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Hey Charles, sorry you are having problems.

I would like to suggest you check-out WP Fix It. I've used them in the past for clients who needed just what you need right now: a monthly managed WP service to do all the heavy lifting for you.

The price for their service is $57/mo. Here's a list of what that service plan looks like:

1. Premium Stable Hosting
2. Elite Security Protection
3. Daily Full Site Backups
4. Monthly Software Updates
5. Personalized Agent Connection
6. Unlimited Issue Support
7. FREE website transfer

Now, again, I have no direct involvement with the site myself but I've used them multiple times and I've always been impressed with how fast they respond to client questions and concerns...including when a site "suddenly goes down."

In your case, if your "host" can't figure it out then your host probably SUCKS. If you are using the Bluehost and GoDaddys of the World that may explain your problem. So it's possible that migrating you off your host to something more "reliable" may solve a lot of your problems.

But if you need a suggestion, check-out www.wpfixit.com. You can do much, much worse.

Good luck and keep us updated in the thread!

Hey Damon, your "guess" about linking to the specific page with a specific target anchor text isn't wrong.

However, with link building the best approach is always to "distribute the weight" amongst your entire site. Your home page is going to naturally accumulate a large percentage of brand-based/commercialized links and in so doing so, accumulate authority that will flow naturally through your site anyway.

But when we talk about a "content-rich site" it's always a site that as very high percentage of deep links -- 70% or more is a great target. That's why having a blog embedded deeply on your site as a subdirectory is a GREAT way to accumulate both deep links and inbound linking authority. But doing this effectively means understanding what "quality content" looks like.

The best way to accumulate good, deep links to your site (and move the dial algorithmically in Google) is to put up GREAT content that people will want to link to. I know we hear that all the time "all you need is great content and you'll move the dial" but most people don't know what good, evergreen content looks like.

Over 2 million blog posts are published each day. Most of them SUCK. But if you can find and publish high-quality pieces of content that generate shares, freshness signals, and attract incoming links, that will lead to great individual Page Authority score that do reinforce overall domain authority.

If I could offer you a tip in this regard, I highly recommend a tool like Answer the Public. Go over there and type in target keyword phrases and look at the questions returned. Then, look to write up detailed pieces of content that ANSWER these questions on your site. Not only is this type of content like CAT NIP to your visitors but it will also work to generate those fantastic Featured Snippets (Answers) you are seeing more and more at Position Zero in Google (like this one for "How to be a Food Blogger").

Hope that's helpful. Good luck with your link building!

Hi Michael,

You submitted this same exact question over at The Guild (SEO Chat). Did you receive that answer?

Here's that answer again, including links to the subscriber-only materials you have access to you. Let me know if you can't access anything or if you have any clarification questions:

First, if you haven't seen our article this month on Domain Authority I'd like you to review that first here:

https://guild.seochat.com/se-news/content/looking-to-boost-your-domain-authority-here-are-some-tips

As for your question below, honestly, there is no right answer. Speaking as a link builder myself I'm ALWAYS going to choose a lower DA value site link target that is niche-related over a higher DA site that is not. That's a qualified linking target. Just as I would always choose a link on a page that is actually going to get clicked over a link on a higher DA page that sends me NO traffic.

So there is really not a quantifiable answer to your question. If you want to use DA 70 as your make or break it number, awesome. But considering that the VAST majority of sites have a DA score of 40 or less, personally, 70 seems awfully high to use as a preconceived standard for evaluation.

Make sure to read my detailed article on link evaluation here:

https://guild.seochat.com/se-news/content/Link-Building-7-Simple-Ways-a-Pro-Evaluates-True-Link-Quality

When I'm evaluating a link I'll honestly not review DA till the end. And even then, again, if a link isn't going to get clicked or send traffic, to me that is a HUGE deal and I devalue the link immediately.

Hope that helps. Thanks for the question and definitely respond (other here, or at The Guild) for more information.

