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Here's my consideration on whether to create a category or not. The answer to all would ideally be "yes."

1. Would a post/page (either one-time or regularly updated) be insufficient to talk about this topic?
2. Does the term receive significant search volume?
3. Can I cover the topic well enough and regularly enough to satisfy users and search engines?
4. Does this category have value to a user? Would a user think, "I want to see all the posts about ___"
5. Does the category avoid heavy overlap with another category?

This mostly apply to tags as well, but I tend to use tags to talk about themes (e.g. an ongoing story in the news), brands, etc.

Alright, so those are the abstract rules as far as I can think about them. Let's look at some examples.

• iTunes iPhone apps: Seems like a good one. You can't cover it in a post, there's plenty of search volume around iPhone apps, there's plenty to talk about, users would want to see only iPhone apps. I do think, though, that you have a ton of overlap. There's a category for "iPhone app reviews" and another for the type of app it is.
• Divorce apps: Kill it. Of the 3 posts in there, only 1 appears even somewhat relevant. Search volume is negligible, and you're not really helping anyone who navigates here.
• Cartoon Network: Should probably be a tag, but only if a user would find it useful.
• Paid: Not sure that people are itching to find paid apps - and they're likely to find the Play/iTunes store anyway. Actually more people look for "best paid apps" than for "paid apps,"  This is one that should be covered by a post rather than a category.
• Top rate: this one's tricky because it's tempting to think there's plenty of people searching for "best apps" and "top apps." Here's what I'd do instead: kill the category; post a monthly list of the best apps overall, and update it. Then get more specific: the "10 best tower defense games for android" and such. I'd kill it because every single post in the category would overlap.

I also noticed that your categories are not optimized. The "free" category, for example, is simply titled "Free." You'd want something more like, "Free Apps for iPhones and Android Phones." (just an example) There are a number of plugins (including one by Yoast) that allow you to set custom category title tags, which I'd highly recommend.

I can't go through each of these for a Q&A, but my structure would look a bit like this:

• Device

• App type (includes reviews, news, commentary, etc.)

• News

• Industry news (because all new apps go under app type)

• Device news

When you're deciding on whether a type of app deserves its own category it's hard to know whether a user would find it useful, and you can make the argument for really obscure things that 1/1000 people would actually click on. Instead, start with search volume, and aim for simplicity over comprehensiveness.

If you do change category hierarchy, make sure to find category pages where you're receiving search volume. It's not likely, but you don't want to be moving any structure around if it's working well for you.

You're asking a big question, so I apologize for the long answer. Hopefully this gets you started. Let me know if you have a few specific questions

Hi there,

Sorry, I thought I answered this! I think I lost my internet connection for a bit.

On pages where you have no good links you want to salvage AND no significant incoming (organic/referred) traffic, I would just return a 410 response code and kill them off entirely.

On pages where you have no good links but you do receive traffic, I would 302 redirect them.

On pages with good and bad links, I would either leave them (200) or 301 redirect them, clean up the links as best you can, and disavow those spammy domains (or pages, in fewer cases) that are spammy if they fail to take their links down.

Hope that helps!

Hi Muhammed,

When you mention a link network, people immediately think about sites like BMR that have been thoroughly penalized. I wrote about them here:

http://moz.com/blog/unnatural-link-warnings-blog-networks-advice

It's a risky strategy, and definitely not my favorite. That said, I think you can inter-link your sites if you do it correctly. For example, you can link to content pieces from one site to another when the topics happen to overlap. I've linked from a philosophy site I own to a jewelry site when the jewelry site got deep on what jewelry means to us.

What I wouldn't do is create 12 sites on the same topic and build a link wheel. I'd also advise you not to cross-link on a site-wide basis just because you own the site. It has to make sense to a reasonable user. Otherwise you'll get caught, re-penalized, and end up wasting a bunch of time that could have been spent actually gaining real life attention.

The most honest answer is that we simply don't know.

There is some speculation that CTR and/or bounce-back rates and search refinement rates factor into the rankings. No one has proved either, but both seem to make sense.

