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I haven't seen any authority say this but when we create articles we Fetch them as Google the same day. Not the home page but that exact URL. If you are producing 20 posts a week and fetching them Google will start to pick that up and start crawling it faster.
Are you using rel=author?
What about other schema. org markup for news articles?
Do you have your blog on a Feed? (Google Reader updates about every hour)
Social Signals? Are people sharing your content?
It sounds like a canonical issue. It can also be because SEOMoz is not an index but simply a crawler. It will report nofollow and noindex pages too and those can lead to duplicate content. But, my guess is that it may be a canonical issue.
Can you post a link to your site and we'll take a look at it.
There was a great article by Hannah Smith in 2011 regarding duplicate content and some of its issues.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/information-architecture-faceted-navigation-duplicate-content-oh-my
Just realized I did search for "debutante dresses" not "deb dress style guide". It would help if I did the correct search, huh?
If this is your first campaign I highly recommend looking through the info here:
http://www.seomoz.org/help/crawl-diagnostics
It's a good overview of what the report you'll get is all about.
Did you get the same results when you did the search?
I've used elance before too and I agree with Cesar to make sure you check their writing sample. You can always try a person out with one article and see how it goes and then determine if they are the "write" fit for your company.
I would also hit up the local university for students in journalism. It's a win win for both of you. They get practice in writing and can show people their work, and you get the articles you need.
Lastly, Carl Dispoto has been asking a few questions on the forum on how to get started in article writing so I would check him out and see if he can help you too.
That is just the initial crawl to help get you started. (generally 250 pages or so). Depending on the day of your campaign setup, that is the day of the week that Roger will run all the reports under your campaign. If you started your campaign on Monday, then Monday will be the day that Roger will do his thing. If you started on Tuesday, etc...
If you don't have more pages crawled after your first full run, then let us know and we'll see what it is. Generally it is a linking situation if Roger can't see all of your pages. But, I would let the reports run before I started to diagnose anything.
Brendan,
It looks like you have some sort of personalization on your search. Try this search string and see if you get the same result:
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=debutante+dress&pws=0
I"m not sure how familiar you are with search strings but I just want to take a moment and go over how you can know in the future if you have personalization in a search or not.
If you look at the string above you will notice "&aq=f&oq=debutante+..." everything after this (and including) are parameters in your search. To avoid this take all of it out after your query so it looks like this
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=debutante+dress
then add the following to make sure that all personalization is off
"&pws=0"
Your search string should look like this now
I'm not a fan of reciprocal links. Having a link profile that is diverse is the key. Here is how I would do it.
You mentioned that their site is a pr3 but I will assume that their home page is the pr3. I would have them link to your home page and then write an article on your blog (assuming you have one) and on that page link back to their "donate" page for "more information on how to donate to the charity".
Google actually has more information on LInk Schemes on Webmaster Tools. Take a look there and it should answer a few of your questions too. Here's the link:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356
Yes, Ahtisham is right. Reviews has a strong correlation with ranking better in Places. I have places pages that have ZERO links to them but are number one. What matters is the reviews, your NAP format.
Do you have a Suite Number and do people come to you or are you a service business? Those matter in how you set up your profile. Each need to be "on-page" optimized differently.
There was a great Mozinar earlier this year on Google Places. Definitely take the time to watch it.
Yes, both can get indexed especially if preferences and 301s weren't in place the last time Google crawled. I've noticed it takes time for Google to use the canonical on a page. I've seen it take 4 or 5 crawls for it to take effect correctly. But don't forget it's just a suggestion and not a directive. I think Google wants to make sure that it's in the best interest of the site before it adheres to it (just a guess)
Don't forget too that Google will only crawl a portion of a site when it crawls (especially for bigger sites) to make sure it doesn't take up to much bandwidth on your server. The home page may not have been crawled since the element has been put in.
Have you set your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools?
(Make sure you have verified both versions of your domain)
Configuration > settings > preferred domain > radial for the www version
Hey Eddy,
I just ran it and didn't get the same error.
Have you refreshed the report?
If you get it again can you post an image of the report?
I agree, Simon pretty much summed it up pretty well. I was thinking the question was asking "Is it still a useful way to get a backlink?" which it is but only if done right and not a one time action. We're obviously on the same page though. Thanks for the clarity in your answer.
I have to disagree with William Lau.
I think that blog commenting has changed a bit. It think it is still relevant. I prefer the term Comment Marketing and Link Earning because that is my goal, to market my site and earn links. Here is how I do it now.
I find blogs that are relevant to my industry and of people who I really want to have link to me (authority figures). I follow their blogs and comment regularly on them. My goal is to build up enough trust and awareness of what I am all about. I have two goals here. 1) if my comments are good then people will want to learn more about me and click on my profile/link to go to my site (not so much for SEO purposes but for site traffice) ( I don't care if I'm number one if no one goes to my site. Traffic is important to me. Even better, relevant traffic.) and 2) I want to be able to eventually earn the right to become a guest blogger or have that person read about me and link to my site because of it's good content.
I think the idea of posting a comment for the sake of posting a comment is pointless. SEO is changing (for the better) and SEO now should stand for Search EXPERIENCE Optimization and not Search Engine Optimization. Comment Marketing is relevant if you use it to help build traffic and not to earn "traditional SEO links".
Google doesn't want to take up to much bandwidth on your server so it will "budget" its time during a crawl. Make sure your page load times are fast, server has a good "up time", constantly add new content so when Google does the next crawl it will see that it is a site that is constantly updated, and make sure your pages aren't too large. You can actually speed up Google's crawl (or slow it down) under configuration>settings> but you don't need to do anything here but make sure that the radial that says "Let Google Decide" is selected under crawl rate.
If you haven't done so already, you can Fetch as Google and submit to index with all linked pages. Technically Google sees your site so you don't have to do this but I always see an increase in the crawl rate when I do it. (Don't do it if you've already done it recently). I also like to submit individual pages to the Fetch as Google when I create new content and I only index that particular page if it's a brand new page that I've added.
When your PR increases, you'll also see an increase to the crawl rate.
The disavow tool is something I would use cautiously! Continue to do the same practices you are currently using (contact the webmasters) and make sure that you are adding quality links going forward. I have a client that had the same issue and we got our rankings back (though not all the way) by contacting webmasters and creating a positive link structure with all of their new links. (they were doing a lot of "blackhat" stuff before they dropped and called us)
If you do decide to use the disavow tool, I would check out this great article by DeJanSEO that they posted back in October (http://dejanseo.com.au/google-link-disavow-complete-guide/)
Let me be clear and say that I'm not saying that every link you want to be removed should go on the disavow document. It should only be used for those excessively spammy links and where you've tried to contact the webmasters and have had no success. You can write notes to Google in your document that tells them the efforts you have made to remove the links. They do actually take that into consideration and if you provide more positive links going forward, that should do the trick.
I'm a little confused to your questions. Can you explain a little more.
Internal Link structure does have correlation with rankings. I really should say that "smart internal linking" has correlation to rankings. Also, external links (obviously) It may be a situation where some pages are linked to more than others. Have you used any tools (opensiteexplorer.org or WebMasterTools) to see your site's links?
If you can, post a link to your site so we can see it and explain a little more about your questions.
Only bad if those 404 pages are resulting from pages in your own site. ( For example, the page that has the 404 is being linked to by another page on yoru site) Not from external sites. That being said, fix them. It's easy. If the page actually doesn't exist then remove them from your sitemap and them remove url like I mentioned before. If the page exists (like example.com/page but the 404 is for example.com/page.html) you can 301 pages or fix your site extensions. I know Joomla has a SEF URL setting.