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Yikes. So this happened recently? Say, right around 5/22 ish?

If so, my conclusion has to be a Penguin hit. Have you received any messages in GWMT?

I'm not sure why you'd be Penguined. I just took a peek at your backlink profile and it looks pretty solid. You have a high PR and a decent DA. Although I'm surprised your DA isn't higher with a PR of 5. I see sites with a DA of 49 and PR of 2 all the time... This is confusing to me.

I'm sorry I don't know what to say but I'm curious. Please keep us posted on your findings if it is Penguin related. It would mean there is some other factor that I have yet to consider going into this algorithm..

Hmmm... glancing briefly at your link profile I'm not sure I could classify this as a Penguin Penalty. Especially with the SERPs dropping back in April. I understand it got worse post-penguin but still... Your link profile isn't too deep and you don't have thousands of weird bizarro-links coming in. Relevant blog commenting and social media will definitely not affect your site negatively.

There's a chance you just need to pick up your SEO efforts. Maybe the algo updates bumped up other sites that have been gaining more links than you recently or something of the sort. I'm not sure but I feel like you just need to get back on top of your link building efforts in a truly white-hat fashion and see what happens.

Sorry I'm not sure I'm being very helpful here.

I couldn't agree more with the link color. I brought this up in another thread and dude told me I'd get used to it.

...no, I don't think I will honestly. I hate the light blue on white theme. Can't understand why that seems like a good idea anyway. It's even lighter than the header color.... Why?

Ugh. Glad you cleared it up. Your demeanor comes off a bit cross, however. "please dont say obvious stuff." --? What does that even mean? I was asking what you meant in my original post. I'm still unsure as to where I am right now.

In any case, the answer to your question is: No, it's pointless. Delete it and move on.

I doubt it hurts (maybe could be considered cloaking but most likely not, right?) but it certainly doesn't help so why have it?

Stick to your title tag and get on with it. There's a reason web developers and SEO minds alike are forgetting this meta tag even exists.

In the future, if we don't know what tag you are talking about we will probably just ask for clarity like I did here this time. The best way to avoid that is to make it clear. A lot of people mistakenly refer to the Title tag as the META TITLE so it can get confusing. Thanks and good luck!

Cyrus has you covered here. I'd say you got Penguined and the fact that it coincided with your posting here was coincidental at best.

Just to further clarify, posting links on the moz q forum does nothing as they are all automatically given a nofollow tag.

Sorry to hear about your troubles. Contact that SEO who did the poor quality link building and see if you can get login names and passwords to remove those articles.

whoa! Now I feel silly. You just blew my mind and made my day. Am I the only one who didn't see all those sorting methods?!

Sheesh. Sorry folks, nothing to see here.

You guys, where am I?

Where am I right now you guys?

The title tag is quite possibly the single most useful piece of on-page optimization you can do... Am I misunderstanding this question?

Right on. So long as we are looking at changes, I'd like to add one more note --

I really don't like how the topics move on this forum. This particular functionality existed the same way on the previous forum, but I was hoping it would change. What I mean is the way it determines which topics get bumped up.

Currently the forum bumps up the newest topic to the top and that's it, that's all. If you go back and add something interesting to a previous thread, said thread stays on whatever page it is in history. It does not get bumped up or indicate to the masses that "HEY THERE'S SOMETHING NEW HERE."

This I feel causes confusion and limits follow-through. I think if adding a new response to a topic bumped it up to the top we would not only see less topics but would have a better understanding and interaction therein.

That's the way 99% of forums on the internets work (and there must be a reason, right?)

Thanks for letting me provide my input. I hope you see this topic, as my posting this response will not cause it to bump and it will stay hidden on page 2 or 3 or wherever it happens to reside currently.

Hi Sida,

I think I am understanding what you are saying now. You seem to be concerned with whether or not the domain you are seeking links from has itself been hit by Penguin. Well honestly the only way to do this is to identify their keywords and know what their ranking was prior.. Maybe look at PR or DA but you'd have to compare that to past numbers.. Really it's pretty dang hard to do.

I'm not sure there's any reason to, either. Penguin penalties do not pass through domains. Meaning if you have a link from blackhat.com and it was penalized, that penalty does not transfer. The link itself may lose value, or "juice," but by no means does this penalize you instantly. Now, if you have a bunch of links coming from penalized sites, chances are you might be penalized too one day or the algo will catch up with you. Otherwise I wouldn't worry.

Gaining links from directories and forums is tedious work and ineffective at best. The only reason I would ever do it (other than maybe an occassional dmoz or relevant directory for funzies) is to actually provide a relevant link for readers. For example, if I am marketing a bicycle repair shop and am posting links from a country music forum under a topic regarding the best new music of 2013.. that's wrong and I shouldn't be doing that.

However, if I am sitting around on a Schwinn-Lovers forum and they are discussing the proper gears needed to best operate their bike, and I just so happen to have written a blog describing how mine is the best and why.. then BAM! I've found a great place to link to and it is relevant to the reader. Now I am posting this link not as a method of building my link profile, but as a way to promote my business first. Yes, I'm very happy to have gained that relevant link which helps my SEO efforts, but this was a marketing effort first and foremost.