Ivan, Panda is a page-level user experience algorithm. Ask yourself: do content pages that result in high bounce rates, low average site visits OR result in "pogosticking" (users click on the pages then immediately use the back button and return back to search results) REALLY qualify as quality pages? The answer is no, they don't.

I would urge you to visit the list of 23 questions I initially linked to above and ASK these of your current content options. Further, if you do visit this link, take a look at this quote from Amit Singhal on the same page:

"low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content."

Directly from the horse's mouth. Can't get any clearer than that.

First off, congratulations and good luck on your new site design. However, this is a VERY general question. The best advice I can give you is going to be a reading list. I would urge you to review ALL of these resources so you can understand what "SEO-friendly Site Design" really involves:

Moz Basics of SEO Friendly Design - http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development

Designing for SEO - http://moz.com/blog/designing-for-seo

The SEO of Responsive Web Design - http://moz.com/blog/seo-of-responsive-web-design (Responsive Design is the Google recommendation and the "hot" approach these days.)

SMX 2013 Boot Camp - SEO Friendly Web Design (great read) - http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/seo-friendly-web-design/

The Web Untangled - http://webwithit.com/products/the-web-un-tangled-pdf-book (great "How To" tutorials that cover everything for new site owners, including initial set-up! - Paid)

I hope the above is helpful. Good luck and make sure to use the search box in this forum so you can bring up other, related, questions of a similar line.

Absolutely! Think of your site as a book. It used to be (pre-Panda) that adding new pages to your site was the right result. More pages, even low-quality pages, allowed for your site to better trigger long tail keywords which generated more traffic. This traffic may not have been super-targeted though and tended to generate very high bounce rates.

Now, post-Panda, it's clear that even a SMALL amount of low-quality, thin, or poor user experience content will drag down your entire domain. That's how Panda works -- it's a page-level quality algorithm. So pruning or removing that content is definitely a consideration to which you must give serious thought. Ask yourself: does your client's content answer a question, fulfill a need, or provides a unique viewpoint all of which work together to provide a full quality user experience? If not, then either re-write (usually a complete waste of time) or remove it completely from your site.

When Google pushed out Panda waaaaay back in 2011 they published a list of 23 questions that site owners should be asking themselves when auditing their site for content and user experience. Read this list and take a hard look at your site and content practices with an eye to understanding how Google may see your site.

Then, I'd suggest you go into Google Analytics under Behavior, choose Site Content, then All Pages, and then sort that content by Bounce Rate. Any page that has a bounce rate of 100% OR an average visit of less than 30 seconds should be reviewed closely for complete removal from your site. Even a small amount of these type of pages can drag down an entire site algorithmically.

Finally, if you do remove the pages from your site, I'd suggest a 410 GONE status code. These seem to be processed much faster than regular 404s and it's a clear sign to Google that these pages are NEVER coming back!

I hope this was helpful Claudio. Good luck with your client's site!

Claudio, I've always been inclined to believe the following:

"If Google CAN know something about your site, assume they DO know something about your site."

So in your case, yes, there is always going to be a danger that Google will see you as the owner of both sites (the penalized domain and the new one) and eventually move any penalties from one site to the other. Now, you can certainly minimize this possibility by doing the following:

• Keeping the sites out of the same GW Tools account.
• Making sure the new domain has different WHOIS information.
• Keeping the sites off of the same C-Class Server
• Minimizing similarities between the two sites as much as possible (including NO 301 redirects and design options).

Regardless, even doing the above may not be enough. I will say though that although Negative SEO does exist, I find it "questionable" that it is the main reason you are having problems. Google advises specifically that it's enough to just "drop those kind of links into a disavow." Most likely though, you have MUCH larger issues impacting the domain, especially if it's been 2+ years.

Definitely consider a professional audit. I really want you to consider existing all other methods before trying this strategy.

Just my two-cents, but that sounds like a TERRIBLE idea. Further, it's going to look pretty disingenuous to your social followings.

