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Cheers - that we me just there - A new SEO plugin killed it which I quickly deleted (it wastn even active but screwed things up).  Site back to 'normal' now

Thanks for checking.

A friend of mine has a site (http://bit.ly/q4iWkM ) that was ranking number one for their key word (Drimnagh() and has now completely disappeared off of the ranking.  I did some checking and can't see a problem.  She does have duplicate meta and titles throughout but this shouldn't be a punishable offence that I know of and is something that I am going to correct with a quick plugin install.

I couldn't see any redirects or code stopping search either.  When you do site:URL it shows up OK as well.

She is client of mine (for website not for SEO) and she is really upset about it so any help from the forum would be appreciated.  This isn't even a site I did but you couldn't get a better person to work with so I am eager to help where and if possible.

Guinness all round if someone solves it next time you are in Ireland

I have never had to do it but there are tools like PowerMapper which is quite pricey for what it does.  Does he actually want a visual one or more like a tree like structure.  This probably more 'doable; by dumpinghte XML into some formatting tool and importing it into HTML.

If you create the embed code with your link back to the site then you will get the juice.  You cant actually put a link in a graphic as far as I know (yet!) so make sure the Widget code is attractively titled as well so people will actually like to use it along the lines (not saying this is the way to go by the way)

Fabolous Infographic - Visit The Site for More by [Jesse Walker - Uber Infographic Guy](hhttp://www.yourwigglywidgettysite.com / "Jesse Walker - Uber Infographic Guy")

Thanks for the nice words  Ryan and I am above now

I'd tend to agree based on your response with irldonalb and your post is quite pertinent as there is an YouMoz Blog by chadburgess post that doesn't exactly point to this (it is realted to noindex but the tactics to get back on Google eyeline are still relevant)

To possibly (badly) summarize some of his tactics that relate to you

• Create some fresh content 1-X pages depends on your capacity and do some internal linking and Google will see this.
• Get some social juice going with your links and recruit some help of friends and associates to spread the word.
• Resubmit your sitemap to Google Webmasters

The full post is here and it is quite an interesting one - http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/accidental-noindexation-recovery-strategy-amp-results

Good luck with it and report back with your success levels..

Kieran

Hi Jon

How old is the site and what keywords / niche (well it is clear betting) were you ranking for?  FRom a quikc OSE check your site is just developing.

Kieran

Have you rung this business?  Ask them where they are located.  In theory there is nothing stopping someone from using your information for a location and they may have verified using and SMS and not the postcard.

Try the old fashioned way first.

Hi Amy

_will losing links from these sites harm us? _

If you are worried about the link quality just put them into Open Site Explorer to see their weighting.  If they are spammy then delete.

_Perhaps more importantly, is my plan a terrible idea in the first place? _

If you know/feel/think that your link list is spammy then I would delete them and so it is a good idea.  This SEOMOZ link is worth a read as a refresher course on the topic if you haven't seen it already. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-101-the-almost-complete-link-guide

Good luck with your efforts

Hi Derek

There was a time when I was in the camp that content was enough,  however the statistics tell us that although content is a significant part of the pie chart of factors it is still only one of them.  Like you I held onto the hope that if I build great content and sat back that the people would find me and the rankings would come.  However mostly from this forum and from extensive reading elsewhere I have let go of this grip.

, would it be possible to rank well without putting much emphasis on backlinking if your content is significantly better than the rest of the ranking pages?

The short answer is if the niche is non-competitive then possibly but if there is any element of search traffic then no.

But all is not lost.  First however do not become fascinated with an actual word count for your posts as length does not equal quantity (in fact break it up into a 2-3 part articles if it is good.

But back to the question.  If you have good content and believe it is better than the others than you should work on publicising it and encouraging people to link to it through the many link building methods available.  Even when you say that you have a 2,000 word  article of good content I am immediately interested personally in seeing it.    Have you put it out on Google+ which is now open to everyone?

Do you Tweet it, Facebook it and put it on your Feedburner even? Have you emailed your friends, customers and colleagues telling them about it.  This isn’t link building per sé but it is a small part of the many things that go on.

** or has the game not changed that much?**

Again what I realise more and more is that the game IS changing every single day as new tools approaches come into play.  However saying that I would say pick 5-6 strategies and work these for 3-4 weeks while continuing to build the quality content you mention.  Work these hard (look here on SEOMOZ for some of them).  Track your performance for desired keywords.  Revise strategy, maybe change an approach and start again.

It is hard work and I consider myself a super-novice compared to others but it is about applicaton, assigning your SEO block of time per day then just doing it.  In fact I think SEO is even becoming a depreciated term  as I often think of it as site public relations more than optimisation.  If you publicise your site well the results is good rankings as people line up to link and publicise it for you.

Hope this helps ??? (send the link would like to see the site!)

Some other Useful SEOMOZ Resources to Have a Look At

• The Definitive Beginners Training
• An excellent SEO Powerpoint Deck from Rand which I 'borrow' from a lot
• This Q&A Forum will help but use the search function as well as nearly all the bog posts and articles are well thought out and well written from intro to advanced

Best of luck

Kieran

No problem...

Installing a blog to your main site shouldn't be a problem really msot of the CMS out there tag on pretty easily.

This site is a great resource so come back often - Since my recent joining I think I have doubled my knowledge levels and still so much to learn,....

