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Interesting. No, I haven't had this problem that I've noticed. I'm curious though and I dig the concept. It sounds like a great movie pitch:
"In a world where everything was deemed spam, one woman sets out to find a decent book to read. She quickly finds out the unsettling truth... GOOGLE'S BROKEN"
post-apocalyptic movies are all the rage right now..
Seriously though, can you provide an example of a term you searched and what it gave you that you didn't want?
I'd be more worried about the second part of your question. If there are thousands of links coming from one domain, you could be in trouble. Try to scale this number down into double digits if you can...
The domain itself.. that's weird and I would want to fix it for branding issues (I'm assuming you are expecting traffic via this link, right?) so people should know where they are going and not be shocked when they get somewhere else. This is more of a reputation/marketing/branding issue than an SEO issue, but SEO is marketing anyway. RIGHT?!
I'm the wrong guy to ask there. Our conversions are next to impossible to track as we are a SaaS service and our clients go through so many different places before they become paid users.
cough cough us MozCon attendees already have it cough cough
That said, I don't believe they announced a release date for the rest of subscribers. It's purdy, but the newest/greatest tools aren't available yet. Most of the tools are the same, laid out differently with prettier analytics and charts/graphs.
Pipe symbols don't hurt, the suck up one character spot as any other symbol. Just make sure your title tags are readable and enticing to the potential viewer. In other words.. make it seem to me like "this is the page I want to visit to learn more about sourcing coffee from Ethiopa." So maybe it should read more naturally like "Klatch Coffee Blog: Our Ethiopian Sourcing Trip"
That's what I would do. Not only does that save characters, but it reads more like a Title. Make sense?
I can't imagine adding a video to your SERP affected your positioning. That wouldn't make any sense. If it affected your CTR.. that's another story. Don't know why it would hurt but it absolutely could based on target audience/user confusion.
This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately... I feel like when people see a video link next to a SERP they assume it's some youtube thing they want nothing to do with. (again depends on the target audience).. This is too new of an option for people and it worries me.
I'm not sure how to accelerate this. I'm assuming you've updated your sitemap.. wait you said you did huh. shoot. Uhh.. I don't know. Seems like Wistia could help you.
Still your CTR might also have been affected by the fact that your ranking fell. Which again I contend was merely coincidental with the video placement in your SERP. In other words, the best thing you can do is continue creating content and promoting your site in order to build organic relevant links and boost your rankings. Dropping 1-2 spots is nothing more than a fluctuation that will occur when competition is beating your SEO tactics... (usually.)
Sorry if this was no help. Good luck!
Well I'm battling with this currently; The root of the problem is I'm not sure how it works either way. I'm not really a developer by heart and this is new to me.
Following distilled's flow-chart I ended up with "build a separate mobile," primarily because I want users to convert differently via the mobile site than the other. Also, our primary site is PACKED with text and content and I want to display a much simplified version of this on the mobile. Whereas some of our primary pages have 14 paragraphs on the desktop version, I want 2-3 max on the mobile.
In other words, the messaging will be simplified, streamlined, and targeting a separate conversion. Mobile users don't want to read all that crap, but I will have links to the "full site" on the bottom of each page if it turns out they need more info. Basically I'm assuming the mobile users know what they're looking for and are coming for quick info/conversions/support help.
(the support pages can be responsive I suppose...)
I don't know. Based on what I'm saying, what do you think?
I appreciate the thoughts everybody, as always.
Honestly, just list out the domains in an Excel file (or google doc) and make separate columns:
One column should read "Contacted" and another should read "Link Removed."
**note: The domain list should come from multiple sources, not just the GWT list. It is incomplete and untrustworthy. Use Open Site Explorers list and maybe even Majestic/ahref or all of the above. Remove duplicates and sort your list and it should be pretty obvious which are the spam links based on anchor text and domain URLs.
Put x's in boxes accordingly.
Then just go ahead and take all of the screenshots of email contacts you have and put them in a folder, zip it up, and attach it to the email.
That's what I would do. Like I said, the more info you can include the better. As much tracking and data as you can possibly overwhelm them with. They may not look through all of it, but it will definitely indicate to them that you have figured out the problem and worked really hard to fix it.
Please keep us posted on how this works. As you may be able to tell this is something I work on often and am very interested in the process and how it works out. I and the whole community would be incredibly pleased if you were able to keep us informed as to how it turned out.
Good luck!
Don't love it, honestly. You need to re-work this. And put a ton more documentation into it.
I'd leave out everything about SEOmoz. They don't care where you learned what you learned. All you need to do is explain that you understand how purchasing link packages is wrong and a terrible idea and that you are interested in removing all unnatural/spam links from your profile. Then go into how you determined which were spam links and what you tried to remove.
This is where you want to attach screenshots and excel spreadsheets showing what links/who you contacted and how many times. You need to provide as much data showing you did as much work as possible. Giving a blanket number just simply isn't enough.
Now beyond this, don't big. Be authoritative. Man up. Realize that you are talking to a webspam team who does not feel sorry for you. So talk to them like you're trying to get a job with them. Be cordial, formal, polite and mature. And don't ask them to "point out some other bad links" for you. They want to know that YOU KNOW what a bad link is, ensuring that this won't happen again. ---THIS LAST SENTENCE IS VERY IMPORTANT and should be the underlying theme of your entire email.
Sorry if I'm coming off harsh, I just want to help. There are a ton of blogs about this.. I suggest checking them out. You can search through YouMoz for helpful posts about this.