If I were Google, I would use CTR as one factor among many, but only judge against results for similar positions in similar results. For example, the CTR on simple questions is likely to be low across the board, so I wouldn't hold that against someone.

With all of that said, I am currently responsible for a number of sites that actively try to convert people directly from SERPs. We haven't noticed any downside to it because we satisfy their query when they do click with more information and they don't click on other results either. As I said, it makes sense. Google would compare apples to apples if they had any sense.

Firstly, I'd wonder about how these "toxic" links were built in the first place. If you were running around generating articles for links and participating in link schemes you may very well have links that are holding you back. One can typically tell by looking at the anchor text pointing to your site; if it's full of unnatural anchor text like "best SEO firm" rather than "[site/brand name]", they could very well hurt you now or in the future.

Don't trust the links to be high quality just because they use the phrase. All the spam emails I get from low-quality spam link builders use words like "natural," "organic," and "high quality." I'm also skeptical that they're talking about "getting links" without content or some broader marketing strategy. How are they going to do it? What are they going to share?

Honestly I've seen people do more harm than good buying into link-building contracts. Quantity may or may not matter more than quality - it depends on the proportion of each - but legitimacy matters more than either. Do you expect these links to generate awareness for your brand and drive people to your site? Why not do both, and do actual marketing in the process of building links? It's smart business, and tends to focus on activities Google won't penalize a few years from now.

I don't know the company or the situation, but do be careful and keep a long-term vision in mind.

First, don't freak out. What does the anchor text look like? Is it for a term you're trying to rank for on that page? Chances are actually pretty low that it's going to hurt you. Google has a few intent- and source-detection mechanisms built in that work relatively well.

If this is a high-value page that you're making a lot of money on or that is ranking well, don't move it and don't 410 or 404 it. It's Google's job to filter through spam and spam attacks, and they do an OK job. I don't think it's totally wrong to disavow the links, but my experience is that people generally over-react.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-bad-links-disavow-17195.html

TL;DR this is all good advice, but don't drop or redirect a high-value page.

I doubt it would have a negative impact, but I would make sure that the alt attribute accurately describes the image. The alt attribute is just a small factor in ranking, so I would not spend too much time on it

Just make sure that you're using the most appropriate image: if you're re-using the same image to target different types of keywords, you might be using images that depict something too broad. You be the judge: if you think it's a good image for the user, I can't imagine it getting you into trouble.

Good questions; do you think you're under penalty now? If not, just work on cleaning up the future of your "link building" efforts rather than trying to go in reverse and fix things. A few answers to your questions:

• No, Google will not penalize you for having a profile that is "too clean."
• Google doesn't care if you "manipulate" your link profile. They care if you've built links to manipulate their ranking system. Anchor text is one big sign that you're attempting to increase your rankings for certain terms.
• Google is pretty good at targeting links you've built to increase rankings. The links that will hurt you are those you've built - not the junky links that everyone acquires over time. The only exception might be a spam attack from a competitor, but that's rare and another issue altogether.

If you've built highly-targeted links, take those down. Don't waste your time taking down low-quality links that other people build to you. If you think links you haven't built are harming you, double-check WMT for a penalty and make sure there's no overly-targeted anchor text  stemming from your own efforts.

On the dofollow vs. nofollow thing, I've written about it before:

http://www.quora.com/Search-Engine-Optimization-SEO/Since-Quora-renders-all-outbound-links-with-nofollow-attribute-what-is-the-SEO-value-of-such-Quora-links-then

Don't worry too much about that. I don't think it's suspicious to have 0 nofollow links, and I don't think Google could draw any valid conclusions based on that alone.

Anchor text is a little trickier. Penguin initially set a pretty low bar - even at 50% high-value anchor text you were pretty much safe. They've since honed in, and will continue to do so. More importantly, they're looking at non-achor-text ways to target manipulative links. Generally speaking, if you can control the anchor text, it has a high potential to be a manipulative link. This is what happens when you "build" or "earn" links rather than trying to build an audience.

