Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Do you have any 404 errors in your report?

Usually 404 pages are seen as duplicates, so when fixing pages linking to 404 pages, it will fix the duplicate issues as well..

Greg

It would be great if their was a plugin or Feed setting that automatically added the canonical tag for you, but im not sure about that.

If they are scraping the content via feeds, then you could include a link to the same page in the content.

Create a link in the content linking to the page URL so that when people scrape the content, the link will still be on other websites, linking to the original source. (do this creatively, perhaps hyperlink the page title in the article)

Your site wont get any penalties as long as your site was indexed first.

Greg

Hi

You have 2 options.

1.) Add a rel=canonical tag on their page with the URL to the original content on your website.

2.) Link to the original content via a URL or text link on their pages

From Matt Cutts:

_We've had a lot of interest in these meta tags, particularly in how the syndication-source tag relates to rel=canonical. After evaluating this feedback, we’ve updated our system to use rel=canonical instead of syndication-source, if both are specified. _

If you know the full URL, rel=canonical is preferred, and you need not specify syndication-source.

If you know a partial URL, or just the domain name, continue using syndication-source.

We've also had people ask "why metatag instead of linktag"? We actually support both forms for the tag, and you can use either. However, we believe the linktag form is more in line with the spirit of the standard, and encourage new users to implement the linktag form rather than the metatag form we originally proposed.

Source

Greg

In layman's terms, yes, useful great content is all you need to get links naturally.

That's how search engines work, they expect that if people like a website or an article, they will link to it. If you can satisfy your visitors by giving them what they want, they will link/like/share your content. (creating brand exposure, more links)

Obviously its not as simple as posting a "great" article on your site and then forgetting about everything else.

You still need to promote the article in social channels/blog comments etc etc to spread the word.

In time, when your website/brand grows in authority (by building relationships with related webmasters/bloggers etc) Google will rank your articles without you having to do anything as your domain has the authority and trust to back it up.

Publish your great content, but then also promote/share it among the influential people in your niche and over time, the links will come.

Just my opinion on the matter.

Greg

There are 3 external links on the example page.

2 are the FB and G+ links

The other is the question mark in the captcha box pointing to Google.com. Its followed, and external.

I hope this solves the mystery?

Regards

Greg

Iv never seen this before, but what do you guys make of this?

http://www.becitywise.com/

According to Google, its a PR7 website.

SEOMOZ are reporting a DA of 6  (1 link to the domain)

http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

Any thoughts as to how or why Google have assigned such a high PR?

According to Whois, the domain was registered on 16/07/12 so its brand new...

The funny thing is, many people purchase links based on the Page Rank, so this guy must be making a fortune. (the Friends links I assume are all paid links)

Greg

Hi,

I can confirm that your 301 redirect is not working..

However, because http://www.davidclick.com/index.htm has a rel="canonical" tag pointing to http://www.davidclick.com/ its not causing any duplication issues.

However, I would recommend you get the index page redirected to the correct home page anyway.

Regards

Greg

If every single page was set to 301 back to your home page and subsequently Google has removed all other URLs from the index, then disable the 301's, make sure the pages are working, and resend the sitemap to Google.

Do a scan with link sleuth to confirm all your pages are working correctly.

Greg

Great news!

As they said, give it a month or two and you'll start seeing your rankings improve.

They probably apply these penalties in bulk and then manually review when reconsideration requests come through. Whoever analysed your profile saw nothing majorly wrong so lifted the ban.

My 2c worth.

Hi Craig,

Search this in Google "keyword"+“Guest bloggers wanted” OR “guest blogger wanted”

Then analyse the authority of each site, and choose the best 10 to submit your articles to.

You could also join the guest posting community at myblogguest.com

Good luck!

Greg

Do both.

Google wants to see fresh content on you site, but then you also need contextual backlinks from other sites.

Do 10 guest posts, and publish 10 on your website.

Greg

Hi,

How bad was the effect on rankings?

Is your objective to get both websites ranking?

If not, why not redirect the old site to the new one?

Redirecting the spammy/Dupe content to the clean pages wont be an issue in my opinion. (Bad link neighborhood would be a different story) but I'm not sure if this will help lift the penalty.

Perhaps someone else can comment on that?

Greg

Link Research tools by Chris Cemper has just released a "link detox tool" that you can use once for a tweet.

It highlights the most suspect links (based on a number of factors) making it "quick and easy" to identify dodgy pages with links to your site

Our websites haven't been hit by any penalties, but there are over 100 suspect links reported that i will manually go through to confirm, and then send removal requests where necessary.

http://www.linkresearchtools.com/news/link-detox-clean-backlink-profile/

What have you changed on the website other than remove the bad backlinks and get rid of the porn directory?

Did you send a reconsideration request to Google?

Have you been updating the site with new content?

Has the SEO company been building more links?

From what I have read, It looks like you are starting to recover.There is no way to know for sure unless you give it a month or 2. Just keep getting great back links with brand terms and check your progress in a month or two. If all looks good, i would say its safe to assume the penalty has been lifted..

Its sounds like pages are on a redirect loop....

Run a scrawl using link sleuth and identify the URL's that are redirecting and you can take it from there.

Perhaps do the scan, and then report back with an example of why they are redirecting and we can be of better assistance.

Greg

I loaded the link in a program that makes HTML code visible. (For HTML noobs like me) here's a link to the program http://www.pagebreeze.com/

If you edit the HTML Source with that link, and then view it, nothing is displayed..

I'm not that clued up with HTML, but from what i can tell, Google wont see that as a link.

Greg

After testing that code in an HTML viewer, I would say no, Google wont see that as a link.

Could you give me a real example of the link?

Greg

This will be an issue as you are linking to non existent pages and Google will continue reporting 404 errors in G-WMT.

It would be worth your time to do it accurately one channel at a time.

Greg

Agreed. I have just run the tool and its identified a bunch of links we should consider removing.. I am impressed as it has saved allot of analytic work identifying these dodgy links.

Hi Craig,

I would suggest looking for guest posting opportunities with webmasters in your niche (or similar niche) rather than publishing on Article/Blog directories.

1.) Always only publish your articles in one place, don't try to mass submit the same article to many websites.

2.) You can publish the article on your website, and then syndicate the article on other websites, but this isnt the best idea either. If you decide to guest post, the webmasters usually check to see if the content is original, if not they wont accept it. Even if they do accept it, the link pointing to the original article on your website is merely a "reference" rather than an endorsement from one site to the next.

Hope this makes sense?