Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Wow! They actually sent me a shirt.

Thanks Moz staff!

If it is just one thread on a forum that was flooded with bad links, you could delete that thread. Make sure that any traffic to the associated URL's get a true 404 response.

My understanding is that doing so shows that you did not want those incoming links and that you are not gaining any advantage from them. If you do another Reconsideration Request, you should probably tell them that the targeted page was deleted.

Hello speedingorange,

You wrote:  "I have always been under the impression from reading online that an algorithm update would see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools, however the site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for. "

I think you have it backwards. The Panda update, which is NOT algorithmic, is the one that would that would "see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools".  The Penguin update, which IS algorithmic, is the one that would cause "site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for".  And a Penguin penalty does not result in a Google Webmaster Tools notification.  (That is my understanding. I'm sure someone will correct me if I am mixed up, And I am OK with being corrected.)

Two of my sites are suffering from what I believe is Penguin damage. For both the damage is a lot of rank lost for only a few keyword phrases. Other phrases continue to rank normally. When I did a bunch of keyword research (using Moz, Ahrefs, and Majestic results blended together) I found that the few keyword phrases that I severely lost rank for had both:

1. a high percentage of Follow links using exactly those phrases as anchor text, and
2. links from sources that didn't really pertain to the anchor text or to our website.

My understanding is that these are the type of things that Penguin will bite you for. So we did remove or change a few of the anchor text links, and did a Google Disavow on most of the remaining links. We did leave a few anchor text links that were from good pertinent sites. This was done in early June, and we still have not seen any results. I have read that we will not see any big results from submitting a Disavow file until Google updates Penguin again. So we are keeping our fingers crossed until then.

Couple of quick things to explore if you are going to try a similar rescue. First, we did not pay any attention to our NoFollow links since they supposedly do not effect rankings. Second, we did create a nice file of follow links from all our link research, and used it as an additional submission with the Link Detox tool (the spreadsheet report from that tool is very valuable when checking for overoptimized anchor text). Third, we disavowed entire domains rather than individual links because we heard that was most effective.

Good luck!

Hi Chris,

I have a couple of small ecommerce sites and ran into the same problem with MOZ Recommended list. They are wonderful intelligent folks - but way too pricey for small businesses.

What I did was search the Forum for questions that sounded like they matched the problems I was experiencing. Then started a list of who answered them in a way that sounded intelligent, that I could understand, and that were polite. You can then check the profile of the MOZ members who answer questions in a way you like. Some will run small SEO firms, or work for small firms. Then put together a Request For Quote (RFQ) and send copies to 3 or 4 of your favorites.

It really does not take that long. Just an evening searching and reading the Forum, then an afternoon to write the RFQ.

After that I did have a hard time choosing just one - I wanted to work with them all but the budget did not allow ;-(

Good luck!

Hello Holger, I ran into a similar issue when I wanted to only track www.mysite.com and not mysite.com

Here is what I remember the Moz Help folks telling me is the way to do it, converted to your examples....

Set up three separate campaigns. One each for mysite.com.br , en.mysite.com.br , es.mysite.com.br  AND when doing so select the button to "Only track this subdomain" (or some phrase like that) for each campaign.

You will not be able to change the old campaigns (the ones with the options greyed out) to the new settings. So you will need to either archive or delete them.

Hi David. Or it can be done more simply (If you have G+ pages for both your self and you business) by just putting these two lines in the head of your page

where publisher is your G+ biz page.

From the research I did, the "recommended companies" on the Moz list are all fantastic, but are all geared towards working with large business on long monthly contracts.

If you just need some quick help I suggest doing this:

1. do a few searches here for terms related to your issue

2. check the profiles of those responded with intelligent answers - some of them will be with small SEO agencies

3. contact them, explain your problem, and ask for a quote to resolve it

Good luck!

Hi Chris,

If your product is in a market that is saturated, high volume, and highly competitive (like iPods or hiking boots) then stick with Egol's advice.

But from your profile it appears you sell specialty table legs, and I think that may be in a different realm of Adwords where the volume and competition are both low. The products my two stores sell are specialty items that are low volume and low competition, so I can share my experience.

The executive summary is "Start generic and start cheap". Doing that will give you an education focused on your niche at a reasonable cost.

My specialty items do not have a high search volume, so starting with broad keywords allowed Adwords to give me data on the full range of keyword searches it was actually displaying for. Depending on the search volume, it can take a week or three for Adwords to create a good list of actual keyword searches. As this list develops, use negative keywords to prune out phrases that are just wrong. Also start to add phrase and exact match for the phrases that appear often.

And I mentioned "start cheap" because Adwords has this weird habit of over-valuing itself. If I start with a bid of $0.15 it will immediately tell me that I need to bid $1.80 to be on the first page. If I ignore that expensive suggestion, I appear anyways. It may take a couple of days, but I will appear on page 1 or 2. Then I can start upping my bid a nickel at a time until I appear in the upper slots.

So budget $100 to do live research on Adwords, and consider it a market research expense. During that time, also go to the library and use their public computer to make a test purchase after clicking one of your ads - to be sure the tracking is correct. Also never delete a campaign, instead pause it so that the old data is always there to refer back to.

