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In my opinion, it depends if we're talking external linkage here or internal linkage.

Sitewide linking out externally to sites with keyword rich anchor text can contribute massively to making the domain being linked to's link profile looking largely unnatural (if all followed links).

However, with internal linkage, I agree that it's advisable not to link back to your homepage with keywords as the anchor text, but other footer navigation with the appropriately labelled anchor text for each link is pretty acceptable in my view - as long as the reason behind this is for usability rather than for SEO.

Here's another idea. Rather than worrying about numerous 301 redirects, why not just set up a rewrite rule in .htaccess using mod_rewrite (if you're using an Apache server) that rewrites all URL's with a file extension (.htm, .html, .shtml etc) to just end with a trailing slash or not include the extension?

One rewrite rule would then redirect all URL's that have an extension to a version without, and subsequently, this would be the only version that would end up getting indexed in search engines and that anyone would ever see. Plus it keeps your URL structure much cleaner.

Does the file/page exist on your website (/include/vdimgck.php)?

Does the referring URL contain a link to this location?

Looking at some of the search results for a search on that filename, it looks like it could be malicious or your site may have been hacked. Check the location on the server to see if it exists first.

You may wish to explore SEOProfiler and SEMRush, both of which have features that can help you identify what keywords competitors are ranking for.

If all the URL's for your pages remain the same, there is no requirement for 301 redirects at all no.

They aren't software, there is a difference. But I appreciate opinions differ.

I was going to send you to the Google search results for 'SEO Software', I then noticed that SEOmoz rank and they make use of the page title 'SEO Software Simplified' so I feel pretty foolish now.

In my opinion, there is a distinct difference between what I refer to as 'seo software' and a collection of tools that each carry out a specific process to give useful insight into just one area. The tools provide users with data to then go away and work with by whatever means necessary whereas software is generally a suite with features that attempt to automate much of the 'optimisation' process.

Having spoken to Jill at HR on a number of occassions previously and being quite active within the High Rankings forum and Sphinn community previously, I'm pretty certain they are of the same mindset of myself and not perceiving SEOmoz as 'seo software' as such.

Be interesting to hear other peoples thoughts on this of course...

There are so many questions here really before it's clear what the cause could be, some of these include:-

1. Are these from other sites you own? One would presume so if you access to remove the links?
2. If so, are these sites hosted on the same server as the domain they were pointing to?
3. Did the sitewide links contain keywords as the anchor text or were they branded?
4. Why did you choose to remove the sitewide links in the first place?
5. Did any of the other websites containing these sitewide links suffer recently as a result of algorithm updates or decline in rankings.
6. The page(s) that the sitewide links were pointing to, does this have other existing links still pointing to it? What % were they were reduced by after the removal of the sitewide links? And of those existing, are they a mix of nofollow/dofollow?

Often, the removal of mass of backlinks will cause a drop as you've experienced. Normally because it's a major shift in the link profile and doesn't look 'natural', providing there was legitimate reasons and there are no other issues that can be raised against the domain in question, often, ranking positions are pretty much reinstated again.

Incidentally, how we often get round this scenario is to keep the sitewide link in place but write a script to only make the link on the homepage followed - and all the others add the nofollow link relationship.

Not at all, it's more natural for a domain's external link profile to consist mainly of backlinks containing the nofollow link relationship than not. The 67% ratio would be about right and this would not, in itself flag any problems at all.

Its important for a link profile to look natural, a healthy balance of nofollow links with followed links along with a nice mix of variety with the types of pages linking back to a domain.

Hi Kris,

SEOmoz provide tools to assist you in analysing and identifying issues within your site and its pages. It doesn't provide "SEO software" as such. Most agencies/seo's will use a range of tools to aid their workflow, there is nothing wrong with that.

What HighRankings are referring to is automated garbage that claims to build you 10,000 backlinks while you sleep or at a click of a button it will tell you how more times you have to mention keywords a,b and c to rank for them - it's all mindless nonsense but people to still fall for it and purchase the software.