Marketing is SEO is Marketing but it's Marketing first. This is the future and it is now. This is also why SEOmoz dropped the SEO.

Voila

I have one gripe -

I miss being able to see which of my responses got thumbed up. Now under my responses it only shows if the topic itself got thumbed up... It's nit-picky but I always liked seeing that on a grand scale where my better answers lie

No way. Not at all. Not only that, but it would definitely get you less clicks even if you did get better rankings.

Always remember: Your page's title is the thing your potential customer/user/client will be clicking on to first visit your page. This is a very important point of first contact in the digital marketing world. Think about the way you search and what gets you to click on links from Google. I bet it's somewhere around 95% based on the title present.

If you were Googling "Xbox One Games" and saw:

• Xbox+One+Games+Review+PS4+Games
• Xbox One Games Reviewed and Uncovered

Which one would you click?

Well alrighty here we are. This forum is hurting my eyes and I miss the old one. I've yet to explore otherwise and obviously am not one of the lucky moz-beta testers but when I arrived to this forum I was forced to borrow a phrase from the lovable Jar Jar Binks.

EEE GADS

Hmm... How to decipher this post..

Well, first off let me just say that the types of links you are describing are definitely what Penguin is targeting. Those are spam links (I'm assuming they aren't relevant) and are in violation of Google's Policies. So yes, I'd say they are "Penguin." Oof that was hard to type.

If what you are wondering is how to find out if you have been penalized or not, you should be able to tell. Between your Google Analytics account and your top keyword ranking changes (found either through moz tools or on your own) you will definitely notice a huge drop indicating that you've been hit by the little furry black and white devil.

Hope this helps a little. The new Moz forum is throwing me off.. CHANGE@!

Well I certainly don't consider hype a four-letter word, first off. Hype is just a clever form of marketing and something that we should all love and embrace. ESPECIALLY in the digital/social marketing world.

As per my expectations... Well I hadn't really thought of it. What I think it is and what I wish existed are definitely two different things, as you've mentioned here.

WISHES:

What I wish is for a more complete backlink profiler a la ahrefs.com. If their backlink discovery tool was paired with the Moz Pro toolset my brain would burst with bubbly joy.

If I were designing Moz Tools I'd consider adding in some sort of functionality that tracks my link building efforts for me. i.e. who I'm contacting, who I'd like to contact, what websites I found interesting and relevant to my campaigns, etc. For example, a pinterest type button embedded in my browser that would allow me to pin a site/blog/whatever to my campaign for my later perusal. Then I could go back and grab one of my form requests, edit it to meet the needs of the specific webmaster or blog owner, and fire it off. I have burnt through far too many journals with notes scattered across my desk and there HAS to be a better way!

...I feel like I'm giving too much away. I have more ideas! I'll save them for the interview one day. As a friend of Joanna Lord's and a Seattle area resident I often have had dreams of joining the Moz crew. Of course I'm happy where I am currently, but perhaps one day I will come a-knockin' ...

WHAT I THINK IT IS:

I honestly don't know. Maybe a robust campaign tracking tool with new graphs and purdy methods of displaying search data. Better integration with GA and GWMT perhaps? Tracking penalties, identifying which algo update may have caused a site's traffic to decrease... Suggestions.. hmm I don't know.

This is fun though I'm excited for tomorrow now.

I would be surprised if your internal anchor phrases knocked you out of the SERPs entirely.

Have you received a message in Google's Webmaster Tools?

HA! Mike, you won the daily internet. Bravo.

Yes, Christy, I signed up long ago. As I said, I am a huge sucker for hype.

Well, skipping ahead to the "what to do now?" question, I'd say you are correct in that there is nothing to do but wait. If it was a manual penalty, you would have a notice in your Webmaster Tools indicating it as such.

If it is algorithmic (and it sure sounds like it is from what you've described) then all you can do is wait. This process can take anywhere from a week to 2 months and seems to be a bit of a crap shoot. I will say, from my experience I've seen these types of fixes get resolved in more the 2-3 week range but have heard of it taking longer. A singing telegram might be nice but I think Matt would most likely just cross his arms and give off a simple fake smile, thank them and close the door.

This is oddly symbolic to the way the Google Webspam Team punks us SEO guys on the reg.

Okay so I've seen a lot of talk about this and haven't really had time to look too far into it. I am a sucker for a hype-train, especially when it comes to a brand/product/service I love.

So Rand is reminding us all this morning of the new moz coming tomorrow. What the heck is it?

Redesign? New Tools/Functionality? Just a purdy face-lift? Is it a separate service from Moz Pro?

What?

Am I the only one who finds OSE anchor text report to be a bit... lacking? I mean.. compared to ahrefs.com anyway?

Why does ahrefs so handily win this battle? I don't want to have to convince my boss to buy me an ahrefs membership so I'd like an excuse not to.