Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Take a look at this thread a few days ago:

http://moz.com/community/q/seo-best-practice-http-to-https

I think Moosa hit it when he mentioned the need for 301s. Also have you set up GWT for your now preferred https site?

That's highly unlikely. Sure you can capture an ip and see who it belongs to but that's a real stretch. If someone is at their desk behind the corporate firewall and you get the ip belonging to a company you have no way of knowing who in that company was on your site.

Why is that valuable anyway? If they are interested they will contact you. Your efforts would be better spent closing them while they are on your site with good copy. Move on from these guys with their promises or I fear you will regret it.

Best.

Just from my own experience having also been through an "algorithmic" Google penalty, it took 6-8 months after uploading a disavow file to see any recovery. But good news is it does work. I agree with the responses from William and LJD but wanted to mention Google does not remove the links you disavow. That will have to be done by submitting requests to the website webmasters. Actually Google wants you to do this first before disavow, but it doesn't seem to hurt not to or do them at the same time.

I used RMOOV as a tool to do this. Great tool and very helpful folks who will talk to you on the phone! Although disavow may get you there with Google, I think it is worth the effort to remove as many bad links as possible since it just looks bad and other search engines will not know about the Google disavow. It is a lengthy process but tools like RMOOV and Detox can help.

So no reconsideration request is required unless you have a manual action. Going forward I keep looking at my link profile using OSE, GWT and Majestic and when I see something I don't like, I update the disavow file. Important to "append" that file so as to keep all the original links and just add on the new ones.

Well if the site is new and you are not greatly tied to it in any way, I'd start over. Not that you can't recover but it can take quite a while and will be some work. You have come to right place to learn though and that is to your credit! Check out some of the beginner guides here:  http://moz.com/learn/seo

Wordpress is great and I am a big fan of Genesis and the Studiopress themes. Get a good host like WP Engine or Websynthesis just to name a couple. But most of all read in this forum.

Welcome and good luck!

GWT = Google Webmaster Tools. In there you can tell Google your preferred website and now you can add the https version as the preferred site. I'm not real clear on the format so hopefully someone will jump in here and MOZ will have more info soon. It is another way to avoid Google seeing the http and https as duplicate content and penalizing you.

Sorry I can't answer more directly!

Hi Kevin,

I don't think you read my question as it does not address the answer in any way. But thanks for your response.

I have already decided on WP.

Take a look at this recent thread.

http://moz.com/community/q/should-my-website-needs-to-be-disavowed-or-not

Marie and Sha are very knowledgeable in this area. And both have websites you should check out for help and great tools.

As Richard says you can use OSE right here! Also you can see links in GWMT. Ahrefs and Majestic are also great resources. Tools like Link Detox or Link Risk are also available and claim to help you determine if the link is bad. Although the best resource for that is you. Because you will know if this was a "manipulated" link. These automated tools may have false positives for links that might actually be helping your site. But again, you will be the best judge of that.

You can't really delete a link but can request it be removed through the webmaster or disavow it in GWMT. I think Richard gives great advice however when he points out that if you haven't had a penalty in the past, you may be better off not worrying about using the disavow tool. If you are in the group of us who have been penalized in the past, you might consider proactive disavow with Google.

Best!

If you did not receive a manual action you cannot submit a reconsideration request. If you properly submitted your disavow file all you can do now is wait. And the consensus is it is as you stated related to the next refresh of Google's algo.

Hang on to the Google doc though just in case you get a manual penalty in the meantime. It sounds like you have done a good job removing links but one of the biggest mistakes is not to remove all the spam links. It is a good practice to use multiple sources to review your back link profile. In addition to GWT there is OSE, ahrefs and majestic. Some like Link Detox and I had good luck with their tool. You didn't mention how they got there to begin with but hopefully you have fixed that as well. Now just focus on building good natural links going forward and wait for the refresh.

You might search "disavow" here as there is a great deal of info.

Good Luck!

