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Every other tool i demo (SERPs, Raven, WebPosition, etc), their ranking results just don't match up to what SEOMoz displays? How can so many companies serve up different results?

I want to start off with stating that i am truly an advocate of SEOMoz and the great stuff they have done for the inbound community that we all know and love. I've been an active member since July 2010 and a paying pro member since December 2010. The software has always been monumental in helping my clients achieve their goals.

However, in the past few months i have received nothing short of buggy unreliable software. The keyword difficulty tool never returns difficulty results. The Adwords data has been gone since i can remember. The rank tracker tool is successfull close to 1 out of 5 times. OSE is updated terribly slow compared to competitors. Plus, I have had to write emails to get my campaigns to be manually refreshed to see new ranking data. I have simply missed deadlines because my data is always delayed or missing from the software. Am i an anomaly here? does anyone have these problems?

I have been researching some new tools as a replacement but i have yet to find anything as robust as the old SEOMoz. I'd love some feedback.

Cheers - Kyle

That's really neat - I saw it and was pretty blown away. Some times the big guys at Google make some stupid moves but this was definitely a beneficial one toward end users.

Okay, anyone else notice the resent UI launch in the Google SERPs? I was planning a trip to visit a friend in Dayton, Ohio and used the query "things to do in dayton oh" and i got a really neat points of interest bar and city stats.

Anyone notice anything else neat with the UI change? Seems like some good stuff for local possibly.

example-serp.png

What search engines did they drop in?

Did you make any updates to the site at the time of the drop?

Unless you received a link spam notifications in your Google Webmasters tool i would highly suggest NOT submitting a reconsideration request. Do your homework first.

• Did the drop in rankings happen across all search engines or just Google?
• Are the pages completely removed from the indexes or just ranking out of the top 50?
• You mentioned you recently implemented a redirect. What is the new URL? How did you implement it?
• If you have your site added to a campaign in the pro tool. Navigate to Link Analysis > History. Is there any weird trends in your DA or your external link count? Any huge increases?
• Also check OSE. Enter your domain and click the "anchor text" tab. Then filter by "all pages on this root domain. Any with extremely high volume? Are you branded terms lower than non-branded?

Run through those five steps and you will have a LOT better idea of what is going on with your link profile instead of simply submitting a request that will take a long while to hear back from.

Cheers - Kyle

I may need a little more information to answer completely but my short response is this.

• 301 redirect if you would like both search engines and end users to be transfered to the new page
• Rel con if you would like end users to stay and search engines to be transfered to the new page

What is the reason for the update? Solely for SEO purposes or migrating to a new site?

Cheers - Kyle

Adam just gave you two great resources.

Also as a disclaimer in no way does the use of SEOMoz's tools make your site rank better in search engines. These tools were created to give you reports to tell you if you site is ranking and the reasons why you are there. Then the blog, webinars, WBF, etc are created to give you strategies and tactics to increase your rankings.

What do you mean by having flash video SEO friendly? By its nature video isn't indexable because there is no text or content for the search engine spiders to crawl. Can you give more details on what you are doing so we can give more feedback?

Do you have any examples of indexed videos?

Cheers - Kyle

Jenny, here is a full list of post were rand and other SEOMoz associates talk about the updates to the mozscape index (which powers OSE and the pro tools):

http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=mozscape+update%3A

In regards to your question of what is mozscape here is another great resource:

http://www.seomoz.org/help/what-is-mozscape

In regards to your last question, it sounds like it was a blend of you losing some links and the mozscape fluctuations. Always take OSE data with a grain of salt, that information is simply to give you insight to trends in your link profile. Did your domain authority drop or stay the same during the changes?

• Kyle

Keep in mind if you are pulling these stats from OSE or the pro tool that the amount of domains and URLs differ each time they update the mozscape index. So the total amounts may change depending on the variations from those two months.

Have you noticed this change with your competitors sites as well or is it specific to only our site?

Have you tried submitting a new XML sitemap in Google Webmaster tools?

They are able to index elements in flash that are using "dynamic text" rather than "static text". This is very similar to an unflattened PDF vs a flattened PDF.

http://oreilly.com/flash/excerpts/seo-for-flash/creating-optimized-flash.html

However, in no way would i suggest using flash for an entire website it is not only bad for search usability but for usability as well. Just think of all the mobile audiences that you are ignoring

Cheers - Kyle

I started with guest blogging. It worked great to get some nice targeted back links but also kept you in the practice of writing. Another not well known trick that i found is that scribd.com still offers followed backlinks if your documents reach a certain number of views.

Cheers - Kyle

"To get them going, I would do the research and come up with ideas and topic summaries for them to then write from. "

Chris i really like this idea! I have always done this kind of backwards. They would be writing articles then i would assist in targeting them and then run outreach. Perhaps i'll try this to keep showing my value.

Thanks!

Oh the troubles of agency side SEO... i wish i could transfer to in house

These are some great tips! I know you cannot share your internal documents but just to pick your brain a bit more, what are somethings you commonly include?

I normally try to keep to this structure (along with ranks/traffic/conversions):

• What i planned to do this month
• What i actually did this month
• What i plan to do next month

With all my other clients it worked great but with this client it just keep on building up to what i planned to do and the actual trickled off since we could never get anything published?

Hey Mozzers,

Recently i have been working with some larger corporations and i have quickly found that publish new content is a nightmare. Whether re-writing current content to be more targeted or getting brand new content published on their blog it goes through an insane approval process something like this:

• Approval from Marketing Manager (main point of contact)
• Revisions
• Approval from Legal/Quality Control
• Revisions
• Approval from someone on the C team (CEO or CMO)
• Revisions
• Depending on content, translation for other language sites
• Then go live

With this crazy process i have barely gotten 5-10 pages of content approved and live since the launch of the project. Now I am getting the questions of why we aren't seeing any results.

The quickest and most direct answer is - we aren't publishing any new content! But you can't always blame the client.

Does anyone have any suggestions, approaches, or strategies to help slow moving clients speed up? Perhaps other techniques to show your value other than publishing new/targeted content?

Cheers - Kyle

I am actually going through this exact issue with a client right now as well. My hypothesis is that Google is not determining/penalizing us based on the keyword that is used in the search query but where the large amount of exact match anchor text is pointing.

Essentially i believe the penalty is at the page level. So a few weeks ago i began running the following test that is something kind of like this:

1. Create a new page on your site targeted for one of your keywords that are dropping, for example "used BMW" or "used audi"
2. Make sure to get your on-page optimizations just right with the term target tool.
3. Then begin building new links to your new page with a large variation of anchor text from sites with a Moztrust over 2.

If my hypothesis is true then your new page will begin to rank as it's authority rises. This is at least what i am currently testing (only a few weeks into it). Hope this helps out!

Cheers - Kyle Chandler

Instead of blocking them with robots.txt (which isn't very effective), try using the canonical tag instead.

For instance, a URL like this:
http://wwww.testdomain.com/page.html?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=Banner&utm_campaign=Campaign

You could add this canonical tag in the head:

With this solution you don't have to worry about losing quality links OR having your query tracking show up in any of the major search engines.

Cheers- Kyle