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Many thanks for your response Dennis - you make a lot of sense - speed is so important and the SS sites I've browsed weren't doing particularly well on that side of things.

Thanks EGOL, I didn't think about using rel=canonical on htaccess. Great idea

Looks like X theme from WordPress s***k big time!

If you did not receive a manual action you cannot submit a reconsideration request. If you properly submitted your disavow file all you can do now is wait. And the consensus is it is as you stated related to the next refresh of Google's algo. Hang on to the Google doc though just in case you get a manual penalty in the meantime. It sounds like you have done a good job removing links but one of the biggest mistakes is not to remove all the spam links. It is a good practice to use multiple sources to review your back link profile. In addition to GWT there is OSE, ahrefs and majestic. Some like Link Detox and I had good luck with their tool. You didn't mention how they got there to begin with but hopefully you have fixed that as well. Now just focus on building good natural links going forward and wait for the refresh. You might search "disavow" here as there is a great deal of info. Good Luck!

I've seen this before that they only show extensions to a URL in the first couple of listings. I think it has more to do with how Google wants to show the top results than with the authority they have. Although there probably will be some correlation between the two.

Dots aren't used in URL structure except to signal a change, either from subdomain to root, root to tld, and in the URL string to indicate file format. Use dashes to separate words.

This is one of those things that just takes time. We moved our blog from /blog to a blog. subdomain about 2 months ago and have only recently seen SERPs reflect that. Also, the SERP results got better gradually rather than shifting overnight.

Some good suggestions above, try some back link checking tools, check their Domain Authority, etc. However, in my opinion, the best way for you to ensure your SEO person is building good links is to learn the basic difference between a good and bad link and actually check them yourself (the bigger your site and the more links you build, the less feasible this is, but the concept that you should be able to look at the links being built and understand what is a good or a bad link is still applicable). Obviously if you are building massive numbers of links, this is difficult (although there are tools that can help), but if your SEO employee (I assume it is singular) is building good links, they shouldn't be building massive numbers of them unless they are coming organically (through creating content or a product that is so popular that high quality links are appearing without traditional link building). Also, how are you measuring success? Ranking growth? Number of links? Quality of links? If you ask your SEO person to report on the links being built and ask he/she to include measures like Domain Authority, Page Authority, etc and then just try and audit the links periodically, you'll start to learn enough about SEO to measure their performance yourself (seriously, try Googling "audit my back links," there's some great tools out there, as well as reasonably simple explanations of the major things to look out for. I also agree with those mentioning that outsourcing SEO is a dangerous (if somewhat necessary) strategy. In my opinion, learning about SEO basics is one of the single most valuable things a small business owner can do, since it will both improve your ability to market online, as well as protect you against hiring a bad employee.

You pretty much nailed it. Google would say its bad, but results say otherwise. I'd be willing to bet that manually writing up unique content that is more relevant to the target keywords would bring better results. When you consider cost vs ranking results though, having a template where you mix and match keywords is a smart move for lots of websites.

No problem! Affiliate marketing is a space that could really use something that shakes the current landscape up. I'd say nearly all affiliate marketers are great, and very helpful (and affiliates are too valuable a lead source to ignore either way), but some elements of the way the space works attracts less-than-aboveboard players. I've seen great value from affiliates, even when we were constantly fighting the coupon skimmers. One last thing that may or not be applicable - not all companies that use affiliates even offer a coupon, but affiliates will still advertise {{company}} coupons. My current company does this. This makes it a bit easier to keep an eye on the skimmers, since I just added a line to our policy stating that affiliates may not advertise coupons, whereas the only thing you can really do about skimmers when you do have a coupon is make sure they aren't bidding on branded search terms or using your trademark in their root or subdomain name.