Look one step down the funnel, instead: rather than looking about the perfect links individually, look at how you're going to get the perfect links. For example, rather than trying to build anchor text, build a good piece of content that will also get you relevant anchor text. Want to rank for insurance terms? Build a bunch of useful content pieces around insurance.

Hi there,

Really interesting question that I just noticed here. I've never done this before, but my best guess comes from the Google Guidelines on moving the site:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83105?hl=en

If Google recommends keeping the redirect in place for at least a month or so, the implication is that you can remove a redirect from site A to site B after a few months without significant ranking drops to site B. That also implies that removing a redirect from site A to site B will not return site A to its former rankings, because the link equity will continue to count for site B. That said, maybe it's different if Google sees the same content that people originally linked to. I wouldn't think so, though - 301 generally means permanent, no take-backs.

You'll have to make the decision on whether it's worth it to remove the redirect based on how much it helped site B. Without knowing the details (was site A properly redirected to the same or similar content on site B? which site is more valuable?) it's hard to give you advice, but hopefully this gives you enough to reason it out!

Looking at the links, there's definitely some unnatural linkbuilding going on with both sites. Google is likely discounting many of the links that Moz has found. Theirs appears a little more unnatural, but without a link-by-link review, it's hard for me to say which of your link profiles is being discounted more. I'd encourage you to seek out a more strategic method of getting coverage where your potential customers are online.

Google incorporates a lot of data into their decisions, so it might not be all about links. We should not assume that PA/DA has all of the answers. Link metrics is one of the larger factors, but it's certainly not the only one.

Google does seem to incorporate user metrics to a greater degree lately. The most well-known result is a Penguin penalty, but the less-discussed action is that Google will actually reward sites that seem to satisfy the user query well. In any case, you can't go wrong by giving the user what they want. I think this is one area where you can improve.

Make the purpose and customer action on the page clear. For example, compare http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html to http://www.signfirm.com/banners/printed-pvc-banners.html, and ask yourself, "what is the function of this page?" My answer on the first one would be, "to learn about what a vinyl PVC banner is." The SignFirm page's function seems to be "to buy a PVC banner." I understand that the CTA is to get a quote, but we should also understand that most of the sidebar content will be ignored.

Also consider a re-design to make the site simpler. Make the things your customer wants stand out. Right now everything stands out so much that nothing does. It's quite busy with tons of colors and a lot of text.

You CAN submit a reconsideration if you want to, but in the case of purely algorithmic non-manual penalties you will just get a response that says, "there are no manual penalties on your site right now" and no change to your rankings. My opinion is that it's pointless unless you have a manual penalty OR honestly think your site has been unfairly impacted or attacked.

Links that have been discounted do indeed factor into penalties. In fact, they're probably the links you want to remove FIRST because these are sites/pages that Google has already flagged. You should absolutely remove them, especially if you're under penalty of some sort.

Removing links is indeed a bit of a two-edged sword in that you often cut out some spam links that Google doesn't (yet) know about. That said, leaving the links in place is the poorer option in my view, as it prevents you from moving forward with a long-term strategy.

If all of your links are manipulative, it might be better just to start a new site rather than cleaning up to return to 0.

That's an awfully interesting mobile URL =/ Ideally you should only have one URL. If that's not possible, you want to follow the same URL structure as closely as possible. If that's not possible, you'll want to add rel="alternate" on the desktop site to the corresponding mobile URL, and a canonical tag on the mobile site to the desktop site.

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details

By the way, I'd strongly suggest detecting based on screen size or width rather than user-agent wherever possible.

Hi,

Sorry I'm late - I must have missed the notification on this one. I recommend against using any redirects that pass link equity so long as there's a manual penalty on the site.

I have seen penalties transfer - usually Panda or Penguin will only be re-applied on the refresh, but if the signal is fairly strong or the penalty is manual the penalty can transfer within days. Sometimes the penalty doesn't transfer, and it's usually because either the content is significantly different from what was penalized (in which case the links just don't count) or because the new site has a bunch of good links to balance things out.

