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The problem with making it transparent is that you would lose 25% or so of the image which means you would still have to add some design to it (ie. making your picture offset or something)  The way it is now you can just add a photo and you're done.  No editing or Photoshop skills required.  I just think it's too 'blocky' (thanks for the verification on that word) and think the 'info card' should be just a slightly bigger size or something to make it work better.  You should be able to customize your background color for the 'text card' too.  I think it would work better with branding. https://plus.google.com/+LaBovick/ has their image fade at the bottom and the 'info card' to the left is a little longer and it looks nice that way.  If Google could make this sort of design default I think it would look a lot better.  Maybe even have the menu fit in that negative space below the image and to the right of the 'info card'. Unfortunately I don't work at Google anymore so I'll just build a template to make it work.  Either way it's much better then the old style.

Hi Stacey, If you the Google+ business page you created was not created in the local category, you cannot merge it with a Google+ Local page. See Google staffer Jade W explanation of this here: productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/3R1-XOGvVzE Also recommend you read: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/2U2NmtIi0Xg Hope this helps!

Hi Ben, I'd echo what Patrick has said and probably recommend his first suggestion the most. Google Webmaster Tools is a good way of checking indexation and if you have a large site with lots of categories, you can even break down the sitemaps by category so that you can see if certain areas are having problems. Here is an old, but still relevant post on the topic: http://www.branded3.com/blogs/using-multiple-sitemaps-to-analyse-indexation-on-large-sites/ In terms of creating the sitemap, Screaming Frog has an option under Advanced Export for creating an XML sitemap file for you which works very well. You just need to make sure you're only including pages that you want indexed in there. Cheers. Paddy

Hey There, Keywords are kept separate based on which campaign you added the list of keywords on. I looked into your campaign and it looks like you have added 28 keywords to OHS campaign and 2 keywords for the colewebdev campaign. The 28 keywords on the OHS will only be tied to the domain you are tracking on that campaign and the 2 keywords you are tracking on the colewebdev campaign with only be tied to the domain you are tracking on that campaign. If the ranking tool you are referring to is here: http://moz.com/researchtools/rank-tracker, that tool is a stand alone tool for one-off rank checking. This is not intended to track keywords for the individual campaigns you have set up on your account. It does look like most of the keywords you are checking on that tool are for the URL that the OHS campaign is tracking, so I would recommend adding them on the Add/Manage Keywords tab of your campaign so they will be specifically shown within the context of that campaign. I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions. Chiaryn

I'd like to bump this question as well.. I see allot of agency's talking the talk, but when it comes down to actual deliverable's, they still turn to outdated and low value "links" just for the sake of reporting that they have built links. (Blog networks, Social shares, bookmarks and resource pages from their networks of sites etc) In a nutshell, link building isnt about that anymore. Its about real world marketing, providing value first and getting links second. On one hand, we could put all our eggs into the "New SEO" basket but then we fall short on actual deliverable's that clients have been used to getting. (Links built) with "New SEO" links aren't a guarantee, it all falls around a campaign and in a nutshell is all about Outreach and PR. I guess its all about educating the client, but at the end of the day, other (Old school) agencies CAN guarantee links and we cant. (Less internal resources, no blog networks all links dependent on outreach and real campaigns) In response to your questions: What are you or your SEO agency doing for your client's link building efforts? Guest Articles (PR / Outreach) Niche Directory Submissions (High Authority and Paid) Broken Link Building (no guarantees, based on hours spent) What are you (or the agency) doing yourself, or out-sourcing, or having the client do for link building? Feedback on content ideas for the content team in the industry. Commonly asked questions from clients. Encourage client Reviews on G+ If a new client needs some serious link building done, what do you prescribe and implement straight off the bat? Only option here is to go old school. (Social Bookmarks, Directory Submissions, Resource page submissions, Paid Links) Alternatively, make it a point that "serious link building" should not be done unless they create something worthy of the amount of links they want/need. (other than internal links, always room for optimization here) What are your go-to link building tactics for clients? Competitor Analysis - Identify Tactics they use, make notes of possible content / campaigns to create to legitimately get the same links Niche Directory / Local link building What are the link building challenges faced by your agency in 2013/2014? As described above, main challenge is educating the client on how a Digital Agency SHOULD be working (with Google, not against it by manipulating rankings IE "building" links) What's working for your agency and what's not? Outreach... We need more contacts and mutually beneficial relationships (PR stuff) Does your agency work closely with the client's marketing department to gain link traction? If so, what are collaborating on? When their PR agency creates a campaign, we review and find ways for them to incorporate a link to the site in all online publications were possible. When reporters contact them for an angle on a story, we take a look and advise were applicable What else might you be willing to share about your agencies link building practices? Looking at the future, we're trying to set ourselves apart from the average agency. Staying away from Link building and moving towards "link earning". Having the motto were whatever we create, it needs to be link worthy or provide real value to people. If we do this consistently for all clients, the links will come in automatically. This is all in theory obviously but really don't want to be doing old school "link building" if i know the value isn't going to last very long. What's the real alternative?? In summary, I'd love to know what other agencies get up to as well. Do they rely solely on outreach? Do they have their own network of sites to rely on for when its time to report and links haven't yet been built? I guess its about finding that balance, old school and new school. Its a work in progress i guess!!

