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Hi

I have a small private blog on wine which, on Monday of this last week, took an overnight tumble and lost all its first page rankings for wine terms. The blog used to be housed at blogspot but in October I moved to self hosted wordpress.

The original site was: wine90.blogspot.com and this now has a redirect to wine90.com. I paid for a professional to port the site from blogger to wordpress and to set up a 301 redirect.

Firstly, is there anything wrong with the move? Could I have lost my rankings for this reason?

Secondly, I haven't added a new blog post in nearly 3 months, would this cause such a drop?

Thirdly, I have noticed that the hosting (I host with the same man who ported the site from blogger) has been poor and the website has been down a couple of times on the rare occasions I checked it recently.

I'm looking for some help, although this is not a money making site, its only a hobby that I add to when I have time, but it is a shame to have written 200 articles and now to face this slap from Google.

There are no messages in WMT and I do not actively seek links so nothing dodgy there.

Any ideas? When I asked the guy who is hosting it he told me that this week there has been a big SEO update but I haven't heard of it?

Hi

I have a small personal blog about food and wine that I recently moved from blogger to wordpress and it is currently being hosted by the company who moved the blog over from one system to the other.

This week I've noticed an 80% drop in organic traffic thanks to losing pretty much every first page SERP, there's no messages in WMT, i dont pay for links, all that's on the site is original content about food and wine that I enjoy. I've never had a previous drop in ranking/traffic like it.

The one thing I can say, is that the guy who took over the hosting is hosting it himself on his own server and the website has been down more times than I would consider reasonable, often for hours at a time (this is when I catch it and I don't check often).

1. Would the site be penalised for this?

2. If I move servers to a reliable co i normally use, how long will it take to recover?

Hello,

Many websites now serve specific home page offers based on the location of the customer, my question is, how does link juice flow around a site when the links (this case from the homepage) are served up based on a visitors location? Internal links from your homepage are valuable for ranking that product well in the SERPs so how does Google deal with this?

So, for example, a car hire website based in the UK. If you arrive on the care hire website sat in Manchester (Northern UK city), on the homepage the website serves offers of car hire deals in Manchester, Leeds, London and international destinations. If you arrived on this website from London (Southern UK City), you would not see the Manchester link at all but London, and other cities in the South.

In this case, when Google crawls the car hire website, it will see internal links but a)which version and b) is there any way of sharing this link value around?

Basically, we want to understand if Manchester in this case will get the benefit of an internal homepage link from Google even though we only show Manchester to people FROM Manchester, OR, do Google only give juice based on one version of the website, a generic UK version?

Or to put it another way, is there any way of cashing in on both geo-targetting the customer based on their location AND getting link juice from those geo-specific home page links? Perhaps there is some code or way of telling Google that people from Manchester (a certain % of our visitors) will see a homepage internal link for Manchester that will pass some small % link value?

Hello,

Not a direct question really, just a poll really of your experience - I work with a few companies and have noticed recently that there seems to be an increase in the time it takes to go from a) showing up in the index (quickly within a day or two) to b) getting a stable ranking. I see spikes over the first few weeks (even up to 3 months) before the rankings eventually settle.

Have you noticed the same, is it taking longer to achieve a stable ranking, do you work with any sites that get indexed, rank, and stay in the same slot for moderately competitive terms comparing to a year or tow ago?

Interested to hear other people's experience and how long we expect to wait for new content to settle

Thanks

I agree with Egol. That page doesn't deliver an answer right there, chances are you'd have to spend some time trying to find it. What's the KW?

Is this solved Joel, I had a similar question that related to Rich Snippets and was to post the answer but justsaw the date?

A second question - low(er) quality, as in low DA/PA links from relevant sites - some things are pretty niche, and can be without many huge DA/PA relevant site links, if a site is one of a few, but still good, on that topic, but has low DA/PA, would it be ok to take in links?

Hi Guys

Thanks for the answers. Will stick to Wordpress then!

Hi

I started a blog in 2006 on Blogspot, then everyone moved onto Tumblr and Wordpress, but in August (just) 2013, what should I be starting my brand new blog on? I dont want to have to migrate in a matter on months.

I did not know that Keri! Years I did not know that! Great advice

Hi

does anyone know a good guide for moving from blogger to wp, without losing rankings and moving over content and comments? I also want to change from a .blogspot addres to my own .com

any help?

But it is a large luxurious villa in Barbados! I've seen many worse cases of aiming for KW with less than irrelvant copy than this. But for advice, questions and context (why someone would rent the house) can be good. So, talking about a large family for instance, or group, you could ask do you need a large luxurious villa in Barbados.. then stating why yours fits the bill.

Think in terms of questions and needs (who your villa would suit) and then writing the content should be easier.

