Category: White Hat / Black Hat SEO
Dig into white hat and black hat SEO trends.
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Attracting custom from 3 cities - Is this the best way to optimize?
Hi Luke, This is a common practice for service area businesses (like plumbers, electricians, carpet cleaners, etc.) who are located in one city, but serve clients within a larger radius beyond their location city limits. It sounds like what you are describing is a bit different - a client to whom customer come from a variety of cities. I do not believe Google would have any problem with what you are doing, provided that you follow what you've planned to do in making the content for these city pages unique. I think a nice thing to do on these pages would be to add some testimonials from customers who come to the business from these other locations. Now, whether these pages will greatly impact your client's ability to rank well for the service+city keywords is up in the air. It really depends on the competitiveness of the industry and locale. If the client is in a situation of modest competition, these new pages could achieve some new visibility and drive some new, qualified traffic, but if the client is in a dog-eat-dog vertical, the new pages may not be able to be of big help. It's really one of those 'it depends' situations. Bottom line, though, it is not my experience that Google views such content as manipulative in intent if the content has a real reason for existing.
| MiriamEllis0 -
Considering which agency to choose for a link building campaign is starting to seem like beating a dead horse.......
Yeah, keep shopping for sure. In fact, forget about shopping for a while and define exactly what it is you need to help you get the results you are going after. If you are looking at straight up link building companies that are primarily focused on the sledgehammer approach and their own link profiles are shady then.... it does not say much for their approach. Fact is, that whilst Google are cracking down, there is still a hell of a lot of manipulation going on and many of the top results are there due to the link building they are doing. But, we can't count on this for much longer and a quality approach with longevity in mind should alway be the order of the day for any serious business with long term goals. My advice would be to do some more analysis, review the competition in earnest, know what you need and what you want and go shopping with a much better idea of what you need.
| Marcus_Miller0 -
How to idesntify "inorganic" links
Uhhh, how much alcohol? I have a reasonably stocked wine cellar.... Good point re JCPenny. Best to you,
| RobertFisher0 -
Reciprocal Links NoFollow
I think reciprocal links to related industries can be perfectly natural. In some cases they can even be really helpful to your visitors. A perfect example is Pink Jeep Tours Sedona (I don't do SEO for them), they have a page for Local Area Info where they link to lots of different hotels, area attractions, etc. Almost ever one of those local attractions link right back to Pink Jeep Tours, and they are all followed links going both ways. This all seems perfectly natural because they are helping their visitors find other fun things to do. In cases like these, I think the reciprocating links are very valuable because they are all closely related (by industry) and helping to increase each other's credibility. Regarding your question about nofollow/no index. In my opinion, no that wouldn't be considered black hat at all. SEOMoz does it, for example, in Q & A profile pages for all the user's links, until they hit "Journeyman" level, when they remove one "no follow." I think the no follow/no index is your own personal choice. Just keep in mind that Googlebot may decide to follow the links and/or index the page anyway. Search engines only view those as "suggestions." Hope that's helpful and good luck.
| danatanseo0 -
Unnatural Link Profile
If its 1K, LinkDelete can probably do it for about $400-$500. But the main problem is that the links aren't guaranteed to be removed. Its based on cooperation of those webmasters, which usually are not helpful. Another big problem is that this is a gamble. 1- You don't know if the links can be removed (uncooperative webmasters) 2- Even if you remove a good portion of links, it doesn't GUARANTEE an accepted reconsideration from Google.
| William.Lau0 -
Is widgetbait no longer valid at all according to the new quality guidelines?
How likely is it that someone who runs a spammy site will freely link to your site? Even if one or two site owners take such an action, it is unlikely to spread. It is good that you are improving your awareness related to links to your site. If you are a legitimate site owner earning natural links, you have nothing to fear from Penguin or Google.
