Hi William:

THANKS, Alan

Under these circumstances, with several parties involved and very technical issues, what is fair?

The developer has billed me for more than 1000 hours in the last 15 months. I have a nagging feeling that either I am being taken advantage of or the developer is not highly skilled, or both. But without understanding  of the technical issues I can't say.

The developer is in Argentina, the hourly rate is $22 but if takes 5x what they do in the US the cost advantage is gone.

Anyone I have spoken to says the 36 hours is excessive.

Giving the developer the benefit of the doubt, what is the very most time it would reasonably take to install and configure GTM??

Thanks, Alan

Hi William:

Thanks so much for responding to my post.  They idea of paying almost $900 (36 Hours of labor) for the installation of GTM does not please me.

I don't know if there was a legitimate problem, or the developer did not know what they were doing or I was being taken advantage of or a combination of the three!!!

Below please find an abbreviated selection of the correspondence between the developer, my SEO vendor and myself.

Do you think GTM could still take 36 hours to install, is it a question of incompetence or ignorance or a combination of those? But I want to give the developer the benefit of the doubt and not jump to conclusions.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CORRESPONDENCE BELOW:

Below are instructions and logistics for the GTM and GA setup:

The GTM script is below. Your developers should tag the beta.nyc-officespace-leader.com website AND the production website before it goes live.
I will manage all setup and tracking with GA through GTM once the script is installed on the site.

Here is more information if your developers have questions: GTM Script Help
There should NOT be any other tags hard coded into the website (e.g. Google Analytics, remarketing, etc.). From now on, all scripts will be managed via GTM (be sure to leave the GA script on your current website until you launch the new one).

Please send me a note when your developers verify that the GTM script is installed on the beta site.

I will ensure that GA is setup and tracking prior to the launch on Tuesday. Please keep me in the loop so I know exactly what time the site goes live. That way I can be online verifying that GA is tracking correctly as the site goes live.

GTM Script for nyc-officespace-leader.com (place immediately AFTER the opening tag):

<noscript><iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-NDXBHH"<br /> height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden"></iframe></noscript>

Let me know if you have any additional questions at this time.

Thanks!
-Todd

---

<a id="bugnotes" name="bugnotes"></a>Hi Alan

Attached to this ticket you'll find a file containing the talk with Inmotion Hosting.

http://tracker.serfe.com/file_download.php?file_id=23461&type=bug [^]

The error seems to be fixed. Today, we are unable to reproduce the issue.

Inmotion hosting has not modified anything but the error is gone.

You can test it here http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/code.php [^]

Todd was modified something?

Do you want to implement the code anyway?

Please, keep in mind that if an error occurs during the weekend, cannot be fix it until Monday

Please, let us know.

Sebastian

---

<a id="bugnotes" name="bugnotes"></a>Hi Alan

Yesterday the code throws an error in beta and in www.

Today, magically the error disappear.
It is very strange and, if the error return?

I recommend insert the code on Monday, because can be detected and corrected immediately.

---

<a id="bugnotes" name="bugnotes"></a>Email to Todd

================================
Hi Todd

The error caused by the tracking code is gone without made any configuration in the server side.

Have you made any configuration from GTM ?

I've installed the tracking code on beta.

Please, let me know if all is ok and I'll install the code in WWW

Best regards

<a id="bugnotes" name="bugnotes"></a>Hi Alan

Now the error appears again. You can check it here http://beta.nyc-officespace-leader.com/ [^]

I've talked with the Inmotion Support again and as result, we need to define if is secure add the exception and if is not secure we need to try to prevent as much as posible the risk of site attack.

Inmotion hosting detect as an SQL injection attack the coockies injected by the tracking code.

Tomorrow first thing, we'll continue with this. I need speak with Leandro about this.

Regards
Sebastian

---

<a id="bugnotes" name="bugnotes"></a>Hi Alan

Can you tell us the aim of implement this new tracking code?
Which will be the features that you win by implementing this code?

We need to know because maybe exists another way of get this without compromise the security of the site.

<a id="bugnotes" name="bugnotes"></a>Hi Alan

We've found problems between the GTM code and the contact us form.

Currently the Contact Us is not sent.

If we remove the GTM code and clean the cookies the form is successfully send.

We need to review the plugin that manages the forms and check the validation functions.

This will reduce the security related to form submissions.

We'll let you know when is working and the changes made

Sebastian

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<a id="bugnotes" name="bugnotes"></a>Hi Alan,
We have researched the issue and we are sure that the problem is on the configuration on tags for /contact-us.
Please, check if all are fine there.

