Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey, I would really suggest some kind of audit if you can stretch to it but if you need to DIY then here are a few pointers.

1. Internal Duplication - the SEOMoz Crawler will give you some good feedback

2. External Duplication - Copyscape is a great resource, run that against your whole site.

3. WordPress - install the Yoast SEO Plugin and figure out what you can no index on the site to cut down on the duplication (tags, categories etc).

SEOMoz crawler will provide valuable feedback as you make changes and you want to whittle down the errors and problems each week.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Great, comprehensive answer from Ryan as ever.

Nothing more to see here folks.

Move along now.

Move along.

Hey Letty

If I request the full link in webbug I get a 200 okay response.

http://www.zylom.com/nl/help/contact/9/?sid=9&e=login

If I request the link less the variables in webbug I get the 404 as reported by the moz crawler.

http://www.zylom.com/nl/help/contact/9/

I would go into analytics, check to see which pages you have 404's for if it is just  '/nl/help/contact/9/' then I don't think you have a problem.

I think nofollow would be a good solution and if we look at part of the nofollow page on google webmaster support:

"Before nofollow was used on individual links, preventing robots from following individual links on a page required a great deal of effort (for example, redirecting the link to a URL blocked in robots.txt). That's why the nofollow attribute value of the rel attribute was created. This gives webmasters more granular control: instead of telling search engines and bots not to follow any links on the page, it lets you easily instruct robots not to crawl a specific link. For example:"

Now, I am not 100% sure if the seomoz crawler respects nofollows (I would imagine it does) but certainly, if other robots are following this link and generating 404's (again, head into your analytics to get a handle on this) then it will certainly help there.

After all, this link is not for robots, it is not to be indexed, it is just a log in form for users so nofollowing that link seems to make perfect sense.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

References:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569

Hey, we offer site audits as do many other firms. A few of note are High Rankings and http://www.webgnomes.org/.

Happy to give you a quote if that helps - just fire me an email to marcus@bowlerhat.co.uk.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Content seems good but the link profile is a bit questionable:

http://www.blogvasion.com/

Really, need more info. What was driving traffic? If it was a couple of key phrases that you had a bunch of anchor text links for then... the links may be as far as you need to look.

Can you provide a little more info on just what was driving your organic traffic?

Marcus

Hey Amelia

Right, simple enough, but potentially confusing to explain. I am going to assume the page is indexed in it's new location in the below solution so will need a new 301 to redirect it back.

1. Delete the current 301 from location A to location B
2. reinstate the page on it's original address
3. create a 301 for the currently indexed page back to new (old) location so from location B to location A

You are effectively just turning this on it's head and removing one 301, moving the page back to it's original location, and using another 301 to redirect to redirect any traffic and page value to the new (old) location.

This is probably a little easier if you forget the page has moved at all and just think of it as moving it from one location to another as you did before.

Hope that helps!

Marcus

Hey Peter

Cybo seems to be some kind of business directory and it is still indexed so is probably not one of the purely for SEO directories out there (just mostly for SEO I suspect). They seem to have a version for various countries which may be why they are generating a bunch of links.

The links themselves seem to be nofollow with the URL as the anchor so on the manipulation front this is not really looking like a problem.

As it goes, if not part of a larger problem, I would not give this a second thought.

Hope that helps

Marcus

If you want to add me to your analytics I can give you some five minute feedback there if it helps.

marcus miller 1975 <at>gmail <dot>como</dot></at>

Hey, no worries, my pleasure!

Good answer. If there is a marketing benefit then it is worth doing. If you are doing it purely for SEO then you are buying links and take the risks that come with that.

If the sites you are contacting are asking you for money for followed links then you are probably not the first so it's a risky path you are walking down.

Hey Rafi

Okay, I had a quick look at your analytics and really, I don't see a lot to worry about here.

1. Your main keywords that send traffic are still doing really well

2. Your organic traffic is down around 19% this month and there does seem to be a gradual decline across some of your big keywords.

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I think what you are seeing here is nothing more than some new competition in your space and I see several sites doing what you are doing and doing it pretty well.

My advice would consist of four main points

1. start adding more varied content
2. start thinking about building traffic from a wider range of keywords
3. look at ways to re-engage with previous visitors (social etc)
4. consider content that you can use to earn links or a link building strategy (content based - not something you just outsource)

Without doing this properly and anointing all the various algorithm updates I don't think you have a penalty as such - you are just facing some increased competition.

