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If URL A redirects to URL B which redirects to URL C which redirects to URL D which redirects to URL E finally redirects to URL F, then Google isn't too happy about that. Just have URL A, B, C, D and E all redirect to URL F directly.

Hi Mozzers-

One of the projects I am working on is not cutting it with what I was able to develop myself with WordPress and various plugins. Not generating links, not very marketable, just not what it needs to be in order to push a strong SEO campaign.

What I need to do is get custom programming and development of a mobile app. I've gotten quotes from various agencies and all are $35K or above. It's not that complicated or complex and the design elements are already there, so I'm not considering spending nearly that much for this.

Has anyone outsourced programming or development overseas and had a good experience? I've had several bad experiences outsourcing marketing overseas, so I have a bad taste in my mouth. But I know when it comes to design and development there can be some very cost effective options. Anyone ever come across a cost effective option some place that wasn't a total disappointment and waste of money?

Any help and direction is greatly appreciated. Sorting through Google's search results proved to be tedious, time consuming and a dead end.

Thanks!

I would just start over. Make a new GA account, install the new tracking code, get added on GWT with this account, then use it moving forward. Then you don't have to remove or delete anyone from the old account. It's just sitting there for historical data purposes. So if you need to go back in time and check anything, sign in to that account. For current stuff, use your new account. Inconvenient, yes, but really the only work around I can think of that doesn't require jumping through Google's hoops to add or remove admins.

Every time I have seen this happen it is due to duplicate content across various URL's or very thin content. Google doesn't tend to want to keep an index of the same page many times or many pages with little to nothing on them. If you didn't have duplicate or thin content problems and have cleaned up your error producing URL's then I'm not sure what to tell you. Someone will probably have to get into your GWT account to diagnose from there.

A few observations from the many keywords and sites I monitor:

1. A lot of what I track is in reviews of various products. I've seen a big jump for Consumer Reports. In many instances they now have two listings and they are higher than where their one previously was. Anyone else seeing this?

2. I'm seeing a lot of new sites I haven't seen before, especially after the first page. In the top 20 of one of my main keywords there are 4 new domains that have never been there before...nor should they be. Horrible sites. One of them is [extremelylongkeyword2013] (dot) blogspot.com. It's pretty nuts to see that.

3. In every search, whether searching for the product or reviews of the product, sears, amazon and walmart are almost always the top three in some order. I'm even seeing Wikipedia higher than ever. This is a shuffle from what used to be.

4. I'm seeing a lot more about.com results than I did before.

5. I have noticed News results on almost every search, many unwarranted. Often the news results are appearing after the top 10.

6. No major shakeups on any of my own sites. Little bit of shuffling, some up, some down, but nothing major. Biggest winners I am seeing are consumer reports, sears, amazon and walmart.

Random I know. I started a fun pet project at www.me-not-spammer.info. Total spam. Totally says it's not spam. Satire and all, something only SEO people will get really.

Anyway I want to make a sidebar of other "not spammers" and need to find a bunch of spammy websites. Problem is they don't rank in search engines obviously so I know of only the ones who leave comments on some of my wordpress sites.

Anyone have a list of a bunch of them so I can link to them in my blogroll?

My best guess has to do with link velocity and age. Imagine you are a well established site, been around 10 years. You have 10,000 links. That link velocity would average 1,000 links per year.

Imagine you have a site that is 10 days old. It has 1,000 links. That average is 100 links per day. That probably sets off a trigger like trending topics in Twitter. You get enough juice fast enough and suddenly Google thinks you are a big deal. That's the only explanation i can come up with as to how something new can pass up something established. With a brief history it can easily be influenced by mass link buying. Just my guess though.

You don't have to explain yourself to Google when using the disavow tool. Simply list the domain and disavow all links from that domain. Doesn't matter why they are there. I would disavow as soon as possible. That's why the tool is there, to ignore the links you can't get removed.

Freshness bonus is all. Looks like it was indexed in December. I've seen this A LOT since Penguin first came around. Google takes about 60 days to respond to new spam. The funny thing is in my industry I have seen this a lot and the spam just goes away on its own. Doesn't happen with an algo update or anything. It's as if Google just ranks any new site that gets an influx of links and then after two months figures out if it is spam or not.

You can literally rank anything new domain for any keyword you want to. Just buy as many links as you possibly can to your new domain and you will shoot up. But beware, your glory will be short lived. Google will remove you before too long. But if you follow that same pattern again and again (which I personally witness people doing) you can keep popping up in the top ten regularly.

Someone did this in my niche recently by copying everyone. Huge blog with tons of pages, each page a ripoff from a site in our niche. My home page was even ripped off. Filed a spam report when I found them. Little less than two months later they were gone, nowhere to be found. Registered in China, bunch of links all at once, you know, the hallmark of spam. Not sure why Google takes so long to respond, but they always do. Give this one some time. Just a new site with lots of links. Google will take care of them sometime in February would be my guess.

