Just in case later in the future you want to turn all your URLs to lower case you can do something like this

In your .htaccess file insert this

ensure it is not a file on the drive first

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-s
RewriteRule (.*) rewrite-strtolower.php?rewrite-strtolower-url=$1 [QSA,L]

Then in your root directory place a file called rewrite-strtolower.php and insert

if(isset($_GET['rewrite-strtolower-url'])) {
$url = $_GET['rewrite-strtolower-url'];
unset($_GET['rewrite-strtolower-url']);
$params = http_build_query($_GET);
if(strlen($params)) {
$params = '?' . $params;
}
header('Location: http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '/' . strtolower($url) . $params, true, 301);
}
exit();
?>

"and considering how many we have it's amazing our rankings aren't better"

I think you may be in the wrong mindset in all this

Remember that Google determines the quality of the backlink from the quality of the site. That can be determined to the reputation of the entire site or the page itself. Just look at JC Penny and it's faults. They are a VERY reputable company and they still screwed up.

Honestly whether it's a .edu, .gov or whatever else it may be coming from Google doesn't care, it only cares about the quality.

Just because you have a ton of links from a .edu really doesn't mean jack squat (TBH).

My .edu links never show up in my Google Webmaster Tools

Who knows, that could be for many reasons, it does not necessarily mean that Google does not already know about them and are not considering them.

Hope that helps

OMG run away as fast as you can from that company, they are full of it.

"offsite site-mapping technology which incorporates our dissociative embedding engine to gain the attention of the search engine spiders while still avoiding any long-term, traceable negative side-effects"

That is a bunch of bull and doesn't even make sense...

I'm sorry but I think I didn't describe my title issue properly.

I currently use "- Free Scrabble Dictionary" on all my 500,000+ pages at the end of the titles. My homepage title only contains my brand name "Free Scrabble Dictionary"

When you say "I would not do it" are you meaning that you would not add "- Free Scrabble Dictionary" at the end of all titles?

Also when you said "because your domain name will appear immediately below the title in the SERPs - thus it is redundant." are you referring to the example in the image?

fsd-title.jpg

What about using my brand at the end of all my titles

Example: - Free Scrabble Dictionary

Because of "Scrabble Dictionary" in that title on all of my 500,000+ pages could that possible be seen as spamming that keyword even though its my brand?

Maybe change my titles to "- FSD"?

My domain is: http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/

"Scrabble Dictionary" is a huge keyword in my niche where I used to rank top 4. Do you see this domain as possibly being hit by the EMD?

My Google Analytics does not show that I was initially hit back in Sept 2012 when it first same out.

Nope never a manual, just getting feedback

Can I get a little more info on your statements?

Keyword stuffed? The only thing you could be referring too is the links from each word to its definition, because the only other text on that page is the title.

Which page/word with the definition and sentence example was "thin"?

I always struggle with these pages I have on my site going back and forth debating what I want to do with them. On one side Google was content, yet at the same time its all about user experience.

http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/word-lists/words-that-start-with/letter/h/

I used to have all my words listed on one page which could have been well over 10,000. Now I pagination them as you can see. I debate writing a header of content for these pages, but honestly users just want the words. Get in, get what you need and get out. What is the recommendation on these pages. Should I write content? Should I not?

I just saw that every one of my dictionary word pages 280,000+ of them all had a list of anagram words on them ranging from 10 to 50 of them and they all contained links like this

[[the word]](/dictionary/word/[the word]/ "check and see if [the word] is in the scrabble dictionary")

[the word] represents the specific word. "Scrabble Dictionary" was my main and hardest hit keyword. Could this have been spammy to Google? That title contained scrabble dictionary in it and it could have been on each one of those 280,000 pages at least 10 - 50+ times?

Well the biggest change I did in the last week was completely refresh my site to a new responsive design. I made sure all my canonicals and redirects are setup properly and checked them 10 fold.

Some changes I have done over the last few months was focus on Panda related issues and noindexed about 90% of my site. This was after the traffic drops and not before. The reason I did this was for instance all my dictionary pages get their definitions from an API provided from another site called wordnik. Since that would be considered duplicate content I went ahead and did that.

Example Page: http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/dictionary/word/test/

I also did the same for all my quotes and sentence examples as well since all those would be considered duplicates. Everything else is original content which used to rank very well. Because of all the duplicate content I thought that possibly could be an issue...no changes yet.

Went through my backlink profile and got some links removed that I suspected spammy as well and disavowed ones I could net get removed and were very spammy.

That is where I am at so far. I used to rank very well in my niche for years and during the Panda/Penguin days is when my rankings tank so I was suspecting that had something to do with it. At this point I have tried so much I feel like there is nothing else.

This is strictly organic / google

No changes that I am aware of, but at the time I had a old site design. I have a new one now

Never had a manual action

I annotate when I make changes so I had none then

I am strongly suspecting Penguin even though the dates don't line up but I have to wait for the refresh before I know

http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/

I need some fresh eyes on this traffic of mine. I have compared the dates to when updates have been rolled out (panda, penguin, page layout, top heavy, etc...) and I cant match these dates with any of them. Can anyone maybe shed some light to my traffic drops and recovery then traffic drop again and see if there is a correlation with any major updates?

• Dropped Jan 22 2014
• Dropped April 4 2014
• Recovered August 25 2014
• Dropped September 18 2014

google-analytics.jpg

The problem is I cant target the referrer with the location in Google Analytics. My biggest refferer is 4webmasters.org and I am assuming it is them, I just need to know if that is coming from Fort Lee

I keep getting a ton of web spam crawler traffic from Fort Lee. Anyone know who this is?

I think the first question I need to ask you is the following

• Did you have a manual penalty in GWT?
• Did your rankings drop from algorithmically?
• Do you know exactly which updates you were effected by? (panda, penguin, top-heavy, layout...)
• What made you decide to disavow links? Did you even need to?

One of the biggest mistakes I have seen many others do when their rankings drop is "panic" and start disavowing links. SEO'rs tend to run to the disavow tool when they may not even realize that their issues have nothing to do with that. Of course if you have a manual penalty they you have something to go by, but if you are effected from an algorithm change then you have some work ahead.

I think the first step you need to do is try and figure out which update(s) you were effected by. That will give you a better idea where you need to focus your attention. Here is a great article that will help you to understand

Once you get past that then here is an awesome article in which even helped me to recover, it takes some work but I promise it was the best thing I ever did.

Can you provide us with a URL to see for ourselves?

You need to provide us with a URL in order to know which site is yours.

I am assuming you are asking how sites that rank above you for your keyword terms are able to do this?

thanks man

Correct, they are not indexed and they are by far spam just looking at them. Here is an example of one

http://beach.speedy.ch/joomdocs/FREE-SCRABBLE-DICTIONARY.htm

I know its spammy, I was just wondering what others thought