Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi, have you checked Google Webmaster Tools for any messages about the site and why Google has not indexed it. That would be the first thing I would check.

Peter

Hi Mike

I have no experience of Attracta, but if, as you say, what they are offering "doesn't exactly sound white hat", that would worry me.

The last couple of years have seen many sites experience loss from 'not exactly white hat' link building. You can get quick climbs in keyword ranking, but if your site gets slapped it could suffer a long time in obscurity. The net result is not worth it.

But as I say, I have no experience of Attracta so my issue is not with them because what they do may be totally fine. All I would say is if in doubt be cautious.

I hope that helps,
Peter

EDIT:  I suggest it is also having a look at this page which may help you to qualify what may or may not work for you: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

Hi Arben

Google's definition of a canonical page is "the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content". (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en)

Looking at the two pages you have linked to I don't think they fall into the category of having "highly similar content".

Similar content isn't just defined as what is the same textually but also functionally. These two pages serve different user needs to find first aid courses in two different locations. To my mind that makes them different.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Steve

If it can only be viewed legally by health practitioners who are members of your site, then it seems to me you don't have an option as by putting any of this content into the public domain on Google by whatever method you use will be deemed illegal by whichever body oversees it.

Presumably you cannot also publish short 25o word summaries of the content?

If not, then I think you need to create pages that are directly targeted at marketing the site to health practitioners. Whilst the pages won't be able to contain the content you want to have Google index, they could still contain general information and the benefits of becoming a subscriber.

Isn't that the goal of the site anyway, i.e. to be a resource to health practitioners? So, without being able to make the content public, you have to market to them through your SEO or use some other form or indirect or direct marketing to encourage them to the site to sign up.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi, if you have Google webmaster tools then you will be able to see in there if you have suffered a penalty from Google, but if nothing has been said to you by Google that could still mean your site has suffered a Penguin slap.

I don't think a change in hosting or IP address will have as significant an impact as you describe. That said, a question re the change... do all of the page addresses on the newly hosted site have the same page addresses with your previous host? If they don't that is most likely your problem.

Without seeing your site then it's difficult to tell you more, but I hope that helps.

Peter

Hi,

Directories of themselves are not bad.

I would say that provided the directory shows a clear track record for your industry and is not just lots of pages of links with no supporting content, then that still holds good.

I hope that helps,

Peter

Changing the URL doesn't remove the link to your domain and if Google has previously identified it as a spammy link they will know from their site cache that the link previously went to another URL, so I don't think you are going to disavow your site of anything by doing that.

Is there a reason you don't want to use the Disavow tool? With only 20-30 links affected it will take no time to put them into a text file and submit them to Google.

Peter

Hi, it is just one site then I don't think it is going to have an impact on your site, especially with the links being in the footer, unless you are talking about lots of them.

If you did want to do anything then yes, just add a nofollow to the footer link. If the footer link is contained in a common block of code that is included on all the site's pages then it's a simple change to do. But there is no need to do a disavow.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi, my recommendation would be the latter - their brand page on your website. There is more context that way and the link (which hopefully they will agree to make a "follow" link) will pass good value to your web page so that page will rank higher for that brand because of it.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi, as mentioned in the other answer I gave here: http://moz.com/community/q/where-is-the-rule-here-that-force-www-in-urls#reply_202351

the first checks for non-inclusion of the www in the URL (the !^www checks if www is not included at the start of the URL being tested), the second checks for a URL that starts with just the domain.

Peter

Hi Rob

Congratulations on publishing your first website.

First comment is the site looks very clean and its navigation is very clear. Whilst content is very important for a website, the look and feel of the site needs to engage you to browse and read, which I think your site does. That is an important aspect of SEO because the more people browse and read your site the more Google will take notice and it will help to grow the authority of your website.

In terms of other optimisation of the site, you need to do it systematically and incrementally rather than take a scatter gun approach. A planned approach to what you do will help you to grow your understanding of SEO. The Moz tools are excellent for helping you do that, plus I recommend you read Moz's Beginner's Guide to SEO which will give good foundations to your learning.

One thing I would look at changing on your site is how you have structured your Title tags. All of your pages start with your site name: "The Removalists Guide" rather than what the page is about. I would reverse the order so, for example, on the Costs page the title is something like, "How much will it cost to move home? - The Removalists Guide".

Having the main words at the start helps both people and search engines to better understand what the page is about. In deciding on a Title of what the page is about, I would try to get inside the head of the person searching and what they are looking for or the question they are asking. Hence my wording for your costs page of "How much will it cost to move home?" rather than "How much will my move cost?" You need to include the word "Home" as it is important to what your whole website is about.

Similarly, with your home page, make the Title something like, "Helping you choose the right removal company" rather than "Helping you choose the right company" - the right company for what? Whilst I understand your site is about "removalists", and that is fine as your brand name, it's not a word understood necessarily by your potential customers - at least not in my part of the world (UK) it wouldn't be.

