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More than a year ago (August 2013) I got an "Unnatural Links Warning," I ignored it because I thought it was erroneously sent and that it was odd that there was no place for me to submit a reconsideration request in the Manual Actions section of Webmaster Tools. This happened for several of my domains. I am now noticing a lost in ranking (but not a loss in "ability" to rank). It led me to post this question in the Webmaster Help Forum, I really didn't get an answer though.

Here is a link to the Google Export of my links from zachrussell.net and protechig.com.

Any idea of what I can do related to this? Even If I did disavow/remove any questionable links, there is no place for me to submit a reconsideration request.

Thanks Lewis,

I get nervous indexing pages with very little content, some of these pages. Some of these "Snippets" have maybe a paragraph of text and 5 corresponding lines of code. Oddly enough, some of these snippets have gotten me organic WordPress leads. Just want some peace of mind

Thanks

Hello Everyone,

I'm starting a new WordPress-based community site WP Temple. As a part of this site, i'm going to be adding a "Code Snippets" Section which will show visitors how to do very specific things on their site. These snippets, by nature, will be small articles but contain highly-relevant for search. Should this content be indexed and followed, as well as added to my XML sitemap?

I appreciate the feedback!

Zach

I anticipate that I will get little traffic from this (my site is relatively low traffic as is). I do ultimately want to use it for another footer link that will promote a website that i'm starting that is focused on WordPress tutorials. That is my ultimate plan for content marketing

Thanks for your assurance.

Hello,

I'm a relatively active member for a website support forum for the Genesis Framework - studiopress.com/forums. Right now I have a plain text signature, but I am thinking about linking to my website (a WordPress Development Firm) with branded anchor text. I understand the risk of Penguin for non-branded, keyword-heavy anchor text -- but If I do this with simply a link to my website's homepage or Genesis development page, do you think i'd be at risk?

Thanks

Zach

It's easy to remove. I currently have the default setup in Yoast where I have (currently) a sitemap_index.xml file with a page_sitemap, post_sitemap, category_sitemap, and a portfolio_sitemap (my custom post type for portfolio items).

Hello Everyone!

This is a question about my site, which is running on WordPress. Currently, I have category page to have the noindex, follow attributes, as they have little unique content. I do have them currently in my sitemap.xml file, however. Should I remove them from the sitemap since Google technically shouldn't index them?

Thanks for your help!

Hello,

I've seen a similar thing. My client inconstantly ranked #1 for traffic cones for over a year, then this last panda update we got put behind by a big brand. Not completely sure why because the brand has almost no unique content on the page. Thanks google!

I agree, the only way I could think this would work would be if the robotx.txt file was on the root domain. I agree, check Webmaster tools, they will tell you under the sitemaps section about "Error: URL was blocked by robots.txt).

One thing to remember is that robots.txt is technically a suggestion to ask search engines not to crawl your site. They can choose to ignore it, though personally I don't know of any cases in which this happenned.

I want to start off by saying I'm a huge stickler for page load speed. Not only is it important to SEO but it is even more important for UX -- especially with bounce rate/conversion rate.

Again, this is all hypothetical, but if the two sites are identical in all other aspects, the page that has the fastest load time would rank better.

Just as a point of reference, using Vimeo/YouTube isn't the only other solution to making your site load faster. You can/should consider things like a CDN -- Especially for video if nothing else. Also, video itself shouldn't slow down page load time as the video itself shouldn't load until someone clicks the "play button"

I want to start off by saying I'm a huge stickler for page load speed. Not only is it important to SEO but it is even more important for UX -- especially with bounce rate/conversion rate.

Again, this is all hypothetical, but if the two sites are identical in all other aspects, the page that has the fastest load time would rank better.

Just as a point of reference, using Vimeo/YouTube isn't the only other solution to making your site load faster. You can/should consider things like a CDN -- Especially for video if nothing else. Also, video itself shouldn't slow down page load time as the video itself shouldn't load until someone clicks the "play button"

I'm not worried about being penalized, as I am only going for relevant links, no spam whatsoever. I'm just wondering if there'd be more value passed through using the keyword rather than the domain.

Thanks

Zach

Hello,

I am working with a company that their domain name is the same as the head term. For example, if I was going for the head term coffee, and my site was coffee.com. This is specifically in the medical space, and i'm competing directly with Web MD and The Mayo Clinic, my advantage on the term is the EMD.

We have a legitimate site with thousands of pages of relevant content, and I am starting a guest blogging campaign on relevant health sites. My real challenge is when I go for anchor text links should I ideally go for [head term] or [headterm.com] as the anchor text.

