Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi,

I've seen several portfolios with several words repeating over and over again - but everything made sense and teghy are ranking well site wide and also with the portfolio pages for those keywords.

This is not keyword stuffing if it make sense even if you have a very high ratio of repetition for one or two words.

More then that the real estate of the page says it all - so it's clearly not a technique to try to stuff that keyword and tray to rank.

Personally I believe it won't harm you at all also because of your domain authority and everything else: google places entry, the brand in google's eye and so on - this is cleary not a spam domain :).

Hope it helps.

Hi,

That screen shot is from SearchMetrics - organic visibility.

Another tool for visibility you can also use is sistrix.com

Both are more or less the same as far as outcome.

Those visibility graphs in correlation with the actual traffic can give you a lot of information.

Hope it helps.

Hi,

Just wondered whether you think the footer text here on tis page constitues 'keyword stuffing'.

** Yes, that's the definition of  keyword stuffing right there.

I think it does but wondering why they haven't been penalised for it.

** Well .. give google some time  

On a serious note, if the sites performs well on the organic side and you don't rank and get a lot of traffic from the keywords / queries listed in the footer Google won't apply a filter. I've seen several cases with sites that used this approach and didn't rank for the keywords that were stuffed and they did fine.

On the other hand the site looks, form an organic point of view, almost flat line

http://screencast.com/t/2uZTXOSRq

So visibility is very very low .. there is not much to cut from that at this point. More then that even if the site will have organic potential due to that heavy footer it won't rise - so even if you don't have a penalty in place you won't be able to get a real lift off.

Hope it helps.

Hi,

The worst case scenario is that you won't rank with one of the versions - on a page by page basis - not site wide.

There is no penalty related with duplicate content. So if you have the first site with 200 pages and 190 of those are duplicate eon the second site - you can still rank with the rest if you have enough quality and authority for those pages.

Now if only parts of the content is duplicate you can end up ranking with both - a lot of companies are doing this "serp crowding" with a lot of success.

As far as if there is a formula for how different the pages should be - there is no exact formula in place.

Hope it helps.

Hi,

First of all you need to assess your link profile and if you do have a large amount of spammy and over optimized anchor text links then you are a candidate for Penguin. If not, you need to look elsewhere.

You first need to check your Google Analytics (organic traffic) and a organic visibility graph for your site ("general ranking graphic" using a tool like sistrix or search metrics).

if you don't have access to sistrix or search metrics or any other visibility tool just post the url he rte and me or someone else will run the url for you.

In google analytics and in any of the visibility tools you need to look for a sudden drop in and short after the bellow dates (when Penguin was released):

October 5, 2012

May 25, 2012

April 24, 2012

If you have a spammy link profile and your organic traffic dropped and is corelated with loss of rankings in the same day then chances are high that you are under this Penguin filter.

Hope it helps.

Cheers.

Sure. It make sense. You can and should suggest the page and yes, that will channel the Page Rank to that page so it will bring the needed SEO value.

Google is on a big crusade right now related with links - you just need to be careful not to overdo anything (over optimization and so on) but if you keep everything in a natural way - you are safe no matter what.

Hi,

I would always go with a link that I am not able to influence the anchor text - that is what Google can calla  natural link.

If you start optimizing anchor texts you will end up with an un-natural link profile and it can backfire.

Ask for a link, but let them decide how to implement it - you will end up with a health link profile in this way.

As for the directories - there are only a few that can be considered ok. Specific directories could be good as long as are not made for SEO. If you go with a submit ion make sure you assess the directory first: if it's under penalty, if you do get any value for that link (ref feral or/and SEO value and mor importantly what are your neighbors - other links hosted on the directory). Some time however doing the assessment in order toe tay safe can result in a negative ROI with the time spent on it. But if you don't really have other options it can be a good place to start. Again, don't over do it - have a good , low ratio of directory links.

One last thing about directories: if they let you choose an anchor text for the link - don't use that directory It's a made for SEO one and even if it's not penalized now - it will in the future.:)

Hope it helps as a general overview.

Hi,

Yes, there is a special filter for over optimisation related with anchor text.

If you have / build a lot of links with teh same anchor text - and overall in your link profile that dosen't really look natural you can receive a filter on that anchor text and only on that anchor text - nothing else is affected.

(in some cases on some variation of the anchor text).

So if you only lost traffic for one keyword that might be the case.

usually it's a manual action as far as I've seen in the past - but there is also an algo in place for this as far as I've understood (personably though I've only encounter manual action against anchor text).

In order to solve this issue - you need to clean / edit /delete some bad links that are looking un-natural using this anchor text.

Your anchor text assessment within your link profile should be the first step to solve this.

I don't know the domain and keyword so I don't know if EMD is an issue - but it's also something you can review (is the keyword the same with the domain name ?)

Cheers.

Hi,

Negative SEO is in effect only if you receive an un-natural message in Web master Tolls (so a manual penalty) or if you get an algo  filter applied (the only one for links si penguin).

