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Hi Mozzers,

Just a quick thought...I've been a member of the Moz community for a while now and have asked and answered many questions. The time that so many people spend to help others in the community is very honourable and think they deserve a mention! I was wondering whether it would be possible/ deem it a good idea to have a "Mozzer of the Month" award for someone who really has helped a fellow Mozzer out? There could be a section where you nominate someone for the award and think it'll be quite a nice way of saying thanks when someone has really helped you out of a tricky situation.

Anyway, just a thought, what do you all think?

Totally agree with Devanur here...there is no need for any site-wide link. If there is a link between the two websites then I wouldn't take them off but i would no-follow the link.

Hi Ali, your link building tactics have got you the penalty, I'm surprised you didn't see this drop at the end of May when Penguin 2.0 was released. You need to act quickly and get rid of all those types of links that you have created and start to focus on non-automated techniques. Start to create content that your users and customers will find useful then look at influencers in the industry to share it with, that is your first port of call.

It is vital that you get rid of all those links (article, directory, blog commenting) because they are very spammy techniques.

Hi John,

If they were doing articles and promoting them then this is why your website has been hit. Article websites took a major hit in the update prior to Christmas and the Penguin 2.0 update last night has more than likely reaffirmed any penalty you were going to receive unfortunately. Do a backlink analysis in OSE and find all the article websites with links on and get them taken   down (if you can, obviously if you have login details then this will be easier). If you can't then use the disavow tool.

Don't forget that any onsite changes that you make, you will have to wait for Google to come back and cache the website before you see any effect. Concentrate on creating great content and look to create relationships with those in your industry and concentrate on your outreach. 5 links on relevant, topical blogs are worth a million times more than 10000 links on article websites.

Hi Lily,

I think the first thing you need to do is a full back link analysis because it sounds as though you may have been hit a little with the Penguin/Panda updates. Have a look through your links and be really strict about the ones that you know are quality and get rid/disavow the others. That will give you a good starting block.

The next thing is, what are you going to do with this fresh content that you are producing? You need to find websites where it will add value, it doesn't necessarily have to be about the ping test but it adds to your credibility in the industry. Make sure you have your Google +1 account setup. There has been a lot of talk about it recently with Moz directors getting a bit of negative comments from Matt Cutts but it will definitely help to have a G+1 account up and running.

Hi Jonathan,

Have you looked at the links to the page you want to rank compared to the links to the other 2 pages? it may be that the other 2 pages just have better quality links to them. If that is the case then get in touch with the webmasters and ask them to change the link.

Alternatively, if you have been building heavily to the page you want to rank, the page may have received a penalty from Google (not accusing you of doing so by the way, just a possibility!). As Mark said, if you can supply us with the URL of the 3 pages then we can have a look into it for you.

Just to add...it is really important that you match your new urls with your old ones so that you aren't just redirecting every page on the old website to the home page of the new one. I use Xenu to find all the old URL's and then match them to the new urls. That way all the link juice will be passed to the new pages.

Vary the anchor text that you use, this includes the 3 names you mentioned and the URL of the website as well. Just keep in mind that Google wants your backlink profile to be "natural" so if the company is called NLCPA then use that as an anchor text as well.

Whatever you do, DO NOT PAY FOR LINKS!!!! If the content you have to offer is quality then they will be willing to take it. Don't just guest post for the sake of links though, if links is why you are doing it then you're wasting your time because Penguin 2.0 was released to stop people doing exactly that!

Concentrate on writing compelling and interesting copy in your website and reach out to people using it as a way of getting people to visit your website where you can then sell your products and services. If you find a website that looks good, see what kind of stats they have. If they openly say what kind of visits they get then that's good, how often to they post, look at the cache date of the website and look at the quality of the posts.

A good place to start is to look at where your competitors have links on, especially nowadays with the changes, those ranking at the top are sure to have some good links.

What content is going to be duplicated? The reviews?

The best way would be to add a canonical tag to the website. You need to identify the main page the content is going to be on then add the canonical tag. For example, If you have 4 pages with similar content then pick the page that has more authority and canonicalise the others to that page.

Here's more info on the canonical tag https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

HI Susan,

First of all, I think this is something that many of us can be empathetic with because we all face the same issues with the on-going changes.

1 problem that you may be having, and possibly why you are struggling with rankings is because you have an EMD (exact match domain). EMD's have come under a lot of scrutiny in recent months and the fact that your URL is a keyword might be hindering you slightly here. When you look at the distribution of anchor text in your back link profile, Christmas Gifts (understandably in your case) is the most used, but Google may see this as keyword anchor text rather than a branded anchor text. I think you need to start using the URL more as the anchor text.

