Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thomas great info above, quick follow up question for you..... I have always wonder why is Google using the "640px" in the   ? many people have been asking the question lately if 640px is an old example or is it the required size? (phones are larger nowaway) the website I manage are non-responsive ocated in a /mobile/ folder such as: http://www.example.com/mobile/page1  and our mobile size cut off is actually 1023px. .... should we be using 640 or 1023px in the rel="alternate"  tag? thank you!

Hi Falguni, If you're looking for white hat SEO (which is what you'll find at Moz) then there's really no generic forum(s) that will send you traffic that matters. Link building via forums has to be done in a particular way anyhow to avoid being spammy and these forums should be specific to your niche. Essentially what this means is if you're working for a finance company, the forums that could be used correctly for them would be different to an accommodation website or a plumber. Locating the best forums takes a bit of research - what you're looking for is an active forum specific to your topic that you can genuinely contribute to, much like I'm contributing here right now, though I do this for community engagement and a mutual sharing of knowledge rather than traffic or leads.

The only TLDs that get any known different treatment is the ccTLD (which sends a geolocation signal). The reason non-"standard" TLDs don't show up very often is that most people buy the common TLDs. Most people still associate the ".com" with websites because they are the oldest TLD. I personally own a ".info" for my email (not a new TLD either) and I typically have to spell it out to people (I occasionally get some strange looks handing it out verbally). I can only imagine the looks if I had a more exotic TLD ("Yes, my email is ralph@crazy.ninja... no that's really it"). So other TLDs are basically less popular and less well understood, which explains why they aren't used very often. The arguments over the years that I've seen that Google is flat out lying about the TLDs being treated equally have never really withstood scrutiny. There has never been anyone who has made a given TLD rank higher solely because of the TLD. The cases I've seen had other factors that could just as easily explain a ranking difference. And an objective test would be very difficult to create, as you would need two identical sites, and from an SEO perspective that's super hard to pull off. Ultimately, tho, why would Google lie about this? What's there to be gained in telling people it's not a ranking factor when it is?

I think it could be this code right here in the head section: name="robots" content="index,nofollow"/>

Very hard to respond to this, but I'll do my best. First, there's no real point in starting a new site if it's going to be thin content all over again. If you just post videos from other sites with some text, you're just a re-aggregator of content. I'd think about what you can do to make your site actually more useful. Think about things like this: Are there search,filter, rating, or navigational features your competitors are using that your site lacks? Are your titles accurate and specific, or vague and targeted towards similar terms? You want to be accurate and specific. You don't want to mislead anyone with promised value only to disappoint them. How can you add useful content at scale? I'd generally lean towards using the existing site, but it can take a while for Google to reconsider it. It's your call, but the important thing is to make sure your pages aren't thin and you're delivering value.

Here is Google's official recommendations for website testing. According to them, no amount of cloaking is okay. Try using one of the other methods suggested.

Hi, You can set up non e commerce goals in GA.Please check below post to set up a Goal in GA. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032415?hl=en Hope this helps. Thanks

Thanks, this is all great advice! I'll have to look into the CarWebsites Terms of Use to see if we have a leg to stand on when it comes to domain and content ownership. The local listings and most other links around the web are already pointing to the new site, so that is a good thing. That is very interesting about the .CARS extension. I have always wondered if that would have an impact... I might try that when I get some time down the road. I have also been considering going to each landing page on the old BrandXCarDealer.net site, erase all the content, and replace it with, "This page has been moved to BrandXCarDealer.com/landing-page-1" Any thoughts?

Snowflake, When you migrate to HTTP's i believe you have to add the new protocol to Search Console. Google looks at HTTP and HTTPs as 2 different sites, which is why you might be seeing your index count going down under your HTTP account in SC. If you add the HTTPs version of your website to search console, you may see that those pages have been indexed under the HTTPs protocol. Check it out, wait a few weeks and see what happens. Secure Your Site With HTTPS - Search Console Help https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6073543?hl=en

When it comes to site-wide links, first consider the users--if you think they will actually click on those links and it would be helpful for them, then you should include them. If you were to include those links in the footer, they should be nofollow links.

spot on Eric!

As a new site, your best hope is to rank for longtail keywords, something like "best locksmith in london open 24/7" or the thousands of other variations on that. Your best shot is to create one super epic, informative detailed guide on everything locksmiths in London. Something longer, more informative, and more interesting than anything your competitors are doing. Then, like the other commenters have said, continue to build strong links from quality domains.

Hi Teamzig! Did Chris's response help? We'd love an update.

I agree with Dirk. Most of your content is copied from elsewhere. Also, your links do not look right and mainly from commenting on other articles. You have plenty of links, so it would be quite challenging to clean them up. But if you want to be considered for re-indexation, you need to rethink the way you do SEO. Clean up your links, use disavow tool for links that you can't remove yourself. Also, your content needs to be original. When you feel like you've done everything you could, file Google reconsideration.

If there are links on your site going to sites that are penalized, you generally need to remove those links on your site.

Hm, I'd be a little concerned if GSC can see it. Maybe GSC can see that JS turns it into a link, but can't figure out what that link is? Any way, sounds like your hands are kind of tied until you can get those nofollows! Definitely make a note in your analytics platform when you get them implemented - it'll be interesting to see what effect they have on your rankings. Good luck! Kristina

Hi Bridget, Yeap, I do know that those points are straightforward. I was just wondering about any factors that could be taken into action, such as links or social media. Speacking of wich, I've found an article, https://www.semrush.com/blog/13-essential-key-strategies-for-ranking-mobile-apps-in-app-stores-and-landing-pages/ that speaks about linkbuilding. Of course Linkbuilding is not the main reason to get better rankings, but as it says, help to improve SERPs.

I agree with Eric, and I also think this may be a good use for UTM tracking URLs. You could easily set them up using, say, the video titles as your utm_content. You could then shorten the URLs with the UTM parameters. Google has a great URL builder tool here.

I'd like to add that there's a lovely Moz Academy video that covers this sort of competitive link analysis.

Hi Spel! Any luck taking care of this? We'd love an update.