I really wouldn't think so, if the pages are noindex and not linked from anywhere I imagine the answer is no but am as interested as you to hear a more indepth answer!

Very good question, I am not sure how Google see's affiliate links but in my experience a site showcasing your product via an affiliate link has contibuted positively to DA. Be interesting to hear what the current word is on this?

Makes me want to re-train as a dentist in London, that's crazy and I'm speaking as a person who chipped their tooth today! As Jesse says.... go!

What sector is your website in?

Hi

This happened to a co. I was working with recently who deleted thousands of pages without notifying the SEO team, this led to lots of work in WMT and lots of digging around to understand where we had lost links. If you've got a load of inbound links pointing at these pages and nothing has been done 301s etc then watch your DA fall, as happened to this company. Ouch. This is what happens when Tech don't "like" marketing.

Agree with the above, work out what each KW is worth in terms of revenue, however, there are many KW, depending how LT and varied the KW are, that can be targetted within the same page without seeing the list of KW though, it would be difficult to estimate. We've often managed top 3 results for closely related groups of 3/4 variations around a keyword so qualifiers like "cheap" + main keyword or "buy" + main keyword (relating to price/purchase) and also quality like "boutique" or "luxury" or "budget".

Hi

Yes, we're noticing the same, more and more with fresh content the title tag seems to be ignored and replaced with just the domain name. Noticed this more frequently this week, maybe Dr Pete has some news

Hi

Actually the 400 new pages would not be similar content at all, the site sells loads of products and these are just static product pages, all completely unique products that are not targetting the same KW.

So, the reality is that, creating new content will not "thin out" the page authority of the already existing pages?

I'm looking after a site that has around 400 pages. All of these pages rank pretty well for the KW they are targetting.

My question is: if we add another 400 pages without doing any link building work, holding DA the same, 1) would the rankings of those 400 previously good pages diminish? and 2) Would the new pages, as more and more new ones are created, rank less and less well?

It shouldn't, but simply run your own test and look at the result in your analyics package across a few browsers.

Can we see the page?

Across multiple domains

Thanks for your help

Hi

We run a few websites and when we canonically tag to let Google know which is our main brand for duplicate content we use a canonical tag.

However, we are also using noindex, nofollow and noarchive.

Is this correct, will the link juice of the canonical tag still flow with these meta names, is it necissary? what is the best practice for the Robots meta name here?

<meta name="<a class="attribute-value">robots</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">noindex, nofollow, noarchive</a>" /> 

Hi

I know I can use Twitter and latest posts on Google & Blogs, but I was wondering what are the best tools at the moment to use if you are looking to write about up to the minute information about a certain topic.

Say the topic is London, is there a website or tag cloud to understand what people are saying about London right now? Anything better than Social Mention?

Hi

We use the Cross Domain Rel Canonical for duplicate content between our own websites, but what about affiliates sites who want our XML feed, (descriptions of our products).

We don´t mind being credited but would this present a danger for us? Who is controlling the use of that cross domain rel canonical, us in our feed or them?

Is there another way around it?

Hi

Im looking at a site with multiple products available in multiple languages. Some of the languages are not complete, so where the product description is not available in that language the new page, with its own url in the other languages may take the English version.

However, this description is perhaps 200 words long only, and after the description are a host of other products displays within that category. So say for example we were selling glasses, there is a 200 word description about glasses (this is the part that is being copied across the languages) and then 10 products underneath that are translated.

So the pages are somewhat different but this 200 word description is copied thru different versions of our site. Currently, the english version is not rel=canonical, would it be better to add the english version where we lack a description and do the canonical option or in fact better to leave it blank until we have a translated description?

As its only part of the onpage wording, would this 200 word subsection cause us duplication issues?

"Your site wont get any penalties as long as your site was indexed first."

So that´s 100% the case, if we were indexed first and our content is indexed no need to worry?

Hi

The websites on which our content will be appearing also pull XML info from many websites so we can´t control them as tightly as ourselves.

Is there anything we can do on our own pages to ensure we get authorship (I though Author tags, no), so we allow them to have the content but google always understands our´s is the original?

Both your solutions mean action on another company´s site.

Hi

Some advice appreciated.  Started working on a site and found out that they are giving their unique content to their affiliates (an XML feed so appearing on another domain).

In this case, if they want to provide the data like that, how can we protect ourselves?

Should we use author tags in our html, is that necessary?

Is there any fix other than "stop doing that and give them different content"?

Thanks

The Google + company brand on the right. linking to a companies Google plus page.

The Google + company brand on the right. linking to a companies Google plus page.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-plus-content-replaces-ads/41452/

We have a Google plus page, but the results aren't coming up there

Do you need a certain amount of people in your circles, what is the criteria to get your brand here? Any links?

Sorry, I meant I was looking for an up to date, frequently updated blog, not software.