So, I hope that gives you a good starter. I am sure you will receive some great tips from others.

All the best to you,
Peter

Hi

To answer your questions:

For a site that is only one to two months old, what is considered a natural amount of inbound links if you're site offers very valuable information, and you have done a marketing push to get the word out about your blog?

This is really a "How long is a piece of string" question. It depends. If the site is for an established brand launching say a new site, then inbound links during that time could escalate to 1000s or tens of thousands wouldn't be unrealistic to expect. For an unknown, who knows? In one sense, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that those inbound links are producing results, both from people clicking on them and it benefiting your site from an SEO perspective.

Even if you are receiving backlinks from authority websites with high DA, does Google get suspicious if there are too many inbound links during the first few months of a sites existence?

Again, it would depend on whether or not the new site was for an established brand or for an unknown, but suspicion isn't necessarily based on numbers - although it would be fair to say that the higher the number the more it might flag up an issue. The main thing though is that Google's algorithms are sophisticated and able to detect link quality on the basis of a number of metrics, e.g. the social profile of a site. You could just have 10 links and it could flag an issue.

I know there are some sites that blow up very fast and receive thousands of backlinks very quickly, so I'm curious to know if Google puts these kind of sites on a watchlist or something of that nature. Or is this simply a good problem to have?

As I said above, the more links accrued in short space of time, the more likely a yellow or red light might start flashing on Google's dashboard, but again it comes down to link quality which is evaluated on a number of metrics that will determine if there is an issue.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Some great pointers Egol. "OMG! My ring fell down the drain."... brilliant. As you say, taking an angle like that is going to make a sleepy subject much more sharable.

Peter

Hi, I don't think there is any SEO benefit that's been proven. If you had asked the question a couple of years or so ago, the answer would have been make sure you use nofollow on your links.

But the web is changing and Google is rewarding authenticity in what you do online.

If you were to write a technical article in a magazine for example, you would typically cite anyone you referenced in your article to give them credit for the piece you referred to. So, if you write a blog post for your site, why shouldn't you do the same? It seems normal and authentic to do that and if you are going to credit them, why wrap a nofollow around it?

Technically, you are passing SEO value from your page to theirs and diluting your own page's SEO value. But I don't know now if Google sees it and treats it that way.

So, that may not have answered your question but it may give something to discuss further.

Peter

Yes, that's much better. It's a lot more engaging I think.

Just a small technical issue with how the page displays in Chrome (and I would think Safari too). On all of the sets of bullet points, the first bullet point (but not the text of it) is aligned right. This is being caused by there being floats on each block of text (e.g. div, p etc) in your HTML being applied from your CSS.

Rather than going through and changing your CSS for each of the blocks, if you add just a clear:both to the ul in your CSS, that should fix it. So as follows:

ul {
  clear: both;
}

Otherwise, it's all OK. Good luck to you with this.

Peter

Hi, first up, if you haven't read it already, I recommend reading Moz's guide here: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

The other thing I would say if you are not clear on it already is first understand the strategy of SEO (i.e. that it is do with provide good relevant content that answers a site visitor's questions) than focussing too much on SEO tactics.

That said, to ensure your content is good and relevant to answer a site visitor's questions that means you need to know what questions they are asking. To do that I recommend doing keyword research to find the the keywords and phrases people are searching for so that your pages can be targeted correctly. When you have done that, make sure the content is well written and optimised correctly for those searches along the guidelines Moz recommend.

As your site is the focus of the attention you want to create then only when you have done those stages above should you be concerned with promoting the site elsewhere through social media etc.

I hope that helps,

Peter

Hi, 50-70 characters does seem quite spammy to me, but then if you watch the Image SEO Basics Whiteboard Friday by Aaron Wheeler, he says that image filename length has much the same character length as Alt Text, so on that basis the answer would be no.

It would be interesting to hear others feedback on this.

Peter

Hi Stephane,

If it's not something as you have said that you have solicited, then yes I would disavow it.

Peter

Hi Ruben

You mentioned: In GWT, the 404s are slightly different. They are www.kempruge.com/example/www.kempruge.com

I have seen this type of thing before, or something similar, when an absolute link has been entered into some anchor text or by itself without adding http:// before the link.

So the link has been entered as www.mydomain.com - which causes the error - but it should be entered as http://www.mydomain.com

Your issue may be something completely different, but I thought I would post this as a possible solution.

Peter

Hi Aaron

With the way search has been changing it's difficult to say 'this' is comparable to 'that'.

I assume you are already blogging on the eCommerce site and creating good quality content there? If not, then I would recommend starting with that and I certainly wouldn't recommend paying to guest blog. In fact it raises the question how can a guest blog be a "guest blog" if you pay for the privilege. Sounds more like a paid link which I wouldn't recommend.

If you have expertise in an area to share and blogs in your space value that expertise then they will offer you the opportunity.

Peter