Gin sounds like a good start. Clean and simple. I'm thinking we need the Google colors, lemon, lime, then some sort of red and blue flavor.
Posts made by WilliamKammer
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RE: What should go in a "Link Juice" cocktail?
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What should go in a "Link Juice" cocktail?
The office just got some of those fancy Google Partner bottles, and I want to fill them up with a tasty cocktail that is link juice themed.
Any ideas on how to tie Google and/or SEO into a fancy cocktail?
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RE: Switch to www from non www preference negatively hit # pages indexed
You are basically 301 redirecting an entire site to a new URL (the "www" subdomain). So treat this like any other 301, you will dip, but it should recover for the most part.
In the future, I wouldn't recommend changing the www status after a suite is established, even if the preference changes.
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RE: How to redirect an url in .htaccess when "redirect 301" doesnt work
Sorry, I should have clarified. The redirect needs the full path of the image. The actual redirect would be something Ike:
Redirect 301 /images/15985.jpg(.*) /images/15985.jog
depending on where the image actually lives.
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RE: What is your opinion on link farm risks and how do I explain this to a client?
They absolutely need to removed as quickly as possible. You are in the right and that company is just doing what companies do and protecting themselves. If the articles on MOZ aren't enough to convince your client, here's one from Forbes... maybe he'll listen to that one: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2013/10/09/seo-rankings-tanking-check-for-bad-incoming-links/
A large portion of my job with new clients is now link cleanup and disavows, because they suffered this kind of penalty with who was doing their marketing before us.
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RE: Is this a NAP inconsistency or is it fine?
The Googler said it didn't matter as long as it was consistent, but I think Vadim has some good points below.
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RE: Hidden H1 Tags
Yes, the way it's usually set up, screen readers for people with disabilities can still read the hidden H1s, so you won't have that card to play against them.
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RE: Hidden H1 Tags
I have seen this done in order to help screen readers, but I definitely do not recommend this. They may argue that semantic rules of HTML 5 dictate that this is an okay practice, and it is for HTML 5, but not for Google.
Google doesn't adopt new rules or semantic changes right away. Changes have to take hold and become common practice. This isn't common enough, and hidden H1s do open you up for potential penalties.
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RE: When the Plural has more traffic, but the singular makes much more sense. What to do?
Ha, yeah. This job would be so easy if only clients weren't a factor. The ones that listen are always the ones that have more success.
Good luck convincing your client. Keep your cool, it can be frustrating when clients force you to let them shoot themselves in the foot. This is because once their foot is bleeding, they're going to blame you for the pain.
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RE: When the Plural has more traffic, but the singular makes much more sense. What to do?
Imagine you are a user. If you're searching the singular, you're probably looking for a SERP with websites of single venue locations to browse through. If you were searching the plural, you're probably looking for websites that aggregate, list, rank or otherwise provide you with a predetermined group of venues. So, if you are a single venue trying to rank for "venues" you're always going to struggle against those sites that naturally use the plural.
With that said, yes, optimizing for a singular will usually give you some juice for the plural as well, but not as much. If you're starting from scratch, I would recommend going for the lower competition, more relevant key term first.
And remember, more traffic doesn't always mean more results. Targeting keywords without the proper searcher intent is going to get you traffic that doesn't convert.
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RE: How to redirect an url in .htaccess when "redirect 301" doesnt work
Have you tried:
redirect 301 15985.jpg(.*) 15985.jpg
This should capture every string that starts with the image name.
Hope that helps.
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RE: Is this a NAP inconsistency or is it fine?
Consistency is key. I would leave the 4+ off. From my experience and from talking with Google employees, the more identical the better for the actual NAP. A Googler who works in that area told me even the difference between "blvd" and "boulevard" can possibly have an impact.
And when it comes down to, "Who do I make happy, Bing or Google?" The answer is almost always Google.
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RE: Duplicate Content From Citations?
You'll notice some citation sites specifically request unique content for the descriptions. This is most likely so they don't encounter duplicate content, but it's a good practice. I know it's a hassle, but unique descriptions enable you to tailor content to the specific citation site, and you can surround your links (even if most are no-followed) with different contextual words they may be picked up on.
