Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks so much Ryan and Tim - Job sorted! You rock!!!

Thank you for reply.

I think the general idea is a good one. Having one very thorough and authoritative page about the common cold should be more powerful than three weaker pages that all compete for the same keywords. In fact, we did something similar last year when we pulled coupons, deals and reviews into a single page, but our review pages hadn't quite taken off and we knew that people don't really search for deals the way they search for coupons, so consolidating made sense to beef up the content in a single authoritative place. However, in the medical niche I'd be very wary of losing traffic that would have gone to symptom and treatment pages, just knowing (ok, I didn't look anything up, but I can guess) how often those are specifically searched and the indexing issues we've had with content inside collapsible divs. John Mueller has said before that if that content was really so important, you wouldn't be hiding it behind a click. It's a really big risk. If there's a way to test it on a handful of pages before rolling out any sitewide changes, I would absolutely do that.

Hi there I have seen correlations in my implementations to improved visibility, but you that doesn't mean that it boosts rankings every single time - each website/industry is different. According to this Search Engine Watch article, pages with Schema markup rank 4 positions higher in search results. But I can't stress this enough - you need to experiment and implement it (correctly) and benchmark your current organic visibility. If all major search engines pay attention to it, I can promise you it's worth implementing and tracking. Hope this helps! Good luck!

Thank you for the resource links and excellent answer! I think I was doing just as you say, "Don't overthink!" I feel like I'm on the right track now. Thanks again!

Looks like the question is legitimate and has generated some good discussion, but I've gone ahead and removed those links.

Hi there According to SERoundtable.com, the Panda refresh is yet to come. I would keep your eye on them, as well as Webmaster World, as chatter usually originates there. There was also some movement last month, but that was really the last I have personally heard. But, looking at my clients, as well as outlet chatter, I haven't seen anything. One thing I would check, is your mobile traffic, as there has been reports of Mobilegeddon causing some stirs. Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Thomas, I was wondering how you got on with this issue? Since it has been 5 months have you started to rank higher? Also, what were the types of links to your site (e.g. www.domain.com/?id=123456)? Thanks, Jason

Here's more info on blocking javascript and the effects it can have on ranking: https://yoast.com/google-panda-robots-css-js/ It's certainly possible that it's affecting the site, but there could be other issues as well. Regarding the news articles, the number of words is not what matters most but whether these are useful to people. If most of these have very low user engagement, then they could possibly cause Panda to affect the whole site.

Hey there, Could you give me some more information about this. 1 - Will domain A still be live? Could I go to domain and read the content or will I be redirected to domain B? 2 - Is the scenario something like this: Comes to domain A via a campaign, for example: www.domainA.com/?utm_source=moz&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=bonus You want to 301 redirect them to domainB but make sure the source of any business still gets attributed to Moz? Craig www.domainA.com/?utm_source=moz&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=bonus

Hi there This is heavily dependent on the industry and searches done by users historically. One thing you can look into is Google Trends. Put in phrases or keywords that matter to your business and see the historical performance over the years. You can get the same idea through Google Keyword Planner. You could also interview the client as well as their customers for seaonalities and get an idea of what they are searching for during peak seasons and off seasons. There may be opportunities there to write content and grow traffic during down periods that will help you for (potentially) years to come. Here's some great tips from experts. Hope this all helps! Good luck!

Thank you Patrick! I'm a big believer in testing as well (aren't we all nowafays), however, a lack of tech tools or flexibility can be an unfortunate hurdle in a journey to establishing a testing culture. Clayton

Thanks Andy, This is very interesting, regarding editorial earned content vs self posted content, its self posted content although its vetted by moderators prior to going live so its not an 'article submission site'. The majority of the sites range for pr7-4 and its not uncommon for the actual article or profile pages to have a pr2. Regarding finding additional link opportunities, this is only a small part of our outreach and along side this we have lots of earned editorial on our projects, although that too is often re used content as we are in fortunate position that our content is often very well received, often republished 100's of times due to a mixture of outreach and from there it going viral within the niche, which makes it hard to scale to every piece of content being unique. Is it the consensus that Google can evaluate wether a site is purely editorial or user submitted content ?

Hi there Have you utilized Schema on the page or do you have any plugins for the platform that may be causing the issue? If you're using the Merchant Center, here is their resource on feed specifications. Can you provide an example URL so that someone here can get a more closer look? Thanks!

I have likewise noticed this on several sites - that do very well in Google. Some sites were near or at the top of Yahoo page one have fallen suddenly &  drastically! Specifically, two smaller (what I call) "magnet sites" or "satellite sites", tuned to narrow band topics, and linked to the main site which also contained those topics. They were both number one, page one - and beat the main, large site on their topic. The net result is the two magnet sites fell back but Yahoo made the "mother-ship" number one in both categories. They "givith and taketh away". I too noticed a large increase in ad-space real estate. Since there's so much less room for organic results, they are obviously quashing multiple SERPS from the same outfits. I have noticed a similar result in Google years back - a satellite site will virtually disappear, but the main site goes to number one.

Wow, 10 years ago EGOL! Must have been tough taking that approach back then when black-hat methods still worked pretty well. You were always in it for the long term I'm guessing.

Agreed, they are mini sitelinks. Official Google release here. Most importantly, as Dr Pete pointed out, "Just like regular sitelinks, one-line sitelinks are generated algorithmically and the decisions on when to show them and which links to display are entirely based on the expected benefit to users."

Agree with James & Gary that you've done the right things and it may just take time. That being said, I've had a LOT of success in the past with adding a link to your sitemap in a G+ post. Now, correlation is not causation so it may just be Google getting around to the earlier suggestions - but I've seen it help even when I didn't have WMT access to do a fetch in the first place. So I would definitely also link to your site &/or your sitemap on G+ and create a link that way. As James said "try building some links" - that would be the first one I try.

what patrick said

Thanks a lot Patrick. I'm pretty sure, this is exactly what I need. Ill read up on it asap, and implement it.