Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Muhammad

Your link building and SEO strategies to a large extent should be no different than before Hummingbird. To qualify that I would say that is true if before Hummingbird you were already creating content that focussed on answering the needs of people for questions they were asking and information they were looking for.

I would recommend you read a recent blog post on Moz by Gianluca Fiorelli about Hummingbird entitled "Hummingbird Unleashed" in which Gianluca very much explains what has changed and what those concerned with marketing online should be doing about it. For me the quote I found to be very helpful was "We should stop focusing only on keyword optimization and start thinking about topical optimization" and that I think at the heart of the Hummingbird update.

With regard to link building, your strategy (which hopefully it was before) should be to make sure that links are built from other sites and pages that are relevant to the topic of your site and pages. Gone are the days when any backlink was good and the more inbound links you could build the better. A lot of site's ranked well using that strategy, but one by one those sites are falling by the wayside.

So set a foundation to build topical content that people want to read and share and you will be heading in the right direction.

I hope that helps,
Peter

I agree with Kevin. Those sort of tactics will not work and will ultimately bring your site more pain.

No, link building is not dead, but it has changed.

If your blog posts and articles are good and target information that people are searching for your pages will rank well and people will link to them either through social media or via their own sites.

Consider also backing up what you are doing with content on your site by making sure you include authorship that is connected to a Google+ account. Then use content sharing platforms like Google+ and LinkedIn (possibly specific LinkedIn groups if they exist for your industry) to place snippets of your articles with read more links to your articles and posts.

Peter

Hi Gordian

I assume the traffic drops you are seeing are from organic search?

Often with a redesign there will be a change in the page URLs for the site. Did that happen with your site? If so, then you need to make sure that you set up redirection from the old URLs to your new URLs. This will be an important thing to address if this has been the case.

Other than that, there are sometimes bumps due to re-indexing of pages but if the content has remained unchanged then you shouldn't see much change and any change you do see should recover.

If the code is cleaner and the user experience better, then you should begin to see some improvements. The latter is that is likely to take longer because it will be based on things like reduced bounced rates feeding back to Google and thereby creating better results due to the perceived better user experience.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Typically, press releases are issued by companies not people, unless the person is representing their own brand.

So in the case of a company, I would say no, because whilst you may have written it a press release is really a statement and not something you would consider as 'authored'.

For blog articles however, definitely yes. Link the article to the individual's Google+ account in the page code by using the rel=author tag in the page to do that.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hello Robert and welcome to the forum

The recent Hummingbird update has no doubt shifted the SEO horizon, but that is true for all of us, Within that, I guess there will inevitably some re-tuning of the Moz tools and their analysis of data, but that is also true of other tools.

Fundamentally, Hummingbird is about Google increasing their focus on ranking information based on a more intelligent understanding of search requests. But Google has been heading that way for some time so there's not been anything totally revolutionary about the Hummingbird update. It's more evolutionary.

Just as there may need to be tweaks to competitor analysis for keywords, there will likely be tweaks to the way on-page optimisation is graded, but to reiterate, this will be true across the whole breadth of tools available on the Internet.

From my perspective, I respect Moz's position and the expertise and comprehensive analysis which both their tools and their team provide.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Oren

Yes, it is a little bit whimsical!

Unless the speaker shouldn't really be speaking because he says the word super excessively I don't believe you would have an issue. Google states the following regarding keyword stuffing:

"Keyword stuffing" refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose)

Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural, for example:

We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom cigar humidor, please contact our custom cigar humidor specialists at custom.cigar.humidors@example.com.

Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66358?hl=en

Does your speaker speak as unnaturally as that? It would be very odd if they did.

I think it will be OK.

Peter

Yes, it would show up in your analytics as an active user but the fact that the query returns no results means it's not been indexed. All good.

Peter

Hi Kieran

I definitely think you shouldn't scrap the content as I am sure there's been a lot of work put into those posts over time.

If it's not worked, then first look at how you can improve it in the light of the knowledge you now have (including also by doing some fresh keyword research), then get to work on it.

Maybe there will be some content that is beyond redemption so in those cases retire the articles. But with some re-working of your existing blog content combined with re-marketing of it through social channels, then you should begin to see some return on your investment.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi,

If I am really honest I wouldn't vote for any of them, mainly because I think there's too many words and they all feel pretty complicated.

Maybe I don't understand your market (which is very possible!) but does anyone search for "authentic designer vintage bags"? However, I can understand someone searching possibly for "vintage designer bags".

I think for your URLs to be useful for search engines and humans alike, then simpler is better. So, I would suggest something like "/designer-bags/vintage-clutch".

A thought regarding the surplus "product-category" part of the URL you should be able to rewrite that out with a line of code in your site's .htaccess file - if you have the option to modify it.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Bill

Yes, those two pages are competing with each other, but then so are all the other results on that page. The fact that those two pages are yours makes no difference. By removing one of them won't push the other up. Instead it would allow another result to come in its place.

So, yes, be glad you have two results turning up on the first page. Now see what you can do to push them both up a peg or two higher.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Kelley,

Welcome back to Moz and glad to hear your husband is better.

It sounds that the SEO company are spinning a yarn or two! Penguin and Panda are reasons for losing ground, but Hummingbird - at this stage! No, I don't believe that.

It's difficult to explain why your site has disappeared for so long and then to come back so quickly. Could it be that for some reason the SEO company put a robots.txt on the site that disallowed any indexing of the site other than the home page? I have seen that happen once before where the result was only a home page was indexed. It might be worth checking the date/timestamp of the robots.txt on the server to see when it was last updated.