If I were you, I'd keep marketing the new site, build some awareness, and avoid passing link equity until the old site is clean.

Hi there,

Google's official policy is that you should try to have the links removed before disavowing. I'm assuming you've sent out some emails and tried to have some links taken down, but you haven't mentioned link removal yet - only disavow. I'm just making sure.

You say you disavowed links 6 times - did you combine those into a single file? Google will overwrite your previous disavow, so make sure you're combining the disavow lists.

Finally, if they were ranking well based on bad links, they can't expect to simply regain their former standing without those spammy links. The spot checkers on reconsideration are always a little arbitrary, so you just have to deal with that. Your only option is to decrease the odds that they'll find bad links by either increasing the proportion of good links or decreasing the bad links.

"If you knew a business was doing something wrong offline, would you report it?"

Yes, but wrong implies doing harm to another person. If people are being harmed by visiting the site, or the business isn't legitimate, that's another case altogether. I'm not sure I'd agree that using these tactics is wrong when the business is legitimate.

I certainly don't have a problem with those who want to report artificial linkbuilding; I just choose not to spend my time policing linkbuilding practices.

Hi there,

You can use press releases to get more coverage and awareness. Simply posting releases for the sake of link equity is a very outdated tactic that will not work well. Google has said they don't want to "count" links from press release aggregation, and most of the links are nofollowed anyway. Additionally, if you use too much targeted anchor text, you might run into problems with Penguin penalties.

http://searchengineland.com/google-links-in-a-press-release-should-be-nofollowed-like-advertisements-168339

My advice is to experiment with well-written press releases only when you have something that is actually newsworthy and that people will actually care about. Don't just submit them and wait - there's a lot more to it. There's an entire marketing sub-field (public relations) devoted to getting positive media coverage from which you can draw.

Hi Taylor,

As others have said, a site building so many links with aggressive anchor text is going to get caught and penalized eventually: probably on the next Penguin refresh, if not sooner. We see this a lot in some of the spammier SERPs where churn-and-burn tactics like this are still the norm. What often escapes notice is that a lot more SERPs used to be covered in spam - "insurance" was horrible, for example - but they are now filled with legitimate brands. Eventually (though not soon, at this rate) there will be little space left for these tactics as sites providing real value move in and solidify their positions.

As far as the morality goes, I suppose it depends upon your moral philosophy. Everyone has an opinion on reporting spam, but let me instead ask you some questions: What do you have to gain by reporting the competitor? Will a report make your business thrive? Does reporting them make the web better for users? Could the competitor learn about it, and turn a spam attack (that probably won't work) on you?

Personally, I'd ignore it and focus on my own business. I have almost nothing to gain by taking others down. In fact, I might be better off if they continue doing cheap tactics while I build a real business. I may eventually fill out a WMT report on them if I was second to them in dozens of SERPs. I wouldn't feel bad about it, either, if it made the web a better place. Here are some other opinions:

http://joehall.me/seo-outing-is-immoral/29/

http://www.seobook.com/media-literacy-seos-or-why-seo-outing-bad

Rand has a discussion about it here:

http://moz.com/blog/aaron-wall-and-i-debate-the-open-discussion-of-webspam

This seems to do this only for parameters that it has decided "changes, re-orders, or narrows content." They may also crawl things that look like URLs in Javascript even when it's part of a function, but it doesn't seem like that's what's happening in this case.

Depending on the setup of the site, you can either manually configure the variable in WMT (don't do this if the parameter is material), write a clever robots.txt rule (e.g. to block anything after a number of digits after the parameter), or (the best solution) re-work the system to generate URLs that don't rely on parameters.

I'm not sure I understand why the server is rendering a page if the URL isn't supposed to exist. Depending on your server config, you may also be able to return a 404 and make a rule for which (valid) pages to render. From there you can just ignore the 404 errors until Google figures it out.

I think that's the best I can do without seeing the site.