I will be waiting for your answer.
Thanks!

Diego

---

Hi Alan,

I am only saying that the form /contact-us currently is not working because the tag configuration for this page are wrong.

Can you check if we are right?

Thanks!
Diego

---

<a id="bugnotes" name="bugnotes"></a>Hi Alan

Sebastian reported this ticket because the contact form is NOT working due to the GTM code

If we remove the code, contact form works again.

1- Can you confirm if we must remove the code for this page? It looks like there is some specific directive on this URL http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/contact-us [^] causing malfunctional and unexpected behavior (the pluginh detect a potential security issue possibly and doesn't process the request)

2- I'm not sure what other situation may raise due to this code, is this properly configured?

3- When we moved the page to another URL this works fine, check http://beta.nyc-officespace-leader.com/aux-contact-us [^] but if we get it back to /contact-us this is not working...

Let me know if Todd can take a look at this and maybe modify settings accordingly

We will awaiting for your confirmation before proceed with anything else

Best regards

Leandro

---

<a id="bugnotes" name="bugnotes"></a>Hi Alan,

I have GTM published on the production website and am tracking goals in the DEV - FOR TESTING view within GA. I also have the same goals setup in the other views, but not turned on yet (see below -- took me a while to figure out what was going on).
The visitor details form appears to be working correctly, so everything is good there.
The /contact-us form does NOT appear to be working correctly.
Right now, no form fields are required which means visitors can submit the form with no info. We need to at least require an email address in order to validate that it's an official form submission. Can you please ask your developers to at least require one form field? I'd suggest requiring name, email and company name at a minimum.
Also, there is no confirmation message presented to visitors after they submit the form telling them that it was successful. This could be an in-form message, a lighbox/popup message (I seem to remember seeing this on the beta site) or send them to an official confirmation page. Any of these options is fine, but we should at least give them some sort of confirmation message.
Once the above items are done I can officially turn on the goals in the other views within GA, and we should be good to go. Let me know when the contact-us form updated with some required fields and some sort of valid confirmation message.

Thanks,
Todd

---

<a id="bugnotes" name="bugnotes"></a>Hi Alan

I can confirm the contact form issue is NOT caused by non-required fields, this does not fix the problem with the GTM code. Anyway, we are still researching this because the code works perfectly for all pages but /contact-us

In order to keep form operational we will remove the code for this specific page.
We need to continue working on the Beta site and probably check with Todd what's happening in there. Can you tell me if he has setup some special tag for the /contant-us page? Maybe this is the problem

Regards

Leandro

---

<a id="bugnotes" name="bugnotes"></a>Email to Todd

Hi Todd

Thanks! I'm in the GTM panel... see below

save imageThe first time I signed in I could see both www and beta, but now I can only see www...

We will use provided code for Beta. Hopefully we will get back to you as soon as we find the problem and the fix for it

Regards

Leandro Mantaras
Serfe
http://www.serfe.com/ [^] - info@serfe.com
Macia 2472 (S3016OCP), Santo Tome, Santa Fe, ARGENTINA
Tel: (ar) +54 (342) 4748205 - (mx) +52 (55) 13282768 - (es) +34 (91) 1877620 - (us) +1 (305) 5375397

On 06/24/2014 01:44 PM, Todd Barrs wrote:

<noscript><iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-P5XK4K"<br /> > height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden"></iframe></noscript>

---

<a id="bugnotes" name="bugnotes"></a>Email to Todd

Hi Todd

I've uploaded the changes related to the Contact Us page to the live site, you can apply the tracking configurations and test if everything is working properly

Please, let us know the results.

If you want to keep track of another form in the website, first apply it on beta, if doesn't work, we'll make the necessary corrections to make it work

Best regards
Sebastian

Greetings MOZ Community:

I run a real estate website in New York City and am not a developer.

My SEO firm requested that the code for for Google Tag Manager (GTM) be installed on my site. They told me it was trivial to add and activate.

My developer struggled with this task and it took them 36 hours to install and configure. Not more than three goal is set up on the site. Is it possible this could take 36 hours?

My developer claims that there was a security issue with the server involving Mod Security. That Mod Security would not allow the installation of GTM. Finally I called the hosting company and an exception was made in Mod Security that allowed the i-frame for GTM to function.

Then there was an issue with one of the conversion forms not functioning (a contact us form that did not forward customer info when GTM was loaded on the URL for the form).

I understand that unanticipated hitches can occur when programming. And I don't want to be unfair to my developer. However I got a huge bill for 36 hours for something I was told by my coder would take a few hours at most. So I don't know what to think.

