Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Joe, Gaston & Donna,

I track 11 competitors w/ a spreadsheet after every DA release, 8 lost a major amount of links, one lost 1,712,850 while we dropped 77,480. Last year I disavowed monthly for 6 months, now just quarterly, so I know it was not on my end. I also noticed a much higher rise in DA w/ this release than any other this year, we went up 3 (which is great) while a major competitor improved 7.

Gaston, if this is a minor bug as you indicated, do you foresee another DA release sooner than scheduled, or possibly an announcement from Moz?

KJr

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We received the above message, which I'm see may also  have. Before I go making hours of edits can someone give me an opinion on what may need fixed?

Here's a link to one of our products: http://heritageprinting.com/products/step-and-repeat.phpAll products are uniquely marked upIt may be the $ dollar sign, but I'm not certain.Looking at WMT > Search Appearance > Structured Data, I see no errors for Schema Markup. TY in advance :)KJr

Ira.

Yes, YP and several other directory sites are very difficult to work with. Since your reviews come from Citysearch, I would start over.

KJr

We are at a crossroad and it's time to decide which direction to travel. We had 4 physical locations represented by 3 websites, August 1st we now have 6 addresses and are going to redesign our websites. Heritage Printing .com is our primary and does very well in DC for printing & signage. Heritage Printing Charlotte .com does well in NC for signs.

How would you proceed?

1. Build 2 more websites for a total of 5: Heritage Custom Signs & Heritage Custom Signs DC .coms
2. Build a unified site under Heritage Printing .com (w/ subdomains or locations folders)

I fear losing our Internet Presence and Page Rank w/ Google by unifying but also fear fueling the ever growing fragmentation of our brand. FYI: We recently Trade Marked Heritage Printing & our logo

So fellow Mozzers, what do you recommend and how would you proceed?

TY in advance

KJr

Chris,

It's the competition that makes SEO great! Embrace this challenge and your rewards will follow.

1. On-Page SEO - use the Moz page optimization tool
2. Quality Content - I know it's an over used term, but it's true
3. Blog - write about what you know, become the expert to your audience by answering questions and invoking responses
4. Back links - this seems to be controversial, but bottom line is: Quality over Quantity

This helped us in 2 very competitive markets for "Signs Charlotte" & "Commercial Printer DC" it may help you too.

KJr

Oliver,

We serve the DC market with a commercial print shop in Waldorf, MD (15 miles outside DC) and I've focused all my SEO efforts on DC. We've had success with this strategy along with the convenience of lower manufacturing costs, as well as maintaining our Super-Fast expedited services model. We've done it and you may as well.

KJr

I always research what my top 5 competitors are doing and try to do it better. I worked on a plumbing products project and targeted the "Fast" and "Always In Stock" as well as "Deliver Today" to invoke the "need it now" emotion, which was primarily the audience's reaction.

Hope that helps.

KJr

Today I start the face to face interviews with website companies. So far most have pushed WordPress, few have offered either and one insisted on Joomla.

Our 50+ products and services are primarily customized, so we sell -10 on our shopping cart. We rely primarily on organic Google rankings, SEO and content is critical.

What do you, my fellow Mozzers, recommend for our next website platform for our mobile world and Google friendliness?

TY,

KJr

Ruben,

This article helped me, I disavowed for 6 months and now quarterly. This may help you too: https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool

KJr

Jazom,

Good Question! I think the search algorithms see voice search the same as any typed search since the request is after the voice recognition software has exercised its duty.

My answer doesn't provide much help, but your post was compelling and intriguing.

KJr

We are preparing to build a new website for a branch of our company. According to Neil Patel (whom I highly respect) our DA should come in around 30 (categorizing us as a startup, see chart below).

So I ask: Why do our current sites DA Score below 30? (20 & 29 respectively)

Our sites were redesigned in 2013 and are responsive, pass the Google Mobile Friendly test and I've improved load speed by over 25% by compressing images.

I have used Moz as guidance for 10 months on both 7 + yo sites, HP.com is 14 yo, our pages score in the high 90's and I have disavowed bad backlinks for 6 months (now only every other month). I thought we would be in or close to the 50 range by 2017 after a solid year of improvements, but I don't see that happening. Our scores go up a point or two, then back down, we have floundered 2 points either way for 10 months.

Most important question: What do I do now to raise our DA?