Thanks in advance for your insights

Zach

I'm dabbling with link building in a non link-happy industry, traffic safety (IE Traffic cones, barricades, safety vests, etc...). We currently are doing #RCS in terms of giveaways for college students as well as discounts in a wider EDU Outreach campaign as well as legitimate guest posting.

I have started to use Link Prospector, and got a list of links/resources pages that we can get info from. I found some great links through here, including ways to get links from higher-profile .gov domains, but was wondering if it is worth it to go after the high(er) quality links/resources pages. By higher quality, I usually set a floor of a DA 25-30 and have a limited amount of external links per page. These would be for branded keywords (IE the company name/domain) and not exact match anchor text.

I'd really like to see how other SEOs feel about this.

Thanks

Zachary Russell

President, ProTech Internet Group

I would probably 301 the non-www version of your domain to the www version. This is your best bet becasuse if you don't already, you may have duplicate content issues arise in the future. Godaddy's DNS 301 works fine, i've used it before with no adverse effect.

What I would then do in Google Webmaster Tools is verify both domains, and specify the www version of the domain as the preferred version. This should solve the issues your having.

If you have any more questions i'd be glad to help.

Zach Russell

President, ProTech Internet Group

Hands down that CSS is the preferred way make dropdown menus. Google and on a lesser note, other search engines, have improved drastically with their ability to parse JavaScript / jQuery, and you may be able to get away with it, but it really should be avoided if possible. With the "new" CSS3 styles, you get almost any style you'd like with that.

I am in the process of revamping my company's website. I do WordPress Development, Design, and SEO consulting, and i'm running into a sort of writer's block when wring my services pages. For example, my page on WordPress Security has 388 words of "body" content, and I feel from a content perspective, it serves it's purpose, but from an SEO perspective it is considered a little light.

I really don't know what the SOP is here, because, I've literally seen competitors sites have a page on "WordPress Security" rank on the first page of Google with absolutely no content, an empty page.

I see a lot of the Moz posts are huge, thosands of words, and I know they perform very well (and they also have ton's of links / PR...etc) and I just want to do the right thing. I know sites like http://www.seerinteractive.com/our-services/search-engine-optimization have relatively short info pages as well.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Zachary Russell

President, ProTech Internet Group

Bede,

Thanks for your answer. I get so frustrated with Google sometimes when they are so unclear with things. This is a great example of that. We don't know what is best for us to do; and it should be in their guidlines.

Anyway, on a separate note. There are some cool things that happen in Philly area with the marketing scene. I just helped start a meetup for Digital Marketers in West Chester; I think that's an hour away from you, you may want to drop in sometime.

Thanks for your help

Zach Russell

Hello everyone,

My name is Zachary Russell, and I run a Philadelphia based WordPress Development and SEO firm, ProTech Internet Group. I have been doing work lately, and have been neglecting the fact that my own site needs work, I have now changed that. I have done a complete redesign and started repurposting content to have a well-rounded content strategy that can appeal the the widest possible audience. My issue I'm having now is this: I have both a Google Places page and a Google +Local page for my business , Obviously duplicate listings are a problem, but I don't know which one to get rid of. They both have 0 reviews and limited +1s, I just don't know which one I should delete, and which one I should push to get more reviews moving forward.

Also, moving forward, would it make sense for me to have a Google +Business and a Google +Local page?I don't know if this would cause any conflicts either.

Thanks for your help and have a happy new year!

Zach Russell

President, ProTech Internet Group

Hello,

I'm looking for some new ways to build links (IE, letitimate not spam), and I know sites featuring a site that I created would be an interesting way to do so. My question is this, the StudioPress Showcase pages http://www.studiopress.com/showcase/baltimore-print-studios link back to your site with an image, with some "Almost URL Alt text". How valuable would this link be, given that the DA is 97 and the PA is in the upper 40s

Thanks

Zach

I am in the process of redesigning my website, and I have been working on the Genesis framework a lot lately, so I used the Genesis framework to make my new site.

The URL is http://protechig.com

As I look at the H1 on the page (homepage only, every other page has solid h1s from an SEO perspective.) The first thing that I see is that the home page H1 is a links (to protech's home page). The second thing that I see is the the title text is replaced with an image (my logo) and there is a text-indent:-99999; and overflow:hiden; I just want to know from an SEO perspective if this is okay, and, if it isn't, what I could/should to to rectify it.

Thanks

Zach

After doing some individual research, this is what I found out:

When adding an using an "M." mobile site to Google WMT you need to add, and verify, this subdomain into Webmaster Tools the same way you would add and verify the "WWW" and "Non-WWW" version of a domain.

Hope this helps you out too

Hello Everyone,

I'm in a situation that I have no idea how to handle. I have only really dealt with RWD, and not a mobile-specific site.

Anyway, I have a client who is launching an m.domian.com for their mobile site, how do I add/configure this in WMT?

