Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Tynan,

This is a sticky issue a lot of webmasters face these days. Although I can't tell you exactly what links to disavow, I can point you in the right direction.

1. What links to look at? First of all, John Mueller of Google recommends starting with the links listed in Google Webmaster Tools, as these are the links most likely to effect your rankings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX5i4iuru7k&feature=youtu.be&t=54m28s

2. Third Party Tools: A couple of companies have developed tools to help identify bad links.

• SEOGadget Link Analyser - http://tools.seogadget.co.uk/ (has a great API - highly recommend this site)
• Link Detox - http://www.linkdetox.com/ (haven't used it, but I've heard decent things)

3. Manual Review - In the end, you're own eye is the best tool you have. You want to look for:

1. links with keyword-rich, optimized anchor text
2. Comment Signature and Forum Signature links (these are different from the more legitimate forum links)
3. Sitewide links, such as in the sidebar or footer
4. Obviously paid, or suspicious looking links on low-quality sites

Our friend Paddy Moogan wrote a great guide on how to do this step by step. You should check it out.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you for certain if you should disavow those forum links. That said, in my experience, it's better to disavow entire sites using the domain: function, then it is to try to disavow individual URLs. Google is much more forgiving if you over-disavow then the reverse, but in the end you must use your best human judgement.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

Hi Jason,

I've been involved with a number of migrations (including this site, moz.com) and in my own experience I've seen anywhere from zero traffic change to a loss in the range of 8-9%.

Google says that in theory, you shouldn't lose any traffic, and several large publishers I've spoken with can attest to this.

In practice, HTTPS migrations can be complex, and with more moving parts the potential to do things less than perfectly can escalate. If you mess up your 301s or create confusing redirects, the potential for reduced traffic is real. My general advice is don't let the migration to HTTPS scare you, but proceed with caution. This post may help: https://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl

Hi Samuel,

Interesting question. Let me add a little bit to lbi-tr's answer.

A lot of times folks will buy old expired domains with high PageRank and try to use them for something else. If the links to these domains are on a part of the Internet that aren't very active, or hidden under layers of navigation, it's not uncommon to find little link data for them in Open Site Explorer.

In this case here's what we can find out (sorry if this repeats anything)

1. The site was for sale in 2011, based on a capture from the Wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20110202101214/http://osozo.com/

2. Although OSE doesn't have any link data, Ahrefs shows some incoming domains, Most importantly is directory.supremohosting.com/, which 301 redirects to the site in question. This is likely where the PR 4 is coming from, and there is link data for this domain in OSE: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fdirectory.supremohosting.com%2F

Unfortunately, the PR4 means almost nothing in this case. It's doubtful that the incoming link juice will help this site rank for anything at all. When a site changes hands and goes through major changes in content, search engines usually make the site "re-earn" it's rankings, despite what the toolbar PR says.

In general when you guest post, you want to ask:

• Is it relevant to your audience?
• Can you envision these articles in a newspaper or magazine?
• Would you trust this site with your credit card?

Check out this post, paying close attention to "Things to avoid" http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-advanced-guest-blogging

And Apply the Golden Rule to Guest Posting

Seems like you're starting to think this out in creative ways, so let me add a couple of thoughts:

1. I wouldn't be too worried about linking out to these local bakeries. Reciprocal links are a natural part of the web. When you get in trouble is when you have dedicated "links" pages that exist solely to harvest link juice, or a significant % of your backlink profile comes from reciprocal links.

That said, you're still probably wise not to make this the backbone of your link building strategy.

2. The offline guide seems reasonable to me, but I have a cognitive disconnect between the guide and the motivations for the bakeries to link to you. If you actually require folks to link to you to be in the guide, then this could be considered "buying" links and could lead to a penalty. (although in reality, this is rare)

3. Better yet, I'd really rather see you create online assets that live on your website, that provide motivation for folks to link to you. These might include:

• Reviews
• Top "blank" lists / Ego Bait
• Business profiles
• Awards
• Content Marketing  (like "5 Secrets Your SuperMarket Bakery Doesn't Want You To Know" - bad example, but you get the idea.
• A scholarship for local baking students
• A certification program
• A blog
• Charity Fundraising
• Interviews
• Contests / Giveaways
• Discounts

The trick, in my mind,  is to give away freely more than you ever expect to get back in return. Never demand a link, but create resources that are actually useful to both the bakeries and their customers, so that they have a natural inclination to link to you.

More link building ideas from Jon Cooper: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

Here's the thing: while internal links might help your PA, PA itself is a measurement of all incoming link metrics to the page, both external and internal.

Also, while internal links can help your PA score, we weight external links more, because external links tend to play a larger influence in Google's algorithm.

After the first few internal links, additional links probably won't move the needle much for you. Too many and it's easy to over-optimize. The best internal links are natural, and often located in the body of the text with anchor text that isn't forced, like in the paragraph above.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

Hi there,

I'm sorry to hear your rankings took a hit. That's a major drag. Major ranking changes can be caused by 100s of different things, so it's important to look at as many elements as you can, and it may take a long time to do a thorough investigation. Even then, it's not unusual for some webmasters to never know why their rankings changed.

