Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi,

Is there a bug in open explorer?

I've run a few backlink reports but when I download to csv the csv's are empty... It's kinda wasted most of my afternoon

Amelia

Hi EGOL,

Thank you. I get what you are saying.

However, we do have a really good website. And I'm not just saying that.

We launched our website last July, and have been regularly updating it with information relevant for our target market: UK Landlords (We're a BTL mortgage specialist). We get around 7,000 visits per month. The majority of this traffic is from organic rankings or PPC advertising, though we are getting more and more referral traffic every month.

We regularly contribute to several influential blogs - one of which is the most influential in our niche, so I don't think our problem is that our content is poor.

Simply - I want to get a few people on board who can offer our website visitors something we can't do ourselves. Specifically, I wanted to introduce a 'Landlord's Blog' - written by  landlords, for landlords. Whilst several of my colleagues are landlords, they either don't have the time to write for us or,(sorry guys!) the skill to do it justice. Hence my wish to get a key influencer on board...

Thanks again for your input

Amelia

Hi,

I've identified a list of key influencers within my niche. I now want to connect with them, specifically to ask them to provide regular content for our site (they'll hopefully promote it via their own channels as well as us doing some promotion). The reason I want to do this is because it's easier to move Mohammed than the mountain! - I want to piggy-back on their success!

How would you go about doing this? Some of the influencers are follwing us on Twitter and I've had some nice discussions with them over the last few months or so (our Twitter has only been going since about March this year). Would you reach out via Twitter, or call them up? I really don't want to mess this up!

Thanks,

Amelia

Hi Chris,

You bring up two points here.

I don't think I can help you much with the first point, beyond saying that rankings are often volatile, and can and do move down as well as up (when I worked for an agency, we often used to say to clients (managing their expectations) that 'search isn't linear' and movement down as well as up is to be expected.) This is especially true of new campaigns.

Remember, if you lose rankings for some keywords it doesn't always matter hugely if the keyword gets few searches or the intent behind those searches doesn't match your page. (though in the second instance, you could re-write the page to make sure it fits with what the visitor is expecting to see.)  So, don't completely despair!

Check Analytics for visits and conversions - these are the metrics your bosses will be caring most about in real terms. If your work is having a positive affect on these, then you know you are definitely on the right track.

Regarding the other problem you have: most people don't want to read accounting articles. I have a similar problem with optimising a very dry and some might say dull subject. It isn't always easy to come up with things to write about in this instance. What I do, is try and work out basic 'profiles' of my intended audience, and then try and work out what sorts of things this person wants to read about (within my subject area, which is finance). Then I go ahead and write the piece. So... Think about the sorts of people who use your website - I haven't spent long looking at it, so this suggestion may not work for you, but I would think about writing things that business men and women are interested in. This could be anything, from the kinds of investments they may make to an article about juggling the work/life balance. For example - would your product help a busy working-mum get her accounts done quickly so she can focus her attention where she (presumably) would prefer it to be: with her family?

I hope this helps - keep at it, these things take time and don't whatever you do start to feel despondent about the rankings. It will happen so long as you provide high quality content and create quality backlinks to the site and blog.

Good luck!

Amelia

Hi,

I wouldn't use it either.

I was quite excited by it at first, but they let 'all sorts' in. Naturally, I searched for my niche, and found some articles, but clicking through to them revealed what I feared. whoever 'wrote' those posts either doesn't speak English as their first language or they used spinning software. I suspect it may be both, but either way I wouldn't want to be associated with such drivel.

Try myblogguest.com - it's the best guest blogging platform I've ever come across - get the paid version though because then you have access to the fantastic 'articles gallery', which is worth it, believe me.

Also, try tweeting something like: '#yourniche anyone looking for a guest blog about XYZ, #guestblogging' or something like that. You'd be surprised by the response - we have a really good regular guest blogging spot by reaching out via twitter. You may need to do a few variations, with keywords and hashtags and what-have-yous, but really try it. It won't cost you anything at all; and at least that way your outreach is with real people.

Also, try and find blogs to post on by doing backlink analysis - I have got a huge list just by going through our competitors backlinks. And the best thing about this is its infinite - your competition will always be adding new links. But, I wouldn't rely solely on backlink analysis (or any method for that matter - variety is the spice of life AND Link Building...)

Good luck whatever you decide to do.

Amelia

ps - I've recommended myblogguest to a few people on this forum. Let me explain, I have absolutely ZERO affiliation with myblogguest. I just use it as a customer. And happen to think it's the bizniz in terms of guest blogging!

Chris is right. Moz is an analytical tool. It won't suddenly help your rankings just by purchasing it!

I think you are right, if you think your pages have thin content then that is the most likely reason why you have poor listings in the SERPs. Work on that, but don't stop building links. Never stop building links!!! Moz tools do help with this, the open site explorer is fantastic (although there is a free version of this, it doesn't give as many results) for discovering new linking opportunities. You say that when looking at your competition's backlinks you can see that 80% of their links come from news sites - how did they get those links in the first place? If they didn't buy them then they must have obtained them via legitimate means. Think about how to get your story in front of the right editor to be included in a news piece. Don't make up news or try and send out flimsy press releases - find something worth doing. Could the company you work for do a fundraiser for a local charity? Your local paper would run that story - especially if you could link it up to a personal story within the company. If it's national coverage you are after, then you'll need to be a bit more creative, but I'm sure that if you had a little 'brain-storming' session with your team you could come up with loads of ideas.

