Category: Intermediate & Advanced SEO
Looking to level up your SEO techniques? Chat through more advanced approaches.
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Bad performance for low competition term
Hey There As other have mentioned, I would also echo that "low competition" is a little relative depending on the query. For just "anglian windows" this is a brand search and will be really tough to rank there moving forward. Even if you do, I am not sure it would get tons of clicks, because this is likely more often then not a navigational search where the user knows they want the brand homepage. For "anglian windows reviews" - maybe I'm missing this, but does your page have reviews on it? As in a collection of 3rd party authentic non-biased reviews? Unless it has something like that - or at least genuine internal reviews written by your site, it's also going to have a hard time ranking there since the query intent / content match is a little off. -Dan
| evolvingSEO0 -
SEO structure question: Better to add similar (but distinct) content to multiple unique pages or make one unique page?
You're most welcome Kevin! I like Kurt's response too and it makes sense. Best of luck and let me know if you ever need anything else or have other questions!
| ITC.firm0 -
Does having small ticket items (say under $1) available for customers to find & buy help or hurt our site?
Wow - thanks for the answer EGOL! This makes good sense to me and helps me firm up in my mind that this is a good direction to keep going on. Thanks again!! Kevin
| Kevin_McLeish1 -
Would using display:none; to hide a section of text effect SEO negatively?
The text is picked up using a text only browser so I would suggest that Google won't have a problem crawling the content. Here are the current guidelines from Google Hope this helps
| CPU0 -
Mystery 404's
One by one is fine with me. I'd much prefer that to screwing up the site. Thanks again, Ruben
| KempRugeLawGroup0 -
International Image SEO - one host vs multiple hosts
What I can tell you from our experiences is that pulling pictures from a different website (as long as it is also hosted on a differnet server) makes sense according to the performance of the site where you display the pictures. As long as you have verified the sites within WMT you don`t have to worry - if you have outsourced pictures and they are used by several other sites which you also own or maintain, there is no problem using a picture sitemap for several times and all your domains. Having thousands of pictures in a shop at least means to consider outsourcing the sources of your pictures and pulling them to the original site. You have to think about how much pictures you have - I would always recommend option 1 as you already mentioned...
| dotfly0 -
Focusing on Multiple Niches for one site: good or bad?
Good response Patrick. I would agree with him. You can target multiple niches on one site however take due care with your on site efforts / taxonomy structure and get ready to add loads of good relevant content.
| SEO5Team0 -
Missing Dublin Core
The only time I used it is when I was working at a site in the educational field, and we used it to markup our lesson resources. We used it less for SEO and more for interoperability with our partners.
| KeriMorgret0 -
Best way of connecting with key influencers
** 'Landlord's Blog' - written by landlords, for landlords...** This is an awesome idea. You might be able to get a landlord to do just one article... or you might interview him/her and then you write something good from what you have learned - giving them big credit. Good luck.
| EGOL1 -
Links from music/celebrity based fansites - sitewide images with no alt text
Further to my previous update, it now seems that Penguin 2.1 positively affected our site. So there's still the chance that the disavowed links have not been taken into account yet. Either way, rankings have remained strong, but we still think there is further to go. We're continuing to contact sites directly, asking them to remove or nofollow our links.
| PixelKicks0 -
Need help for improving SEO App?
I can not help your suspicion. But let me tell you there are tons of apps ranking for related keywords(which they DO NOT OWN) in the app store btw I have changed the app title to Guru99 (SAP, Java, Testing)
| Chirag7530 -
Lazy loading images effect image seo?
Thanks for the prompt reply. My images are already optimized but 200 7kb images take longer to load than 1 1.5mb image. The fact that it loads the same gray pixel gif for 190 images saves lots of time. I played with the JQuery lazy load and got the page speed up from 50 mobile & 64 desktop to first load (there is also caching) all the way up to 69 mobile and 84 desktop (google speed test). Even with the caching there is about 10 points difference. (approx 75 and 90). There is also a difference in the user experience even though it is mostly felt in first time mobile users...
| BeytzNet0 -
Offering discounts and getting backlinks - concerned.
Yes, agreed - will ask for nofollows on backlinks as not doing this for SEO benefit anyway.
| McTaggart0 -
Just identified and reversed a severe footer links penalty - any similar experiences out there?
