Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi, Whether you report this or not is up to you - there's always been a lot of debate in SEO circles about whether it's a good idea to do this or not but the end of the story is pretty much that it's up to you. The technical answer to the question is that yes, soliciting links with products is directly frowned upon. Plenty of people still basically do this but in a more subtle manner, where they are "developing a relationship" first, often not directly asking for a link. Products for publicity is an ancient trick which Google won't get rid of, but they definitely can and do say that they aren't happy with a direct exchange.

Hi Vijay, You can learn more about the meta refresh here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection. Generally it's not good for SEO, as in it doesn't really pass link equity. So, if the crawl test says you don't have any, then that's a good thing. Hope this helps! Jen

Did you get the incapsula error message when you tried to click Post Response in Q&A, or when doing something else?

Hi, The sites I work on are both on SSL certificates (entire sites). This was not something I wanted but the powers that be above me in my organisation made it clear that there wasn't a choice. The two sites are in financial services (we are a mortgage broker) which is why we had to have it, even though it isn't a necessity as far as our regulators are concerned. Just a company policy. Thank you for posting this information it gives me hope that my sites may start performing even better throughout 2014. I don't have bad listings (in fact we're position 1 for a few things on both sites) and since completing redesigns on both sites one in March one in April this year (one is on a new domain as we created a new company for commercial mortgages as opposed to residential ones) we've seen a real improvement in rankings and conversions. All I'm saying is SSL shouldn't be a barrier to rankings and it isn't one for our rankings. Though I was extremely worried by it when they decided we had to have it! Best wishes, Amelia

Hi Dave! Thanks for reaching out! My name is Anne, and I helping the Mozzer Alliance today! There could be a few different reasons we've just started crawling this subdomain: 1. Did you recently link this subdomain to your site differently? Our crawler starts with your home page and uses recursive crawling to find pages on your site through the links we find. This could explain why we just started crawling the subdomain. 2. Did you change your robots.txt for this subdomain? Our crawler, Rogerbot, follows robots.txt. If you edited this site recently, this could also explain why we just started crawling your subdomain. I hope this helps! If you have more questions, please reach out to the help team at https://moz.com/help/contact. From there we can help you troubleshoot what's going on, but keep your campaign details off the interwebz. Have a great weekend! Anne

Jane/Martin, Thanks for the responses. I just wanted to verify what I was thinking before making a move. I agree with both of your points and I'm going to try and persuade the coders to make this an actual pop-up from a single static page. Thanks again!

You're welcome, Beehive, and good luck with the work ahead.

The answer really depends on what type of penalty you have, but in most cases, your whole site will be affected and the new content will likely struggle.  There are some cases where only a certain part of a website or even certain keywords are affected by a penalty and new content could still thrive, but that's not as common. Still, if you can add good fresh content then I would continue to do so!  This can be a sign of good faith to Google that you are actively working on improving your website.  You can even link to this content in your reconsideration request to show Google that you are doing all you can to make your website as helpful to users as possible.

We are happy to help. Best of luck, Andrew!

Thanks Berner

Actually don't bother with this one, I figured out what I needed to know. Thanks!

Hi there, In order to reduce the risk of passing the penalty but to ensure customers and repeat visitors get from site A to site B, you can try a 302 redirect, a meta refresh or a JavaScript redirect. Google traditionally does not pass authority or anything else through these types of redirects; however, there have been discussions lately in the SEO community about these types of redirects possibly carrying penalties over to the new domain as well. However, I'd still say they're safer than a 301 if you ONLY want to take traffic with you, but essentially want to start afresh. Cheers, Jane

Hi Robert, You're doing the right thing! Ask the right questions (you are) Ask them in a reputable community (like this) Take the combined weight of your own experience and good feedback from the Moz community to your client (your next step) You should expect to get a blizzard of counter-argument and obfuscation from the link development company.  These days, it's very likely that the rep in question spends a lot of time on the phone trying to explain away the fact that his company has a "Kick Me" sign on its back, and that his comany's activities put their clients at risk.  He's just trying to stop the bleeding. Your advice to your company is directed toward making sure that your website is in the best possible position to earn your company money over the long term.  The rep is just trying to keep yet another client from cancelling on him - which is a goal not aligned with the long-term health of your website.

I have a related queston about "hidden" H1 tags. I not iced on my company's website that there are multiple H1 tags which is a no-no, but the first tag, which must be part of our theme, is hidden by positioning it off the screen with the following css: position: absolute; left: -9999px; What are the SEO implications to using this css? Thanks, KP

So glad to be of help, Eduardo.

Consider creating a page on your site for both terms. Weddings are a big deal for people and ultimately, they are going to book a venue that they love and relate to. If you have a great venue, you shouldn't be afraid to list a few other venues (perhaps not your primary competitors) that are good alternatives. Perhaps you could even make a referral arrangement with them and earn some income from people who book their venues from your page. Your home page could target the singular, Wedding Venue term - and of course highlight your venue. An additional page would be created to highlight the plural, Venues for Weddings, and the content would focus on the Top Venues in your city. It's a great chance for you to highlight what is special about your venue and deliver value to the searchers of either term.

Hi Gary, I thought I had added a local listing for London, do you know where I can do this?