Lastly, my plan is to take all the lessons learned from the past years and apply it to the new site, measure the success and then redesign the other two sites in accordance to the new model. But that may be a year away.

KJr

www.heritageprinting.com

www.heritageprintingcharlotte.com

| DA | Rating |
| 1-10 | Poor – Your site is young and weak. You have a lot of growing to do. |
| 11-20 | Decent. Your site isn’t stellar, but you’re doing better. It would be good to grow. |
| 21-30 | Fair. Your site shows signs of SEO, but there are many things you can and should do to improve. |
| 31-40 | Competitive. A lot of startups find themselves in this DA range. It’s not bad, and you’re beginning to get close to the sweet spot. |
| 41-50 | Good. Now, you’re getting somewhere. This is a nice place to be, and many good e-commerce sites find themselves squarely in this category. |
| 51-60 | Strong. As you swing out of the lower half of the scale, you’re beginning to get much healthier. This is a good place to be. |
| 61-70 | Excellent. A DA at this level represents a great site with a lot of recognition, a lot of link backs, and a considerable authority in its niche. Many .edus are in this space. |
| 71-80 | Outstanding. You’re dominating in the SERPs and owning your niche. Quick Sprout is a 73. |
| 81-90 | Very outstanding. You’re in the upper echelons of authority. You can consider yourself to have arrived. |
| 91-100 | Rare. These sites are household names — Wikipedia, Facebook, New York Times, etc. Your site will probably never attain this level. Only a miniscule fraction of a percentage of sites on the Internet ever get this high. |

https://www.quicksprout.com/2014/04/09/how-to-score-your-websites-seo-in-10-minutes-or-less/

AliMac26

I take all aspects and changes to our sites very seriously, especially the Title tags & page content. I too adopted a Moz campaign and recently revamped our keywords to better target our product pages SEO. Analyze a Keyword is one of my favorite Moz tools. We have seen measurable improvements since that major update.

How Long to take effect? That depends on numerous variables; DA, Traffic, Links, Outside Advertising, etc... when I want faster results, I submit the updated page for indexing through Webmaster Tools.

Hope this helps

KJr

With all the changes in web design, I feel it best to seek advice from my fellow Mozzers. We are definitely going with a custom design and I know it MUST be responsive and faster load speed than we currently employ.

What other requirements should I seek from our designer?

Approximately 50 product pages w/ ECWID shopping cart holding a dozen or less products.

TY,
KJr

However, is this overkill? I personally think not... but would a domain level 301 redirect work just as well from preserving / passing on any authority to the new URL.

Not overkill in my opinion.

We have acquired several businesses, but never merged them into a new domain, so my process was to utilize the acquired domains as long as they held value. With the last competitor we acquired, I actually built out his site and it has shown immense value.

I know this is slightly off your situation topic, but it may help.

KJr

Sounds like you've found the issue, or at least the main one. I would wait on the dev site to be removed before starting over with a new domain.

KJr

Laura is right "they are sacrificing increased sales and UX to aesthetics" Customers that want "Pretty" over Marketable are impossible to please. IF you are somehow able to accomplish this task, that customer will expect you to deliver on every unimaginable request.

I have left campaigns do to this refusal to "bend" for reasonable results.

KJr

Hi A_Q

I always considered all PR sites as "nofollow" links, I still use them but don't see most of them when I check our inbound links, except for the association groups we pay to be in, but I don't see them as PR sites, more industry news.

KJr

Hi Becky,

I have tried it both ways with positive results. I prefer the Title to "flow" and not appear as KW stuffed. From day 1, my mentor taught me "The Click is more important than the Rank" but we all know we must have rank to get click...

I always try to write Titles, Desc and content in a reader friendly informative manner, which sometimes means going against popular recommendations.

Hope this helps

KJr

I felt similar inasmuch as how often to disavow. My research show if you have been penalized disavow regularly, if not then annually with some monitoring is fine. Pre-Emptive disavow seems slightly proactive, I only disavow 3 to 5 bad links after 6 months.

Hope this helped

KJr

Christy,

1. yes, we are registered under Heritage Custom Signs

2. yes, we will have both entrances just as it was when the previous tenant occupied the space

3. yes, we have a long established phone number that currently "rolls over" to one of our main lines, we can easily set it as a primary

Thank you very much for responding, I have 2 days to research and provide our direction.

Kevin (in for Joe)