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  • Hi Bethany! So glad you've provided these clarifying answers. The business model seems a bit unusual, with all practitioners using the same room, the building not being a business, etc. So there is some grey area here, but here's what I believe is applicable: Google can typically sort out different businesses being located at the same office, but you need to be aware that there is, indeed, some risk here. It is possible that: Should other practitioners using the building create GMB listings, there is a chance their details could get merged with your client's details, particularly if those practitioners don't know what they are doing and don't adhere to Google's guidelines. Hopefully this will not happen, but, there is a lack of control here that makes me a little nervous. Should one of the other people working in the office knowingly or accidentally spam Google, it could negatively impact your client. There is a possibility that, in looking at the street-level signage of the business, Google could become confused by not seeing your client's name on the building. This could lead to a lack of trust. So, given the above, what you will want to do as the Local SEO for this client is to be sure you set up a regular schedule of checking his GMB listing to be sure the NAP and all other details have remained accurate and haven't suddenly changed (indicating a merge). And, you'll want to be on the alert for any sudden ranking drops (which might indicate a red flag being raised at Google due to the activities of other people using the building). I do not advise you to go with the suite number suggestion of the Google rep to whom you spoke. I'm afraid they might not have been acquainted with Google's very adamant policy stating that the address must be exactly as it is in the real world. That rep needs more training. The one thing that gave me pause about the business model you are describing is this guideline from Google stating that this type of business is ineligible for a GMB listing: An ongoing service, class, or meeting at a location that you don't own or have the authority to represent. Please coordinate with your host to have your information displayed on the page for their business within their "Introduction" field. But, in this case, because the building isn't actually a business and has no brand, my conclusion on this is that the guideline doesn't apply, and that your client would be eligible for a GMB listing. Whew! Lots to consider but the devil is in the details with Local SEO. Hope this helps!

    Local Listings | | MiriamEllis
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  • The parallax or infinite scroll effect is going to cause some SEO issues since it is basically one webpage with a single url. This is going to make it difficult to optimize your site for a variety of search terms and could lead to keyword dilution since you are optimizing only a single page. Also, I would imagine an infinite scroll/parallax site would present some analytics issues as well. One issue I have noticed with some client accounts that I have put heatmaps on is no one scrolls below the fold. So I would imagine having a single infinite scroll site design you would see higher bounce rates. I have seen some sites, however, use their homepage as a parallax scrolling page with specific content pieces linked throughout the homepage. Google has provided some insight into infinite scroll pages on their official webmasters blog which can give you some more insight.

    Web Design | | JordanLowry
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  • If you have more than one link to the same page on a given page, it won't be considered duplicate content necessarily - but it also won't pass any additional page equity.

    Link Building | | RuthBurrReedy
    1

  • Recommendations from my other comments still stand.

    On-Page / Site Optimization | | LoganRay
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  • Hi David, The proliferation of links throughout the sites you left comments on is probably just a function of some weird trackback settings on their part - not a whole lot to be done besides disavow the links, which you've already done, although you might also try to delete the link from the original comment and see if that helps. Your site sinking from 4th to 7th is not an indication of a penalty - if you'd been penalized, you wouldn't be anywhere near the first page (although I do think you are describing link building behavior that puts you at risk for a penalty - more on that in a minute). Instead, what I suspect happened is that the sudden influx of low-quality links has diluted your page's authority. Since a lower percentage of the total links pointing to the page are high quality, you have gone from sending the signal "great links, with some not-so-great ones too" to sending the signal "LOTS of not-so-great links, a few good ones" which sends a lower quality signal to Google. Your question has a couple of big link building red flags in it, and I think it's likely you're at risk for a manual link penalty or a Penguin smackdown. Blog comments and directory links are classic examples of low-quality/spammy link sources. You have recently seen how blog comment links can result in a deluge of link spam to your site. Basically, anywhere that you can put a link on a site that you don't own, without a human person approving and curating the link, is going to be a link source that, at best, isn't valuable; at worst, it could actively work against you. I know that it's tempting to go out and grab these easy-to-get links, and sometimes it seems like it could be OK if the site is topically related to yours, but these are tactics that have been heavily abused by spammers and are beyond useless in modern SEO. Instead, focus on getting higher-quality editorial links to your content. It takes a lot more work but is a much lower-risk strategy in the long term. These links have the added bonus of potentially being a source of converting referral traffic to your site as well. Here are some resources to get you started: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building https://moz.com/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building https://moz.com/blog/targeted-link-building-in-2016 https://moz.com/blog/case-study-how-we-gained-more-than-100-links-for-a-travel-website-via-content-marketing Good luck!