Forget about SEO almost, focus on content, try to have a broader focus, engage people who visit and bring them back, look at content you can use to build some buzz and links, look at content you can use to incite some viral activity.

Focus on your site basically and don't worry that Google is working against you.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

If you are using the SEO plugin it allows various variables in the title templates. So, to use the page / post title and the site name you would use:

%%title%% | %%sitename%%

To use the title and the site description you would use:

%%title%% | %%sitedesc%%

If you wanted title, site name, site description

%%title%% | %%sitename%% | %%sitedesc%%

If you go to the help tag under the Titles & Meta's section you can get a full list of these variables you can get to customise your template titles.

But, the plugin also allows you to customise on a page by page basis in the page / post settings which is also really useful.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Hey

To some extent this is the wrong question and thinking here - both of these could be right and both of them could be wrong.

It's impossible to answer this without looking at the context of the linking page - example:

• Page on the target site for violin teachers in new york
• Page on an external site that also lists violin teachers in new york but also links out to other resources

Using either of those anchors would not make sense here and could potentially be classed as manipulative - the name of the site you are promoting may make more sense. Again, hard to feedback on what would be right here but I would simply use what makes the most sense on the context of the linking page.

Remember -  Google already knows the context of the target page so concentrate on making that page as good as possible and getting links with natural anchor text on relevant resources that could also drive referral traffic and you will likely be in good shape.

Hope that helps
Marcus

In my experience, if you have this message again, you still have links they don't like. 35% of linking domains is not a great deal and as Stephen said, whilst Link Detox gives you a good starting place you really do have to audit these links in a brutal fashion.

You have 15000 external links from 2000 sites - that's a hell of a lot of links for a semi popular blog let alone a site that does not really publish any content that would attract links.

If you are holding onto links as you think they are 'ok' or because they 'don't look too bad' then you may need to get a whole lot more aggressive with what you remove.

Also, just because you remove the manual penalty, don't expect things to be amazing afterwards.

An alternative approach to finding the bad links and getting them removed is to identify the good ones and consider getting them repointed to a new URL and starting again with a rebrand / new URL. It can be easier to get a response from the good sites than it can be getting a response from the bad ones.

Failing that get a whole lot more aggressive with what you remove.

Hope that helps!

Marcus

In Google Chrome:

1. Right click on the page in question and select: View page source

2. Search for <title></em> to see your title</p> <p>3. Search for <em><span><meta </span><span>name</span><span>="</span><span>description</span><span>"</span></em> to see your description</p> <p>Shout if you get stuck!</p> <p>Cheers<br />Marcus </p></title>

Hey Jonathan

There are a couple of things that really jump out at me here.

Point 4 - You must use a full address or you are not going to see solid results. Seeing as how you used a mailbox previously and then are now using a new address then you likely have some NAP consistency issues. You need to

Point 5 - Do you need an address on the website - absolutely! There used to be an option to not show an address on your places listing and specify a service area but they are moving away from this and address is essential for your places listing and you really need to have this address on the website as well.

First thing i would do is take a look at the Local Ranking Factors from 2013 and review each point from the Foundational Ranking Factors, Competitive Difference Makers and Negative Ranking Factors and I think you will soon see a whole host of problems.

If I just pick a few from each to feedback on:

Foundational Ranking Factors

• Consistency of Structured Citations - multiple addresses will cause problems
• Quantity of Structured Citations - sounds like you have only updated some so likely work to do here

Competitive Difference Makers

• Consistency of Structured Citations - same problem as we have multiple addresses out there
• Quantity of Reviews - we have some but more would always help
• Quantity of Citations from Industry-Relevant Domains - you don't mention going after any industry specific citations and again if there is inconsistent address details on these sites then...

Negative Ranking Factors

I think you manage to hit 3 of the top 6 here

• Listing detected at false business location - that mailbox won't have helped here
• Mis-match NAP / Tracking Phone Numbers Across Data Ecosystem - those old citations are again not helping here
• Mis-match NAP / Tracking Phone Number on Places Landing Page - again, those old citations will be working against you
• Absence of Crawlable NAP on Website - at position ten but still very important!

Ultimately, the things that work towards helping you rank are in many cases the things that work against you if not done right. The concern over listing the address is understandable but a consistent NAP across the data ecosystem and on industry related sites is such a huge part or ranking locally that you can't really get away from this.