So much more could be said, but I need to go eat breakfast. You are welcome to contact me through one of my stores. Just google my name without the "ory". Good luck!

Sorry, no good answer on how to effectively explain that "it takes time" (I run multiple stores myself and am not a big fan of hearing that either)

But I do have a question. Are you using PPC in the meantime to drive some sales? Also you could be doing PPC combined with CRO to get their conversions improved while you all are waiting for time to pass and organic ranking to rise. You can learn a lot from PPC about what people really search for and what message motivates them.

Look to see if there is /b/ in the middle of the URL of the page you are trying to enter. That means you are using the page as the logged in owner of the page. Moz can't do that of course...

So sign out of your Google account completely, then search and find your G+ business page, and copy that URL. Or you could just try manually editing the /b out of the URL you are attempting to enter.

I checked the AquaFarm page in your image.

My understanding is that G+ prefers to use schema data as it's 1st choice for presenting, but it does not look like you have schema data on your page.

Then it goes for Open Graph data (like Facebook uses) and you do have that. But when I looked at the image linked with your   meta property="<a class="attribute-value">og:image</a>"   tag it is only 56x56px - which is maybe too small.

I know that the minimum image size has been changing recently, so I do not know exactly what it is right know, but I have been using 300x300px images successfully.

If you want people to be able choose which image to display with their post, you will need "tag" multiple images.

If you want to do Twitter Cards you will need add those tags also and make a 120x120 image for Twitter.

Basically you end up with two sets of pictures: one "visible" set sized properly for your webpages, and one "hidden" set sized properly for you social media accounts.

Hope this helps...

How long ago did you do this?

Google is often pretty slow to change things. Sometimes it takes weeks for a simple change like a page title to start appearing in the results...

Hi Coral. I sent you a PM (which is accessed by clicking the little human shape next to the question mark and the magnifying glass at the top of these pages)

Hi Brian,

Also don't feel bad if you find some of it fuzzy and frustrating. I used Moz Pro for awhile, then left. Now that I'm back I find I really struggle with figuring out how to get things set up right in this new Moz Analytics. There are a lot of gaps in the Help files.

I'm thinking about starting to use screenshots when I post questions here because I just don't know how else to explain the problems...

But I think it will be worth the battle. Good luck!

I've used it with no bad effects, and probably good results.

I have (or had) a keyword on one of my sites with very over-optimized anchor text links. That keyword suddenly dropped from page 1 to page 7. Just that one keyword, which points to a algorithmic (Penguin) penalty. So I analyzed my link profile (not any easy job) and did a Disavow listing enough domains containing those anchor text links to re-balance my link profile somewhat. That's all I did. No reconsideration request, no removal of links. After about 6 or 8 weeks, that keyword suddenly popped back from page 7 to page 3. Page 3 still sucks, but at least that makes it easier to do the work to scramble back to page 1.

Was it because of the Disavow? I don't know for sure, but it sure doesn't look like it hurt anything.

This stuff is often a bit vague and voodoo like, which is why it helps to get a site review from a professional. Check your PM's as I sent you a reply to your reply.

I do not know of a handy button back to Moz Pro. Instead I just keep this link bookmarked: http://pro.moz.com/campaigns

You wrote: "Feeling increasingly frustrated and starting to avoid using Moz."  Yep, me too. There seems to be too many bugs and too much inaccurate data. Sometimes I think I stay subscribed just access to this Forum...

Hi Little Bigman,

I just finished doing a little research on hiring a group to help with link building. All the quality places wanted about $200 per link. So if you are happy with the links you get for $100 each, it's probably best to stick with them. Can you share the name of your current source?

$10 a link from some mysterious overseas agency sounds way too dangerous. Besides, the SEO value of one great link will probably easily be 10x that of some crappy link....

Or you could just use your htaccess file to 301 redirect their broken link to whatever page on your site you want it to go to.

Couple of things...

1. You service is focused on Grand Rapids, but no where on your home page do the words "Grand Rapids" appear. You need to use the phrases and the locations you want to rank for. Get something like "Home Care in Grand Rapids" as an h1 way up near the top of the page. Then sprinkle appropriate words like "Grand Rapids, Michigan" at least 4 times through the rest of the home page.

2. If your site is brand new, it may not rank organically on Google for quite awhile. Last I heard, Google had a 1 year "sandbox" that most new sites were stuck in. The sandbox is there to make sure you are a serious site that is going to stick around. Supposedly it is VERY HARD to rank organically above page three while you are in the sandbox. During that period you can use PPC and social media to drive visitors to your site.

When I first went to your site I thought it was about Langley, VA (where the CIA is)

You should add "BC" and "Canada" to your title, description, and page text. Maybe Google is just confused about what city your site is about?

Also your first h1 tag is really messed up. It's a handful of links, images, and text. I think it should just be the important text. After that you have more h1 tags, and for some reason they are capitalized as H1. You should only have one h1 that is just text.

You also have a whole bunch of H2's (capitalized) that are just vague section names. One or two h2's that directly relate to your site's purpose would be much better.

All your html code should really be lower case letters (I think).

Have you done all the "local SEO" stuff to tell Google that your site is only about Langley BC?