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Hi Rajat

The analytics code may have given some signals to Google of pages to index but to test it the staging server's pages are in Google use site:mysite.com/staging (NB. no spaces between site and the domain name).

Peter

Hi Rajat

I agree with Federico. Also, if there was no active link on mysite.com to mysite.com/staging then it's unlikely Google would have found it unless the staging site had been submitted to Google via a sitemap for indexing. You should be fine.

Peter

Hi Rand

Many thanks for taking the time to check by on this one. I appreciate you giving your valuable input.

Peter

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 Claudine

When you say that you have just changed your website for a new one, did you also change the domain name to a new one? If so, that is the likely cause as a new domain has no basis to have been awarded any authority.

Also, it is a new domain, what did you do with the old domain and the pages on the old site? Have they been 301 redirected to your new site and pages?

Peter

[Edit]: Just checking the domain you have listed in your profile: exomarketing.biz that shows as being around 4 years old and in Open Site Explorer it has a domain authority of 31 so I assume this is not the site you are referring to?

Thanks for sharing that site MJ - I love the titles that site generates.

Peter

Yes! How about "101 ways to clean your belly button"! That would be unique content

Hi, I suggest trying http://ubersuggest.org.

Seed it with the word 'cleaning' and it will lots of suggestions by initial letter. You can also drill down into the each of them by clicking the phrase alongside + icon to find longer phrases.

Some sample results:

•  cleaning blinds
•  cleaning business
•  cleaning black mold
  •  cleaning black mold in shower
  •  cleaning black mold on wood
  •  cleaning black mold with bleach
  •  cleaning black mold basement
  •  cleaning black mold walls
  •  cleaning black mold in dishwasher
  •  cleaning black mold on ceiling
  •  cleaning black mold on basement walls
  •  cleaning black mold off wood
  •  cleaning black mold furniture
•  cleaning bathtub
•  cleaning brick
•  cleaning baseboards
•  cleaning battery acid
•  cleaning belly button
•  cleaning battery terminals

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi, if your 301 redirects are tested as working then that is good so existing links in Google's index should at least be forwarding tor the correct pages.

Are you asking how much time you should wait for the links in Google's search results to show the new links? If so, it often depends on how active your site is with updates normally. The more frequent you update the site the more often Google will tend to check for changes. In general though, a few days is not unreasonable to wait, maybe a bit longer.

Have you checked your sitemap in Google's Webmaster Tools? Does it show that Google have processed it and indexed pages. There's no real need to re-send a sitemap if the original was correct, so if everything checks out OK then I would wait for a bit more.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Linck

I think it is extremely unlikely that doing this would have killed your rankings in two days.

It's more likely a coincidence with something else that has happened. Think through anything you have done in the last 2-3 weeks that could have had an impact, check your Webmaster Tools Reports and make sure Google are not reporting any issues.

Peter

That's really helpful. Thanks Jeff.

I would ask the site owner to remove the photo and link. If that fails then if the page is not important to you then it will be simpler to remove it than wait for the disavow to take effect.

Peter

Hi Dario

The first thing you should really do it contact the site who created the bad link and ask them to remove it and the photo if you are not happy about that also. If they are unresponsive then sending in a Disavow should really be done after speaking to the offending site's owner.

If though, as you say, the page is not important to you, then if the above doesn't work then yes, just remove the page.

Peter

Then I think you will see a recovery and possible improvement, but check through Paul's suggestions.

Peter

Hi Bryan

It's frustrating I appreciate and I agree the SEO is not good, but I would just stay out of it, I don't think it ever pays to take an approach like you are suggesting and you have to be careful what you say as you need to guard your own reputation and let the other company's reputation stand or fall by the results they produce - or don't as the case may be.

If I was asked my thoughts in private by the company receiving the service then I would give them but qualified as "in my professional opinion", but I would even then be careful about what I said.

If this other SEO company fail then at some point the company which recruited them will get rid of them and quite possibly come back to you.

I hope that helps,
Peter

That's a great detailed answer Paul!

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

Hi

In Open Site Explorer, there are various filters for the Inbound Links report.

By default it shows "all" links from "all" pages to "this page" (i.e. the page at the URL entered).

But you can change the filters to show links that are from "external" or "internal" pages to "pages on this sub-domain" (e.g. www.) or "pages on this root domain".

Yes, different tools will show different results especially for external inbound links due to the nature of how much of the web they crawl. In those cases, I would always look at the highest figure on the basis that the crawler that reported was able to crawl more pages and find more inbound links.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Zachery

29 pages showing up in your Moz crawl report out of 16,400 indexed pages on your site is such a small percentage (0.18% to be accurate) it is not worth worrying about. Also, if GWT is not reporting any issues I think you should be fine.

Don't worry, be happy!  

Peter

I'm don't think there would be zero risk, but the risk would certainly be minimised.

It's authenticity that really matters in all of this. If people are writing topically relevant blog articles that link to pages on the same subject and it's being done authentically, then you are working and operating the right side of the line.

Peter