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In marking paid ads as "advertisement" for the sake of Google organic, if you have a block of small ads, do you have to mark each and every one as an advertisement?

For instance, let's say you have a block of small ads in the right column... mark each one or just at the top or what?

Thanks!

Hi Erica,

Yeah, I get that about Google and links. just trying to come up with some reason why anyone would go to the trouble to submit a video review.

Moz is kind of tough comparison, since it's an industry leader with many reasons one might post.

Thanks... Mike

Hi Justin,

By "embeddable" I was just thinking of some kind of social friendly gizmo/result that lures people in to find out what movie their life is like or what movie character or actor they are like or some kind of pop media crap like that for grabbing eyeballs out of social.

Until comments can deepen page text, you might want to "noindex, follow" and remove those thin pages out of the sitemap and index, just so Google doesn't find too many thin pages to whack you over the head with.

Best.... Mike

Do you think folks would do a video review if they could get a link to some local business... part of the mention in their review? If so, how would I publicize that without getting slammed by the G?

Hi Erica,

Thanks for the post. I've seeded it with reviews. The main trouble is getting folks there to even come in contact with the idea of posting a video. Good points about interface and gamifying. The site doesn't sell anything, so can't give a discount.

If anyone has any more ideas, please post. Thanks!

One area that we've had a lot of success with is user generated content. I see it's possible for folks to comment on the site. How much does your use of email drive those comments?  Maybe controversial opinions promoted by email to your list would gain deeper UGC. Better yet if you could segment media fans by personas. Creating thinner pages, say about a trailer review and then not having comments to deepen it makes for a lot of thin/highly templated pages.

You could also work a bit more on internal in-context linking to elevate the importance of various search pages.

I think in the incredibly competitive space of movie reviews, the site will have to focus smartly on nichier/longer tail searches.

Do you leverage youtube? What about some kind of embeddable result creating tool for self-obsessed tv/film fans to link to?

Just some thoughts. Curious to hear what you think. Good luck! Best... Mike

Hi,

I'm working on a site that has video reviews of various places. It's general information/experience that most people possess and production-wise they are selfies. These videos are then transcribed and, voila... searchable content.

My problem is this... how do I get large numbers of people to go to the trouble to make a 2 minute selfie? I thought about HARO, since one could work in a plug for something, but they have a site traffic threshold that this new site isn't at.

Any and all ideas on how to efficiently generate this content for a new site with very little traffic would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Hi Egol,

Thanks for the message. For this particular site, I'm looking at a very noticeable dip in position tracking that is then partially obscured by the following week's Thanksgiving holiday. This week, the week after the holiday week, is down about 15% traffic wise compared to 2 weeks prior. As a point of reference, last year this site was flat for the same period. So, don't really think it's just seasonality.

I might think it was just this site, but it just happened to coincide with that increase in mozcast temps and other stories of flux.

Has anybody benefited or suffered with the same kind of timing?

Did anyone see any big changes around Nov 19th & 20th? Mozcast had some high temps around there.

If you saw any big changes in organic search, any ideas WTH that was all about?

Any guesses?

One site I work with took about a 15% hit and has since sort of skidded sideways.

Hi Oleg & Chris,

Thanks for the answers. This is exactly what I've been thinking, but wanted to sanity check it... just to make sure I wasn't just having an initial negative reaction to someone else's idea.

Best... Mike

I work with a site that gets lots of members and conversions from its specialty interest community forum out of organic search. The site has been around for a number of years and still has many forum pages that do well in search that are 5+ years old. Some of these discussions may have dozens of comments and a few have thousand words.

The option has been floated to end accepting new comments on specific discussions at some point. I can see the negatives, such as folks coming out of search and wanting to register to comment, but not be able to... if we closed the discussion to new comments.

I've always assumed that new comments may freshen up a page a little organic search-wise, but honestly don't know how much that matters.

Are  there any good reasons to close a discussion to new comments? Related question, what do you think is the optimum qty of unique text before paginating?

Thanks!

Hi,

I'm working on a site that has video reviews of various places. It's general information/experience that most people possess and production-wise they are selfies. These videos are then transcribed and, voila... searchable content.

My problem is this... how do I get large numbers of people to go to the trouble to make a 2 minute selfie? I thought about HARO, since one could work in a plug for something, but they have a site traffic threshold that this new site isn't at.

Any and all ideas on how to efficiently generate this content for a new site with very little traffic would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Good answers all. Thanks! Can you guys come to this meeting with me?

He thinks if you buy a domain with some links pointing to it already, that solves problem one of a site passing some authority. Problem two, pulling it off, he thinks would be relatively easy. Gah!

Here's how I feel about this:

https://youtu.be/AwY4pzb0Pjs

My client wants to build a second site to provide targeted links for SEO to his main site. He's interested in buying a TLD with some near topic authority/links and then build the second site's authority up from there.

He is clear that this could get him in trouble for a link scheme, but thinks it can all be hidden from Google. Off the top of my head I was able to recall a few of the pain-in-the-neck things you'd have to do to not get caught, but he seemed unconvinced. I recall you'd have to have:

• Different registrar

• Different contact/WhoIs

• Different site host

• Different G/A, GWT

• Logging into second's site's G/A, GWT with different IP address not used for main domain

With the exception of the last one, he didn't seem to think it would be too hard. Aren't there more difficult maneuvers required for hiding this from Google? I want to be able to point out to him how ridiculous this low integrity effort will be, without losing the client.

Thanks! Best... Darcy

Hi Dmitrii,

Always fun to watch Matt's Greatest Hits, in this example the value of making things better.

I guess the make better or delete seems super black and white to me.

Economically, who is able to make thousands of pages dramatically better with compelling original content? So, instead, the only other option is apparently radical elective surgery and massive amputation? I guess I'd choose the chemo first and don't really see what the downside is for noindex/follow and exclude from the sitemap.

Anyway, thanks again! Best... Darcy

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for the message.

To answer your question, part of the reason is link juice via a noindex/follow and then there are some pages that serve a very very narrow content purpose, but have absolutely no life in search.

All things being equal, do you think a smaller, more focused, sitemap is generally an advantage? In the extreme and on other sites I've seen sitemaps with noindexed pages on them.

Thanks... Darcy

Thanks for the suggestion, Andrew.

With setting priority or not in a sitemap, do you think a smaller, more focused, sitemap is generally an advantage?

Thanks... Darcy

Thomas & Dmitrii,

Thanks for the message. With all do respect, I really read the above linked post differently than Google saying "just delete it."

Also, I don't see how deleting it preserves whatever link juice those pages had, as opposed to a "noindex, follow" and taking them out of the sitemap.

Finally, I don't necessarily equate all of Google's suggestions as synonymous with a "for best effect in search." I assume their suggestions mean, "it's best for Google if you..."

Thanks, again!

Best... Darcy

Dmitrii & Thomas,

Thanks for your thoughts.

Removal would be one way to go. I note with some interest this post:

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-block-thin-content-use-noindex-over-404s-21011.html

According to that, removal would be the third thing after making it better and noindexing.

With thousands of pages, making it better is not really an option.

Best... Darcy

Would there be any positive effect from editing a site map down to a more curated list of pages that perform, or that we hope they begin to perform, in organic search?

A site I work with has a sitemap with about 20,000 pages that is automatically created out of a Drupal plugin.

Of those pages, only about 10% really produce out of search. There are old sections of the site that are thin, obsolete, discontinued and/or noindexed that are still on the sitemap.

For instance, would it focus Google's crawl budget more efficiently or have some other effect?

Your thoughts? Thanks! Best... Darcy