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If another site is linking to you, and you don't want that link to "harm" your site, a rel="nofollow" tag within the href is enough.
That said, if you want a link to "help" your site, a rel="nofollow" tag is not recommended. I don't know if your owned sites are harming or helping you. There are much more suspicious links I'd take care of first.
Good luck.
I found those links with Open Site Explorer.
The example you gave of the forum page doesn't see overly suspicious to me. I'd take that on a case-by-case basis. Generally you should start with the most obviously suspicious links first, like those I provided in examples above. If getting rid of those don't do the trick you can move down the list to borderline cases like the one you provided.
1. I don't recommend nofollowing links on your own website. If you don't trust the place you're linking to, maybe then. But usually we don't link to pages we don't trust. I doubt it would help your situation.
2. Use the Moz toolset, including Open Site Explorer. If you can find their contact information request that the link be removed. Keep records of these emails or phone calls so you can submit it with your disavow file, which you should submit for any links that do not get removed after reaching out to the webmaster, or any links for which you could not find webmaster contact details (keep track of these too so Google knows you tried).
I was writing about URLs. I think it's fine to have your brand name in most or all title tags, though I'm not sure I'd apply that to an exact-match domain like yours without adding the .com too (as in " - IceSurfing.com" not "- Ice Surfing".
If you had one page about ice surfing I could understand putting it in the URL. But if you expand this strategy out to all pages on a domain about ice surfing then it is going to get pretty redundant. I'd go with #1.
It could be due to many reasons. One would need to know the domain in order to do further analysis on the issue.
Hello Fabrizo Ferrari,
Your name is fantastico!
I would listen to Patrick and do a backlink audit. Here are a few I found that would in-and-of-themselves, help explain an anchor-text specific ranking drop to a specific page:
http://www.news-1.com/musicnews.php
This page has a text link ad with that anchor text.
http://www.classicalforums.com/articles/Fourteenth_Century_Composer.html
This forum has a text link ad with that anchor text.
This "looks like" a purchased link:
http://www-education.org/music-schools.html
This "looks like" a purchased link too, as it seems very out of place:
http://www.scifipulse.net/how-long-can-doctor-survive/
I'm sure there are more to consider disavowing. Good luck to you.
iCourse,
It used to be that Google told their Quality Raters to look for "Supplementary Content". This has recently been removed from their Handbook for Quality Raters, and you can learn more about it here: http://www.thesempost.com/updated-google-quality-rater-guidelines-eat/ .
That said, they probably removed it because people were showing unrelated supplementary content, or because QRs were marking pages with lots of supplementary content and very little unique body content as "High Quality", which they are not.
In your case, all of the ideas you presented sounded like useful added information for someone on a local vacation or real estate page.
Hello Chris,
You pretty much hit the nail on the head, except that the Federal Trade Commision (FTC) in the United States says it's not enough to just make the disclosure on a single page. It also needs to appear on the blog / article itself. I've included some links below that you may want to check out.
http://diannej.com/2012/new-ftc-rules-on-writing-reviews-affiliations-and-sponsored-posts/
I think the way you have it is fine. If you must change it, I'd go with /product/the-product/345897345123/ . However, again I think this way is good: /product/the-product345897345123/ .
That is a lot of sub-categories for that amount of product. You might consider adding a Noindex,Follow tag on some of them if you're not writing unique static copy for each of those pages.
Many of the big affiliate and price comparison websites route links through an internal folder first. This allows them to record the conversion, set a cookie, etc... It also makes all of those outbound links look like internal links. Usually it looks somethingl ike this:
Web Page hyperlink for "Visit OnlineStore.com" is actually a link to YourDomain.com/partners?merchant=OnlineStore. From there it will redirect (what kind doesn't really matter here) to OnlineStore.com along with any affiliate code you have added to the URL for their tracking purposes, if necessary. Typically /partners is blocked in the Robots.txt file so the search engine can't even follow it to see that it's an external link.
Alphonse it sounded like they were just waiting for the sitemap to launch. Other than that, I couldn't think of anything else to add because the sitemap should solve their issue. However, I have marked this as "Discussion" again.
If you want to show reviews for products you sell I recommend gathering and using your own reviews. If you don't have the volume for that and still want to show reviews, maybe consider an iFrame. It depends on the service and how their feeds/scripts work. For example, if the script is in a folder that is blocked in the robots.txt file, Google will not be able to access it and will not be able to render that content.
I know it's possible depending on your host, but in the case of a Shopify-hosted website if they're saying in their own forums that it can't be done then they can't (or won't) do it. At that point either using Shopify's blog or subdomain (not recommended) are your choices. If you have an existing blog and need to import the posts to Shopify you can use: https://apps.shopify.com/blogfeeder .
Thank you Kathiravan,
For jewelry and gold coins I think the image and "read more" is the best option for both user experience and SEO, assuming Read More goes to the product page. My advice would be to link the product title to the product page as well, and for it to be the first link to that page in the code (read more being the second link) since the first link determines anchor text.
Does that answer your question?
Kathiravan,
Is this a Wordpress site? I've never seen a true eCommerce site do that. Category pages have an image of the products, along with a title, price and sometimes a very short description. Product pages should show the image and a full description, along with tabbed or otherwise easily accessible content for other features and information. Videos, multiple image views and reviews are also encouraged.
Hello French_soc,
If this were my site I'd have all three model versions Rel Canonical to a single page featuring all three of them and explaining the difference between the features to help the shopper decide which one to buy. It would be like a mini-category page, or more appropriately a Product Grouping or custom landing page.
Does that make sense? Sounds like it was what you planned to do.
Hell Full Media,
Are you just linking to the PDF files from that page, or are you loading them in a preview window, or... ? I'll need to know a little more about what you're doing now and what your goals are if you need more specific advice. Until then, have you looked into Caching those files?
There are definitely tools you can use to display these to visitors so they don't have to download the PDF to browse the catalog. I think Akamai has something, and there are lots of Lightbox plugins for Wordpress. Look into Unflip too.
STP_SEO This could have many causes. Can you share the site so we can have a look?
If I understand the question correctly, it sounds similar to how most eCommerce sites deal with sub-category (e.g. Apparel/Clothing/Pants) and you're asking if you should put unique content on those pages.
There is no right or wrong answer here, but I have two guidelines for you to consider.
#1 Search Volume
Does the topic of the category / inventory page receive significant search volume? For example, if it is a landing page about a brand-specific product (e.g. Used Honda Accord) it probably deserves its own content. If nobody searches for the exact product assortment that page is about (e.g. blue used Honda Accord year 1989) then you may not need the content to rank for those long-tail queries.
#2 How Can You Help Your Visitors?
The primary goal of content on these pages should be to help the visitor. Improving your rank for searches should be a secondary concern, which will alleviate some of your trouble with pushing the listings further down on the page.
Think about what the user is trying to do on this page. Most of the time they're still not sure exactly WHICH product to choose, or they'd have landed on a product page, or a deeper category. Help them choose. For example: Brand X is for entry-level shoppers and provides the greatest value. Brand Y is for experienced shoppers and has the most features.
You can use drop-down divs and other display tactics to keep from pushing the listings down too far.
You can also prioritize these pages so you're not writing content for all of them at once. By focusing on the top performing 20% or so first, you'll find out if the investment is going to scale out well to the rest of the pages, or if you should just leave them alone.