Is the 36 reasonable or is this taking way, way, way too long.

Thanks everyone!!!

Hi Samuel:

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond to my post!!

You make an excellent point about the necessity to create content useful for humans rather than search engines, a position my SEO firm has also taken.

My site has received no manual penalty from Google. Besides launching an upgraded version that made mostly cosmetic changes, not much has changed on the site since February.

But I should mention that in late April a link removal requests were made to about 100 toxic domains. About 30 web masters voluntarily removed their links. In mid May we filed a disavow request with Google for the other 70 domains. Could the removal of these links and the disavowal request have something to do with the fall in ranking and traffic? Please note the site only had about 280 domains linking to it in March and now there are even less. The quality of the incoming domains was pretty poor.

Good suggestion regarding adding no-follows to the poorly performing building and listing pages. But we have a bit of a challenge with listing pages. They get rented quickly and it becomes unfeasible to add them to the site, and they are absolutely essential, if we need to add 300-400 words of content and write title and description tags. So how would you suggest we manage listings if we should not "no-index" them?

Regarding our potentially spammy domain, we have used it for the site since 2006.  An alternative domain (www.metro-manhattan.com) exists that redirects to our primary domain (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com). Do you think it would be better to redirect the site to the www.metro-manhattan.com domain? It better matches the brand "Metro Manhattan Office Space". But I have heard domain changes can be dangerous nightmares.

You point out a potential issue with dashed in our domain. Do you think the single dash in Metro-Manhattan.com would also appear spammy?  Incidentally, I don't think the content on our site looks spammy at all, maybe there is some thin content but not spammy.

Thanks for your assistance!!! Alan

Greeting MOZ Community:

I operate www.nyc-officespace-leader.com, a New York City commercial real estate web site established in 2006. An SEO effort has been ongoing since September 2013 and traffic has dropped about 30% in the last month.

The site has about 650 pages. 350 are listing pages, 150 are building pages. The listing and building pages have an average bounce rate of about 75%. The other 150 pages have a bounce rate of about 35%. The building and listing pages are dragging down click through rates for the entire site. My SEO firm believe there might be a benefit to "no-index, follow" these high bounce rate URLs.

From an SEO perspective, would it be worthwhile to "no-index-follow" most of the building and listing pages in order to reduce the bounce rate? Would Google view the site as a higher quality site if I had these pages de-indexed and the average bounce rate for the site dropped significantly. If I no-indexed these pages would Google provide bette ranking to the pages that already perform well?

As a real estate broker, I will constantly be adding many property listings that do not have much content so it seems that a "no-index, follow" would be good for the listings unless Google penalizes sites that have too many "no-index, follow" pages.

Any thoughts???

Thanks,
Alan

Six months after starting a marketing campaign and spending a lot of money on SEO audits, link removals, wire frames, copywriting and coding my web site  (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) traffic dropped significantly after I launched a new version of my site in early June. Traffic is down about 27%, but most of the traffic from competitive terms is gone and the number of leads (phone calls, form completions) is off by about 70%.

On june 6th an upgraded version of the site with mostly cosmetic changes (narrower header without social media buttons, streamlined conversion forms, new right rail was launched. No URLs were changed, and the text remained mostly the same. But somehow my developers botched up either canonical tags or Robot Text and 175 URLs with very little/no content were indexed by Google. At that point my ranking and traffic. A few days ago a request to remove those pages was made via Google WebmasterTools and now the number of pages indexed is down to 675 rather than the incorrect 850 from before. But ranking, traffic and lead generation have not yet recovered. After spending almost $25,000 over nine months this is rather frustrating.

I might add the site has very few links from incoming domains and those links are not high quality. An SEO audit was performed in February and in April a link removal campaign occurred with about 30 domains agreeing to remove links and a disavow file being submitted for another 70-80 domains that would not agree to remove links.

My SEO believes that we should focus on improving visitor engagement rather that on more esoteric SEO like trying to build incoming links. They think that improving useability will improve conversions and would generate results faster than traditional SEO. Also, they think that improving click through rates, reducing bounce rates will improve ranking by signaling to Google that the site is providing value to visitors.

Does this sound like a reasonable approach? On one hand I don't see how my site with a MOZ domain authority could possibly compete against sites with a high number of quality incoming links and that maybe building a better link profile would yield faster results. On the other hand, it seems logical that Google would reward a site that creates a better user experience.

