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Hi Gareth,

First of all your issue might not be Penguin related  -> http://screencast.com/t/ocuuKXoKUz0v

Just because the drop "happen" after the last penguin update and also because your link profile dosen't look like a penguin candidate.

Also you should check and see if you have some manual action (maybe you got hacked or something) - now you can see that in Web master Tools - hope you the account already in place.

That being said I would't invest a dime in SEO at this stage but I would definitely invest in redoing the site - there is so much room to make it more friendly and attractive - starting with the font size and the way the products are featured and presented, images as far as resolution, quality, navigation flow and many more.

On the SEO side just make sure you have the right thing sin place - and again, no need for SEO "experts" sending advice and invoices - just take care of the normal stuff like Title tags, and descriptions and H1 that are all working as one. Target a keyword per page and push some informative descriptions and reviews and images, videos on those pages.

Just my 2c.

WMT dose't display all links as it will be easier to "calculate" the link juice of those links and start gaming the rankings. There is no criteria and it dose't make sense to tray find one.

It's just a general indicator of the total links you have for one domain name. It's a good indicator and together with OSE and other link profile screeners you an get a good overall feedback from your link profile.

OSE on the other hand provides a lot of good feedback but it's not that vast as far as data - OSE doesn't reach the "other space" in depth.

That means if you have a link and it dosen't show up in OSE and WMT it doesn't mean is not considered by google is just not shown.

You can also try majesticseo as it dosen't provide in depth information but it has a very vast database of links - and again, majestic seo won't provide all links either - just a larger pool.

Hope it helps.

Based on your description it looks like an algo anchor text penalty.

That means your main term is overused in on page optimisation and/or used as anchor text way to much.

If this is the case you should start de-optimizing for this term and change or remove any "bad" links that is using this term as anchor text.

First of all you should identify if your link profile is un balanced - that means again, if you have as ratio a lot of in coming links using this term as anchor text.

Is  this term also part of your domain name ? You can't really do much about this (the domain thing that is) but at least you can de-optimize teh site so the term is not all over the place.

Google likes to be told what toi rank for and for what term but not in a very loud voice - if you know what I mean.

Once you've cleaned / edited some bad links that used this term as anchor text and you've tunned down a noch the on-page optimisation for the term (internal links/anchors, h1, url format, titles and even content / text within your site) and based on the size of your site (as number of pages vs crawling numbers) you will then have to wait for the site to be re-crawled and you will recover. However you will probably not go back to the initial position (around 15) as some factors that were coming into play for your 15 position will no longer be in place / counting towards your rankings.

As soon as you recover you will need to build a plan for this term in order to improve rankings but don't go again over borad with the optimisation... eg: build good links to the page /that is ranking for this term but without the term as anchor text, channel your internal PR towards this page but again without heavy optimisation around the term.

Hope it helps.

Widgets are still fine as long as you put a nofollow on the link

You still can get referral traffic from it but the idea, and that is more then ok in my opinion, is that there is no longer room for link building using widgets.

Hi,

No, transfering (and by that you probabaly mean redirecting ) old authority to the new site will also transfer the manual action

Just make sure the disavow file is correct - make sure you use domains not links (as the disavow file is "sensitive" to duplicates: www vs non www, http vs https, slash at the end vs non slash at the end etc)

Cheers.

It depends on how fast Google bot will identify that link and credit it towards your site.

First of all, if the link is on a new page, check if the page is in google index - once it's listed that means the link has also been discovered. Check in google with site:url of the exact page that has the link.

If the page is older and already in the index it depends on the authority of the site and how fats google is re-crawling that page: that can take from a few minutes to a few weeks or even more.

For the link to be visibile in open site explorer and other link profile tools - it depends on the crawler of seomoz or the other seo tools crawlers but it's not related with teh fact that the link will or won't be counted by google.

Some links are set "on delay" by google so even if the link is found it's place "on hold" and the actual vote will be casted later...

Bottom line: to see the benefits as far as rankings from one link it depends on:

• how fast google can find the link (from a few minutes to several weeks - depending on the site authority)

• even if the link is found it can "on hold" (depending on your site, anchor text and several other factors)

• it depends a lot on the type of link: inline, image, footer, site wide etc and again, on what type of site and page is placed (authority, relevance)

• and of course it needs to be a do follow link to see any benefits in rankings.

Hope it helps - as a general overview at least but you can always place your site and the link here so we can have a look and send  amore in depth reply...

The PR of the site in this case is pointless.

There are a few questions that will help with the assessment:

• what is the domain url ?

• one or more samples of the keywords you want to rank with

• the age of the site (not the domain . the site: files, content you've posted)

Based on this feedback can be posted way easier...

Cheers.

But you can still develop and use them - it can still bring a lot of referral traffic if the item is really good.

It won't affect your main site at all - but the micro site won't rank. It's a new site with duplicate content - that for sure won't rank in search engines. However if you don't need this micro site to rank you are safe - duplicate content is not a penalty issue - you just don't rank with it.

Hope it helps.