Thanks

Zach

Good answer we both submitted this at the same time.

Check out this article, it's the Google Requirements for Removing content

There are multiple ways to do this:

Ideally, robots.txt is the way to go, you can also noindex the page. There is no need to do both. If your looking for the page to disappear as well, i'd let it 404.

Another option is to request the URL to be removal request in Google Webmaster Tools along with these things it's under optimization>Remove URLs.

Hope this helps

Aaron,

That kind of sucked, I always like Moz's better than the keyword tool, it was a little more aesthetically appealing.

Any reason why Google Revoked Access across the board? I know Raven lost access as well, but I thought it was because of finances, not because google decided to go power hungry.

thanks for the update though

Thanks,

Let me know what you think of my post, I am trying to start establishing myself in the blogosphere, though that particular post is really is a high-level recap of Search Love, though I had a lot of points made in David Mihms Presentation, which was amazing.

In response to the local algos, they seem to be, in my opinion, even more neurotic than the organic ones. I mean they are ALL over the place, it is also VERY hard to track local rankings.

You'd be treading in some murky water there. I had a conversation last week at SearchLove Boston with David Mihm, one of the most reputable local SEOs, and we had a conversation about creating fictitious addresses for businesses, the problem is that you cannot use a PO box, which leaves you to use things like UPS store mailboxes. Google can obviously tell that if your at a UPS Store and will take it down; David Mihm explained it as a Wack-A-Mole game.

Also, if you use fictitious addresses, what stops competitors from reporting you? Again, you could try it, but it's real tricky to do, and successfully get away with. I'm much more of a fan of #RCS.

Some good resources to learn from

getlisted.org

davidmihm.com

http://protechig.com/seo/search-love-boston-2012-takeaways/ (not to toot my own horn, but I have a good amount of local tips in this post)

Hope this helps!

Zach

I personally haven't had this happen, but I have a few friends who have had their posts promoted. I'm pretty sure it is a 301 Redirect. What happens is your post gets syndicated to a lot more people (more people subscribe to the main blog than the UGC).

An interesting thing that my friend made me aware of is that if your YouMoz post does get upgraded to the main blog, you lose all the social shares of it as a YouMoz Post, personally I think Moz should try to fix that , but it may be impossible (because if they keep both posts then it's duplicate content, unless they noindex the page, but I digress).

Depending on the volume, I might just want to integrate both blogs into one, but delineate the equivalent of a YouMoz post as a "Guest Post" which is what YouMoz is.

Hope this helps

Zach

Okay after some research the only thing that I have found that has changed since the 23rd is an increase in missing meta descriptions, around 700 of them. Could that impact SERPs

I'm a WP developer and an SEO, i'd be more than willing to do some troubleshooting here on the forums for you. If the settings>privacy is checked to allow search engines to crawl, then I doubt it's a WordPress issue in itself, though a plugin could do this.

What is the URL of your site? You may have a robots.txt that is blocking search engine crawlers, i've also seen a thing where all URLs on the site are noinexed and nofollowed.

Let me know and i'll take a quick look for you.

Zach

I'm a huge fan of using things like screaming frog to get a lot of raw information, and then pushing them through something like link detective (or the links extension for excel) to get data on all the pages.

Screaming frog will give you some valuable info like

• title length
• meta description length
• h1-h6 info
• Meta Keywords info (basically to know if anything is there so you can remove them)
• Duplicate meta descs. titles etc

It's also free for less than 500 URIs

Hope this helps

Zach

I agree,

Just kind of describe what it's showing of a specific picture. Just keep in mind the "real" use of alt text, Accessability for people without a monitor, if you keep that in mind, you should be golden.

Thanks,

I'll give it a look

Thanks,

I'll take a look at it

I agree with Paul,

To elaborate a little more, the problem is is that web hosts, most of the bottom of the barrel ones, share many, many websites on the same IP, thousands I'd expect. The thing is, most websites on these shared hosts aren't overly concerned with SEO, and many of them are spam, and if one of the 1000s of sites on the same IP get's banned, then your site could be potentially harmed from a SERP perspective.

Hope this clears things up a little bit more

Zach

Hello Everyone,

I have taken a few clients recently that i'm doing local SEO for; I'm curious of what the best tool is for keyword tracking with local intent? I have heard things about WhiteSpark and MicrositeMasters, but I have no idea what is the best, is SEOmoz's tracking good for local?

Thanks

Zach

Hello Lance

In general, a 301 redirect tells google, "hey, this page moved and is now at this URL." With that being said, here are some best practices:

If you are literally just merging pages into one, within reason, then there is no problems with redirecting them to the new page.