Any thoughts from the MOZ community???? Does it sound like the recent loss of traffic is due to the indexing of the 175 pages? If so, when should my traffic and ranking return?

Incidentally, these are the steps taken since last November to improve SEO:

• SEO Traffic & Ranking Drop Analysis and Recommendations (included in-depth SEO technical audit and recommendations).

• Unnatural Link Removal Program

• Content Optimization (Audit & Strategy with 20 page keyword matrix)

• CORE (also provided wireframe for /visitor-details pages at no-charge)

• SEO Copywriting for 10 pages

• New wire frames implemented on site on June 6th

• Jump in indexed pages by 175 on June 10th. Google Webmaster Tools removal request made for those low quality pages on June 23rd.

  Thanks, Alan

When I try to use the on page grader and enter my URL, an error message appears stating: "Sorry But This Page Inaccessible".

The URL is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/office-space and it works fine when I enter it on my browser. Any page from this domain generates this error. Is there a bug with this tool?

How would I go about tracking ranking on various keywords? I see it is possible to tag keywords, and I have done so for about 250. But I don't know how to generate a ranking report for these keywords; ideally I would like to do so filtering them by the label I have applied.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Alan

Greetings:

When I try to use the on page grader and enter my URL, an error message appears stating: "Sorry But This Page Inaccessible".

The URL is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/office-space and it works fine when I enter it on my browser. Any page from this domain generates this error. Is there a bug with this tool?

How would I go about tracking ranking on various keywords? I see it is possible to tag keywords, and I have done so for about 250. But I don't know how to generate a ranking report for these keywords; ideally I would like to do so filtering them by the label I have applied.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Alan

Thanks!! Your suggestion to get a detailed list of the HTML imperfections is excellent.

So as long as the site loads relatively quickly, code validates and site map is  correctly set up, you don't think some sloppiness in the HTML (and I will determine  exactly what that is) will hamper Google ranking fatally?

Shame to spend tens of thousands of dollars on SEO and code kills the effort.

Thanks,
Alan

Greetings MOZ Community:

My real estate website www.nyc-officespace-leader.com, originally designed in Drupal, was relaunched using Wordpress in 2013. The code for all URLs validates. The relaunch was performed by developers in Argentina.

As part of an SEO campaign, I very reputable design/coding company in the has provided new wire frames to correct useability issues holding back conversions. In the course of the design adjustments they inspected the code and have told me that it is inefficient, that a number of shortcuts were taken and that the code does not conform to Wordpress best practices. What concerns me most is their  claim that the quality of coding makes it more difficult for Google to index the site and this may be detrimental to ranking.

Is it possible for the original developers to clean up this code if the deficiencies are pointed out to them? Or once coding shortcuts are taken are they impossible to fix?

Would it make sense for me to request that the new design team put together a list of HTML deficiencies and provide to the original developers and ask them to correct?

I am spending tens of thousands of dollars on content optimization, content marketing. It would be absurd if these coding issues would ultimately prevent improvement in ranking and traffic.

At the same time, I hate to be a cynic but the domestic design/coding firm, while being very professional, does have an incentive in getting me to ditch the original design so I commit to an costly rebranding. If these issues are really minor maybe it is not worth making the effort to clean  up the code (assuming that is even possible) and focus the budget on content marketing.

Any thoughts?

My site was only effected by Google's algorithm (Penguin),there is no manual penalty.

Well I though I was in luck as I understand Penguin 2.0 was rolled out today!

So are you saying that despite the new Penguin update, Google will not review our disavow file and that the  only action to take is to ping the links from the low quality domains in order to expedite Google's review of our site?

Thanks,
Alan

My site does not have a manual penalty. The penalty is the Penguin. We were first hit in April 2012, with a drop in traffic from 6700/month to as low as 3,000 about a year ago. Since then after a site relaunch, some new content, social media traffic has climbed back up to about 4,500/month. Since November I am working with a MOZ recommended SEO firm. Link audit and disavow remove has been done and now content marketing is commencing.

Do you think my domain should be changed? Being that there has been an improvement I would think not, but am not sure.

Also, while my domain www.nyc-officespace-leader.com my brand is Metro Manhattan. I have owned the domain www.metro-manhattan.com since 2010. In fact that domain has redirected back to ww.nyc-officespace-leader.com for 4 years.

Would it make sense make www.metro-manhattan.com the primary domain? Would it help get around any penalties? From a branding point of view it would might be beneficial. But then I would lose all the links.

Hi Oleg:

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

The 87 links looked very spammy to me, consisting of low quality directories for the most part. So your response regarding the 31% removal is very encouraging.