The first 3 questions you want to investigate:

• Have you been hit by a penalty?
• Have you been hit by an algorithmic update? (as Pixel by Pixel pointed out)
• Any major crawling issues? You can check Moz or Google Webmaster Tools

If the answer turns up negative, you might consider a full site audit. Keep in mind, you may not have done anything "wrong." Algorithms change, and you might simply need to change your tactics to keep pace.

Hi Andrew,

First of all, lots of good answers here, but let me add my own 2 cents.

Google recently cracked down on link networks. Creating a series of multiple sites and linking them individually comes pretty close to a link network, even if you don't intend it to be one. The risk of getting penalized or deindexed completely is too high to consider this as an option.

So really your 2 best options are to create subdomains, or subdirectories - this means each team would be a different folder on the main site, so MLB.com/team.

If I had my druthers, I'd go the directory route, unless there are reasons that you thought this will kill conversions or ruin the user experience. The benefit is that each subfolder would benefit from the link metrics of the root domain, and the site would be much easier to maintain. My feeling is this would give you the greatest traffic/ratings advantages over the alternatives.

If you choose to go the subdomain route, I think you'll be fine. Last summer, Google started reporting subdomain links as "internal" in Webmaster Tools, which is an indication of how they now view subdomains, which agrees to an extent with what Alan has mentioned here.

Here's an older article from Rand on the subject, but much of it is still relevant today: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

To my knowledge, the grader hasn't been changed.

An easy way to help diagnose the problem might be to look at the areas the grader says the page needs improvement, and double check against your site to ensure the grader's accuracy.

If you do this, please share with us what you find! Thanks.

Hi Irving...

Really interested in your answer here, because I haven't heard this before. My understanding has always been that it doesn't make much of a difference, mostly based on comments Matt Cutts made in this 2010 Webmaster Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=971qGsTPs8M

That said, I may be out of date on the subject. I'm sure there might be correlation data out there I'm not aware of. Any thoughts you can share on the subject would be greatly appreciated!

Both Ryan and Marie provided good answers, but let me elaborate further.

This is not a php thing. You can verify this yourself by visiting these pages.

Does the page content change when you visit /?lang=en&limit=5&limitstart=20 and switch to /?lang=en&limit=5&limitstart=20? If these look like the same page, then you have a duplicate content/title issue on your hands.

Google's take on the matter is simple...

"Provide one version of a URL to reach a document

To prevent users from linking to one version of a URL and others linking to a different version (this could split the reputation of that content between the URLs), focus on using and referring to one URL in the structure and internal linking of your pages. If you do find that people are accessing the same content through multiple URLs, setting up a 301 redirect from non-preferred URLs to the dominant URL is a good solution for this. You may also use canonical URL or use the rel="canonical" link element if you cannot redirect"

You have several options to deal with this, depending on the content_._

• Use the canonical tag to point the different versions of the page towards a single, definitive URL. Best to use this option only if the pages are actually duplicate.
• If the pages are not duplicate in content, but duplicate in title, then make sure your CMS writes unique title tags for every unique page of content, as Marie describes.
• If these extra pages are producing lists of only slightly varying entries, like a list of blog archives, you may consider adding a Meta Robots tag to NOINDEX, FOLLOW those superfluous pages.
• If dealing with pagination, here's an excellent article from Adam Audette to help.

This is a tricky area, and you must be careful when dealing with duplicate content, because it's easy to make a mistake and have Google de-index your content. That said, by correcting these errors, you just might see an improvement in your indexation and traffic stats.

That's would be an awesome feature. Unfortunately, the only way to get a report like that is if you don't have any competitors chosen in your campaign set up. If you do have competitors in your campaign, there's no way to remove their link data from this report.

If you're interested, you can submit a PRO feature request. Other members vote them up and down and this is how the product team decides what to build.

Regardless, thanks for the heads up and letting us know this is a functionality you'd like to see.

Best of luck with your SEO!

Google has trended towards devaluing links between domains with "Administrative Relationships." It's a good bet that they can figure out you own both domains.

That said, it's only a devaluation. The links still count - just not as much. Think of it more like internal anchor text from your own site. Like Nakul said, since it's only one domain, you're not going to suffer a "link-wheel" scheme penalty or anything similar. It's natural and normal for sister sites to link to one another - even groups of sister sites. But the links likely won't help as much as external links form outside sites.

Howdy,

Different pages will rank differently for different things. Links are a big part of it, but Google uses over 200 different signals in varying degrees, so it's often hard to pinpoint the exact cause of why one page ranks higher than the other.

In this case, I'd choose to run a "full report" in the Keyword Difficulty Tool. As a PRO member you have a certain amount of credits to run a number of reports. Each report takes a few hours, and the system will email you when it is ready.

