Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Nice to know.

How active is dmoz today ? (as far as editors and sumbitions)

Do you know anyone that did that ?

I've try - I've become an editor to some domoz satellite sites like chefmoz and music moz but no luck in moving up from there (that was 2009 though)

Hi,

Before submitting check and see if the category has an editor - at the bottom of the page one or more username should be listed. If there are no editors with Dmoz going down the hill, chances are slim that you will get listed.

If there is at least one editor - you can get listed - but even so it can take a lot of time.

However, the Dmoz "get listed" best strategy is: submit it and forget about it. (if you get listed good, if not , good)

Even if you get listed the benefits are no longer as they used to be.

Cheers.

Hi,

First of all you need to make sure that this is the reason for your poor rankings  as if you go this route you might end up with resources spent and noting to brag with

As far as finding freelancers - I don't know about the SeoMoz Q and A - if you can find any I mean - but you can try Elance or Odesk but make sure you get a person that is reliable based on feedbacks, reviews and ratings ...

Cheers.

Hi,

Yes you are right, that's not the best link you can hope for but what you did is good and enough. You don't have to worry about it anymore.

The disavow file will only inform Google that you want that link to be disregarded (as far as sending Page Rank) and they will do that once you submitted the disavow file so no worries there.

You will still see the link in other tools as a dofollow as, again, what you did is only informing google about it. So you can still get referral traffic from those links, you don't care how many are there as there are all nofollow basically so no danger for you as far as algorithmic or manual penalties.

Cheers.

Hi,

Are you 100% sure it was the recent algo that affected you ?

The Penguin update was released on May 22 - did you lose a lot of rankings site wide starting with this date ? In the same day in UK there was also the Domain Crowding update rolled out.

Your visibility so far is looking good:

http://screencast.com/t/d70j6RMFd

In a few days you can see if you lost domain wide rankings.

What I am saying is that you need to be sure if you got affected and by what in order to fight that  . As if you didn't get hit by Penguin you will go after this link hunt and spend resources for nothing.

I would suggest to make sure what did affected you and what is the damage - based on that you can outline the strategy.

Getting back to your questions:

Other than the Disavow tools and manually contacting people to take down the links is there anything else we can do?

** No - if it's (the issue) related with links.

Is it worth going through the content, meta data and other 'on page factors'?

** Only if you have really bad spamy issues on page - based on a first overview you don't. (unless you are hiding it very good

Hope it helps.

Cheers.

Hi,

I have detected than one web domain is generating 2400 links to my site

** Are those links spamy ? can you post the domain and links ? Maybe those links are helping you - if you disavow them you will lose any Page Rank those links are sending - if any.

should a use a disavow tools, as it is imposible to have contact from webmaster and no response to your emails

** You should use the disavow file for this only if you are 100% that those links are bad and also if your link profile is not strong enough to "eat up" those links so they won't raise any flags on Google's side - again, if the links are bad.

My web as not been warned or penalized, but i dont like this link, and i want to inform google of that,.

** Then this is the easiest way to flag this link and be stress-less.

If google acepts the disavow file, should i still see on my webmaster tools that web links, or will they desapear

** Yes, you will still see the links in Web master Tools as Web master Tools displays both follow and no follow links. (and since the disovow dosen't do anything but adding on google side the nofollow atribute to the link - even if that's not on the actual link / code).

Hope it helps.

You're welcomed !  I know how it is to get stuck on things like this

Hi,

You don't have to take the mobile version down - all you need to do is make google know that that is the mobile version and it should rank for mobile alone - that is done by using rel alternate tag.

See more info here: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2188344/The-New-Mobile-SEO-Strategy

Including the use of rel alternate.

Hope it helps.

Hi,

If you change content, design and URLs in the same time you won't be able to assess the reason behind an improvement in rankings or a negative effect in rankings.

Let's say you change all 3 in the same time and you get a slight increasing rankings - you will be happy but the setup behind this is that the content change had a huge positive impact and the design and url changes had a negative effect - you only see the final end result  - this is just an example.

The bottom line is that you can get the best out of it if you do it step by step as you can adjust, roll back, edit in order to get the best out of it.

The last change I would do is the URL change and always have a fix and clear procedure in place for this as it is important (if you have some visibility now and the risk of losing something is big).

Cheers.

Right on the money Lynn !

Hi,

There are tools that you can use - though for close 50k pages is harder to crawl. Best bet is the Web master tools count - although is not 100% exact either.