You cannot simultaneously like your home page and Facebook page with one click on a like button. I think it depends on the type of website. On blog type sites or news they always have social buttons like that which are URL specific to the story you are reading. But on service websites of people that make tools or websites or something, they tend to have a Facebook widget that shows how many people like them on Facebook with a like button to do that.

I haven't seen any evidence that several likes of a URL help it rank any better. While it is certainly a sign of popularity, I haven't seen any conclusive study on it to show it will boost rankings. However number of likes on your Facebook page can impact how you show up in Facebook search. Might not matter much to you, but something to consider.

You want to disavow the link with Google if it is hurting you: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1

Be sure to look up tutorials on how to submit links to disavow so that you do it right. And be darn sure you want the link disavowed. But that way you can take care of any nasty links hanging around out there regardless of the webmaster's cooperation.

Kind of a loaded question but let me see if I understand. You have a call to action button and you want to use it in multiple places on your website but don't want a duplicate content penalty. You wonder if making the button in text might be more effective. Is that correct?

First of all, I think there is a lot of research out there that your image call to action will be more effective than any styled text could be. You have a lot of options with fonts, colors, shading, etc. in images, not so when styling text. I would definitely use a button in that regard. Also, you want it to stand out. That isn't always just bright colors, it's contrasting colors. SEOMoz for example has a light blue background. Right now there is a pink "call to action" of sorts (more of a look at me I'm important note) at the top for the expiring private messages. Stands out, doesn't it? Because a warm color (pink) contrasts with the cool color palette established by the blue background.

You don't have to worry about a duplicate content penalty on images that I'm aware of. What I would do is only use it once per page in the best place you can put it and make sure every time you use it on all your pages you maintain the same alt text. I've seen that it's possible Google isn't a fan of repeating an image with different alt text or calling lots of different images but using the same alt text.

If someone is linking to a URL on your domain that doesn't exist, go first see if you can find the link. See where it is on their site and what the anchor text is and what context it appears in. Then determine the page they either meant to link to or something close topically. I would then redirect the bad URL they are linking to over to a URL that works so that I can maintain the link juice.

If the links are coming from an undesirable place then you can always block the bad URL they point to in your robots.txt file and disavow the link with Google's disavow tool.

Not sure about the automatic updating part but if you access your rankings in your SEOmoz campaign you can export to PDF or CSV. You can export the whole rankings history to CSV if you want. It's at least a start.

Nearly all of my domains in webmaster tools show thousands of links to me from atomysolutions.com. Problem is only a couple links show up to them in OSE so can't learn much there. I try to access their site but every page I do I get a 403 forbidden error. All I can gather is they are some kind of health and beauty thing.

I did a site search in Google and looked at the cached result of the first page but it took me to sexyshoes.co.uk or something. I honestly cannot figure out. OSE shows them as one of my linking domains, but I can't see any of the pages linking to me.

I need to know if this is a spammy site that I need to disavow. I have no idea how or why they link to me. Any insight from any Mozzers is GREATLY appreciated!

Like I said in the last paragraph, if this is temporary, 302 redirect the original destination URL to the new destination URL as well as the redirecting URL to the new destination. If these changes are permanent, make them 301 instead of 302 redirects.

I used to try and to the whole author tag thing in the head section and it never worked. The only thing I have gotten to work is the ?rel=author at the end of a G+ profile link. Here's an idea. Why not include the author's name at the top of the news article and link it to their profile page.

Then at the end of the article have a by line about the author and link their name there to the G+ profile? Or vice versa?

There is a much easier way to do this now. Simply link the authors name to https://plus.google.com/1000000000000000000?rel=author and Google picks it up. Then they add your domain to their Contributor section of their G+ profile.

If you want their name to link to their profile page on your domain that is fine. Just use their name twice, one with a link to profile page, one with a G+ link. Or you can link their name to G+ and add a link in the bio like "click here to read more articles by john doe" or something like that.

Hey Mozzers, I have a lot of blogs that deal with health/exercise/fitness and that niche and need to get content for them. I'm not looking for mass content that is crap. I'm looking for well thought out stuff.

Any bloggers in that industry want to be guest authors and put up some posts on any of my sites? Trying to get good content and this seems like a good way. You can include a link back to you obviously.

Please let me know if you are interested, I'm happy to get in touch and post your content on my sites. Thanks!

Let me make sure I understand you. You have a vanity URL like bit.ly or something. It redirects to your website which is bitly.com or something like that. This redirect is a 301 permanent redirect.

Are you asking if bitly.com changed what you should do with the redirect? That's how I understood the question. So say bitly.com now goes to bitly.com/new or something along those lines.

If this is the case, all you want to do is change your 301 redirect of bit.ly to the new destination URL and keep it a 301. That is, unless bitly.com/new is only a temporary URL. If it will be reverting back to bitly.com then don't do that.

Instead, when you redirect bitly.com to bitly.com/new use a 302 redirect, keeping the 301 from bit.ly to bitly.com in tact. Hopefully that answers your question. Let me know if your scenario is different.