The bottom line is, there are no shortcuts or cheats with SEO, provide quality that people want, cater for your intended audience and engage with your end users. Everything else from thereon is almost a given (providing you have a decent designer and developer that knows what they are doing looking after your website).

Hope that clears that up...?

Are you removing sitewide links on other domains pointing to your website or are you referring to sitewide internal linkage within your own site?

This is where many misconceive the concept of guest blogging. If time is spent chasing algorithms, manipulating search engines and following through any process in the hope to get a backlink, it is unlikely that a) you are doing it right and b) that you will really be rewarded well.

As with anything online, a content strategy should be thought through, you should understand your target audience and know how to address the readers and what content to provide within articles. If the only reason for writing a guest post to get a backlink, then the article is probably only low quality drivel and will subsequently only find a home that is equally the same.

I for one would much rather spend the time creating a fantastic, well researched piece equipped with imagery, citations and the like and be rewarded with placement at a high traffic authority blog with a link back to my site that sends targeted traffic that may convert rather than a bland, uninteresting 500 word article at a blog that no-one reads. Of course, I'm not saying that this is what you do however think of it like this:-

Why should Google devalue weight passed through a link from an article published on a blog that receives plenty of traffic, has significant social signals and a high level of engagement. Just because it's a guest post doesn't indicate that the content is any less worthy than anything else online.

Sure, if the same author bylines and anchors in links are used each and every time, then it's going to be pretty easy for Google to spot - but then, if you're doing this, then you're going about it wrong anyhow.

Write quality, unique content, identify awesome blogs to publish at, encourage audience engagement and maximise social potential. Google will never devalue your efforts if you are only thinking about your audience and customers, that's the bottom line and always will be.

You may find this useful: Link Building Due-Diligence: The Guest Blogging Checklist

How I would handle this would depend upon the performance of the ecommerce website and which entrance paths via the website convert higher.

You could easily instruct search engines not to index the search results page by adding the following in your robots.txt:-

Disallow: /search.php?search=*

But is there a real likelihood of duplicate matching content with your actual category pages? It's unlikely in all honesty - but depending on your website content and product range, I suppose possible.

If many visits to your website arrive via indexed search result pages, I would be inclined to leave them indexed however and implement measures to ensure that they won't be flagged as duplicate content.

Ways to handle this depend on your ecommerce provider and it's capabilities sometimes but more often that not, is just a case of ensuring there is plenty of unique content on your category pages (as there should be) and there is no chance of other pages of your website hindering their ranking potential then.

Hi Bill,

I did just type out a long response to you but it got lost when I posted the message, I think because the message I was replying to was deleted as a duplicate.

In short though, I described how the current template is better from a design perspective but all the issues are still apparent though. I checked out a product page form a 3dCart demo store and the issues are there too. The software is not open source either so unfortunately you're limited with their poor design / development whilst you host your store with them - just one of the many issues with hosted ecommerce solutions.

All you can really do is ensure page copy is clean, tidy and optimised along with ensuring page titles are unique, descriptive and optimised (required on the page in question).

We're actually building an RC Model ecommerce shop for a new client in the UK from within the next month or so if you would be interested in checking it out when it goes live.

It amazes me that there is still discussion about dofollow social bookmarking websites, article spinning, automated backlink sourcing and the like.

Focus your attentions on other efforts that matter, other efforts that will prove genuine, legitimate and natural.

Sure, if you feel a social bookmarking websites such as Mister Wong will drive targeted traffic to your website, go for it. The likelihood is, it won't. Social bookmarking has had it's day really, few of them are really great traffic drivers and even those that are, the value of the traffic is questionable.

I wouldn't recommend wasting your time on sourcing dofollow links only, it's not natural, it only indicates to a search engine that you're trying to game their system. A handful of relevant nofollow links that send traffic is going to prove far more useful than a handful of dofollow links from websites that no-one ever visits.