The "Full Report" goes way beyond links and also looks at on-page elments, social metrics and anchor text for the top 10 results of the SERP. When setting up the report, you can also add your own URL if it is not already on of the top 10.

Taking a broad look at many more signals aggregated in this way can often give you a better idea about why your competitor is ranking, and often leads to ideas about what you can do to catch up or improve.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO!

Hi Virginia!

My personal opinion and experience are that although keywords in the URL may have a minor place in Google's ranking algorithms (sometimes to a negative effect in the case of over-optimization) both keywords and URL structure have a far greater impact on user experience and click-through rate.

A couple of studies (here's one) have shown slightly negative correlations between higher rankings and both the length of the url and number of hyphens. In other words, _shorter URLs with less hyphens tend to perform slightly better in search results. _

On the other hand, URLs with keywords in them tend to get higher click through rates.

There's also a couple of schools of thoughts about subdirectories vs. "flat" architecture. Some would argue that subdirectories give your content semantic structure, (i.e. everything in the utc folder could be related to one another) while others argue that a "flat" architecture with fewer folders can lead to better crawling (although I've never seen any sold evidence of this.

Regardless, I don't believe there's one right answer.... it's best to experiment and use your best judgement as to what will lead to the best user experience.

Unfortunately, this might possibly an attempt by a spammer at what is called a 302 hijacking. Google says 302 hijackings haven't worked in years, but many webmasters disagree wholeheartedly.

(on the other hand, it might not be this at all)

Basically, a spammer points a temporary redirect (check the redirection through a tool like URI Valet to see if it's a 302). Often if the site has a slightly higher authority, it can fool the search engines into hijacking your traffic. A deeper explanation here.

Another possibility is that your site has been hacked. Check for spyware, check Webmaster Tools and check to make sure that your domain is not the one being redirected. In Webmaster Tools make sure there hasn't been a change of address, and do a fetch as Googlebot to make sure your pages show up correctly.

Finally, you can fight back.

1. Contact the offenders hosting company and let them know
2. (a scary letter from a lawyer might help
3. File a spam report with Google
4. Post the issue on Webmaster Central

If it is an actual 302 hijacking, Google should take care of it fairly quickly.

Often, these aren't 302 hijackings at all, but are caused by internal site issues. Do a thorough site audit first before taking further steps.

The quickest way to do this is using the "Top Pages" report in Open Site Explorer.

Simply enter the root domain of the site you want to research, hit "search" then navigate to the Top Pages tab. This will show you the number of lining root domains to each internal page.

Here's a screenshot:
https://skitch.com/cyrusshepard/8baj7/open-site-explorer

+1 For Doug's answer. You can download the standard Inbound Link report from OSE. Make sure to filter for "external" links to "all links on the root domain" (or subdomain)

Open your report in a spreadsheet, The "Target URL" column will show all the URLs on the domain with an external link pointing to them. Here's another screenshot:
https://skitch.com/cyrusshepard/8bakm/microsoft-excel

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

It's likely that if you are getting a "0" that indicates no data available.

Mozscape will only report the status code for pages it has actually crawled in the last index. If it hasn't crawled the page recently, it doesn't report the status code. (it still has link metrics for that URL because it can see and calculate all the incoming links to that page without crawling it)

If these are backlinks to a particular site, you should be able to get the same data using Open Site Explorer, and running a custom report to export the large amount of data.

Another option, if you actually want to crawl all of those links and return a status code is Screaming Frog. 

The Frog has both a paid and free version, but it's one of the most useful paid tools I have ever used.Hope this helps! Cheers.

I am not opposed to high-quality, niche specific directories. Specifically, I would look for industry-specific directories (not broad directories with industry specific categories) that offer good, human written descriptions, editorial reviews and do not allow the submitter to dictate the anchor text.

Usually, directories run by industry organizations, non-profits, government bodies, universities, community services, etc generally make fine directories - especially if inclusion means good referral traffic as well.

Everything else, including general directories, heavily templated thin content sites with optimized anchor text I would avoid.

Hi Paul,

Linkscape is updated every few weeks, and with each new index old links are cleaned out. Occassionally you can find links that no longer exist, but Linkscape will look for these links during it's next crawl of the web, and only include them if found. So any non-existent links tend to disappear in a few weeks.

This is actually a very interesting problem for web crawlers, because 50% of the entire web disappears every year, and 80% disappears ever two years! Keeping up with this churn is a momentous task. In fact, over half the time it takes to publish a new Linkscape index is spent on processing time to ensure it's accuracy.

As Ari mentioned you can try Majestic SEO. You can also find some (highly inconsistent) backlink information in Webmaster Tools. No two link reports from different sources will ever be the same so you will definitely see different results. That said, if I had to choose one source for backlink information I prefer the numerous advantages offered by OSE.

Occasionally OSE reports links that are "hidden" or otherwise hard to find. In extreme cases it's best to check the source code of the website to ensure the links are actually missing.

Also, feel free to report any possible OSE errors to the SEOmoz help team (help@seomoz.org) Any information can help make the tool better.

Best of Luck with your SEO!