If you have a brand, that you've built up social followings on over an extended period of time, it seems VERY short-term to change out different domains. And frankly, the days of partial or exact match domains having long-term, strong, SEO staying power, is really over. Branded sites with branded anchor texts are really the SAFE way to go in what is a clear war by Google on keyword-rich link building.

A domain change is never an easy decision but unless you've legally changed your name or are "rebranding" -- doing a domain change JUST to get some kind of "partial match" in your URL sounds like pretty piss-poor SEO advice. Clearly, I have limited facts here and it sounds like they are doing this for some perceived "local SEO" geographic benefit but in my experience, most of these changes don't end up being successful in the long-term.

Now, the above being said, it is very common in the legal industry to have a keyword-rich domain (ie. http://www.bestinjurylawyers.com/) but use the Firm or Brand Name for social accounts (ie. https://www.facebook.com/TheReevesLawGroup). You can find a ton of examples of firms doing this so it's not the end-of-the-world and you can easily use these examples to justify NOT making a uniform change at your end.

I hope this was helpful. Good luck with your client situation.

To be blunt, moving from one penalized domain to another to escape a penalty is most likely a complete waste of time. It's been a known fact for years that penalties follow 301 redirects. But it was recently clarified by Google that "moving" your penalized site (and that includes content) to another domain to escape a penalty is also a foolish choice. Google now reserves the right to move a penalty to any new domain (something we've suspected for awhile, but now can confirm).

In your case, I'd strongly look at continuing to salvage the domain. If you weren't aware of the above, then I'm hesitant to believe that you've also done EVERYTHING you can to unwind your algorithmic penalty. Further, you reference both Penguin/Panda above and yet BOTH have clear different approaches to how they should be resolved. Maybe your "high-quality content" isn't really as high-quality as you think? Maybe you haven't disavowed all the toxic links/domains affecting your site? Have you tried to seek out a professional Google penalty site audit? I'm not convinced you've done all you can just based on your question.

No judgments, but personally, no, I don't believe this is a "non-dangerous approach."

To clarify, I didn't say that your PageRank was "0" in October. I was hoping YOU knew what your PageRank was in October because if it was 3 and you are now a 0, then clearly that would imply a larger issue. So unfortunately, unless you can backtrack your previous PageRank histroy, all we can do now is speculate.

And I'm confused about your statement here: "because the website overall is doing well there is no clear indication what is causing the drop in rankings for the homepage only." The tool I gave you is for Google Organic-only traffic. And I'm sure most of your traffic is still coming to your home page, that's common for sites. So I'd really look at the tool to see if there was any noticeable drops especially "back a couple of months ago."

You also said specific "ranking drops." So that means you have been able to map keywords to your home page, correct? I would do a couple of things with that information:

• examine the sites Google is now ranking above you for these keyword queries and look for trends
• example your backlink profile with an eye towards these specific keyword phrases that have dropped
• example your on-page optimization (especially internal linking) that references these specific keyword phrases (anchor text)

Keep me updated.

How do you obtain a complete link sample indeed. You really can't. Even the best programs may show only 25-30% of your entire profile at any one time (and in some cases only 15%). According to Google, all you are "supposed" to need is the export from GW Tools, that's clearly not the case.

Unfortunately, if you are only at 52% removal on your existing links that's not nearly high enough. I'd personally recommend trying again to get that number up, on your existing links, but make sure to run a NEW download from GW Tools regularly, they appear to be updating that bi-monthly now so new links are probably already in your account.

Keep working and consider adding www.linkrisk.com into your analysis as well. That's another pretty good source of links and it does a good job of sorting the links into suspect classes for you so also very helpful.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Hi ZoomZoom,

Although I can't do a full site audit in this forum I see some clear issues which could easily explain your drops:

• Your site loads horribly slow. You're scoring very low on the Google PageSpeed Insights Tool
• You've got 70 images on that home page. That's hurting your Page Speed and overall usability.
• You appear to optimizing for the phrase "3D IC technology" and yet it's not represented on the page once.