My SEO is convinced my site was hit with a Penguin penalty in April of 2012. There has been a partial but incomplete recovery in search traffic. There never was a manual penalty.

Are you saying that removing a lot of these bad links will actually result in poorer ranking? My SEO firm has told me to get a significant recovery I need to start a program of content marketing to have new high quality links created.

Regarding the disavow, are you saying that if Google does not refresh Penguin for another 6 months I will not receive the benefit of the disavow until then?

Thanks,
Alan

Hi MOZ Community:

I hired an SEO firm to run a link audit, identify bad links, request that those links be removed and upload a disavow file to Google Webmaster tools for the domains that would not agree to remove their links.

My SEO company after emailing the owners of the bad domains linking to us obtained the following results:

NYCOfficeSpaceLeader

• Total for Removal: 125 (118)
• Found: 87 (84)
• Removed: 27 (27)

Only a total of 27 domains out of 87 found domains have been removed so far.  Seven additional domains have asked for a link removal ransom which we are refusing.

Only getting 27 removed seems really low. Is this normal? Is there any way to increase this number?

Will the disavow file have any effect and if so when? If Google does not actually remove the links, how can I determine when the disavow file has been processed.

I feel a little silly having paid a lot of money and the only tangible effect to date is that links from 27 domains have been removed.  Has it been a worthwhile investment for only having links from 27 domains removed? My company does not have an unlimited marketing budget so obviously there is some concern.  At the same time the SEO firm seems professional.

Thanks,
Alan

So to  map out the site and build internal text links that manipulate link equity is not that labor intensive after keywords have been selected for landing pages?

While I am am impressed by the provider's knowledge and service, somehow I find that costs always seem to  be increasing in an unanticipated way.

An initial SEO audit cost $4,995, Link removal $2,500, content audit to create keyword grid for 22 pages $2,500, Content Optimization Review $3,150. Now I am faced with optimization of 51 pages for about $6,200 plus development of internal link structure (whatever that costs!!!) plus local SEO at $1,500.

So I would have spent $20,000 before any link building even begins!!! Maybe they have a good strategy, without a high level of technical expertise it is hard for an amateur like myself to say. But I think you are 100% correct, they are breaking down each process to its smallest component and that maybe be resulting in inflated costs.

Thanks for your input!! Alan

Sorry, I am not quite following you. These are text links that would be created among different pages of text. In what context are you using the term "database"?

I am already paying to have a page edited a manually so I don't see how tables and databases come into play? Sorry for my non technical question.

Alan

Hi William:

Price point is $95.00 per page re-write.  Content exists but style is to be improved where necessary and keywords integrated into text. Tags to be re-written.

I have paid about $2,100 for keyword research and the creation of a keyword matrix in addition to the $95.00 per page. So my total exposure will be around $7,000 without internal linking.

In terms of the scope of work on each page, for example a page like: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods/downtown-manhattan/financial-district will be re-written to incorporate the following three terms: wall street office space, financial district office space, financial district office space rent, downtown office space for lease, office space downtown, downtown office space for rent, downtown brooklyn office space. Stylistically this page is not too bad.

Some pages like the home page (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) need editing must be re-written for conversion. Three terms to be optimized on the home page are Manhattan office space, new york office space, new york city office space, manhattan office space for rent, office space in manhattan, office space in new york, new york office space for rent, office space for rent manhattan, office rental manhattan, commercial property for rent, office for rent, office space for lease.

Do you think at the $95/page I can insist that the SEO firm provide internal linking?

Thanks! Alan

My Manhattan based commercial real estate firm hired an SEO firm. The company conducted a content audit, created a keyword matrix and suggested optimizing 51 pages for specific keywords. A specific price per page was quoted, which I understand and accept.

I was under thought that setting up internal text links to redistribute page rank and thereby improve ranking for competitive terms was included in the price. But this task was not included in their quote.

I really want to avoid getting nickeled and dimed to death. Should this cost be included, or legitimately is setting up the internal link structure something that is an additional expense? If this task is legitimately an extra, how labor intensive is it? A lit bit of extra time when re-writing pages or a completely different task that would be quite time consuming?

Also, I believe the flow of page rank within a site can have a big effect on ranking, so setting up internal links is critical. Are these assumptions correct?

For some background, www.nyc-officespace-leader.com gets 4,500 organic visits per month. Google Page Rank is 2 and the site was hit by Panda in 2012 but has partially recovered.

I would really appreciate some insight from the MOZ community. I do not want to pay too much or too little for these services. THANKS, Alan