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RE: Alexa Rank and Sem Rush Rank
No single indicator is going to give you a score that can accurately tell you what you want to know about a website. It's good to pull in multiple scores like this to compare. If they seem consistent with each other, the scores are likely more trustworthy. If they are not, determine why not, sometimes it's because one tool is picking up something that another is not.
Here's a list of a few of the scores I use:
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MOZ Authority (page and domain)
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Alexa (yes, it matters, it's just reading different metrics than the others).
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Google PageRank (just one indicator, not the end-all be-all of scores)
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There are plenty of others as well, each scoring according to different metrics, which makes them all of value in some way.
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RE: Keyword every blog post?
It never hurts to do a little keyword research and do some optimization for blog posts, just don't go overboard and force keywords into a blog post for ranking's sake. As long as it's natural in the writing or headlines, it's almost always good to target larger groups of the traffic you want, as opposed to smaller or non-existent groups.
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RE: Wordpress Speed Optimization Inquiry
After some testing, we found WPEngine to be the best solution for Wordpress site speed. They are a hosting company that specializes in Wordpress and they use a lot of caching and CDNs without you needing to set anything up or worry if things are working properly.
I'm sure similar results can be duplicated by building out your own caching and CDN, this is just another option for you.
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RE: How do retailers phase out short term promotional pages for best SEO?
It depends on how quick the promotions are. If the promotions really are short-term, I like to create a "specials" or "promotions" page where they can all be aggregated along with some unique content. Pages like that can get crazy traffic and even links. Visitors love them.
Then, you can have those individual promotions pages branch off of that main one. 301s to the promotions page would work. Or, if possible, maybe creating brand new pages for each promotion isn't the right way to go about it, and those promotions should ONLY live on the main promotions page.
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RE: Is it worth disvowing scrappers' links?
I make sure to disavow these as well. No need to disavow each link individually, just knock out the whole domain in the disavow.
This became common practice for me once I had to clean up a manual action penalty that wouldn't go away until the scrapers were disavowed.
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RE: Renaming web pages vs new web site
Thanks for posting the follow up. I'm really glad I could help.
I hear bluehost is okay. I've tried a lot of hosting companies over the years, and the majority have that arrogant attitude. Charging $60 per 301 is insane though. If you decide to move your site, I recommend having a professional do it, or it could go very wrong.
Happy to see your ranks recover
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RE: WebMaster Tools keeps showing old 404 error but doesn't show a "Linked From" url. Why is that?
I hate to speculate on anything involving SEO, but I've always taken those 404s as visits Google has been able to grab data for. If Webmasters is able to catch the data for a visit to a 404, it'll let you know about it.
What lead me to this cringe assumption cringe was how similar those 404s were to existing pages, like someone tried to type in a URL and got it wrong, or deleted some of it and hit "enter".
Take the info for what it's worth, which isn't fact, just an idea to get you rolling.
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RE: A good review schema markup tutorial?
Depending on the amount of reviews you need to mark up, this tool may be all you need: http://schema-creator.org/review.php
Just embed the generated code and you'll be good to go, or it will at least give you a good start.
There are also Wordpress plugins that allow this sort of generation in the backend.
Hope that helps.
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RE: Domain Forwarding - SEO Impacts?
Unless I'm mistaken, frame forwarding is masking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Masking
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RE: How much weight does domain age really carry?
In my experience, I still consider it to have some weight, but not enough to beat out a better resource that is producing better content and getting more links.
I don't think age is a top-level factor to consider, but it has enough weight to get a leg up on a property that is similar in status.
The difference between a 4-year domain and a 1-year should not be a factor in this case. Something else is in play, and it sounds like it's time to dig even deeper.
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RE: How can I tell if a competitor has a KML Geositemap or not?
Usually these are at root.com/geositemap.xml and then root.com/location.kml or locations.kml, so punch those in first and see if anything comes up.
Google doesn't index these things, so a site-specific query isn't going to do much for you.
In the end, does it really matter if they do or not? Would your strategy change if a competitor had a KML? Off the top of my head, I can't think of an instance where that would be the case.
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RE: Domain Forwarding - SEO Impacts?
This looks extremely spammy to Google. It makes for a bad user experience, since you're trying to trick the user into believing they are going to one site, when they're actually at another. Even if this isn't your intent, Google doesn't like it. Not a guaranteed penalty, but a way this set up could possibly hurt you.
