Category: Search Engine Trends
Explore current search engine trends with fellow SEOs.
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Proper Way To Submit A Reconsideration Request To Google
Hi Daniel, I hope that by now your penalty situation has been resolved. Was just a little concerned when I read this thread that there might be a little confusion over the need to remove those paid links from your site. I just wanted to clear this up for any new people reading Q&A who might take away the wrong idea from the thread. If the paid links are now nofollowed, you don't need to remove them (unless they are serving no other worthwhile purpose). Matt Cutts talked about this in the webmaster help video Why do paid links violate Google's guidelines while other ads don't? As Matt explains in the video, there is nothing wrong with having paid advertising on your site, as long as there is disclosure (usually in the form of a nofollow tag). For those who might be reading this thread because they too are wondering what to include in a reconsideration request, we have created a Checklist on our site that might help. http://www.rmoov.com/google-reconsideration-request-checklist.php Hope the penalty is now far behind you, Sha
| ShaMenz0 -
Cocitation with just address?
Hello, The authority of the domain is not huge and sits at 23 as we have not yet bothered with the main website due to a variety of reasons. The domain was registered in 1998 and has not been dropped since. We currently rank in the top 5 for all keywords without any SEO at all. Basically the web dev has access to the site and needs to make the appropriate changes as me doing it would push him out of the work he would get doing it. There is some personal issues with the web dev meaning that we can't get him to sort it for another couple of months and I've only been at the company a couple of months so far. The issues at the moment are fairly serious and I'm talking no title tags and no www to none www and the other common onpage SEO dramas. I know that optimizing the website would give us a massive boost. The authority of the cocitations would be on extremely popular job websites with authorities of 60+ the sort that are known by everyone and rank for pretty much every job related keyword. Thanks.
| LukeHutchinson0 -
Does the Search Algorithm vary considerably locally?
Hi Rahul, Google Places results normally comes in search when your search term has location name. If the author has implemented author profile with website then only you will see Google author image in search results. Its obvious you will see different result in Google.com and Google.co.in May I know the search term you have searched and from which location ?
| SanketPatel0 -
Why Am I Ranking in Bing but Not Google
Is this a new website or an old site? You could have been hit by algorithmic issues that Google has rolled out but don't play any influence in Bing, like Panda or Penguin. You could also be blocking Google from crawling your site in your robots.txt. I'd definitely sign up for webmaster tools in Google if you haven't already and see if there are any issues they are reporting there. In short, with no information about your site, it's hard to give you a good answer, but I'd look at some of the points I mentioned and see if any are relevant.
| Mark_Ginsberg0 -
Would Google Remove Pages for Inactivity?
You might not have enough linkjuice into those pages to assure constant spidering.... and as a result, Google forgets those pages between crawls.
| EGOL0 -
Is our office location keeping us from showing up in the local results?
Hi Miriam Virtual office may not be the right term to use in this instance. In the UK we we can rent office facilities for a monthly fee and they are referred to as virtual offices. These facilities can include a myriad of services, such as telephone answering if required, mail forwarding, secretarial services and meeting rooms if required. Many home based firms in the UK use these services so as not to show their home address and have one or a number of physical "business based address" in particular locations as long as they can pay for them. There is no hiding of address or "black hat tactics'. You are paying to have a physical business location in a particular area. It may be different in the US. Hope this clarifies it for you
| davidallen3650 -
Has Google lost its mind? I am the only link in every SERP for a query?
FYI, Deb is an American clothing retailer, and they sell dresses. So even if it's not a brand in Australia, it is still a brand that sells the thing that you're trying to rank for. I can see where Google might find it semantically confusing.
| BradsDeals0 -
Sudden drop after 301 redirection
Experts, Thank you for the response. We have done page to page redirection using asp code. Please find a screenshot attached of a page from the old site. There is no 404 page displayed in the old site as it simply redirects from the old site to the new site. For example, if a user goes to www.oldsite.com/abc.html it redirects to www.newsite.com/abc.html. Before setting up 301 redirection, Back links from Web 2.0 and other good article directories had been built for the new domain. We started the 301 redirection in September and completed section by section. Rankings for the new domain came up in google and stayed until we filled up the "Change of Address" form on 20th Nov after redirecting the homepage. Please find the screenshot of the analytics attached. On Nov 28th, many of our keywords disappeared from the rankings and we saw a big drop in traffic. Rankings are not even in 100 at the moment. 1. Will it be appropriate to wait for a week or two to see if google re-indexes the new website. 2. Shall i roll back the entire process and withdraw my request for change of address. Shall i remove 301 from the old site. 3. Have i set it up correctly Thanks for all your help. I appreciate. Some images that might help... GA-drop2.png old-site-code.png GA-drop2.png old-site-code.png
| ITRIX0 -
Optimizing Main URL with Various Relevant Keywords
This is hard as there are many times in which any site would want to rank for a related keyword, but the search engines are only interested in showing content that the searchers want. So if someone is searching for light show, they are probably looking for a light show. If you had a page that had videos of light shows using your product (the videos have to be yours) and maybe upcoming light shows using your lights, that would make sense. You could even have a section of your site dedicated to promoting light shows in different parts of the world or country. It could be a light show guide, ultimate resource. That might rank for it, but just your homepage isn't going to be a good result as it probably doesn't answer the query for "light show". Stop thinking about how to optimize and start thinking about how to answer people's query. If your site or page isn't the best answer, it's not something you should be worrying about. If you can be the best result, then make your site/page the best result with content. No amount of onpage optimization will help you rank for related terms unless you can answer the query at hand. Hope that helps!
| katemorris0 -
What are the most trusted SEO sites?
