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Thank you for the insight. I agree with your insight. You are correct in saying that it will affect signals because there is no link. And also not an SEO issue.

Obviously, this is just my opinion but this depends on several factors. I'll start with the main ones. If you'd like to see what these factors are, as a general guideline, you can refer to: https://moz.com/rand/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/rank-factors-pie-2013lrg.gif So the main ones as you have mentioned are links. But what type of links? 1. Quality Links from domains that have high DA (domain authority) 2. Quality Content - your page needs to have high PA (page authority) 3. Content Update Frequency 4. Relevant Content and keywords 5. Social Signals What does this have to do with how long it will take? If you perform all of the above at 80% to 90% consistently, SPIDERS and SEARCH ENGINE CRAWLERS will crawl your site more often. And the easier you make this crawling activity is for the spiders, then better you rank and the better you rank, the more clicks you get. The more clicks you get from keywords, organic searches and relevant links, the more often search engines will crawl your site because in their mind, they are saying "wow, this site has great relevant content for XYZ keywords and it is updated often, I better crawl this site more often". I cannot comment on specific time frame but a good guide is 3 to 6 months for some real results. Of course if you have unlimited budget as in those startups and you have an old domain name that you purchased that is highly sought for, you can shortcut this time. For example, if the Malaysian Airline MH370 event happened, there was a lot of search in CNN traffic and you happen to have a link that day to your site. I bet you can increase SEO ranking very shortly. 2JlNGau

If you were hit by Panda... Google was telling you that your content was not up to their expectations. **Now we're bouncing between the top 10 and the top 30. ** That probably means that you have not recoved from Panda.  I would be working just about 100% on content.  If you improve the content then you might get more links and more social shares.  People like to great sites, people share great sites.

Hi Ahrefs is definitely a better option than SEMrsuh for this, because it has a more accurate link database. SEMRush and Moz both have less link data, so Ahrefs would give you the most complete picture. I suggested SEMrush because it is free tool (sort of, 10 free requests per day + 10 with an account).

It's pretty hard, even from a creative standpoint ( of which I have experience in as an artist / maker ) After: content marketing scholarships ( only a few, were not rich ) projects on manufacturers sites proper directories that people still use sending our resource links to service oriented sites for their customers Local businesses in form of local directory The backlink grab bag grows smaller and smaller for this niche, gotta remember that our niche is so small and particular that mobile and tablet traffic isn't big at all, since our most popular customer type is a male in their 40s - 50s working either as a contractor or a small biz owner. There aren't many sites that even talk about our niche, let alone people actively interested in it, unless they need them. I've been struggling for the past 6 months on backlinks, and previous SEO companies have as well before me. It's bad enough that when I do competitor backlink audits, I see the same directories, spam comments, article spins, unrelated content like article spinning and lots of sister sites being created just to link back and forth to. Any suggestions in the creative backlink field would be honored at this point. As it is now, I send out about 10 to 15 emails daily to sites I feel would benefit from our large amount of help content I've created over the last 6 months, something our niche competitors have slacked bad on, while our customer's have called and complimented us on it, other sites could care less, even more so when I ask to link back in some " clever or even outright " fashion.

Hi There, Good topic, and like Chris, I agree that this approach of creating a single, really strong piece of content and linking from it to your city landing pages is a MUCH better idea than trying to re-hash the same topic over and over again for every city. I'm not an expert on how this would the flow of link influence, but I think it's way more important to consider the better usability your suggested method provides than would the thin/duplicate/spun content approach. Hopefully you can find other geo-specific topics to cover for individual cities, but if a single topic applies equally to all of your locations, then it's a good idea to present it that way.

Hahaha, yeah, not my personal choice of reading material, either.

Hi EGOL - Thanks again for your help!

Hi, Linkbuilding is about the most awkward part of SEO, which is why it is so easy to get it wrong, which many do. In order to create something that people are going to want to link to, you need to have linkable assets that are going to engage people. Imagine for a moment that you are contacting a blog owner who talks about home & DIY hints and tips. There is absolutley no point in just going in there with an e-mail and asking for a link - you need to engage with people - you can't just go in there unless there is a value-add for them. One thing I would suggest, is looking at the speed of your site. I ran this quickly through Google Page Speed Insights, and it is very slow. This won't help your SEO efforts. My honest suggestion is to first of all sort out your site speed and then get your local SEO in order. I would imagine that most people using you are going to be locked out and need to use their mobile to get to you? If this isn't in order, you could be wasting time and money on areas that won't help immediately. Get reviews from the likes of Trustpilot and get yourself on to sites like Trust a Trader. I hope this helps. -Andy

Google does, in fact, know that lawyers are attorneys and attorneys are lawyers. However, you'll notice that Google's search results don't reflect this. You'll see different results for lawyer phrases versus attorney keywords. When optimizing, you'll want to make sure you've done your keyword research and mention those keywords appropriately on the site.