    Link Building | | RuthBurrReedy
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  • Hi Kerry, I have also been seeing a huge influx of these links from image directories and have had a hard time finding out more information about them.  Finally, someone else seeing this same thing! I've been disavowing them but there are so many and they just seem to keep increasing. Would love to hear from more mozzers if they have been seeing these and if they are harmful.

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SylviaH
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  • thanks for thoughts!!! and if anyone wants to share there opinon, most welcome..

    Keyword Research | | Rahim119
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  • thank you for your insight. A whole lot I need to work on here.

    Keyword Research | | Lilala_Kids
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  • I get the best rankings when I have category pages that organize and link to a number of different product pages, each with generous amounts of unique, substantive text content and images. If I am selling brass widgets, I will first build many different pages for the different types of brass widgets that I sell.  Each of those product pages will contain substantive content about that product, at least one photo - usually more, a buy button, and links to similar items (each with a photo, short description). Then I will build a category page that has a photo of each item, a paragraph of text about it that is substantive enough to stand as a product description, a buy button, and a link to the full page description. I believe that the above shows google that you have a large mass of diverse content about brass widgets, that consists of several substantive pages and a single page that summarizes your brass widget offerings. I use this approach on info sites and on product sites.  The category pages are my most effective at rankings and pulling in traffic.

    On-Page / Site Optimization | | EGOL
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  • Glad you're seeing the site back in the rankings. I would definitely keep digging, though. A 14-month disappearance is not something you want to chalk up to an error, because you could easily relapse days or weeks from now. In other words, it's good news, but don't let your guard down.

    Search Engine Trends | | Dr-Pete
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  • Hi Ian! Did Joey answer your question? If he did, please mark one of his responses as a "Good Answer"—it'll get him some bonus MozPoints, and it helps us keep track of things. Otherwise, what's still stumping you?

    Technical SEO Issues | | MattRoney
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  • Great thank you for the feedback. This is being run by another team, but we want the chance to provide some feedback. Does anyone have any great examples of product page designs?

    Search Engine Trends | | BeckyKey
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  • Hi Marco Having the URL will definitely help. You can email us at help@moz.com if you wish to keep it private. Cheers!

    Link Explorer | | DavidLee
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  • Yes I have run a full report, but thank you very much for the resource, I'm sure others will find it very helpful. From the report I've seen that our backlink profile seems to be our biggest issue of ranking, especially since we lost one of our biggest. And for a niche industry eCommerce site, it's very difficult to find backlink opportunities. Hoping that after this site redesign we will of increased out DA and PA some, but won't see that change for a few more months at best. Again thank you for the resource and response everyone!

    Technical SEO Issues | | Deacyde
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  • I check and verified my account with Disqus and also contact them as well. Today I try to post all the comment the mark as spam on Disqus individually to a couple site and they accept my comment right away. For the Facebook profile I use to company profile. Would it be better to use personal profile?

    Link Building | | mongor
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  • I can highly recommend CognitiveSEO too. They aggregate all 3 major backlink sources and you can also add in your own upload from GSC. Their tool does an excellent job of categorising the quality of the links, and also an excellent system for easily inspecting the actual pages/backlinks for manual assessment. Tools also include ability to compare your backlinks to crowd-sourced disavow lists, to automatically generate new disavow files, and they've recently added a solid rank-tracking tool and some improved reporting. Well worth checking out. Paul

    Link Building | | ThompsonPaul
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