Your question here was 'local, really? and the answer has to be a resounding yes. You can see that local is important in that the query you are targeting (and variations of) all show a seven pack of local results so local is more important than traditional organic listings (which are also heavily localised in many cases) but if you want to optimise for local you have to be prepared to have the address visible.

You really need to get all of the basic, foundational factors in place and make sure the NAP is 100% consistent and there is little to no duplication (that is sites that have multiple citations at the correct and incorrect address). You also need to be prepared to wait a while if you have negative factors to undo here. I would really be looking at a six month process including a clean up and then some positive promotion to get where you need to be (no quick or easy wins).

This post will give you more details on the importance of citations along with a structured process to identify and audit all of your citations to get that consistency in place (and results will follow): 
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/noise-trust-nap-consistency/

Hope that helps some and keep the faith - local works, it just needs some work to get there.

Marcus

Penguin can and often does have page specific problems. In fact, most often it seems the homepages of many sites are most affected and seemingly Penguin 2.0 does a better job of targeting inner pages.

I have worked with several companies who are still struggling to rank their homepage after Penguin yet can generate traffic to their inner pages.

Firstly, I would not jump to assume there are lots of problems with the site, perform an audit if you are unsure but don't make this as an assumption. Use known penalty dates to review traffic and anoint the analytics so you can get a clear picture of which updates caused the traffic drops for a quick and easy way to get more intel.

More often than not I am now advising people to just start over on a new domain and redirecting the old (not with a 301) to the new. This is painful, and many folks are holding onto domains but if clean up is not working and is not practical to continue down this route then a clean domain gives you a fresh start.

I have just had a quick look at the backlink profile in OSE and it does not look like your standard penguinised site though. Are you sure about the cause of the loss of traffic? Do the drops coincide with known penguin dates?

Really, the analytics should be your first port of call here and tools like this will help you easily map algorithm change dates to traffic changes: http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

Then, investigate further from there on in. If links do seem to be an issue link detox is a quick and easy way to get a good grasp on what kind of links your client has.

Ultimately, it needs investigation but start with analytics, form your hypothesis and try to prove it and then feed back here.

Hope that helps

Marcus

Hey Chris

Without a link or the keyword it's hard to give anything other than very general advice and this could just be a natural flutter. The SERPS are so volatile that fluctuations happen almost daily so It may not be a cause for concern and it may come back to near where it was in a short matter of time.

If you wanted to dig further, the obvious thing to look into would be the links to your site and specifically any links that used this keyword.

• Do you have low quality links with this anchor text?
• Could links have been devaluated?
• Could low quality pages with links on have been hit by the last panda update?

It is likely nothing to worry about but if you have done some lowish quality link building around this phrase then it may warrant further investigation.

Hope that helps and happy to look a bit harder if you can drop in the keyword and a link.

Marcus

Hey Frank

No date as far as I know but the rollout post on the Google Webmaster blog states that it will be coming at some point soon:

"We will continue testing and refining the change before expanding to additional languages, and we’ll be sure to post an update when we have more to share."

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/04/high-quality-sites-algorithm-goes.html

Hey Mark, given the Panda correlation I would look at content issues first and see what we can dig up there.

So, the 60 second SEO audit:

1. I grabbed a chunk of content from one page:

"Female PE Teacher, Permanent - Bath - Pay to Scale Full time role paid to scale depending on relevant teaching experience Required for September 2013 Full time as in accordance with the Teachers"

Run that through Google and what do we see.....

Lots of listings for that exact piece of content - approx 40 reported. But, we hit the third page and we see:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 21 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

No sign of your clients site though!

So, we open it up and look at the omitted results and there are now over a hundred results and your clients site is in something like 95th position.

Conclusions?

The client site is basically a conduit to other sites like totaljobs.co.uk and re-purposes content available in several other locations. Therefore, they are being filtered as they are not the originator of the content and they bring nothing new to the table.

Pros & Cons

Pro - It's content so can be sorted easily enough by creating unique content.

Con - there seems to be a lot of it

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Your client needs to do a content audit and create descriptions of the jobs that add some value and uniqueness. Given how many other folks there are pumping out these same descriptions there is likely some opportunity there but the old model is broken and they have to bring some value.

Caveat - this was the quickest of quick looks but certainly, it seems there are no real mysteries here so just dig in and do some deeper analysis. I imagine the site might give copyscape.com a heart attack!

Hope that helps!
Marcus