Honestly, Google is pretty smart about these spam links. They see hacked sites all the time, and chances are good that those spam links are not related to the content you're actually building the site around. That means the real risk is likely very low. That's especially true if the spam pages on your site created by the hacking are now 404ing. It's clear you're not trying to manipulate rankings. You can feel free to add spam links to the disavow pre-emptively. https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2309486/matt-cutts-use-the-link-disavow-tool-even-if-your-site-hasnt-been-penalized Just make sure you only blacklist a site if the entire site is pure spam. Otherwise use the page disavow feature. I'd say you may as well do this, but it wouldn't be my top priority. The exception to this is if you were hacked and the spam links are relevant. Example: If the hacker created doorway pages about viagra, and your site is about sports memorabilia, I'd not be too concerned. Just make sure all the pages about viagra are dead. You can still submit a disavow. I probably would just to be on the safe side, but only once I got around to it. If the hacker created doorway pages about sports jerseys, and your site is about sports memorabilia, I'd be concerned. This could look like an attempt to manipulate Google's rankings, so I'd step on the disavow. And again, make sure any pages created by the spammers are 404ing or 410ing (even better).

Typically, links from multiple subdomains on the same IP address aren't recommended or wanted. It's links from separate websites that are on unique Class C Blocks of IPs. This way we know that most likely each site is not owned by the same site owner. Just on a side note, typically we don't recommend getting a lot of links from blogspot sites. There are unique cases where a link is okay, but we don't prefer blogspot links.

Matt Cutts on Sitewide Backlins That pretty much will tell you everything you want to know. As far as the domains being spammy, really that's going to have to be a personal decision. Just because the word directory is in the name, it isn't a spam site. Just because there is a hyphen, doesn't make it spam. Google is progressively becoming more and more powerful, and more and more capable at telling what is real, and what isn't. Visit those websites, do they look like spam to you? Do they look like a directory listing site do you? If you worked at google, and had to do a site audit, would you ding someone for linking those sites? Really for all intensive purposes wikipedia was a directory, and then it started getting powerful, and gaining traction, and then it was being abused. Anyway, I guess to answer your question, you will have to look at the websites to actually know the answer. Is the website functioning as merely a place to gather links? Then yes, it is probably spam. EDIT: Also, at first I thought this was a competitor analysis, but considering that you are mentioning disavow, I will presume this is for you. The disavow tool is VERY powerful, and I would use it very sparingly. Do what you can to organically remove the links before disavowing them. Not only that but if you still have links from these sources, you are still getting some sort of juice, so build a bridge before burning a bridge. Replace those links with new ones, from legit sources. Write some press releases, post some solid social media, reach out to bloggers etc.

Hello, 100% agree with everything Patrick put here. I just thought I would add that Meta-Data is also relevant and important for conversion purposes. Without inputting Meta-Data Google will just crawl the title on the page and use the first 155 characters in the body in the SERP. Having Meta-Data replaces this and, depending on how engaging it is, it can also increase the CTR. A higher CTR is considered a ranking factor. Luke

Domain Authority is used to track the the “strength” of your website compared to other websites. According to Moz, this is metric is calculated "by combining all of our other link metrics—linking root domains, number of total links, MozRank, MozTrust, etc.—into a single score." Juggle Cats has 13 Root Domains and 41,022 Total Links. Most of which seem to be coming from sites owned by the same parent company called Proquantum, a _"Special-Interest Directory Website Publishers since 2002" _ In addition to Juggling Cats, they also own Engineers Guide USA, Health Guide USA, AssessorLinks, and Doomsday Guide. Each of these websites includes a footer that links to all of the other sites (and this footer can be seen on every page). That being said, a domain authority of 30 for a site that's been around since 2002 is nothing to write home about. I've worked with companies who have newer sites that look terrible & aren't even optimized for search, and they'll often still have a domain authority between 30-40. This is because domain authority is more about #links than anything else, and more specifically it's about the # of linking root domains. In this case, it seems like the huge # of total links might be pulling up the overall domain authority slightly...but this isn't really significant in my opinion.

Typically no, LinkedIN decides whether or not the link is nofollow or not. But, if you share the article, and you put the URL in your description, it will be a "do follow" link.

I know I'm a little late to the game but one suggestion I would recommend reading your post is to take the synonym out of your page title on your home page. For example, I work with a lot of attorneys and if I create separate pages for "lawyer" and "attorney", I never get the respective targeted traffic ... google just ranks the more optimized, higher PA page for both terms.

Hi Krishna, If you haven't read it, I'd also suggest checking out our Beginner's Guide to Link Building.

If they went to burner pages, then I would understand it a little better. However, when I click on the shorten link, it goes to his blog page on his actual site; not a microsite. It's like the shorten link redirects to itself, but is passing equity. And, I can't figure out where the shortened link is actually posted it. It's not in the source code of the actual blog page. Not sure how to find the origin of it. Rube

First port of call is the Beginners guide to SEO from Moz.... it genuinely gives you the best starting point. Along with lots more great articles here in the Learn SEO and Search marketing section of Moz. Also see if the recent Webinar on how to perform a Website SEO audit from Moz is available yet, it will help you gain some real insight into numerous measurable facets of your site and its outreach. Finally keep coming back to the Q&A section of Moz, there are lots of real people giving real and genuinely great insight into lots of topics. Good luck Tim