Do you have the penalty in available in your Google WT? What exactly does it say? Most penguin penalties I've seen are partial matched and affecting only some incoming links. Removing pages won't help as you don't know which ones are affected. Doing a link cleanup by going link after link asking for removal and then requesting a reconsideration may remove the penalty (in conjunction with the disavow file), but there's been several polls online and over 80% of the people who did this and got their penalty removed didn't see their rankings back. This is obviously true, as probably those manipulative links were the ones causing your high rankings and now gone you need to get some REAL, EARNED links to gain positions. Truth be told, no one can tell what will happen, and you can only try. The ultimate question always become: Is it really worth it? Or do I just start fresh (new Website, unrelated to the old one)?

Thanks guys - I'll keep persevering. Hopefully I'll sort this out shortly!

You're right to be scared! Earn backlinks via quality content and clever PR instead. RE: News releases... http://searchengineland.com/google-links-in-a-press-release-should-be-nofollowed-like-advertisements-168339

If you want to be subtle about it, then just display a simple horizontal message at the top of the browser window as Cyto references. It isn't in your face, but it is noticable. Leave a small "X" for people to close the message bar and make the bar itself clickable to link to your new website(s). If you want to really let everyone know, then create a slider image/graphic and place right smack dab in the middle of the Home page and have it scroll with your other images/graphics. Make the graphic clickable to the new website(s). In my opinion, I would go with the more subtle approach as the visitors will see the site pushed down a little with the message bar clearly having an X to close and a text blurb about the new site and a CTA to click to visit. Also, this will show on all pages from where the visitor lands. Patrick

Thanks for taking a look anyway Chris. Does anybody else have any suggestions on what might be going on here? Cheers, Greg

I'm getting a 403 error for the entire site at the moment (?) Could you double-check the URL? Interesting that you mentioned geo-targeted pages and that this happened around when Panda hit. Do you have a ton of pages of the form "[brand] [city]" (dozens or hundreds, maybe)? If those pages are very similar - with only a few details switched out, this is definitely the kind of thin content that Panda hit pretty hard. Google views those pages as low value, and can devalue the entire domain based on that perception. This wouldn't appear as an error in GWT, since it's an algorithmic action. Unfortunately, I can only speculate, without taking a peak at what Google has indexed.

Andrew, The other folks are correct. Right now we do not have an API that has this information. Thanks! Jen

Thanks for the clarification Peter - appreciated! Luke

We are so sorry that you didn't get the deserved investigation with this issue. Please write in to help@moz.com and we will re-visit this issue quickly with you. The data should certainly not be as far off as you are seeing.

Yeah, I'm with Federico - 100 doesn't seem like a ton, unless your total link profile is very small. I'm not clear on what you're trying to accomplish with changing the category in WordPress - is it the category page that's a problem? If the links are all to one page and you can live without that page, you could let it 404. If it's a category page, then yes, I guess you could change the URL. Just don't 301-redirect the old URL to the new one, in this case, because you'd carry the links and any penalty. If this was something like Penguin, you'd still have to wait for a data refresh. If it's a manual penalty, you'd need reconsideration. So, even total removal may not instantly fix the situation.

Hey David and Denis! I've got the same issue. My "Advanced Inbound Links" report is in the processing status for the month or so. I've resubmitted my request  for 5 or 6 times, but the report never finishes. Actually it stuck on this: "Getting data from the LSAPI. 158 out of 100k results found".  Would much appreciate your help! Thank you.

Hey everyone! Just got a note from Erin at MOZ and the Google+ issue is fixed! Kudos to the team on getting that done. I know how tedious and time consuming debugging this issue must have been, but they kept on it even after this thread went cold. Kevin