It's all been corrected now. In link above, it gives you an exact example of how travel sites have been typically using footer links, and how they have been hit. I'd say my client was a carbon copy. A travel site with keyword rich footers - a few of which pointed externally - most of which pointed at internal pages.
| McTaggart0 -
Advanced SEO question.
For "Los Angeles Criminal Defense Attorney" you are attacking with your homepage. The most powerful page on your site. For "Los Angeles DUI Lawyer" you are attacking with a weak internal page that is poorly optimized. You have another DUI page that is not very good... http://www.aerlawgroup.com/dui-and-driving-offenses.html ========================================== Your title tag on the DUI page is contaminated with other practice areas. Focus it on DUI. This is your current.... <title></span><span>Los Angeles DUI Lawyer - Los Angeles Criminal Defense Attorney | Criminal Lawyer</span><span class="webkit-html-tag"></title> Make your title tag a pure attack on DUI <title></span><span>Los Angeles DUI Lawyer</span><span class="webkit-html-tag"></title> =============================== You have a canonical problem. Your homepage resolves on... two URLs. http://www.aerlawgroup.com/index.html http://www.aerlawgroup.com/ As a result, your power is cut. You need .htaccess to 301 redirect the index.html version to root. Also you have many internal links that point at http://www.aerlawgroup.com/index.html These should be pointing to http://www.aerlawgroup.com/ ================================ You have two pages going after DUI http://www.aerlawgroup.com/dui-and-driving-offenses.html http://www.aerlawgroup.com/dui.html If this was my site I would consolidate and attack with one (dui.html). Then change all internal links to point at that page. ================================ I would also improve the attack on local search. I'll let someone else make suggestions there.
| EGOL0 -
Internal Linking for better seo
thank you very much for this! I am already working on link changes. All the best Iris
| Rebeca10 -
Large-Scale Penguin Cleanup - How to prioritize?
Your data sources are correct (AHREFs, Bing, Ose & Majestic) but I recommend including Bing as well. The data is free and you will find at least some links not shown in other sources. The link prioritization you shared is absolutely incorrect. "Priority 1: Clean up site-wide links with money-words; if possible keep a single-page link" While it is true site-wide links are commonly manipulative, removing the site wide link and keeping a single one does not necessarily make it less manipulative. You have only removed one of the elements which are often used to identify manipulative links. "Priority 2: Clean up or rename all money keyword links for money keywords in the top 10 anchor link name distribution" A manipulative link is still manipulative regardless of the anchor text used. Based in April 2012, Google used anchor text as a means to identify manipulative links. That was over 18 months ago and Google's link identification process has evolved substantially since that time. "Priority 3: Clean up no-brand sitewide links; if possible keep a single-page link" Same response as #1 & 2 "Priority 4: Clean up low-quality links (other niche or no link juice)" See below "Priority 5: Clean up multiple links from same IP C class" The IP address should not be given any consideration whatsoever. You are using a concept that had validity years ago and is completely outdated. bonegear.net IP address 66.7.211.83 vitopian.com IP address 64.37.49.163 There are no commonalities between the above two IP addresses, be it C block or otherwise, yet they are both hosted on the same server. You have identified the issue affecting your site (Step 1) and collected a solid list of your backlinks using multiple sources (Step 2). The backlink report is an excellent step which places you well above most site owners and SEOs in your situation. Step 3 - Identify links from every linking domain. a. Have an experienced, knowledgeable human visit each and every linking domain. Yes, that is a lot of work but it is what's necessary if you are going to accurately identify all of the manipulative links. Prior to beginning this step, be absolutely sure the person can accurately identify manipulative links with AT LEAST 95% accuracy, although 100% is strongly desired. b. Document the effort. I have had 3 clients who approached me with a Penguin issue, we confirmed there was not any manual action in place at the time we began the clean up process, but before we finished the sites incurred a manual penalty. Solid documentation of the clean up effort is required by Google in case the Penguin issue morphs into a manual penalty. Also, it just makes sense. You mentioned 50+ web properties so clearly others will be performing these tasks. c. Audit the effort. A wise former boss once stated "You must inspect what you expect". Unless you carefully audit the work, the process will fail. Evaluators will mis-identify links. You will lose some quality links and manipulative links will be missed as well. d. While you are on the site, capture manipulative site's e-mail address and contact forum URL (if any). This information is helpful to contact site owners to request link removal. Step 