I'm showing a PageRank 0 on your site, a white toolbar. There has been a PageRank update since October. What was it previously? Did you lose PageRank during the last update? It looks like you have a relatively average DA 34 score which should be enough to rank you for most keywords. Make sure to head over to the Panguin Tool and run this site against reported recent algorithmic updates by Google, that will help fine-tune your site auditing.

Finally, when you change or jigger with setting in GW Tools it can take a period of a couple of weeks for things to "shake out." So just an FYI there as well.

Good luck!

Ouch, I just lost my entire response to you so unfortunately, this one won't be as detailed.

What you described is common. Google doesn't provide a full backlink view of your links and I've personally experienced what you've experienced, receiving sample links that are not referenced at all in the Google link download I originally worked from. To combat this, use multiple sources: Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer, Google Download, Ahrefs, etc. I then take these links and import ALL of them into the Link Detox tool over at www.linkresearchtools.com. The tool does a fantastic job of auto-sorting the duplicates for you. Do this so you work with a larger sample going forward.

Unfortunately, now that you've been denied Google won't even consider looking at another recon submission for at least another 3-5 weeks. Take that time to run a more complete link sample then refine your analysis around the sample link classes and anchor texts they provided. Finally, the standard for Unnatural Link Manual Action removal campaigns is high: think 70%. So try your best to remove as much as you can. What you can't, make sure to DISAVOW at the domain level and link to both your Disavow File AND your Link Pruning Sheets within your next Reconsideration Request.

Good luck and if you remember nothing from this answer remember this going forward:

Golden Rule of Link Building: "Any link on which YOU can control the placement and or anchor text rich nature, is an UNNATURAL LINK."

I hope this was helpful.

Colin, per Andy above, your link profile is TOXIC. I mentioned previously that if your site had anchor text rich links higher than say 10% on any phrase then this can and will lead to suppression issues in Google, specifically via the Penguin algorithm. Go over to www.majesticseo.com and just look at the Anchor Text breakdown chart generated on your www. subdomain. It's terrible. Almost 70% of your entire backlink profile is anchor text rich, and it appears to be low-quality, non-niche related link spam like Andy's example.

Penguin was originally know as the Over-Optimization Algorithm and that applies mainly to the excessive use of linking anchor texts that make up your backlink profile. Your backlink profile SMACKS of a site that has been hit by a Web Spam penalty. I'd urge you to conduct a thorough link audit, identify the low-quality links referenced by Andy above, format and submit a disavow file, and look to PHYSICALLY REMOVE some of these links. Then, and only then, when Penguin is reran (refreshed) in the future, hopefully your home page will pop back-in to search for your various "loch lomond" keywords.

Penalty site audits are something of which I have some experience. So if you want a professional review I can assist you. Otherwise, make sure you read the quality resourses here at Moz and at SearchEngineNews.com on How to Conduct a Penguin Site Audit.

Good luck and make sure to head over to the Panguin Tool by Barracuda Digital to see visually if you've been subject to any recent algorithmic updates by Google. My guess is that you've been hit, repeatedly, over the last several months.

Your home page is indexed. Google instead is just choosing to index your interior page over your home page for this specific query...which is more common than you think.

Why?

It could be that your home page is over-optimized for that keyword phrase or contains an excessive number of exact match anchor text rich backlinks on this specific target keyword. If either was the case, Google would choose to instead rank the second most qualified page from your site in search, which is going to be an inner page.

To troubleshoot this, make sure you audit the home page using a plugin like www.seoquake.com and review the backlink profile with an eye towards that specific search term "loch lomond lodges" over at Majestic SEO. Even if the page got an "A" with the MOZ tool, that won't analyze the backlink issue. And if your home page is made up of say 10% or higher (purely arbitrary number here) of links using the phrase "lock lomond lodges" that may cause Google to suppress the page from showing competitively for this phrase specifically.