If your just completely trashing the page because it serves no value, than have the redirect go to the next category up, or, have the individual features page go to the features page once you delete them. I would ask myself this question, "If I was a user following a link that links to the 301d page, where would the next-best pertinent page be?"

Be aware of the number of 301 redirects any specific link has. Ideally, there should only be one.

If your concerned with link juice, which you stated you are, what is stopping you from contacting the webmaster of the site that links to that page and ask them to change the URL on the link, stating that you redesigned the site and the URLs have changed. The worst they can say is no, or nothing at all, or they can take the few minutes out of their day and change it.

A great way to do this is use OSE to get the links to any given page on your site, and then run it through one of the numerous tools to find the whois contact info of that domain, or just use their "contact us" page.

Hope this helps,

Zach

I am looking at your competetors for these keywords, and i'm suprised your ranked in the top position in the first place. If you look at the top results for these two keywords your competetors are microsoft, slideshare, and youtube which all have a Domain Authority of 80+ and a Page Authority of 50+. Your homepage has a Domain Authority of 27 and a Page Authority of 33 with only 50 links to your site as a whole.

A reconsideration request wouldn't help you because there is nothing that you did in violation with their webmaster guidelines.  if you type into the google searchbar site:agentpresentations.com, you will see that google has your site in their index 86 pages.

Remember that adwords and organic search are two separate things, and I don't understand why adwords would recommend a reconsideration request.

I would personally focus on creating more content and outrech to gain more links to your site.

Hope this helps

There cold be a number of issues with this. First off, how long ago was the site verified with WMT and how long ago did you submit the sitemap?

It could be just a thing that it takes time for Google to index your site, It will take even longer if there are less links to your site.

Also, as far as search queries, it could take months for that to really show useful data, at least in my experience.

If your trying to market the blog as a part of the company, i'd personally just move everything over to a subdirectory. In my case before, we physically can't move the content over to a blog because of a bunch of complications.

I know that SEOmoz was having issues referencing the AdWords API, which may be why your having this issue. They also had an issue a few months ago where their keyword tracking went down.

Hope this helps

I know that SEOmoz was having issues referencing the AdWords API, which may be why your having this issue. They also had an issue a few months ago where their keyword tracking went down.

Hope this helps

it gets really tricky interlinking two domains, even if it's just a blog on a different domain. I'm not saying that it can't or shouldn't be done, but Google, can view it as a method of artificially attempting to boost Page Rank.

I'm not an expert on this, but most large sites that I see keep their corporate blogs on the same domain, for example SEOmoz they have their blog, and the UGC blog as well (YouMoz).

By keeping both sites (corporate and blog) on the same domain, the domain as a whole will increase their Domain Authority, which will help both parts of the site (theoretically) increase in rankings.

Be aware if you move the blog to the corporate domain, you'd need to implement a 301 redirect all the urls to their new url on the corporate site, and, you would lose 1-10% of inherent link value,

It really depends, however on the individual domain because all situations are different. I have an acquaintance who has a main site getting about 200k visits a month, with a blog on a wordpress.com-type site that is getting about 250k views a month, and it is best to keep the blog on it's existing domains because it's not worth it to lose the link juice.

Hope this helps

Zach

Okay,

Thanks a lot!

Zach

I am curious, what is the best way to link things from an SEO perspective

1. Full Path; http://yoursite.com/links/alink/

2. Absolute Path /links/yourlink/

3. Relative Path ../yourlink/

Just curious if there has been any quantifiable data on this.

Thanks

Zach

Howdy Everyone!

Since i've seen the MozCon presentation by Richard Baxter at SEOGadget, i've been completely amazed by the links extension for Excel. I tried this morning to give it a try. Unfortunately, I cannot get it working, and was hoping that someone here could help me out. I know it's out of the usual "realm" of questions, but I figure it's worth a try

I successfully installed the addon and entered my Access id (as "member-xxxxxxxxxx" member is in my id) and the secret key. I then downloaded the "OSE" excel spreadsheet" just to make sure I get all the calls right (as I know the doc works)

Once I do this, and enter anything in, I get the "an error occured: the remote server returend an error: 401 unauthorized.

I then went into the config file (as the setup doc suggests) and disabled run time caching (or at least set "SEOMOZ_API_use_cache_YN":"N") and the SEOMOZ_API_timeout to 100000 from 60000.

I have also tried uninstalling and reinstalling the addin, along with regenerating the MozScape API Key

Anyway, i'm not an excel wiz, and would appreciate any help that I could get on this. I'm also about to experiment with SEO Tools For Excel if anywone wants to check that out.

Thanks in advance

Zach Russell

I looked at the top pages, and it looks like the traffic (and everything else) is down across the board. Do you guys have any other suggestions as to why this could be happening?

Thanks for you help

Zach

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