There are plenty of automated tools on the market to produce what you're after, but expect to get penalised further down the line.

The design of the website / product pages are poor and would be unlikely to convert well due to the layout and presentation of the information.

Just a redesign of the page would make a significant improvement to onsite behaviour I would expect.

A few points include:-

Conversions

• Design is not fluid.
• Too much whitespace.
• Everything just appears in one wide column, needs to be split into easily digestible sections with call to actions.
• There is nothing catching my attention and no existing call to actions.
• Ask yourself - Why should people buy from you?

Optimisation

• Page contains stacks of CSS / junk type tags from MS Word
• Majority of page is built with tables rather than external CSS and DIVS.

Competition

• Are your prices competitive?
• How does your website compare against your competition?
• What can you take away from your competitors websites / business model?

Analytics

Have you analysed the data you have to learn:-

• Where visitors are leaving your website.
• Whether they are viewing any other pages other than the landing page.
• Are the pages driving the traffic the most relevant for the queries / referrals?

Overall, the website doesn't install trust in the consumer, this on it's own, won't necessarily produce a non-converting website but coupled with various other onsite factors, it's not going to prove overly successful.

Often, many ecommerce stores make very initial poor choices choosing poor ecommerce providers / solutions and this can lead to more design/development and conversion optimisation / SEO later down the line.

Hopefully that has been of some help to you though.

Google since released a 52 pack of updates since the roll out of Penguin and Panda 3.6 which you may have been stung by almost immediately after the first hit.

SEOmoz provide up to date change history of algorithm updates as soon as they are released.

Any backlinks you have which are associated to blog rings / networks - I would delete as many as you can. If the network has been identified and blacklisted by Google, then they'll be rolling out penalties for any domains that have used them. Parallel to this, build some natural links to balance out your link profile as soon as you can too.

Many websites have incorporated the necessary development that allows query parameters from their internal website search to be indexed by search engines - with the view of essentially driving more traffic - however untargeted it is likely to be - it also builds many thousands more indexed pages from their domain in the search engines.

A common way of doing this is by monitoring incoming search term referral traffic and then adding a widget on page to contain these search queries linking to the same search query processed via their internal search, hence how so many of these pages can be indexed for a particular domain.

It's very common with torrent / file sharing websites.

You unfortunately can't control what methods another website is using but it sounds like there is more to it in the sense of what they have done if they are outranking for a completely unrelated term to their domain yet have identified that your domain is authoritative for this same terms.

Without knowing the specifics, it's hard to elaborate further on this... Happy to look if you wanted PM domain/keyword.

Does it rank for anything worthwhile?

Does it have any legitimate / valueable links pointing to it?

If the answer is no to both of those questions, just delete the page and recreate it at a new URL and request a removal of the old URL from Google's index (and obviously don't 301 redirect it).

Regardless of why your question wasn't accepted or not by the system, I'll provide the answer to your question...

The pipe (|) symbol has been used in page titles for many years now, it used to best practice to format your page titles something such as the following:-

Keyword 1 | Keyword 2 | Keyword 3 :: Company / Brand Name

With the keywords being in the order of priority that you wish a search engine to perceive as being the most important for that particular page.

Search has evolved since then and everything Google look for is natural look and feel serving the most relevant and useful content for the end user so it is now advisable to write page titles manually and natural in the sense that it should read well, like a short, descriptive sense describing the particular page.

Check out this for further information which discusses writing page titles that will have the best chance of performing on the web.

I'm not entirely sure I follow the situation but certainly yes, if your website was only launched a week ago, it's highly unlikely it's ranking for anything and the authority of the domain is likely to be much weaker than others that are more established on the web.

What type of query are you analysing a ranking for? Is it a query on your brand / company name? Are the retail stores part of your company too or outlets that resell your products? Links are just one of many factors and quality of links far outweighs quantity of links so there is plenty else to consider if you want to outrank these other two websites. Without more information on this, it's difficult to point you in the right direction however.