Questions
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Do industry partner links violate Google's policies?
Hi Daniel, Whether these links are all okay or should be removed depends on what else the sites link to, and what else they get up to besides linking to you - if they have been picked off for spam tactics (either linking out, inbound links, on-page spam, etc.) then you'd want to avoid having them link to you, even if they are otherwise genuine industry partners. Sadly some legitimate businesses also run less-than-clean websites from time to time. I would ask the agency who provided your link report for an explanation as to why they placed some of these industry partners in a "remove" category - they may have some very good reasons, or they may have mistaken the intent of the links. I would say that even if they are mistaken, both you and the agency need to ask yourselves if there's a chance Google might also mistake these genuine links as manipulative or unnatural. Unfortunately that can happen as well, but if you are filing for reconsideration you can always explain that x, y and z links have arisen due to a mutual respect / partnership that does not carry with it a commercial benefit to either company in direct relation to the link. Google has been extremely authoritarian over the last few months about links, and there's a possibility that they'd say a partnership link wasn't "natural" because it had commercial intent. Sometimes it's damn hard to figure out exactly what they mean by "natural". It's incredibly frustrating. However, backing up again to where you're at right now, I would say that you need an explanation and thorough analysis of why genuine links have been flagged. You never know, the agency might have found something that's actually going to save your next reconsideration request.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JaneCopland0 -
Why does the csv export from OSE only include 25 of the 90+ links?
Thanks Ryan, but I'd rather not. It's some research on an old link deal we had that we're rolling back. I'm not exactly proud of it But I can tell you I started by running OSE on Domain A. Then filtered for "External Only" and "All Links to this Root Domain" and "Group links by Domain". Then scrolled down to find the domain I was looking for backlinks from, clicked the plus sign next to their name, which revealed 3 of the top links back and a link to "view all the links from this domain". Clicking on that takes you to the report I want to export.
Moz Tools | | DanielH0 -
Should we have customers like our URL or our Facebook brand page?
Thanks for the feedback Ryan. It's true things could've changed. I was just curious if anyone had done any tests one way or the other. I think I'll go with continuing to build up our Facebook brand page community, although building likes on the URL is tempting and seems like something Google will count in the future if they don't now... Anyone else have any input or experience with rankings improving because of likes on a URL or FB brand page?
Branding / Brand Awareness | | DanielH0