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Hi there. Exactly same IP? or same C-Block? I would recommend having different IPs if possible, also do keep your and client's websites on several different hosting servers so if one of them goes down, all of your websites are dead at the same time - you'll save yourself lots of pain. As for how valuable those backlinks are - I'd say as long as you're not using spammy techniques (lots of footer links, all of them are follow, to the same page, with the same anchor text etc), you will be fine. Of course, it would be nice to have every single client website with different C-block, but in real world it's close to impossible. Hope this helps.

Hi Bas! Great Question! Its mainly depends on the links you have. If the back-links are authoritative and people visited your website using those links they will defiantly help in index the pages and pass the link juice although they are year old. But if those links does not have such significance then it might not help!

There have been many people this week reporting huge drops and fluctuations in their websites' DA and PA. This has been put down to the recent updates with Mozscape and how it is calculated. Rand explains it quite well in this post: https://moz.com/community/q/da-pa-fluctuations-how-to-interpret-apply-understand-these-ml-based-scores Any drops in DA and PA don't necessarily mean that your website and/or link profile has decreased in quality. Which is why it's always recommended to compare your DA/PA metrics against your competitors rather than against your own website's historical metrics to get a more accurate view of how DA and PA updates are affecting you.

Hi Syed, Thanks for the question. There could be a number of reasons why you can't rank any higher in search results. One place to start is to look at the websites that rank above you and see what they have that you don't. The things I'd look for are: Are they stronger, mainstream brands or established websites who are naturally stronger than you? For example from the UK, I see websites such as Buzzfeed and Amazon ranking for this keyword. These types of competitors are going to be very hard to move above. Do they have more and better quality links than you? Radi pointed this out in his answer and Open Site Explorer can help give you an answer here. Is their content better than yours on this topic? Be honest with yourself here and see if they're doing anything better than you and see what you can learn from this. Do they have larger audiences (you can get an idea of this from their social channels or engagement such as blog comments) which means they may be generating more user signals to Google? Is their content more keyword focused than yours? You can use the Moz on-page grader here to get an idea of this. It can be hard to jump above stronger websites, but focusing on lower competition, niche keywords first is definitely the right approach. I hope that helps! Paddy

Thanks for responding, I know that it's a bit of wishful thinking on the part of a time frame things will take place. It's just such a blackeye to see these linkfarms helping competitors rank when they aren't being relevant or useful. As well seeing places like BBB do some follow backlinking while telling new customers they're " phasing " it out, while keeping the follow links where they are for who knows how long is very frustrating, specially since competitors are sucking that precious link life blood. In niche markets, backlinks are more valuable than gold.

Hi there! It's very possible that this is due to our last couple of indexes being smaller than previously, which is an issue that we're hoping to resolve with our next release. You can read more about what happened here: https://moz.com/community/q/september-s-mozscape-update-broke-we-re-building-a-new-index

Hi, Based on the info you've given, I would definitely go for your option 3. Having links in the footer of the site is never a good idea as it multiplies the number of links by as many pages you have on the site. If you think it makes sense to have a page presenting the other websites then that sounds great and only means one external link to each site; sounds like you could create some nice content on this page too! Hope that helps

You are very welcome! Thanks for asking a good question.

Thanks!

Hi Marie! Thank you so much for your reply and I think what you have outlined makes perfect sense! We have never engaged in shady link building but didn't want to just overlook the fact that unnatural links can be built even without directly engaging in blackhat stuff! Since it has been 12 months (more or less), I will go ahead with an audit and make sure we are still on the right track!

Hey. Thanks everyone for theses great answers.  Very informative. Doesn't look like any of their blog posts have established any backlinks, so I'm gona guess that our link should have the value same value as the older ones.  Looking forward to Google finding it

We are already doing FB syndication and publishing on our blog.  I'm just trying to find more avenues to promote this content (safely).  My client has 5 blog posts a week.

I'd add that you'll want to make sure the directory is reasonably relevant to your business, and likely to send traffic to your site. Any ranking boost you'd get from a free directory would be negligible, so if it's not likely to send qualified visitors, I wouldn't bother.

Hi Matt! We actually just ran a blog post specifically on getting through the SEO plateau. You can check it out here. I'd also suggest checking out our Beginner's Guide to Link Building, which focuses on sustainable tactics to improve your link profile. Best of luck!

thanks appreciate for your help, thanks

Hi Anubis, I'd first compare the two URLs, and question why search engines are favouring the second URL over the first. Is it because the page has more text, better optimised titles, more links, better internal linking? Is it because the page is more user friendly and what search engines are looking to provide as the answer to the visitor's question? I'd aim to get the most relevant result to the user ranking well, regardless of what's ranking well now, because ultimately that's what search engines are trying to do. Is it a very competitive niche? I'd also check your on-page optimisation, and the user experience of the page, and ensure there's enough text for search engines to understand the content of the page, and enough information for users. I'll let someone else come back on the tools, as I always use Open Site Explorer. Hope this helps!  Zoe

For me, go for more links on relevant football related sites / fan forums / US sports colleges, places where your products will likely be seen and have genuine interest in rather than directories, as per Oleg also maybe have an alternative en-us site. If you are truly looking to broaden your horizons and eventually have a presence in the US, I would suggest developing a series of useful export partnerships with key members in the US who can advocate for your products and link to your site, then once you have a foothold, maybe look to introduce shippers and use them as the address for local us services. If and only if this takes off, it may be time to have a US base/office for committing to the US market.

nailed it!

Assuming the mobile site is a "m." make sure your using the rel=alternate tag to tell google the different versions.

Hi Andy, Thanks for sharing. I stumbled upon it right after I posted this discussion on the Q&A. It's an great video and does indeed gives a lot of helpfull information!