Have you tried SEMRush? We have both Moz and SEMRush. I like Moz best, but my colleague is a fan of SEMRush. It's just a preference thing. Try that tool too, it's not the same as moz, but it is a viable alternative, and like I say, a colleague of mine much prefers it.

Whatever you do, don't stop building high quality links to your site.

Good luck!

Amelia

Hi Everett,

Thank you - this is great info.

Have a great day

Amelia

Thank you K. - Very useful and informative.

Thank you Devanur

Hi,

We are about to rebrand.

This means we need to move all of our content on to a new domain. I want to make sure this process is as smooth as possible and we don't lose too much by way of rankings.

I have read this page: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html and plan on following the instructions to the letter, but was wondering if anyone had any additional tips? Also, the article linked above is OLD. From 2008, is there anything'new' that I should know?

Thank you (in advance) for any help you can offer, it is much appreciated!

Best wishes,

Amelia

EDIT: I forgot quite a big element when first posting this question!

We are merging two existing websites into the new URL. The two sites are for two different products we offer, but we'll now be offering both products under the same URL.

But how are they going to do it?

I wouldn't have thought they could distinguish between a guest blog and a normal blog post unless it's labelled as a guest blog (and let's face it, if Google goes after guest blogs, then all those sites promising to publish guest blogs will change their message pretty quickly).

Additionally, if a publisher agrees to publish a guest blog on their site, aren't they endorsing (voting for) the guest blogger? Wouldn't it then be a 'natural' link because the publisher has agreed for a guest to publish content on their blog and therefore must believe that whatever the guest blogger is saying is worth sharing with their visitors?  Also, the blog editor (or owner) will have to review the guest blog before publishing it, so again, it's been verified by a human. To me this seems to be perfect content, and what we want and need more of online.

One more thing. The 'problem' with guest blogs is usually down to quality, and I would agree with you that there are a load of rubbish guest blogs published on similarly rubbish sites. These are the problem, not people employing professional writers and researchers to generate useful and informative content that people actually want to read.

I just can't see how it would help the index to remove sites that provide useful content. Or, am I missing something here?

Yeah, I came to the same conclusion! I was hoping someone would say this, because 'on paper' it seems good (strong domain authority, gives followed backlinks etc etc), but my very first reaction when I first saw it was 'YUK'.

Thank you for confirming my gut feeling

I've read this as well, but I just don't quite get how or why Google would want to go after all guest blogs! I get that some are rubbish and spammy and I guess those are the ones that cause a problem, but a guest blogging campaign should be as much about gaining traffic from referral sites rather than using if purely for link building.

I think about it like this: if a guest blog brings me traffic by itself then the SEO benefit of the link is the cherry on the cake. Without the SEO benefit, I still get targeted traffic to my site that converts.

Hi Studio33

We use My Blog Guest (http://myblogguest.com/) for our guest posting activity.

I recently petitioned my boss to be allowed the paid version, and it's well worth it! We have the most basic plan (can't remember what it's called, but it's the cheapest one there) which allows us to post 10 articles in the Articles Gallery. I think there are other plans, but I couldn't say how good they are or not because I haven't used them!

Before using the paid version we'd spend ages on the my blog guest forum trying to get guest posts from relevant sites, but it just wasn't time-effective for us. But, if you're not 100% sure if you want to pay for it or not, then go for the free version to test the waters - especially if your budget is tight (though I do think the price is fair for the service they offer - which is excellent).

I also send out tweets on a fairly irregular basis with the hashtags #guestblog and #guestbloggers if I really need something quick, and that works pretty well (we got a regular guest blogging spot on a very influential and high trafficked blog in our niche from sending out tweets).

Good luck with your guest blogging - it is worthwhile.

Amelia

Hi,

I came across this journal site in a competitor's backlinks - it's apparently one of their top links. However, it looks like the competitor stopped using the service about 2 years ago - I was wondering if it was:

• too much work
• not effective
• or, worse, bad for SEO!

http://www.blurty.com/

I was wondering if anyone had ever come across this service and used it before - I can't find anything on Moz about it and there doesn't appear to be any results that answer this question if I search Google, so I was wondering if anyone can shed some light on it.

Would you say it's worthwhile using or not? We only have very limited resources so the benefit has to outweigh the work involved (though I am fully aware that it would take a month or two to build momentum).

Thanks for your help!

Amelia

What's the problem?

I think you need to build more links. Am looking for a quick fix on this myself as our domain authority has recently taken a battering - we lost some links so it's probably down to that.

Thank you again, Scott!

Thanks for replying Scott!

In webmaster tools there are 25 crawl errors. These are all pages that never actually existed on that site. Like I say the IT department messed up the DNS when they set our landlords site live - all the landlords pages were listed under the smartloan domain.

I haven't marked them as 'fixed' yet because I haven't actually fixed them (yet)!

Landlords does not reference smartloan at all - and vice versa. They are completely separate businesses (though owned by the same holding company).

I haven't done a change of address - maybe I should have done this back in July 2012 when this problem first happened?? All I did then was to noindex the urls in smartloan's robots.txt, then in WMT I did the remove urls thing, which worked back in July.

What is concerning me is whether this will affect smartloan - as a business it will pretty much depend on natural search visits, and won't survive without it...

Thank you again for replying and for your reassurance that it probably isn't something to worry about - my developer says the same thing, so maybe I'll just let sleeping dogs lie and hope for the best!

Have a great evening (or morning/afternoon if you're in a different time zone!!!)

Amelia