Looking at your backlinks as well, there does seem to a few low quality links in there. Have you done a full research of your back links, this may help identify which ones you need to omit. Remember that if you have paid for any, you should have no-followed the links. Be honest here because Google is looking for paid links that are not no-followed, this includes press releases now.

Did you get a message on Webmaster tools about spammy links or an unnatural linking profile? Where was the site ranking before Penguin 2.0 was released?

I'd usually say redirect it to a category page (zip code or city) straight away but from a users point of view it may not be the best thing to do. Maybe leave the page up with a sold sign and then have a "you may also like" section underneath so they know the house is gone but there are some other options, probably the best for UX. After a few weeks, I'd then 301 it to a category page.

Google often puts new websites high up at first and then your rankings will fluctuate whilst it figures out where to place you. You should start to see some stability soon then you can put a long term strategy together.

Start to build some high quality, relevant links back to your website and this should help you stabilise your rankings.

I agree with the previous comments and be aware that if your competitors are building dodgy links, there is a good chance that they will get a penalty in the near future! Keep the faith with natural links and you will reap the benefits in the long term. Remember, SEO is a long term strategy so compare your stats each month and make sure you are seeing an improvement...if you are seeing an increase then keep it going, don't worry too much about those above you because there isn't much you can do about them.

I'd create a page for the top cities that you feel are important however don't just create pages just to target local search terms. If each course in each city is slightly different and you can tailor your content to match each city then it would be worth doing.

What I'd do is concentrate on building to the generics versions of the keyword and you should see the localised versions appearing in the SERPS.

The first thing to consider is what type of penalty the website got hit by, if it was Penguin and 99.9% links built were spam then you can leave all your links and just take the content. If it was Panda then you can't even take your content and place it on the new/old website because you'd still get found. If it was both then don't even bother redirecting anything!

I'd question the importance of the website to any business if it wasn't worth spending time on finding ALL the spam links and fixing the penalty. The reconsideration request can take a while, you may have to submit 3 or 4 requests before it gets lifted. I know this can take a considerable amount of time, effort and money but it's got to be worth it to get the business back on the right footing. Put yourself in Google's shoes, they deal with these requests every day and have got a back log so if they see ONE link that looks spammy, then they aren't going to lift the penalty. Someone is going to have to sit down and look at your link profile manually!

If the www.websitename.com has bad links and poor content, then why 301 it? I know you are doing it for the customers but you could just put a banner on the homepage saying you've moved to www.website-name.com.

A canonical tag tells Google that you are aware of the duplicate content that exists on your website and you are telling Google which page to count as the authority. Pages with a canonical tag WILL be indexed.

Websites with duplicate content can, have and will be penalised by Google, that is what Panda is all about. The canonical tag does fix this in the majority of times but if there is a way of removing any duplicate content then this is advisable.

Whilst over-optimisation is an issue, it is more about the quality of the websites you are getting links from than the anchor text used. You could have a brand link and if it's a poor quality website, you are going to get penalised. If you haven't disavowed any links, I'd make sure that 90% of them were disavowed.

You've also got duplicate content on your website so I'd say you've been hit by a Panda refresh as well as Penguin. Type in "To assist clients in getting value from their businesses, we provide Business Critical Software and IT services within various industry verticals." to Google and you will see 4 different versions of your content.

You need to do a full backlink analysis ASAP and be ruthless in the ones you get rid of, if you wouldn't show the link to Google then it's bad. Use the disavow tool in Webmaster Tools then file a reconsideration request to Google with details of what you have done and why there were so many bad links.

It's a long road to take but if you want the website to come back into the SERP's then you are going to have to do this.

Good luck!

page authority and domain authority are a good measure of how good a website is (but not the only measure!). Think about where your post and link are going to be in the long term. For example, if you are guest posting, the post may be on the home page for a week or 2 but then it will be archived so you need to look the inner pages of a website and look at the authority of that page.

If a website has a much higher page authority than domain authority then it's a sign to me that it isn't that good. It'd be much better to have a higher domain authority than page authority because it will show that the website has been up and running for a while.

Also look at the last time Google cached the website and the inner pages, that way you will see how often Google revisits the website and the chances of your link getting cached. Look at some popular websites and look at the domain vs page authority scores, the home page maybe slightly bigger but not that much.

Hope that helps!

Unfortunately this is a problem that many people have. Sometimes the best thing to do is to simply rewrite your content. I know it seems the wrong thing to do because why should you have to rewrite yours but its often the easiest thing to do. The websites with your content on will be getting penalised for copying yours not the other way around as Google will realise that your website is the authority on this.

However, you can visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?pli=1 and file a DMCA complaint to Google. Also, have a read through this post http://blog.kissmetrics.com/keep-content-thieves-away/ as well, if you haven't already sorted out your rel=author tags then this will help you.

Good luck!