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Hi again Igor!

Those pages do not exist anymore right?

If you load them, they just show a 404? That's how I understand this since you moved to using a different plugin.

If your site's 404 page is optimized then, in my case, I would just mark them all as fixed and wouldn't bother with them.

I'll also make sure no other page is linking to those dead links.

As an alternative, I would export them, then do a redirect to the homepage. It'll bog you down if it's a lot so it's my last choice.

Hope that helps

Locally, they work a lot better. Globally, they aren't like what they used to (from my experience and tests)

For your question, I would actually "mix it up" - sitewide and single page. So there's variation.

Remember that you shouldn't just rely on it though. Get some  other inbound links, too

Part 1:

I would definitely get that fixed asap. I would also check analytics (add in a separate https if you haven't) make sure analytics is actually tracking each page, http or https

Are you tracking rankings though? Have you seen any dips? Have you seen any trends declining over the months/years? That might also be affecting your traffic so it might be a combination.

Part 2:

Definitely. You have to check your site and optimize it for mobile. IF that is really a valuable part of your strategy, then you have to look into that ASAP. They are really big in usability right now and they even show a rating in the their pagespeed/insights tool for mobile. Be sure to fix the issues.

Since it's an old site with that much traffic, you might want to start doing a content audit as well.

Good luck!

Pretty sure google knows of domains like that already.

If your link profile is already solid, then that's irrelevant. You should spend your time on other more important things.

If you just want to do it now, then disavow it. It won't really change anything since you have a solid link profile already.

Yup, what he said.

Just use the universal code.

Its hard to actually capitalize on the images nowadays. It's still very niche dependent so that's something I can't answer directly.

As for getting the page to load instead of the attachment, as you are on wordpress, try out Yoast SEO and check out the permalinks area to see what you are looking for.

Good luck!

It's basically the same thing, just with a different process.

But just to answer, for SEO = 301's are always better.

I would give them what they want, and inform them of the possible outcomes

More often than not (with proper redirects in place) the new page will rank on the same spot after a while.

It's a win win for them. They get what they want, they have 1 domain to worry about plus they have built a lot of links to the separate domains.

It's like the traditional ecommerce strategy: build separate product specific sites -> after building enough traffic -> 301 to category page of main domain. We all know it's harder to get natural links to category/product pages so that's what I would do.

gazzerman1's suggestion would be my next play if that doesn't get approved.

Depends on the price. If it's affordable enough to acquire the link, then yes, I'll go for it. It's just 1 link and it's a strong one for the mean time. You can then focus on other cleaner links after that.

I'm less scared when it comes to local tlds as well. They tend to get passed on.

My answer: I'll get the link.

Hi Ruben,

Grab the link.

Industry Link - Check

Potential to Send Traffic in the Future - Check

Potential to get your link/post there to rank so you have an extra spot in the rankings? - Check

That's enough for me.

Looking at PA/DA/PR/MR etc aren't really that important in this case, assuming your site's niche is in the boring (high money but typically boring) side. I'd go get a link and build a relationship which will work further in your favor in the future.

I just switched a blog to https. I've gotten double my impressions for a blog.

My company site, just switched to https 2 weeks ago. I've gotten triple the clicks so my overall rankings went up.

I can't really fully "control" the test for my company's blog though as we have to post content regularly. In the case of the https switch, we only posted 2 new pieces of content instead of the 4 we usually do.

We didn't do any link building. Everything was just left as is.

Takeaway, purchase it. It's cheap, you have nothing to lose really. Just be sure you implement things correctly.

Hi!

There are some terms that you just won't be able to rank for with a single page. It might be because of the competition or google might see the keyword as not as relevant so you'll be limited. I would look at it at a case by case thing. It doesnt mean you have to create a new page each time.

It's just an option and you can do tests for it if you want. If it ranks better (and faster) then you have a winner. If it's just an extra maintenance cost and doesnt give results, you might want to just scrap it altogether and redirect the url to the old, improved page that was already performing.

Hope you are having a great week!

My take, I'll just go ahead and start doing other things to improve it's current rankings. I could assign someone to go over links if another team member is available.

If I see improvements, within the next month, then that's a good sign already that you should continue and not worry about the dead links.

It takes google a long time to actually forget about those links pointing to your site. So if they are dead AND then you didnt notice any increases or drops in analytics, then they are pretty much ineffective so they shouldnt be a major obstacle. I think someone coined a term for it, ghost links or something. LOL.

Hi Igor,

Seeing ezinearticles in there is definitely a red flag that tells you that it probably has web directories, article networks, blog networks, pliggs, guestbooks and other links from that time.

Maybe you can dig up some old analytics data, check out when the traffic dropped.

If you did not see any heavy anchor text usage, then the site must've gotten away with a sitewide penalty, I would assume it's just a few (or many, but not all) of the keywords that got hit so either way, youll need to clean up -> disavow the links if they are indeed like that. So that's probably a reason for it's low organic rankings.

That, and since it's old, it might have been affected by panda too.

What's the exact day of the drop? Normally, I wouldn't really be concerned with a drop in webmaster tool impressions especially after a bump up, but since you mentioned you lost traffic on Bing, yahoo and social, it does raise some flags.

IF that happened around the final 3 days of the month, then you were affected by the update I mentioned which nobody seems to be talking about....

Anyway, did you check crawl errors on GWT? Did you crawl the site separately ? Did you see any problems with the index/noindex/etc?

As for injected codes, the easy way is to load pages (that you lost traffic on) in google. Check the saved cache. If you got some injected codes, they'll show up there.

There's really not much we can do but assume things. I do hope you could find the reason for the problem.

It usually take a long time for the disavow to kick in. Takes me up till the next major update usually.

I would not recommend 301'ing the old domain until I see signs of improvements (usually, a big bump in webmaster tools "impressions" change, since the penalty drops you to almost nothing, is good enough of a sign for me to take the next step)

I'll assume that you have a good reason for the separate local website so yes, I would actually create new pages to rank for specific keywords. Some of those pages can rank for a lot of local/related keywords, too so it's a win win situation

Hi Igor,

Do they still show up in Webmaster tools? Do you have a penalty because of those links that used to link to the site? If not then I wouldn't really worry about it and just prioritize other things and make that a side task.

Are the majority of them on bad looking domains? If you checked the link URL on archive.org, were they spammy links? Then go ahead and include them in the disavow list.

Did you mean that you want to get your new links to get indexed? Send good links (not just bookmarks)  to them, that'll work.

I can't really recommend the old school (when they send a new link 200 bookmarks) way of getting links indexed.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-social-stream/screenshots/

https://wordpress.org/plugins/rebelmouse-widget/

http://www.designchemical.com/blog/index.php/premium-jquery-plugins/jquery-social-stream-plugin/

Kind of similar -  https://wordpress.org/plugins/twine-social/screenshots/ but takes up some space

The one on code canyon is pretty good though.