You won't get any value SEO-wise, any keyword indicators the domains may have directed to your site should already be on your pages anyway (if freshly bought domains being 301'd were indicators in the first place).
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RE: Domain Forwarding - SEO Impacts?
Hi Enam,
Your questions are answered below, but there is a larger issue here. Buying 50 domains to redirect for SEO value will not hurt you, but it will also not help you in the slightest. None of those domains have any juice to give, and they aren't doing anything for you, good or bad. There are reasons to do this sort of thing (branding), but not for SEO. Also, PLEASE SEE ANSWER "C" BELOW.
A. No.
B. No.
C. Location forwarding, for the love of all that is holy. Right now you are masking your website with 50 different domains.
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RE: Simple on-site SEO - bet practice for keywords in content
Matt is correct. Keyword density is no longer a thing that helps positively with ranks, in my opinion. It can hurt you if it is overused though.
If you're worried about content being naturally over-stuffed, that's a valid concern. If your client is in the pizza industry, how do you not use the word "pizza" all the time? The answer is: creatively. It'll be different with every industry, like with pizza, focus on toppings, dough, cheese, sauce, etc. to dilute the density.
Don't force it in, make it look natural, keep it in the H1, title, URL, and other best practices, but try to mention it only when required in the content to reduce mentions. Anything above one mention in the body isn't required, but sometimes quality of content requires it to be mentioned more.
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RE: Manual Webspam Error by Google!
How did you know you received a manual action if there's no message about it in Webmasters? If there was a message there and now it's gone, then congratulations! You got it removed, and they had poor communication while informing you of such.
Also, just because a MANUAL action no longer exists doesn't mean you are free and clear. You could still be penalized for spammy links, just not manually.
Link cleanup is a good thing, with or without a manual action. Clean up your stuff, so you can know where you stand on that front. Then if you are still suffering, look into other areas.
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RE: Manual Webspam Error by Google!
I'm assuming you submitted a disavow report? If so, it must have been within a week of the reconsideration request, which is too short in my opinion. I like to give disavows longer than that to be recognized by Google.
Google wants to see you put a lot of work into link clean up, multiple contacts to the webmasters asking for removal and such.
Google is a slow moving machine and its tough to be patient. It's possible you were too fast for Google. I would recommend trying again. Update your disavow report, force crawl, wait 2 weeks, explain everything in a new reconsideration request.
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RE: How is this site ranked so high on Google?
SEO tools are an indicator. Never rely on one exclusively. Also, Moz looks at white hat factors. Your competition may not be playing by the rules. If that's the case, just hope Google handles them and keep doing your thing the right way.
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RE: Citation/Business Directory Question...
You need to be uniform across the web. Determine which number you want to be pronounced on the website, and schema it. It's okay to have the other phone number on there as well.
As for the uniformity of the listings across the web: put both numbers. I've spoken with a few of Google's Local Page Experts (or whatever their title is), and they've confirmed that, at least for G+ and Maps, the big deal is having the same number on your site as you do other place and putting both numbers in (one as an alt) is fine.
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RE: How is this site ranked so high on Google?
Totally agree here.
Keep in mind, there is a lot of more to the ranking ability of a site for a specific keyword than just PA, DA, links, and social.
On-page, the context of the links, etc. There's a ton of things, and Simon nailed it: if you don't know why something ranks, study it, it's an extremely valuable piece of information. It's hard not to just hate on a site and think it "got lucky," but it's ranking for a reason.
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RE: Site with no ads hit by Page Layout update?
I wouldn't attribute this to a page layout penalty.
Make sure to keep track of your rankings, so you can check to see if there was a dip in ranks that correlates with the dip in traffic. Keep in mind the ranks do fluctuate, especially if someone else is actively focuses on the terms.
This could very well be other people gaining ranks above you, or search volume being a little low for a bit. The data isn't large enough to determine trends. A few dozen impressions here and there could be anything. Take larger time-spans of data to determine trends to figure out why things are happening, but this isn't a display penalty in my opinion.
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RE: Best way to create content in Google Plus to help SEO
I agree with the other responses on the point that the quality content you generate should not go into a G+ post. Put your good stuff on your good site, and share through G+, it still is, technically, social media.
With that said, there is a great way to generate content and increase your ranks (of your G+ listing) with content in G+, and that's by relying on others. Get more reviews, link your G+ in places that people will see, so they follow you, be engaging with them on G+.