How do you tell if the 140 + 20 sites are good or bad? Only really by going through each one checking their content and also perhaps checking them in Open Site Explorer. Target the ones you have identified already first and then begin to go through the others.

I hope that helps. All the best to you.

Peter

Hi Cindy

Providing you can change the URL of your existing page you don't need to create a new page, just update the URL. If you cannot update the URL however, then yes, the only way will be to create a new page. In either case though you must create a 301 permanent redirect from the old URL to the new URL.

In terms of the traffic drop of the page, then that would have been due to the page dropping from #3 to #7. As Doug said, had you made any changes prior to that which could have caused the drop. In terms of anything Google may have done, it's possible, but difficult to pinpoint for relatively small drop like that.

How do you check where your page is ranking? If just by testing yourself in Google then you cannot be sure of that because of Google's personalisation of search results, so it's worth checking In Moz Pro by signing up for a free trial (if you haven't done that already) and using the Rank Checker tool. That will give you a much better view of where your page ranks for the country you check it from.

Peter

Hi David

To create a Facebook business page you have to first have a personal account.

I would say every time that if you want to represent your business and Facebook is the right channel to be on (for some B2B businesses it may not) then create a Facebook business page. The only reason to share your personal page is with genuine friends who could be business contacts as well, but my general rule is to keep them separate.

The page you linked to is a business page shown by the reference to the product/service.

I hope that helps,

Peter

Hi Nathan

No, that is not correct. Only 301 redirects will pass value and they don't guarantee to pass all of the value. As 302 redirects nothing is passed.

There is information here on redirects: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi David

First step would be to remove the link herself from those sites if she could get access. If that didn't work then at least try to contact the sites and ask them to remove the links

But if she is unsuccessful with those routes she would be to go through Google Webmaster Tools and start a process of disavowing those links one by one. This video by Google's Matt Cutts may help explain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA

Peter

Hi Papp

What is the best keyword research software without monthly payments from those you have outlined?

Well Long Tail Pro has a monthly subscription so that doesn't fit, but the other two may do. But on what criteria can you judge what is the best?

Tools that scrape Google Suggest like the one you linked to can be useful and produce interesting results, but that isn't the whole story for keyword research. What about search volumes for the suggested keywords? And also the difficulty of ranking for them? Without volume and competitor metrics to go with your keyword research the research is very incomplete.

Of the other two you mentioned, I only have experience of Market Samurai. It does provide search volume data and you can also use it to analyse competition for selected keyword(s), but how it compares to others I cannot tell you. As to what is determined as best, I don't think there is one tool. It is more down to how you work and what works best for you.

Peter

Hi Bob

If they're opposed to link building then they are going to have to work hard at creating as you say "stellar targeted authoritative content" and then make sure they engage on social media to sharing their content that will hopefully encourage others to create links for them.

Looking at the make up of the current top 10 for those search phrases there is a lot of hard work ahead to compete and be number 2.

A couple of brief things about their site currently and in particular their articles.

I would recommend finding a consistent way of creating their page URLs. Some are hyphenated but many are not (e.g. http://www.nlpca.com/DCweb/dcwebdynamicspinreleasearticlehtml.html) and as such they are not clear to read as humans even if a search engine can probably makes sense of them. Some are to PDFs and some are to external websites, but you don't know what you are going to get when you click the link. The articles need to be better organised.

Also, scanning their articles those I looked at seemed to contain no links, i.e. referencing other articles on the site or even citing external experts.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Jeseph

Yes, duplicate content can be an issue especially if your sites has lots of it, plus you will get the situation where Google will only index one instance of each page.

The best way around is in your situation though is to have one instance of each product, but to use that instance in multiple locations from a browsing point of view. If done correctly, each product will have a unique URL, but the page it is on can be referenced from a variety of locations/categories.

So, for example, a page about a shiny blue pen could be linked to from a pens category and also a gifts category, but the URL of the shiny blue pen page can be the same, e.g. yourdomain.com/blue-shiny-pen.html so one page and not a duplicate.

In terms of the facilities within Wordpress to make that happen I am not a Wordpress expert but I know there are many on this forum who are, so I am sure someone will give you some guidance on that.

Peter

Hi Lori

A 410 code it technically correct in the context you are using it, but for SEO purposes you are better to do something with links that are going to the pages you are currently returning 410 codes for.

If you have a page that relates in some way to the page you have removed, then create a 301 redirect and send the requests to the similar page.

If no similar page exists, you could just redirect to the home page. In some cases though in those circumstances it could be worthwhile sending the link to a custom 404 page similar to the one Moz use as you can see for my invalid page query: http://moz.com/404. Rather than use a 301 redirect in those circumstances, this type of response can be a good opportunity to engage with the visitor to try to guide them to the information they are looking for. The Moz 404 page is a good example of that.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Ivan

You say "what I have been doing up to now..." which suggests you have already been doing this. What success have you seen on bloggers being willing to tweet to their followers your offer? If you have already offered this to quite a few bloggers, then you should already have some indication on (a) the percentages of bloggers who are willing to tweet for you and (b) the take up rate from their tweets.

I would be interested to hear if it is proving successful for you.

My strategy if wanting to offer these free audits is to build a list of contacts myself through my own outreach in social media. It's not a quick strategy but something you need to build and grow over time. Go on to the social media channels and engage with people, listen and try to answer their questions, share with your own followers any good things they are sharing. Then, as people build up more trust and authority in the places you are engaging people will begin to respond to you more and be more willing to share the good things you put out.

I hope that helps,
Peter