Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I agree with Lynn, 3-4 weeks is nothing and in those weeks Google can often change your position in the SERPs. If you still haven't seen anything in a couple of months then something may be wrong. Start working on your local brand awareness in the first stages of your strategy, then start to monitor local versions of your keyword (service in X), they are the most likely keywords to rank first.

http://www.advancedwebranking.com is the tool we use. It is free for 30 days for you to trial it.

If you have got a large website with 100's or 1000's of pages then you can prioritise which pages Google should see first in your XML sitemap. Your HTML should sit in the footer of your website and is important to have because it should increase the speed at which Google sees all your pages on the website. I always recommend having both XML and HTML

Thanks Shane,

The website is hosted by an external agency but we are going to be hosting it on our server. Do I give the agency my IP address or is there something specific I need to ask them to do?

Hi Mozzers, happy friday!

I'm moving a new clients website from a really bad CMS to Wordpress and wondered what I need to do to do this, get the A record of the old programmers? If someone could do me a checklist that'd be great!

Thanks!

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.

Thanks Phil, I've used join.me in the past when trying to show clients reports etc so I'll give that a go.

Why not spend your time and money on improving your own listings and content rather bidding on competitors names? The CTR is going to poor whatever you do because it isn't really what the customer is looking for.

I've had the same issue with a few pages of a clients' website. I've also heard that it may be the title that is used in DMOZ.

Have you tried to spell it with "ae" rather than with the umlaut? So it will read Schallpegelmessgeraet. Not sure if Google Germany can read umlauts and I'm guessing with the problems you are having, they may not be able to.

Personally, a stay as far away as possible from it. Use your money on activities that are going to actually drive traffic. If the website has been penalised then there will be no benefit to get from the links, and I imagine those links are going to be very spammy.

Hi Mozzers,

Wanted to pick your brains on something...we are going to give all our clients an update on the industry and want to invite them all to a webinar. Although I've done a few before, I've never set one up and wondered if anyone had any advice on what platform to use etc?

Any recommendations would be brilliant!

Thanks in advance,

Karl

Ok, ok, I get it, you think its a rubbish idea!

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?

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?

Hi Connor,

I agree with Martin, I wouldn't say your website is over optimised but the content at the bottom is a little bit spammy. Was it just the homepage rankings that fell or is it a site-wide issue?

I've never seen this happen before, is this something that you've experienced in the past Jonathan? Seems very odd!

Hi Matthew, welcome to Moz!!

Have you done a Google Places listing for the website yet? If not, then this would increase your visibility for "electricians grimsby". I'd look at expanding your keywords as well, you could go for "electricians in yorkshire" too.

Find some local directories as well, this is the reason they exist. Just did a quick search and found this one www.localelectrician.co.uk. If you are going to submit to directories, just make sure that the page the link is going on has been cached recently or it won't be worth it.

I think it would be worth adding the "priority" attribute in your XML sitemap. That way you can tell Google which pages you want to be crawled as priority. Remember, Webmaster Tools is not a live update of what Google sees, in some instances, it can be a couple of weeks behind.

Just looked to see if **http://inlinear.com/design/ **was cached and it was cached today about 5 hours ago.

I'd agree with Matt, it has to be other keywords that you are not tracking that must be struggling. What about seasonality? When you compare year-on-year, is the decline the same or out of sequence?