Don't think of G+ as another site for you to put content on. Think of it as another social media site where you can attract an audience and be engaging. By doing that, you are allowing others to produce content for you on G+ while you provide value by engaging them.
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RE: Manual Webspam Error. Same Penalty on all sites on Webmaster Tools account.
This is definitely a unique situation in my experience, so keep that in mind, but I'd think about (after making sure nothing on- or off-page could have caused the manual action) submitting 11 reconsideration requests at the same time, telling them everything you looked into, the tests, and the situation with your entire account getting manual actions. See how they respond to that.
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RE: Manual Webspam Error. Same Penalty on all sites on Webmaster Tools account.
I do see a red flag right away in the page source. When I viewed the page source code I saw some spammy looking links right before the footer. This could be an indication of a hack. If all of your websites in webmasters are on the same server, or your login for all of them is the same, or something similar, it's possible you had all your sites hacked. If you put those links there, then remove them.
Manual action messages are very vague, so sometimes it takes some digging to identify the root of the problem. The above is an idea of where to begin.
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RE: Had SEO Firm tell me to Start Over - pros and cons help please
You can recover, but I wouldn't recommend hiring one of those companies that said you couldn't.
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RE: Had SEO Firm tell me to Start Over - pros and cons help please
Hi Chris,
You have been misinformed. Disavow is your friend when done correctly. If you know you took a hit for bad backlinks, you can recover. This comes from personal experience of fixing this issue. You are usually talking about 1-2 month recovery period when link cleanup is done right.
If you like your brand, domain, and you were ranking before a link penalty, then clean it up. Should be cheaper than a new website as well.
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RE: Renaming web pages vs new web site
It sounds like it's time to get aggressive with your hosting company. Tell them they botched it. Tell them it's effecting your business. Also ask them how they attempted it in the first place. If you don't know what they did, you can't fix it efficiently. Discovering what they did without their help could possibly take a lot of digging and technical knowledge, but it's possible.
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RE: Renaming web pages vs new web site
Hello,
There is some good news and bad news here:
The bad news news? That old site, cheaptubesinc.com is not 301'd. Notice how to URL doesn't direct to the new one when you type it in. You have two identical sites going on due to a botched 301. In order to help with that, more information on how you attempted the redirect is needed..
The good news? It is probably an relatively simple fix. Once you fix that 301, things may settle in.
Hope this helps.
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RE: Paid Directory Links
Agreed, if you're doing it, don't rely on it to increase your website's PageRank, but powerful citations on those reputable directories can help with Maps and getting some targeted traffic.
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RE: Google Places for Business was removed after 6 months
When you go to your Places for Business page, click to edit details, then at the bottom of the page there is a "Get help with this listing" link, which will allow you to tell Google to call you. You'll get a Google Local rep on the phone who can tell you exactly what's going on and possibly reverify it on the spot.
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RE: Paid Directory Links
You'll never get a straight answer from Google, but here's what I've witnessed:
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Paid directory links CAN be beneficial if they are human-moderated and/or reputable. Something like BOTW has been a good historical example. There are also niche-specific reputable paid directories.
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Be INSANELY CAREFUL. If you're skeptical about a specific directory site, don't do it. It should be a well-known brand in the niche, for example, Martindale-Hubbell for Law.
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Think of it more as citation building than link building. There is SEO-value, but don't rely on directory link juice.
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If you're careful, rely on the directory site's authority and reputation, and do a little research, you should have no issue having some paid directory links in your link profile with no penalties.
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RE: New un-natural links to my website that i didnt create.. and lots of them!
A disavow report is a must. Also make sure there's no manual action message in Webmasters that may require a reconsideration request.
Definitely contact all the webmasters to request removal and document the requests, they will be useful for the reconsideration if needed.
If it was a bot, it seems like there would be a lot more than 5 links a week. A number that low looks more like someone manually adding things, which could be a sign of negative SEO tactics by a competitor (if it's not an SEO company you hired that is just bad at their job).
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RE: Does the position of an author byline on a page affect authorship?
In my experience, it doesn't matter where the byline is. I've dealt with sites with is almost everywhere and recently had a site with it in the footer with no issue. Maybe not the ideal place to have it, but still an option it seems.