That's where I'd start my troubleshooting analysis. I hope that was helpful. Good luck!

User experience, which of course is paramount as been mentioned above. However, what hasn't been mentioned above is the clear need to PRUNE (remove completely) from your site low-quality content for Panda reasons. I personally would not want to redirect any page that has a 100% bounce rate or an average site visit of less than 20 seconds. I'm sure if you filtered these target pages the metrics would be even worse than this.

The problem with low quality or thin content is that even a small amount on the average site will drag down a site algorithmically. Google used to view websites as books, and the best practice was to continually add pages to that book so that you had more possible targets for Google to rank and send you long-tail search traffic referrals. That is no longer the case. Instead, anything that doesn't provide a high-quality user experience is just dragging you down and that includes exactly what you stated in your question "duplicate content, keyword stuffed, and just plain bad content."

So what should you do with these pages? I would certainly not 301 redirect them just for the sake of "redirecting them" nor do I believe that a "custom 404 page for a previous BAD piece of content" enhances user-experience. Instead, I would urge you to remove them completely by the site via a 410 GONE redirect. Google has already publicly stated that they process 410's faster and that this is the PREFERRED best practice to ensure these pages are completely removed from the index.

Hope that helps. Good luck with your project.

Ditto.

Correcting canonical issues is just a sound SEO best practice and has the following clear benefits:

• It consolidates PageRank, DA and Page authority through one uniform URL structure
• It eliminates possible on-site duplicated issues by preventing two version of the same page from arising.
• It consolidates social shares through one URL structure
• It consolidates incoming links into one structure ensuring you get full authority to both www. and non-www URLs.
• It's user-friendly, and ensures that bookmarking and linking is done uniformly.
• It's a W3C best design practice and helps "future-proof" your URL structure.

If you want to "quantify" this to your clients all the above is where I'd start. Even though Google and Bing both make it easy to physically choose "how" you want your site to display in search results, hiccups still occur. And again, if you are indexed by your www. URLs, but are still accumulating links and social shares to your non-WWW URLs, you absolutely won't get the full algorithmic ranking benefit for these URLs until you put the redirects in place.

In sum, this is just a smart SEO practice and is a MUST correct item on any SEO audit checklist. I've seen situations were putting in the .htaccess file in place or adding server side redirects has immediately increased a site's PageRank and overall DA authority. This is usually the norm.

I'd certainly fix it, and you should as well. Hope that was helpful!

I ran the URL above through two header tools, both returned 301s. Here's the header check info returned:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently => Server => nginx Date => Mon, 03 Jun 2013 06:17:24 GMT Content-Type => text/html Connection => close X-Powered-By => PHP/5.4.6-1ubuntu1.2 Expires => Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT Last-Modified => Mon, 03 Jun 2013 06:17:23 +0000 Cache-Control => no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 ETag => "1370240243" Content-Location => http://www.imoney.my/ms/ms/personal-loan Location => http://www.imoney.my/ms/pinjaman-peribadi X-Redirect-ID => 101 X-Frame-Options => SAMEORIGIN

And to answer your question, no, a redirected page should not return a 200 status code.

I hope that helps.

How is redirecting ALL pages back to a home page the BEST approach from a customer usability standpoint? I'll answer that for you, it's not.

At the very least, you should be sending users to a custom 404 error page and then providing them recommended options they can examine further. Just sending them back to the home page does nothing to "qualify' the visitor. Further it can and does increase exit rates since your home page is usually NOT the most qualified page on your site for the average visitor.

Most Wordpress custom redirect plugins allow substantial functionality in either the establishment of custom 404 error pages or the ability to send a redirect to related pages within a site. That's always the best practice as opposed to the "expedient" practice of "just redirecting all the 404 error pages to a Homepage."

Sounds to me like you should be performing an individual page audit and seeing which pages have link and PA authority then "individually" redirecting those pages to a more qualified page. In 9 of 10 cases, that is most definitely NOT your home page.

But that's just my experience. I hope that helps.