The site:domain is a good indicator but it's generated "on the fly" but it will show you a better result if you go "deeper" and click on page 10-20 and so on.

However right now it looks like there is an issue with site:domain. for more info see: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-site-command-cluster-16829.html

Cheers.

Hi,

SEO for youtube videos is really great and it's still so easy to do - especially since a lot of people don't optimize those videos. if there is still room to optimize those you can go really high ...

The best available resources I was able to find and follow with great results are from this guy Derral Eves : http://www.youtube.com/user/derraleves

I have no connection with him - so it's not advertising I guess

Hope it helps.

Hi,

If all the content you want to remove is part of a separate folder / directory then use the approach from: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663427

Except from the use of robots.txt - set all those pages to noindex - don't use robots.txt ! (very important)

In case you have some pages in the same folder that you still need in the index but this number is low as ratio vs the ones you want to remove - is better to remove it all and the index those back then move one by one and remove the ones you don't need - it's all about the numbers.

Cheers.

Hi,

If you improve it : design (usability) and content - Google will be the happiest and it will rank accordantly (the only "but" is that - it needs to be a real improvement).

The only golden rule I would follow is - do not change the URLs. If you really really want to change the URLs too do that on a later stage not during the content and design changes. When you do that - just update the old 301 redirects to the new format and add new 301 redirects for the "current" structure to the "future" one - don't use 301 redirect hoops - this is really important.

Best case scenario in my view:

Step 1: Update content only, wait for changes to be visibile: rankings, traffic, CTR etc - track result, assess feedback from all platforms available: seomoz, Web master Tools, google analytics etc etc. Doing this you will see exactly how much of an impact had this content update.

Step 2: Update design - similar with step 1- assess, track, analyze. See how much impact this usability had on the numbers, engagement etc. Use Split A/B testing from Google Analytics to see what version is better and decide based on your users engagement not on your personal preferences.

Step 3: update URls - only if really really needed.

Wait for some time between those steps - based on the size - a few weeks, a few months.

Be ready to roll back if disaster strikes on any of the steps...

Hope it helps as an outside suggestions.

Cheers.

The issue I have is that I have few visit on each page. So it's gonna be very difficult to see if there is any change.

** Even so - you can still track the rankings...

HI,

So better to remove the Hits from the h1 ?

** From outside I would say yes. However, again, I would say you should test on a few "test subject" and then decide - it's always room for improvement and you might find that it has some benefits

Cheers.

Hi,

If all keywords dropped - and most (90% at least) are +50 as far as position now then Penguin can be the reason if that happen during the update timetable. otherwise the reason is different and I hope for you that you are not under Penguin as far as filter because that will be costly.

If you jump from #3 to #10 and so for some keywords that is probably due to "the google dance" - it means you don't have enough stability to maintain one or more keywords stabile and when a new link appears google might dance with your rankings before trying to stabilize those - it dosen't mean you are necessarily doing something wrong - and whatever you do don't change your strategy based on those movements - unless you are doing something spammy and in that case you need to stop anyway (if you care for the project long term).

Cheers.

Hi,

Maybe I am wrong but the sample you've provided can be part of "ever green content" that is the same now and in 2 years or is content based on queries that deserve freshness ? I would say is kind of in the "ever green content" and if so Google won't get back regularly to check if updates are made - also base don the pages change rate in the first days/weeks/months of life.

Maybe I got your question wrong though but the basic idea is to play safe, don't go into really tiny micromanagement and always test in a few pages and if it works go wide

Not really helpful I know 

Hi,

I was ranking 3rd for my local search and now Im the last result on the page.

** So from #3 you got to pos #10 ?

If so, this dosen't look like Penguin - it would't be that "soft". With penguin you are on pos #3 and then .. nowhere in sight (+50 at least) and it's site wide - so that means you lose rankings more or less on all keywords.

For now your visibility with external tools is not available so it's hard for me to say , for now, if you lost rankings  or just on a few keywords - but you should see that in your internal tools like Google analytics and Webmaster tools and in SEOMOz if you track your keywords here  (you should :).

I've been link building, creating relevant blog posts and adding new pages and I am losing traction.

** The link building part is very tricky: did you went above the "call of duty" ? If you did - it may or it already back fired.

Overall - my personal best advice is to look at everything from a Serp point of view not independently to your site alone. Look at serps for your keywords and see what others are doing, building and so on.

Cheers.