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Hi Iris

I can't help you with what you are seeing within Moz without seeing it specifically, but maybe some from support will be able to help you with that.

The ?db at the end of the web address for your site is called a query string. Typically, these are used to pass a string of text (in this case 'db') to run against a script on the site to do something as a result of receiving that string of characters. But it may be that it doesn't do anything and if, on the web server, there us nothing to process the query string, then it will be ignored. For example, if you try this http://www.bbc.co.uk/?db and this http://www.bbc.co.uk will do the same thing because there is nothing to process the ?db on the receiving web server.

You can only ask the person who created the link with the ?db to give the reason why.

I hope that helps in some way,

Peter

Hi Mark

Yes, login to your account. By default the system currently logs you into Moz Pro.

At the top right there should be a light green button that says "Start using Moz Analytics". Click that and if you will be logged into it.

Yesterday, there was a link which made it possible to switch back to Moz Pro, but I cannot find it now, so it may be that the only way to get back to Moz Pro is logging out and in again.

I hope that helps,

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, no I haven't needed to, so to be fair to you (which doesn't come across in my original reply to you - apologies), you are right to be cautious.

My thinking, based on what you said "I either haven't been able to make contact with webmasters, or they are asking money to remove the links", was that if you have done those things then you have done what Google asks in trying to mitigate the issues. In other words, you have demonstrated you have tried to do the right thing.

In that case, then disavow is an option for you, but maybe, in hindsight, with 20-30 links affected that represent <5% of your backlinks, then you should do nothing and concentrate on further offsetting their impact by growing more good links.

What I wouldn't do is pay for them to be removed. IMHO, for sites that are trying to earn money from holding sites to ransom then that only encourages more sites to ransom. If the site is asking for payment as a sort of "administration fee" (which I still think is unreasonable) then maybe ask them one more time. If the links are genuinely bad and the host site(s) have more than just yours, then they are endangering their own site by keeping them.

I hope that helps.

Peter

Just posted at the same time but a little later than Nakul - ditto answer!

Peter

Hi Nathan

If the links are legitimate from good sites and you want them to link to the correct pages on your site, but are not having success with the Chinese site updating them, then it may be simplest to use URL redirection.

If your site is hosted on a Linux server then you can create URL redirection via an .htaccess file in the root folder of your site. If your site is hosted on Windows server, then similar methods exist.

Essentially, this will mean you can intercept the broken links when they arrive at your web server and before they end up reporting a 404 page not found error. In doing this, you can redirect the broken link to the actual address on your site. The result will be that the links will work and also the search engines will change their index for your site to the current address.

So where you currently have a backlink going to mydomain.com/missing-page.html, your URL redirection can signpost the visitor (human or search spider) to the correct page mydomain.com/correct-page.

It would read something like this:

Redirect 301 /missing-page.html http://mydomain.com/missing-page.html

one for each broken link.

I hope that helps,

Peter

Hi Benjamin

It's rather a question full of riddles, but as far as I see it the search engine only cares about providing the most relevant pages for the search.

Just because the widget counselling service is only available online doesn't really matter to the search engine. If someone searches for "widget counselling boston" and there's a website run by a company showing that they are based in Boston, then it's more than likely that company's web pages will rank highly. Unless of course, there are many other widget counselling companies in Boston!

I'm not sure that answers your question, but I hope it 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, I cannot see that this would benefit your site. If you want to attract people to your site then give the people visiting Hacker News the catchy title as the anchor text to the Google friendly title on your site. Then you can do both from the outset.

But in truth whilst smart headlines may increase clickthrough what both human and search engine visitors want is smart content.

Hope that helps

Peter

Hi Bob

Looking at the page on your site, my first thought is that there is far too much text and information at this initial stage of your conversation with your potential customer for them to be able to process.

I would look at breaking down the page into a series of simpler bullet points outlining what you provide and avoid going into lots of detail.

Whilst I appreciate your motive for doing this will be the desire to be transparent with your potential customer, I think in many cases, they will neither understand or be concerned with how you are going to do their SEO (including the details of how many hours you will be spending), but will be more concerned with the benefits you will provide them with and the outcomes of your work for them.

I'm not sure that is what you want to hear and others may disagree with my thoughts, but I hope my thoughts are helpful.

All the best to you. Peter

Hi, OK, I understand a bit more now.