| RyanKent1 -
Very Big Pr blogs
I checked the PR9. That is definitely fake. PageRank is a product of the links that point to a site. Therefore you CANNOT have a high PR without high incoming links. Even using the freshest and most generous backlink checkers that site has no more than a handful of poor quality backlinks. Let's ignore backlinks and just use common sense. What other PR9 sites can you think of? Amazon.com is only an 8, seomoz is only a 6. Apple.com is a 9, as is adobe.com (one of the most linked domains on the planet). Would you say that this blog with it's keyword anchor laden fiverr style content is on a par with those sites? Is it likely to pick up the same quality and quantity of links? PR is a product of the links. If the links are not there then that PR does not belog on that domain. Just because you can't see how they are faking it doesn't mean that it is not fake. (earlier 301 redirect to a higher PR domain is the likely trick used by the same) Here is an OSE comparison that shows the difference. It could be argued that OSE is usually a few weeks behind, but then you have to assume that this site could close the gap on Microsoft.com in a few weeks, which is even more far fetched!
| matbennett0 -
Fix Bad Links in Google
That is an excellent point and I hope it is a Panda update rather than a Penguin. Fixing content on the website will be exponentially easier than trying to track and remove links. It very much looks like a Penguin penalty, though, and I didn't think Panda acted like this. Here's an example search: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Why+Sell+Your+Car+For+Cash+to+Auto+Buyer%22&rlz=1C1SNNT_enUS360US360&oq=%22Why+Sell+Your+Car+For+Cash+to+Auto+Buyer%22&sugexp=chrome,mod=19&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 That is the exact phrase on one of the inner pages. It looks like this domain "http://ip-72-167-48-40.ip.secureserver.net/" is now ranking above their actual domain, which you can see if you click the link to see the "entries that they omitted" I've never seen a domain like that, but I assume it's the result of something GoDaddy is doing on their hosting end. Anyway, it's very curious. Any other thoughts would be more than welcomed.
| TomBristol0 -
Link Building on Blog Posts w/ Ads & Mostly Pictures
_should I still avoid an anchor text link from the first paragraph of this page: http://www.tutorialchip.com/inspiration/20-most-famous-round-corner-business-cards-designs/_ For this page, specifically yes - The page is almost a year old, so adding an anchor text link to this specific page, without a major content revision would provide almost nothing in my opinion (from SEO perspective) If you are paying to have your product on there like the others, then this would need to be No-followed per Webmaster guidelines (if no indexed no SEO benefit would really be seen if left indexed you run the "risk" of violating Google Guidelines Would a few links from blog networks be harmful if we had a lot more "white hat" links to offset them? Depends completely on you link portfolio, as even "white hat" these days is sometimes "Grey Hat" so one more link could be all it takes to push you over the edge, of course I am only playing devils advocate, but when giving advice I try not to give risky advice.
| Jinx146780 -
How fast should I make links
I do add new fresh content and I agree 100% with Nakui and you.but in the mean time all product on the lens are mine that I sell in amazon.com . Not only I sell my product I will let a charity collect my commission here. Then later I will add a link to my site. Mybe question should be. Does links from web 2.0 has any value? or is this should be another post Thank you so much for your supports. I am really trying to learn here.
| giftbasket4kids0 -
Can I be penalized for offering incentives for links and social followers?
I would think that the links have more value than the likes, as Google still isn't able to truly crawl Facebook. Like George said, I'd hold off from following any of these quick get rich schemes as they might hurt your website in the log term.I would instead say you should engage your audience and get them to comment on your posts and talk back to you more. Having a more engaged audience will have more benefits over a bunch of quiet followers long term.
| TheeDigital1 -
Please help? unique penguin problem with a blogger template
No, still not fixed really do not know what to do next.
| wcuk0 -
Dealing with internal pages with bad backlinks - is this approach OK?
Thanks Robert and Ryan for your great input on this, Luke
| McTaggart0 -
Sitewide logo footer link - what's the risk?
Thanks for your responses everyone. Really helpful and much appreciated, Luke
| McTaggart0 -
I need de-spam help/advice
The purpose of OSE is to show you links to your site. There is no way to accurately determine which links are organic vs manipulative without visiting the site. DMOZ links would not be considered as manipulative.
| RyanKent0 -
Will my association's network of sites get penalized for link farming?
"Part of the dental associations core is sharing information to make them better dentists and to help their patients which in addition to their education, is why they are considered to be some of the best dentists in the world. As such, we build links from what we consider to be valuable content between the sites." Don't worry about all of that. Sounds like you guys are squared away ^_^
| benjaminspak0