Hope this helps... good luck!
Few things going on here.
I agree with kyle that the user experience is poor due to those ads and that will absolutely hurt things. Slow load times are a huge problem as well.
Beyond that, your link profile needs some work. It's quite skewed. There are 22,000 links coming from 25 domains. That's a huge disparity that really shouldn't happen. Also, as far as anchor text goes I notice a huge number of links pointing at sports news and <a class="clickable title link-pivot" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text." data-text="športové novinky" data-id="39055838023">športové novinky (which I'm assuming is sports news)</a> <a class="clickable title link-pivot" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text." data-text="športové novinky" data-id="39055838023"></a>
This could be a potentially bad thing.. even though they're only coming from a couple domains. But you really want to make sure your anchor text is branded and not forced with keywords at all times. A few here and there is good, nay great, but all of them being targeted keywords is begging for a Penguin penalty.
Have you received any unnatural link warnings in GWT? Definitely check if you haven't..
And then check out all of your on-page reports here at Moz. There are a ton of onsite things that I'm sure could be done to this site and the Pro Tools here will help you discover what the big ones are for you.
Most of all.. you just need to build some high-quality content and become an authority on all thinks sports news all the while gaining relevant backlinks organically.
Can you expand on that last notion?
I understand that I don't want to cram a full site's worth of info onto one mobile design.. My idea is to have a scaled back simplified version of our site with the most popular content covered as well as the blog feed updated and currently pulled from the live site.
What else am I missing?
Thanks to everybody so far you've all been incredibly helpful.
this community
So I was looking at this as it was the top organic google result and got worried when I saw the limitations of a "free" account. It seems to host on a monthly basis and I don't really love that concept. I want to be able to host the site on our own servers in-house. The company is a SaaS company so our login pages will need to be embedded and there are security issues when operating outside of our own servers...
*(I'm already going to have to talk with engineers about the mobile implementation and I just know they'd freak if I told them we were hosting offsite.)
Still I love the simplicity of the formatting and already saw a template I would want to use here... Anybody know of a tool like this I can purchase one-time and host the files on my own server?
I did look at that first link briefly and didn't really love the templates they were giving me. Looked pretty cheesy but perhaps there was a way to customize this and I just didn't dig deep enough. Still, the howtogomo link is awesome and I will definitely be bookmarking/referring to this site as I go.
Thanks!
Moz only updates campaigns once a week. This usually happens on a Monday, but chances are your campaign has not been updated yet. It should tell you on all of these pages when exactly the last update was done so you can confirm, but I'm sure this is your issue..
You'll get an email notification when your campaign has been updated and is ready for you to view as well.
I've been tasked with re-building our company's mobile site and honestly have zero experience doing so. I know my way around HTML pretty well and have built several websites but never for mobile.
Does anybody have any recommendations for me as far as tools to use to construct a proper mobile site? I basically want a simple page with four buttons on the front and a little drop down menu in the top corner. (not that this matters terribly but just saying, shouldn't need to be overly complicated.)
Thanks in advance!
Oh my.. Perfect! What you need to do is create a blog!
There's no reason you can't have a blog. I don't care if you sell kitty litter, toiletries, or butcher tools. Everything is blog-worthy. Become the source on why your product is useful. What new products just came out. Why your store is the best resource to get them from. And what exactly you can do with this product. Tie all of these together and you've got yourself a ton of link building opportunities.
And yes, host your infographic on your domain and spread them out to places like visual.ly and other infographic sites.
Why do you need the link pointed to your homepage? What difference does that make? The link juice passes to your domain no matter what directory/page/image internally it's pointed at. And the brand is then furthered. Drop your URL in the description or small at the very bottom of the infographic if you'd like and you might get some direct referrals.. But really as a link-building/SEO tactic the exact route of your linked content doesn't need to be all to your home page.
As EGOL said, Build an info site with a store! DO THAT!! You will succeed.
THIS is inbound marketing in 2013.
If you have the content, the links will become easier to find. Yes it's a daunting task going up against the likes of what you're suggesting, but you'd be surprised. Sites with thousands of links like that don't always win on sheer numbers alone. In fact, sometimes those numbers hurt them. It all depends where those links are coming from of course... but I digress.
The interviews are a great idea, keep that up. Maybe you can publish a survey and offer a nifty prize, then at the end of the survey post your findings. Keep it relevant to your niche and people will be interested in your charts/graphs/stats. This could gain you a whole bevy of links.
At MozCon Wil Reynolds talked about creating one infographic that changed his life. It was shared all over the stinkin' place and picked up by all sorts of media. All it takes is a hit like this and you'll be off and running quicker than you realized was possible.
Good thread. This is what we are all striving to do.. (Or at least what we SHOULD all be striving to do. There are some who are still unsure what it means to be an SEO/inbound marketer in this day and age.)
You're on the right track, undoubtedly. Good luck to you/us!
Have you seen any signs of algorithmic penalties or SERP fluctuation? If not... forget it. Yes I would ask to have it removed if it's a garbage link from an irrelevant site. But I would avoid the disavow tool and use it as a last result. I don't trust that tool as much as others seem to... You can usually do well without it too. If you start getting manual penalty warnings and your SERPs are dropping without any response from the webmasters... then it might be time to break out the disavow.
Whatever you do, DOCUMENT it! All emails, contacts, discoveries.. keep these documented in a separate folder in case you ever have to submit a re-inclusion request to Google.
That's all I can really say.