Hi

The site I'd been following over the years last updated in May, so it's clearly not the authority it once was, I know there's a PPC post here about once a month but I was wondering where do the PPC brigade spend most of their time? My work is 50/50 atm but was once much more PPC focused, is there an SEOMOZ equiv. in the Paid Search world?

Hi Zeph,

I can turn my video into an infographic? It's a city guide, you think that will fly?

Hi

We've been using all kinds of domain endings including .co.uk, .uk.net and even .co, it doesn't seem to hurt ctr massively, what it can hurt is people coming back to site, people will forget a domain ending and, if you're uk based, assume it was .co.uk or .com. This is what happens in my experience.

Hi

We've spent a month putting together a really complete and awesome video guide, it really is a beautiful and useful thing and is hands down the best bit of content online on this subject. - Great... but

Getting the eyeballs and getting the links?

Related Bloggers and Influencers....

Egobait (anyone who is in the video)

Customers (inform those who already use our site)

But who am I missing, this is our first guide, and a months work deserves a really good push, how else can I push this content for a) links and b) views.

Whats your checklist?

All suggestions welcome, I will revert with success of this afterwards.

Think you have to throw a sitemap up and do some social bookmarking and just wait. I know its infuriating esp if you've worked on site that index the same day.

OK, so a wide range of clothing options cuts out the niche problem, WW delivery?

Guess it also depends on how far you are with DA already. With a newer, low DA site may well be worth it. As long as you're happy to never get a hit from it, and absorb it all into your link budget...

There's a few key directories that are mentioned time and again as supersafe, Yahoo, BOTW, DMOZ, Business plus a few others. I'd be interested to know what biz you're trying to promote. For example, I've heard (and someone can correct me please if im wrong) that the mor niche you are, the more likely you are to get buried and the less the link means - ie, if you run a B&B in Kensington, you'll be HOME>TRAVEL>ACCOMMODATION>HOTELS>EUROPE>UNITED KINGDOM>LONDON>KENSINGTON - this may be an ott example, but you get the jist.

anyone?

Hi Ryan,

OK, basically I have a lot (say 250,000) products open to me, but as we're doing every single product page by hand with unique content, it would take lifetimes or an army to fill out all these pages so maybe its time to get super selective. Basically, we're up against a lot of companies all with the same product, so I want to stand a chance to rank 1st page, perhaps being selective in the products we choose will help us out.

Any other ideas besides internal linking and obv external links?

Hi

I mentioned yesterday how one of our sites was losing rank on product pages.

What steps do you take to improve the SERPS of product pages, in this case home/category/product is the tree.

There isn't really any internal linking, except one link from the category page to each product, would setting up a host of internal links perhaps "similar products" linking them together be a place to start?

How can I improve my ranking of these more deeply internal pages? Not just internal links?

Hi

No the slogan isnt for ranking factors its to try to improve the CTR, so staiting how strong pricing is (as it actually is as this site is a comparison model)

Hi

Scratching our heads here over SERP drop for some of our product pages, Although they are all uniquely titled with the product name, we have recently added 4 words at the end of our title, like a slogan which are repeated on every one of our product pages.

However, we've also seen a drop, but not as far, on related category pages, these have unique titles.

When we talk about "unique title" being important for SEO, does that mean 0 reptition between page titles? I see many companies use their site name in the title (even here see | SEOMOZ Q&A - would four words at the end of a title do this?

Or am i barking up the wrong tree entirely? Ive seen so much movement over the past few weeks its hard to correlate anything we do with the result, so even after advise I think i'll wait a week

Hi Guys

Actually we have done, we've started to produce really good video guide content that is  involving a local community and we feel it's a real value/content play compared to the competition. So I'll push that one as far as i can first before the press releases.

Well, I guess I will add a couple of press releases and measure what happens. As long as it's not hurtful I'm happy (apart from the $400 burned of course)!

I'll make sure they are relevant and interesting. Thanks for all the comments.

Hi

Im seeing our competitors use sites like 24-7pressrelease.com to release rather uninteresting and dubious press releases and it seems to be, looking at their link profiles, the lions share of all links to these particular landing pages. Yet since I've joined SEOMOZ all i've seen is that PR sites don't work and arent worth it.

So far, I've resisted doing any PR stuff and have just kept on creating and promoting content which is severely time heavy work. Is there really 0 value in these? If i have 0 PR currently and add just a couple is that worth it?

The co. we compete against are at it every week with this site and similar paid sites. Are they making a mistake?

Hi

We've just finished a great bit of video content for a page we're trying to push up the serps. I've done some reading around but there are lots of conflicting views.

We have created this content (its a city guide) for the purpose of becoming the resource on this topic but we are a new site and we need the links we hope to generate from this, we don't want the links to youtube.

Where would you upload the video? Everywhere? One place? Vimeo?

Thanks