4 - Conduct a Webmaster Outreach Campaign. Each manipulative domain needs to be contacted in a comprehensive manner. In my experience, most SEOs and site owners do not put in the required level of effort. a. Send a professional request to the site's WHOIS e-mail address. b. After 3 business days if no response is received, send the same letter to the site's e-mail address found on the website. c. After another 3 business days, if no response is received submit the e-mail via the site's contact form. Take a screenshot of the submission on the site (not required for Penguin as no documentation is, but it is helpful for the process). All of the manipulative link penalties (Penguin and manual) I have worked with have been cleaned up manually. With that said, we use Rmoov to manage the Webmaster Outreach process. It sends and maintains a copy of every e-mail sent. It even has a place to add the Contact Form URL. A big time saver. If a site owner responds and removes the link, that's great. CHECK IT! If there are only a few links, manually confirm link removal. If there are many URLs, use Screaming Frog or another tool to confirm link removal. If a site owner refuses or requests money, you can often achieve link removal by having further respectful conversations. If a site owner does not respond, you can use "extra measures". Call the phone number listed in WHOIS. Send a physical letter to the WHOIS address. Reach out to them on social media sites. Is it a .com domain with missing WHOIS information? You can report them on INTERNIC. Is it a spammy wordpress.com or blogspot site? You can report that as well. When Matt Cutts introduced the Disavow Tool, he clearly said "...at the point where you have written to as many people as you can, multiple times, you have really tried hard to get in touch and you have only been able to get a fraction of those links down and there is still a small fraction of those links left, that's where you can use our Disavow Tool". The above process satisfies that requirement. In my experience, not much less than the above process meets that need. The overwhelming majority of those tackling these penalties try to perform the minimal amount of work possible, which is why forums are flooded with complaints about numerous attempts to remove manipulative link penalties and failing. Upon completion of the above, THEN upload a Disavow list of the links you could not remove after every reasonable human effort. In my experience you should have removed at least 20% of the linking DOMAINS (with rare exceptions). It can take up to 60 days thereafter, but if you truly cleaned up the links in a quality manner, then the Penguin issues should be fully resolved. The top factors in determining whether you succeed or fail are: 1. Your determination to follow the above process thoroughly 2. The experience, training and focus of your team You can resolve the issue in one round of effort and have the Penguin issue resolved within a few months....or you can be one of those site owners who thinks it is impossible and be struggling with the same issue a year later. If you are not 100% committed, RUN AWAY. By that I mean change domain names and start over. Good Luck. TLDR - Don't try to fool Google. Anchor text and site wide links are part of the MECHANISM used to identify manipulative links. Don't confuse the mechanism with the message. Google's clear message: EARN links, don't "build" links. Polishing up the old manipulative links is a complete waste of your time. AT BEST, you will enjoy limited success for a period of time until Google catches up. Many site owners and SEOs have already been there, and it is a painful process.
| RyanKent1 -
To list or not to list? Products that contain basic info only, yet show off product depth...
Some of our products on our site only have 40 characters of description... If this information is all you got on a single page - and you have a lot of these pages - then you need to fix this or you will be hit by a Panda problem. Since about two years ago Google has been demoting the entire site in the rankings if you have a lot of these pages. I have pages with short content and they have been noindexed. I am slowly writing substantive content for these (250 words to 500 words) and when that goes live I start getting long tail traffic and rank much higher than they were originally. This is long boring work. I have these pages prioritized by potential income and plug away at writing them a few each week.
| EGOL0 -
Should discontinued crusty old products (but still new stock) be listed on site?
If you have been in biz for any amount of time you get returned items. REI has a separate store for their returned items (extremely interesting article here). So do lots of other very high end businesses. But they frequently sell them in dedicated stores or in outlet shops. When I have an item that was purchased and returned. I check it out to see if it is still good, then list it on ebay as "used" - and they sell immediately. I also just took a lot of stuff to my local Goodwill store. It was not selling and I just wanted to "get it out of here". I do have a "clearance" page on one of my sites, just to give deep discount on some items that I want to move - but if I get impatient they go to Goodwill.
| EGOL0