These types of pages are automatically by the Content Management System (CMS) on which the site is built. I'm not sure you will have much control over the Titles, but it depends on the CMS used. Wordpress, Joomla?

There may be a plugin or extension you can use to fix the automatic titles generated for these even if to only add a Page 2 or Page 3 etc to the end of the title. In terms of optimising them beyond that as there not a lot you can do if the content is being generated dynamically and the pages presumably contain lots of links to other articles so in a sense you should not consider them as landing pages to appear in search engines but as signposts for search engines to build links on your site.

Peter

No problem Lewis, but thanks for the link to the Chrome plugin. I didn't know about that one. Very helpful - thank you.

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, it's very important you don't have duplicate title tags and use titles that are what they say, the title of the page.

Think about your site being a book. In any book there are pages (i.e. the pages of your site), but in this book each page has unique content. So, how do visitors and search engines know what those pages are about if they all have the same title?

Without seeing your site it is difficult to comment further, but look at what is unique about each page and then give each page a title that is both unique and descriptive in 3 or 4 words telling both search engine and visitor what that page is about.

I hope that helps.

Peter

I agree with Joseph on his points he has raised as well.

Peter

Hi, I think the likelihood is your site is still suffering a kick back from Google. Whilst they have removed the penalty that doesn't mean to say, your status will be automatically restored and unfortunately, to some extent or another, Google will still treat your site cautiously from a ranking perspective.

Also, with the links you have disavowed that has still left a lot of domains from the numbers you have given for which links are still active. They may be good links, but with your site having so many it is possible that Google are still checking the large number remaining.

Restoration will take time I think and yes, the recent Hummingbird update may have impacted your site as well. The on-page optimisation looks OK but as a directory site with little "answering questions" type Hummingbird content, perhaps you need to establish conversations with potential customers using an on-site blog and through social media.

I hope that helps,

Peter

Hi Keith

I would definitely, update the listing to show sold and, if possible, keep the image, but add a "sold" banner across a corner of it and as you say, use it as an opportunity to guide the person who has landed to other options.

By keeping the listing, at least for a time, you will keep some content equity in the site, plus by having sold vehicles showing then it creates the impression for potential buyers that the company is successful in selling and therefore must be selling good vehicles - and may even call them to action to not hang around!

At some time, the sold vehicles will need to be removed, but rather than redirecting them to straight 404s maybe set up a server redirection to point the link to the special search page on the site that says the vehicle is sold but encourages them to search for something else.

I hope that helps,

Peter

Hi Christopher

Any alternative analytics tool you use will report the same "(not provided)" result. That is because the issue is not with Google Analytics but with Google search not providing the search phrase as part of the data passed to the analytics tool.

It may be worth you having a look in the Google Webmaster tool for the same site though as some data is available to view with that, but not as useful as it would be for tracking a search visit as it would be in Google Analytics.

Peter

Hi, I have given some thoughts about keyword research and where ranking should sit alongside a focus on good content in my answer to your other question.

If you have a Moz Pro account then you have access to the Rank Tracker tool which I would say is the best way to see which keywords you are ranking for - provided you know of course what keywords your site is optimised for.

However, if you don't then assuming you have installed Google Analytics on your site or some other website analytics tool, I would suggest digging into that data. Unfortunately, Google has recently removed access to what searches are resulting in clicks through to your website. Now all you will see is "(not provided") in your analytics. But if you get a decent amount of searches coming from Bing and Yahoo, that data will give you some idea.

I hope that helps.

Peter

Hi, basically you need to do some keyword research. There are quite a lot of keyword research tools around but if you want to try one for free then use the Google Keyword Planner.

You need to start with a few seed keywords to get you started and then allow the planner to give you some suggestions. For example, if you ran a dog walking business, then you could enter "dog walking" into the Planner and allow the tool to do its work. The tool will give you an idea of how many searches there are for each of its suggestions + an idea of how competitive those keywords are and therefore give you an idea of how difficult it may be to rank highly for them.

But there are lots of things really to consider and I would advise not to get too focused on ranking for specific keywords as with the recent Hummingbird changes Google have introduced, it's never been more important to give attention to your website being broader with quality content that is relevant to what people are searching for than just being focused upon getting pages ranking for keywords.

I hope that helps.

Peter