Hi,

The keyword closer to the root has a slight better impact but in some cases the subdomain can be considered by Google as separate items / domains so all teh DOmain authority from the main domain won't be passed.

That is only in some cases when the domain has a totally different content, score, user flow etc.

However since you can not control if Google will consider your subdomain as a separate item it is somehow risky.

Personally I am always going with the folder - always. (just to be safe and to get the maximum out of any links to the domain)

Hope it helps.

Hi,

Your robots.txt file is very .. steroid healthy. It has his own universe

Are you 100% sure all of the entries are legit and clean ?

First thing I would do is to check Web M;aster Tools for the mobile subdomain. If you don't have it yet, that will be a good place to start - to verify the m subdomain.

Once in WeB Master Tools - you can debug this in no time.

Cheers.

For sure it dosen't count as duplicate content !

The only down side is the CTR in search results pages - if having the same description your user could be confused then it's a problem if not then it's 100% ok.

Hope it helps.

Hi Diane,

From an usability point of view I think (and this is a personal opinion) that you could work more on the page to make it more friendly.

Just a few ideas:

• replace the fav icon

• change the font (hard to digest / read)

• change / improve the titles for the 3 top stories.

• use GA with A/B testing to track different behaviors.

• color scheme could be more "friendly" by adding a matching color palette.

• add some header with some good call to action images... Slides are a good approach. Very actionable as far as clicks and all.

some other points:

• get rid of the keyword tags.

• you have some issues as far as accessibility with different browsers.

Question:

• you don't track the visitors for the page ? (google analytics or anything else ?)

Hope it helps.

Unless the links build are not shady I will move forward. Once the ranks are achived then maybe cut from the pace a little - don't invest that much as the ROI will only go down from there but stoping it's not a good choise in my opinion: it's not natural, there are spikes in the link profile, some old links will fade  and at some point you will want to resume, competition is never at sleap.

Move forward while you are ahead and make the gap between you and competition even bigger - long term you will only have benefits.

On the other hand, yes, if the links are bad, spammy then you should stop before starting

Hi,

On blogs I usually don't use or advice to use the brand or domain name as blog titles are usually long - adding the domain / brand will only make them even longer. If your blog makes a good job as far as branding - no need to put that in your Title.

As far as keywords - that is always a good idea - but again - you should use your main keyword that is targeted with a particular post in your H1 and use the h1 also as the title tag - that can cover the basic setup. Anyway, I would rather not use the keyword in the Title tag / h1 if it dosen't fit and if it's not really readable like Jesse also mention. Also the keyword, to "maximize" the SEO effect should be as much as possibile closer to the beginning of the title.

You can add for some - the hype formula for keywords - Use the "keyword: comment" format.

So if your main keyword is Iphone and your post is actually called "the new model of Iphone" you can move the keyword in front using: "Iphone: the new model" - stupid sample but hope it sends the idea

Hope it helps.

I have to disagree - I still strongly suggest not to focus to much on this issue in your case - but this is why this filed is exciting  different opinions and approaches

If the description for the product is the same why changing it ? We should do this for the user not google if we want to keep everything clean and white. And in this case for the user it dose make sense to have the same description.

Hi,

This is what I found that could match your needs:

It sounds like you want to display an RSS feed within your HTML website.

The easiest way to do this is to use RSS2HTML a free PHP script.

This means that you can retain the complete control of the HTML layout (using templates) and make it match your existing design. Additionally using PHP rather than JavaScript will mean that search engine spiders can "spider" the contents of the RSS feeds.

Additional details and a free rss2html download is available at:http://www.feedforall.com/more-php.htm

Additional information and other options for displaying RSS feeds can be found at:http://www.rss-specifications.com/displaying-rss-feeds.htm

Hope it helps.

Yahoo Directory entries (but depending a lot on location and niche) are still ok for referral traffic. Some US Yahoo Directory niches are still receiving a lot of traffic and the ROI on the entry can get positive.

I would't do it from an SEO point of view though on Yahoo or any other directory. Some very "good" directories got penalized by Google for passing PR so you are on the safe side if you keep away from it.

No follow links from directories are good though - you balance the follow vs no follow ratio so that can also help.

Hi,

The best bet is the removal tool from GWT - this is the fastes way.

If your pages are static and google bot is visiting those pages once a month or once 4-5-6 months - you will need to wait until google bot is visiting those pages again, notice the nofollow and drop those from the index.

I'v e seen cases with 6 months.

Anyway you will probably see those pages drop step by step.

What you can try, although is not very straight forward is to build an xml sitemap only with those files and submit it via GWMt - sometimes google bot will think that something new happen and will visit those pages, see the no index and speed the process - but not always as I've seen in some cases that this didn't work - in some cases it did.

Again, the best bet will be the GWMT removal tool.

Cheers.

Yes, because it make sense for both the users and Google.

Google is against duplicate description all over your site for home page, contact, about and product pages just because that will impact the users in a negative way. In your case, like in zazzle.com it dose make sense.

It will be weird and un-helpful just to change the description so you don't have duplicates or just change slight words again for the same reason.