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Hi Dave, Thanks for writing us.:) If you see [no anchor text] this simply means that there wasn't any anchor text in the html code of the backlink. https://moz.com/learn/seo/anchor-text https://moz.com/help/link-explorer/link-building/anchor-text If you have any other questions or concerns please feel free to ask. Have a great day!

Haven't heard of penalties with no messages or emails (I'd double check the email settings and spam folders just to be certain). Definitely seems like an odd situation and a less-than-ideal user situation. As for the age of the penalty, Google has only been notifying users of "partial" pentalties for a year or so, and each penalty has an expiration date. (the expiration date isn't revealed to the website owner, only Google knows this) There is a chance if you pose this question on the Google Webmaster Forum, an actual Googler may be able to answer directly.

Thanks Tom. This answers it.

It's likely Panda and your titles.  You have "Care Fundraising Supplies" in every title.  This is splitting "fundraising" to every page. Try removing the branding - it should help. You don't want to compete with yourself on every page.

The visual design itself is not a major concern as far as ranking, however the underlying code changes can present an issue (or an opportunity) depending on the code quality of both the current and new designs. This guide from SEER covers the essentials you need to be aware of during a redesign: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/seo-website-redesign-checklist If you avoid dramatically changing the body content of the page, the URLs, the title tags, and the internal linking structure, those are the most common changes that would produce issues.

If I understand your situation correctly, you do not sell directly on the website but give (or get?) quotes instead? Here's a simple solution. Whenever someone gives (or gets?) a quote, have the site direct them to a "thank you" page. Set that page as a Destination URL goal in Google Analytics (or any similar platform). One arrival at that "thank you" page would be one "conversion." Then, you can track conversions to see what people from what traffic sources tend to "convert" (by giving (or getting?) quotes). However, it is important that there be no other way to arrive at that "thank you" page except by getting (or giving?) a quote. Block the page from search engines. Have no navigation to that page at all. And so on. I also think you are asking how to know which "conversions" turn into paying customers? Unless you sell directly on the website and use e-commerce tracking, you will need to use a CMS (customer management system) and integrate it with Google Analytics (or any similar platform). This way, you can track results from the beginning to the end of the "funnel." I hope that helps -- good luck!

I know this is an old question and I don't have anything to add myself but I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has any thoughts on this because we're looking at doing a similar thing.

I would suggest brushing up your knowledge on link building before starting on this activity. Some useful links below for your reference. Growing Popularity and Links - Moz Link Building Resources - Point Blank SEO Hope this helps, Cheers, SEO5..

The correct answer is: yes, but it is  not a major factor anymore.  Please refer to the another similar  post herehere http://moz.com/community/q/can-geographic-location-of-web-server-affect-in-seo " Server location (through the IP address of the server) is frequently near your users. However, some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure, so we try not to rely on the server location alone. Said that, a best practice is to follow one of these options: hosting the site in the country targeted; using an IP assigned to the targeted country and operate via proxy " - @gfiorelli1 Thanks Rashesh

Hi Tom, Thanks so much for the thorough answer. Very, very helpful. And thank you for the article about execution order... I've been looking for something like that for a while!

Hi Robin Are you all set with this? Martijn has the right idea. You can add these as attributes to your markup to make the errors go away and get the implementation perfect. It's probably not hurting SEO though. You can find the documentation for hentry here: http://microformats.org/wiki/hentry

Hi Robin, Just wanted to clarify - when you delete a page and googlebot tries to access that URL it returns a 404 (not found) response - i.e. those pages you're deleting are 404-ing. I'm assuming you're asking whether or not you should return a custom 404 page (see guidance here). Creating a useful custom 404 page is a good idea as it helps visitors to your site find an appropriate alternative to the page you've deleted. This often a better solution than just displaying your homepage. Depending on why you're deleting these pages you might elect to 301 redirect any outdated URLs to the current version of the content (rather than just letting these pages 404) - more on this later. You also asked if these 404s can cause you problems. Obviously 404s can cause problems for users - if they can't find the content they're looking for, chances are they may elect to leave your site and go somewhere else to find whatever they need. From an SEO perspective, allowing pages you no longer wish to be indexed 404 is fine. However, when you delete a page you should also ensure that you remove the page from your sitemap and also remove any links to the page across your site. However you should be careful with letting some pages 404. Rand wrote a post way back in 2009  essentially he highlights that if a page has good links from external sources, and/or, is receiving substantive traffic and/or has an obvious URL visitors or linking sites intended to reach then you should 301 redirect to an appropriate page. I hope this helps, Hannah

The title and description look good to me, if i was going to modify is myself, i would add some of this Flatiron loft for rent | West 21st Street to the description tag and also add more of a location in the title and description such as: NYC or New York City, ya know?

Hi Alan, Handling a Google penalty is a delicate issue as there are a lot of factors that need to be considered to assess the penalty on the site accurately. It is not a black and white issue where there is one right answer and doing that will fix the issues and lift the penalty. The whole process includes an in depth analysis of the site including the on page and off page factors. I would really suggest you to consider hiring an expert on this subject and have them do a thorough evaluation and provide recommendations. I've included links to some resources below that you might find helpful. Recover from a Panda Penalty - QuickSprout SEW Article Cheers, SEO5..

Put your blog in front of people that are actually going to click through and read it, not to gain ranking. If you still want to submit to a directory, look through the lists provided by SEL and MOZ manually. See if the sites still have a high PR, and how your content will be displayed.

Thomas, could you review your response and edit with a keyboard? Some of the formatting is off, making it a bit confusing to understand. Thanks!

This is actually really easy to test. Set up a basic version of each, and run the URL in this tool. Seo-Browser will allow you to see how your website is seen by a search engine bot. I have used this for TONS of sites, and never had it fail me when needing to see if something had to be changed. Once you copy and paste your URL in place, click the "simple" button. You can also sign up (it's free) to get more in-depth results. As long as you have live (meaning read-able and not image based) text that is crawlable in your slideshow, you should be fine. Try it, and test using the method above. Best of luck!

follow backlinks. site artchitecture and quality of content way above competition. I see businesses buying up 100+ keyword rich domains and ranking well for all domains. It tells me 2 things: 1) search engines are not always that clever, 2) I need to be patient, because of 1).