Yes they do sound good and I got excited by the hype. I am concerned that there is not more info available on them other than on their site as you state. I did purchase the SEO plugin and played with it a bit. Seemed to work quite well and very feature rich especially for the og stuff and all the social integration. Also got along with Yoast "WP SEO" from what I could see on my test site. The schema markup for "product" was not visible on the page and reading Google's guide line, that appears to be a bad idea. I asked the plugin developer why and got a note back assuring me it was OK to do and followed Google's own guidelines. I asked for a link to verify that citation (3 times) and never received a response again. The silence from support on this to a verified paid user is a deal breaker for me. Too bad , 'cause it does look cool.

Thanks for your response!

It would help to understand why have you decided to disavow links. Have you received a manual action or think you may be subject to algorithmic penalties? Has traffic to your site dropped?  Just because a link comes from a site with low DA, it is not necessarily bad. Google is looking for manipulation.

Hi. Hopefully MOZ team will respond but I noticed if I type "http://www.kuzyklaw.com"  I get a 301 to "https://www.kuzyklaw.com" and then another 301 to "https://kuzyklaw.com/".

One to many redirects I think. Noticed you are WP. Did you use a plugin for the https change?

I like your checklist approach and think it adds value for users of your site. Could you use it to generate leads? A "call to action" widget of some type that would send your checklist to users who leave their email. It's a pretty common scheme and maybe worn out, but I still go for it if the information sounds intriguing enough.

I know that doesn't answer your keyword question but I tend to agree with Chris that too much text on a home page can be overwhelming and cause a viewer to check out. I think you use the homepage as an overview an to "set the hook".

Nice site!

Can't really compare as I haven't used the other tools, but I used RMOOV and it was very good. Various price levels depending on number of domains to contact. The $99/month did it for us. Very good support (by phone) as well.

Good Luck!

Except that the bad links may have been disavowed in their GWMT.

We went through the same thought process and decided to self host a wordpress site and dump the wordpress.com (in our case) blog. There are many advantages of having the blog on your own site. You will be increasing the number of pages and adding fresh content. Google likes that and you can compete for more keywords. Also creating content in your blog that other people will link to because it is high quality will get you links naturally. I don't think it can be overstated as to how important this can be for SEO.

I can't really speak to whether or not the 301 is a good idea. In our case it wasn't possible anyway.

Hope this helps!

We also saw an increase in traffic and rankings around 10/17 and were feeling pretty cocky. One tracked keyword jumped from 7 to 1 and in the last 3 days has come down to 5. Traffic also reduced and I think it coincides with the 3 day thing Dennis mentioned. I just attributed it to the Penguin update "settling". But now Dennis makes me want to do better on page!

Impressions are up looking prior to 10/17 so I think that is a good thing overall. Have not had any similar drops on social or Yahoo/Bing.

Trick question! We did after the disavow and a refresh. That took about 8 months. I think every situation is going to be different and in some cases, it may be better to start fresh with a new domain. One advantage we had was catching what the "SEO" company was doing and getting them to remove as many links as they could.

You didn't mention if you have a Manual Action or suspect a penalty. We definitely had a Penguin penalty and knew we had bad links. We used Link Detox as an aide in the process but manually reviewed each link - Good/Bad. Beware of just going with what the tool says. Do your own evaluation.

Some really thoughtful responses here that I agree with.

I noted your average sale is $125, so I would call this a high-ticket item and your customer is probably buying because they seek the quality of the product, not the discounted price. It is reasonable to assume the retailers are the ones who have been recommending the product and if you start a war with them, they will recommend something else.

I think the first commandment of wholesale manufacturing is "Thou shalt not compete with Thy Retailers". They are your most valuable partners.

Also understanding the demo of the client might help as Dana points out, some products just don't make sense on-line and you may have one here. Also if the customer skews older, they may not be comfortable buying on-line. You might even decide to launch the product in a new look and name just for on-line sales.

So I think Lesley has given great advice and insight. Seek out new customers and don't worry about those the stores already have, rather, be grateful for them as they will finance your pursuit of new markets.

Best!

Do you see links reported in GWMT for both versions? In our case there are no links reported for the non-www site. (www is canonical). If you see links on both sites, I would disavow both just to be safe.