+1 What a great list. ^^ What they said, good luck !
| Andropenis_Australia0 -
Sub-domains and keyword rich domains
Thanks and yes that's what i have now done with the microsites. So thank you very much for your advice. The subdomains rank too well for me to bite the bullet on these too, or at least for the moment. A slightly different and better suited analogy would be "my main site advertises Hotels and each sub-domain advertises Hotels in London, etc, although my main site also advertises the same Hotels" FYI my site has an Adult Theme (although not porn) which is why i am not posting URL's. Thanks again!! Jon
| jonny5123790 -
When to remove bad links.
Our links were from an SEO company who always vowed their methods were totally adhering to google, but that was before penguin. I have heard this exact statement countless times. I hate to be harsh on my own industry but things are quite bad for clients. They do not know who to trust, with good reason. many "SEO agencies" have little to no SEO knowledge. They skipped everything and built links, which worked too well in the past and now many site owners are paying the price. many of these same agencies outsourced 100% of their work to other countries were the work was performed in the lowest quality manner, despite assurances to the contrary many sites offer the appearance to be US or UK companies, but a quick inspection shows the veil is very thin and these are actually companies from India or other countries who pay for a virtual office or a single small office in order to funnel business. Companies and site owners need to know how to navigate the shark infested waters of SEO and work with quality service providers. Regarding your Penguin issue, based on the information provided your efforts are not even close to what is required to resolve the issue. 1. A comprehensive backlink report is necessary to capture all known links to your site. I use data from Bing, Google, OSE, Majestic and AHREFS. Once combined, this report is the most comprehensive list in the industry. There is no single source, nor any two sources, which can be used to properly capture all the links to your site. 2. The links need to be properly identified. Most site owners and even SEOs struggle in this regard. It cannot be done by any automated tool as there are far too many errors. 3. A comprehensive Webmaster Outreach Campaign needs to be conducted, and it needs to be successful. On a bad campaign the success rate should be about 25%. On a good one, the success rate exceeds 50%. There are numerous factors involved. I know you are probably thinking "no way! I only get 1 out of 100 site owners to respond". The problem I see is most site owners chose the easy way out when they built manipulative links, and they similarly choose the easy way out when attempting to remove them. That is why forums are full of site owners sharing "I have turned in 10 Reconsideration Requests and all of them were declined". You need to eliminate a "significant" number of links before using the Disavow Tool. My recommendation is to seek out a quality SEO provider with experience in resolving Penguin issues. If you cannot afford the cost of cleaning up the manipulative links, you can also change domains. The cost of losing all your good links and changing domains is very high in the long term, but in the short term the expenses are quite minimal.
| RyanKent0 -
Where can I find the htaccess file in the Wordpress yoast plugin?
As suggested in the above comment you can get to your htaccess file in yoast or you can also get to it manually on your server.
| GoodAtMarketing0 -
Wordpress Seo Title and Tagline
Thanks for the tip!!! Also, for the general settings, for say Home Title, or home page description, do you typically leave that blank? In WordPress general settings, and the allinoneSEO plugin?
| Cinfo10 -
Are press releases a form of paid links? Matt Cutts on paid links
I understand, I have done myself in the past too but I am not a big company at all. How I see it, most press releases are done to be picked up by bloggers and writers who will take them one step further and write about them if they are interesting enough. Do you really think that if all press release networks will still survive if they have to apply the no-follow attribute to all the links in their content? I don't think websites like PRWeb or PRNewswire (to name just a few that most people know about it) would charge hundreds of dollars for a press release with a no-follow link. I think you are referring to what it a press release suppose to be, a short and informative piece of writing. Nowadays, I think for most people has this become just another way of getting links back to your website.
| echo10 -
Local SEO url format & structure: ".com/albany-tummy-tuck" vs ".com/tummy-tuck" vs ".com/procedures/tummy-tuck-albany-ny" etc."
First question. Tummy tuck is a unique procedure in itself i am guessing, so using NY in the title would benefit you a lot. For example just speaking generally, if you use a deep target keyword such as , albany-ny-tummy-tuck , You might be limited on the traffic you get but will be good traffic. Vs using ny-tummy-tuck. My personal experience, specially dealing with unique niche items, I think a person from manhattan would want to go to albany to get a tummy tuck. So that being said a broader net for that keyword would be awesome. Side Notes: A. you need to use your company info " full address " on every page. Either site wide footer to be indexed or text on every page. B. To benefit best for that local based seo signal you need to make sure all your citations are in order. Use yext.com. AWESOME time saving and a must if you want to compete locally. Or you can manually make the changes but does take a lot of time. Second question, i would recommend looking at what is the most traffic driven long tail or medium size keyword that would benefit you and put that as close to the main directory as possible. ie: Home/ Procedure / Tummy Tuck . It would awesome if you can post your current Site structure and maybe we can help you structure it better, Hope it helps Hampig M Bizdetox.
| BizDetox0