Best of luck with it -

Kieran

_For link building, I was thinking along the lines of researching relevant sites, asking to be a guest blogger, or providing them with some unique content. _

This is a good tactci and looking at your site I am sure that you can provide this.  It takes time and you have to put the miles in I think.

Currently i'm looking at improving the rank of our Investment Newsletter page. SEOMoz gives it a grade A in the on page optimisation tool. But we are only on page 3, where as two of our competitors are on page 1 with equal or lower grading.

So do you believe the main reason for this to be our lack of links?

The page grading tool is a Get the basics sorted out tool and I think personally it helps you focus on the message of the page.  The next leve is to look at what is on the page.  I often go back to pages (and do this nearly every day) and ask mysef was I drinking when I did a certain page.

I would seriously work at getting the blog back in the mains page as when you click away you are well... away..

Hi Adrian

Well done on ranking for Collectibles in the UK it is a competitive  space with lots of search – I didn’t see you at number one however so I would suggest you check with personalized search turned off.

**However I feel we may be held back by our Domain Authority score. **

Now you mention Domain Authority.  Your domain authority is currently 32 so growth is of course Welcome.  A lot of that comes with linking from high authority sites.  Your site looks like is a powerful source of information on collectibles on first glance but on closer inspection it also looks like that a lot of it is curated news.  I would think about developing your own news and information.

Your blog also is on the WordPress.com platform and is not self hosted. I would work to correct this and bring the blog back onto your local site as you are moving traffic off of your main site.

We are well set up for a content based strategy due to "News" nature of the site. My ownly concern with link building is i've heard that it could potentially negatively effect us.

I am not sure what you mean here.  Lnk building is something you should be thinking of even through organically spreading good news and articles that people link to and share on the Net.  If you produce an excellent article with an interesting slant on a collectible then it may get added juice and get links.

Or is the risk of link building only really associated with black hat methods?

Link building done well and professionally (as I with the ethics of a professional as opposed to paid) should be part of your marketing plan.  Many companies now employ full time Internet marketing experts doing just this as part of their brief.  Link building is not equal to black hat.

One last thing. I've been using the Google keyword Tool to judge competition for specific search terms. Is this useful for organic search? Or is it only relevant for PPC?

On accuracy of the Keyword tool irldonalb is right and the tool is inaccurate and should be used along with Insights and some of the tools here on SEOMOZ if you are a member.  But it is still a good indicator and shows the level of activity.

It is relevant to both search and PPC.  Google never claims for it to be 100% accurate either but it is used by most people these days as on of their go to tools for their keyword research.

Finally it IS worth while reading though here a bit (if you havent done so already for more ideas and tips for your SEO campaign.  I visit it regularly and it is one of the best references.

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Sometimes OSE can take some time to index your pages.  The OSE index would not be as fast as the Google Index so that may be the reason.  Your post is quite pertinent as Rand Fishkin posted a blog post on the updates and upgrades that are being made to the system to improve the depth of the crawiling

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/linkscape-september-update-feedback

Best of Luck

Kieran

I wouldn't worry too much about the double redirect but how old are the pages that you are redirecting?  Are they getting a lot of traffic?

Never seen a double re-direct before but then again I have never seen a lot of things

That's a bit of a pain.

If anything tell them to set up a custom informative 404 error page that will at least direct them somewhere else and not bail from the site.

Not all errors are bad but for instance if you are getting 404 errors and the actual pages do not exist anymore then you should do 301 redirects on your .htacess to point Google to the right page.  Doing this will sort out a lot of the errors.  But if you are getting 404s and the pages are there then that is a bigger problem

Restricted by robots is not an error as this is telling you that you don't want somewhere crawled.  Check the file to see if it is correct in what it is restricting.

How often are you pushing your sitemap out to Google.  If you are as active with pages as your posts suggest I would think about submitting a new one or automating its creation.

If you are actively working the content on the sties there can often be this level of SERPS  bouncing.but if you continue with the content I wouldn't worry too much about the errors for the moment and do the housekeeping above.  There are very few completely spotless sites out there and the Google Webmaser  tools and even the SEOMOZ tools here will always give you some level of errors.

hope this helps

Kieran

Thanks Shelly - appreciate the positive feedback!!! Hope I never have to use Blacklisted Loans though....

Hi

I would recommend starting with this to at least get an appreication for the business of SEO http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Read the questions and answers here on the forum and spend time looking at the blog posts and Webinars that indeed confirm that there is no magic wand

Update: On re-reading this I also realised that it may have been a bit trite.  The most important thing is that from the beginning you are thinking of it and it is part of your focus.  Make the entire team aware of the importance of this.

Saw this and tried the following which isn't automated but is one way of doing it.

• First install SEO Quake plugin
• Go to Google
• Turn off Google Instant (http://www.google.com/preferences)
• Go to Advanced search set the number of results you want displayed (estimate the number of pages on your site)
• Then run your site:www.example.com search query
• Export this to CSV
• Import to Excel
• Once then do a Data to columns conversion using ; as a delimiter (this is the CSV delimiter)
• This gives you a formatted list.
• Then import your sitemap.xml into another TAB in Excel
• Run a vlookup between the URL tabs to flag which are on sitemap or vice versa.

Not exactly automated but does the job.