So if you didn't receive any messages from google via Web master Tools and Penguin is not in effect - that means there is no current issue with Negative SEO - so the drop in rankings is not really from this bad links you are seeing.

There is one other possibility - when those bad links started to pop up you might have seen an increase in rankings  and traffic and and after some time google spot those bad links and cut them out (by cut them out I mean ignore those - they don't matter in your ranking process). if that was the case after the push up you wills ee a drop - to previous levels.

You can check that with a visibility tool to see if the patterns applies to you or post the url and some of us can have a look.

My 2 cents. Hope it helps.

Hi,

There is a golden rule related with urls: "never change those"

You need to have a very strong reason in order to touch urls that are ranking well.

But if you do decide to change them there is only one very important thing you need to do: 301 redirect old urls to new ones. It will solve most of the problems.

If you do lose rankings now - there are other things to change - that html at the end is irrelevant for the rankings.

So the bottom line is if you do decide to touch the urls, adding a permanent 301 redirect to the old urls that will point to the new ones is crucial.

My 2 c. Hope it helps.

If you post the urls another 2 cents will be added

Hi,

But it looks like the entire site's organic visibility is .. flat line.

See a screenshot here: http://screencast.com/t/LDe92AnA

You did had a spike up but then it went flat line again.

It also looks like you only have 4-5 keywords ranking on the second page and those are the best rankings for now.

So it's not only the two pages that have issues...

Am i missing something ?

Hope it helps.

Hi,

Can you post the domain name and the two urls so we can have a look at the visibility?

Cheers.

Kent is right. You need to check the CTR in Web Master Tools prior and during the impression spike.

That spike in impression is correlated with either a spike in rankings for current keywords you had or a lot of new pages you've publish in the past or recently got in the index with good rankings.

If your CTR was low, so your entries didn't appeal to the users it means, from Google's point of view, you don't really deserve to rank.

More then that check the organic traffic time on page (for entry pages) and pages view for each organic entry to see how users did behave once they click in. If those numbers are not very "friendly"  there is a high chance that the users bounced back in search looking for a different result - and that again can cause a massive organic drop.

CTR and low organic user behavior patterns will drop your organic numbers and in most cases as far as we've seen it's always more visibile after a spike in impressions.

Hope it helps.

It's a decision that makes sense even if it looks like there are a few people that are not very happy with it.

THe Q and A community - the open one - not the pro Q and A - is very nice and open. A lot of good people around here with professional background that are getting involved in Q and A.

Hope the decision will be taked lightly and understood also by those who used to use it

As far as i Know this is mainly ignored by google (unless you starting to do this on a large scale and then it will back-fire) and a waste of your time.

If you think you will get some referral traffic from those then it make sense but you better have those links with a no follow. (however, base don past experience with this type of services I doubt that there are good sites in those networks).

If you do this for link building - note everything down as you might need the information later on when you are hit by an un-natural link manual action and you will need to hunt those links down

Just my opinion - hope it helps.

Hi,

Although the site has some incoming links and some DA based on OSE, the links are not the omnes I would die / kill for.

You have 0 organic visibility forthe domain in US, NL and DE  - I 've only tested those 3.

So the bottom line is that your site, even if indexed (over 100 pages) and as you said with no issues there is basically no reason for the site to rank.

The site is not new and for this reason is indeed a little weird not to rank for the "brand name". Although for the  brand there are several other results in serps.

Personally I would focus on link building . quality over quantity of course .. 3-5 good links not 1000 spammy ones. I would also look for EMD issues.

If you are safe on the content side and everything also it dosen't hurt to send a reconsideration request  it can't harm you . just to make sure there are no manual filters attached.

Just some ideas and opinions - hope it helps.

Bounce rate is a ranking factor, a major ranking factor - but not the bounce rate you see in Google analytics.

Google only measure and take in consideration the bounce in serps.

The bounce rate that google is taking in consideration is outline bellow:

So if someone is searching for something, clicking on your result but then the user hits the back button and is clicking on a diffrent result in serps without changing the query  then that is a bounce.

Sometimes, also for new sites google is pushing pages up in serps in order to have clicks and calculate the user behavior - this bounce rate.

The Google analytics bounce rate is a good internal indicator but I would't spend time on it or "upgrade" it to a number that you should monitor and track.

Hope it helps.

Hi,

One good resource is Ann Smarty's plaform, www.myblogguest.com.

Very good resource - mostly clean.

Hope it helps.

Hi,

For me it dosen't show on #1 - using google.com from AT and google.at - still from AT.

Even so - give google some time - it will figer it out soon. I've seen several similar results for a day or two and then based on the quality it will remain up or it will go down - it's google dance after all - it needs to push new sites up to see if users will behave and embrace the site or they will bounce - get back into serps.

Hi,

Everybody has issues with the AdWords API - as Google revoked access to a lot of companies and now it looks like they are after all of us

I agree with you that they did had some issue with communication especially with the Adcenter - but overall I am sure they have some solid reason - what I don't understand is why they didn't open up and be transparent.

I don't think there is a good replacement for Raven overall - on the features they provide and that are not present in other tool kits.