Am I missing something? From the why you described it, I really don't see how this can be considered "buying a link" at all. If you told University X, we will do a scholarship specifically for your students, onliy if you link to it, then, sure, that makes sense. However, if the scholarship isn't directly tied to a particular school, then I don't see the problem. If this is considered buying links and can be penalized, then wouldn't that mean any contests, give-a-ways or sponsorships that a site creates, and then that someone else links to would be violating google's guidelines? Ruben

Hello Roadjan, The site has very low domain authority without many external links. Some of those external links appeared to be paid advertisements, or links on network sites owned by the company, such as the ones in the sidebar of Restful Cottage Holidays with the picture of the moving truck that links to the site. This should be a nofollowed link. Otherwise, the links look fine - you just need more of them, which you might get by promoting your existing content with content amplification Services like Outbrain or on native ad platforms like Facebook. Or you may have to produce featured content that is worth sharing and linking to, such as moving calculators to estimate the size of the van you might need based on the square footage of your home and how much "stuff" is in it (minimal, moderate, cramped...) that needs to be moved to the new location. I'm sure you have all kinds of ideas about content, but the important thing is not to just publish it on your site and let it sit there because nobody is going to find it. You have to create stellar content and then go out and promote it. I don't think you should be disallowing your disclaimer, cookie policy, accessibility and privacy policy pages. Google likes to see these to know you area  legitimate business. However, you could block your /thank_you page. Your /get-a-quote/ pages are fairly thin. I would either beef up the content on those pages or block them from being indexed using a robots noindex, follow meta tag on those pages. /moving-to-cyprus-1 Should be a testimonial not a news item or blog post. moving-with-work-to-europe Seems like it's more about external elevator usage than the title of the article. I just don't think someone arriving from search engines after searching for "Moving with work to Europe" is going to be happy with the content they find on that page. I don't see the purpose of this type of content other than to target keywords or fill out the news section. The same goes for many of the other pages in the news section. They aren't "news" so much as either quick blog posts about a job, or information that would work better on one of the other pages, like the "Moving Overseas" section. If Whois info is correct and this site was created in 2007 and updated again in 2012 your issue may have to do mostly with domain authority due to very few high quality backlinks. I would create tools for the the moving industry, and related industries, to use on your site. Also consider partnering with various government organizations, such as the Tourism board for your area, to publish unique information about the area and entice people to move there. This could result in some nice links from the partner and local news if done well. I don't think you have a "penalty". You just need better content and some earned, high-quality links. Good luck! 54389058.jpg

No problem, Moz can highlight duplicate content for you. Run a crawl diagnostic and review the report.

Hi Keri I did yes, i stumbled upon it and thought i'd give my two pennies worth as an SEO! Certainly wasnt looking for a backlink as it would be pretty irrelevant for our industry and would never expect a dofollow links from a comments section anyway. Thanks to you also for your feedback Cheers!

Good idea, however according to Google Webmaster Tools under Google Index>Index Status the number of indexed pages has been dropping. It is down by 120 which is about half the 250 which we have set to "no-index, follow" on August 20th. I suspect it may be down a bit more as the results on Webmaster Tools may lag a bit. I just can't explain why the pages views per visitor has not increased if the bounce rate is down. If the bounce rate has decreased from about 69% in August to 63% in September which means that 37% of visitors are staying on the site instead of 31% which is significant improvement (about 18%). I would think this would translate into more page views per visitor. But it has not. Pages views per session was 2.38 in August and 2.18 in September. This seems impossible. Thanks, Alan

Hi MOZ, I'am sorry that I have not previously responded. The problem has been solved. Thanks! Also thanks to Pixel for the response! Greetz, Sam

Thanks guys really appreciate the advice. We've decided to buy the CCTLDs and hold them (to avoid anyone else from taking them) but we're going to move ahead and follow your suggestions of using HREFLANG.

Google says they treat domain-wide redirects like that as 404 errors instead of 301s. How likely they are to do this depends on several factors, I think, such as: Are the two domains topically related? With respect to the domain names With respect to the topic of last known content Are the redirects all going to one landing page (i.e. home) or does each page redirect to a specific landing page? Is the content on the new URL the same content as the old URL? I remember asking about this exact tactic circa 2008 and it was considered "busted" (as in Google knows and it's not worth it) even back then. I wouldn't do it.

That sounds like a reasonable approach. If you wanted to be extra careful you could also ad a robots follow,noindex tag to the header of the paginated pages since they all have very little unique content to add. A third option, which I would only use if people are linking into those paginated pages (very rare), is to rel canonical the paginated pages to the first page.

I agree. Squarespace is a great tool and EASY to use for those that are starting out. However, if you are truly looking to be a competitor in Search, IMO, you will need to stay away from these types of platforms as they tend to be problematic and not offer the flexibility needed to properly optimize the site. As MoosaHemani said, use WordPress or similar. If your site will be eCommerce, just install Woo Commerce and call it a day. This will give you all the flexibility needed. Good Luck!