog-post has been interlinked with thousands of internal links as per search console; but lists only 2 links it got connected from. How come so many links it got connected internally? I don't see any.

Thanks,

Satish

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the reply and helping hand.

1. We are "crm" industry players.

2. We are globally relevant. Product used globally and website has global visitors across different countries.

3. We don't have any dedicated pages to any country. English language website.

4. There are many internal redirects. And some sub-domains redirected as sub-folders.

5. Reclaimed links sources are not from India/US. Mostly from Europe.

6. Our domain is based in Germany.

If you are Okay with private messages, I can send you more details. Please let me know what you need to know more.

Thanks,

Satish

Thanks for the response.

Users are not actually spamming but using our pages as their platform. But the keywords are spammy keywords in internet world. Those pages are ranking good for certain keywords. So, I am confused whether to delete the spammy content pages or let it them being well-ranked pages.

Hi,

Our ranking between India and USA is varying inversely like....when we improve in India...drops in USA and vice-versa.

And the possible correlation I have from my end is: We have reclaimed some links and removed same. It happens at both redirects and removal of those redirects. When we reclaimed some links, we improved in India and dropped in US. And when we removed these redirects, vice-versa.

Any idea on this? Please share.

Thanks,

Satish

Hi,

We have cigarettes and viagra as keywords in our sub-domain where our clients can post their business content. We have decent number of impressions and clicks for these related keywords. I have seen that these two words, especially "viagra" is most spammed. So are these hurting us? We dropped post Penguin update. Any correlation? Do you think that these keywords penalise us? We don't have messages or suggestion from Google

Thanks,

Satish

Hi Sean,

My doubt is: If we redirect all incoming links to one page; do Google penalise? What's the best way to reclaim the incoming links pointing to non-existing pages? We have redirected some links and dropped in rankings?

Thanks for the response.

We have 6 sub-domains like blog, etc. Our blog is a sub-domain but configured as example.com/blog (wordpress). Others are left as same. sub-domain.com, etc. We have thousands of visits on these sub-domains with hundreds and thousands of pages. So, we are not sure whether these will be treated as individual websites by Google or all together as same website. If they treat as individual website, will there be any link juice passing from and to domain and sub-domains? And my doubt is, what's the best way to link these sub-domains from our domain. I have gone through some posts saying too many links from sub-domain to domain may turn as spam for Google.

Thanks for the reply.

We been doing good till this drop and suddenly dropped for mobile category. The related changes we made in correlation to this drop are only few redirects and removing footer links. Btw, we are ranking good in mobile speed tests and mobile-friendly as per Google tools.

Hi,

Our rank dropped and we noticed it's a major drop in "Mobile" devices category, which is contributing to the overall drop. What exactly drops mobile rankings? We do not have any messages in search console. We have made few redirects and removed footer links. How these affect?

Thanks,
Satish

Hi,

I would like to know the best anchor text practices. I think it's same for On-page and Off-page. As per the internet seo buzz, people suggests differently as below. Which actually work out?

1. Exact match with target page title or partial match

2. Will "Read more" and "learn more" are Okay?

3. How much it must be relevant with URL?

Thanks,

Satish

What's the best optimised linking between sub-domains and domains? And every time we'll give website link at top with logo...do we need to link sub-domain also with all it's pages?

If example.com is domain and example.com/blog is sub-domain or sub-folder...

1. Do we need to link to example.com from /blog?

2. Do we need to give /blog link in all pages of /blog?

3. Is there any difference in connecting domains with sub-domains and sub-folders?

Hi Coleman,

My question is not exactly the same but you have given right answer in different prospective. As you said we have many external links pointing to our non-existing pages of our website. So we been planning to redirect those to right pages rather than creating pager for such incoming links. Will this helps? We cannot create pages as we already replaced with new pages.

My actual question is: We had referred to many external websites from our website or blog pages which are not actually direct links but redirecting and landing. Do we need to replace such links with actual landing pages? Will this helps us anyhow in SEO or completely negligible?

For example: If we have mentioned example.com/seo and it's redirecting to example.com/sem. Do we need to replace /seo with /sem here?

Thank,

Satish

Previously I have asked about the replacing of internal redirects with actual live pages. The answer is, yes it'll work but may not be huge impact.

Now I am concerned with external redirects. We have enough number of external redirecting links. I am thinking to replace them with actual landing pages. Will this improve SEO?

Thanks,

Satish

Hi Furtak,

I will send you in PM.

Thanks,

Satish

Hi Furtak,

Thanks for the response. Here I have uploaded our ranking screenshot. Please have a look and let us know your valuable understandings. Based on that, we conclude something to work on like link audit if we are certain of it.

http://imgur.com/a/J7Cdz

We have improved ranking when we fixed certain broken links, but dropped on Sep 17th, which is too early to blame on Penguin (my guess). One thing to notice here is that we had reclaimed some links (around 10) on 15th and we dropped on 17th. We reclaimed more than 50 links for last one month. Do these redirects pushed us down?

We dropped more on USA.

Thanks,

Satish

Hi Furtak,

Thanks for the response. Keyword you mentioned must be in anchor text or URL? We have keyword in URL but not anchor text.

And...how about linking this 2nd tier page internally from many number of possible links; so that it'll show-up in Google naturally? One of our most internally linked page is showing up in Google which we wanna replace with this new page

Thanks,

Satish

Hi Dirk,

You got it right. All the pages we redirected were pointing to similar pages once, so probably they should be okay as u said.

Regarding disavow; what are the metrics to decide on a link? Some links might be good looking with decent DA and might be hurting us. What's the best way to findout actual back-links dropping us down. Disavow comes with risk as there are chances we may reject good links, so it's better to make sure about the links.

Thanks,

Satish