Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Carrie,

You can use tools such as Moz's Link Explorer to vet the quality of these links. I would also make sure they're topically relevant to your client's site. If so, you're probably okay.

Best,

Paul

Hi Yasin,

I hope you're well!

You can create a disavow file that contains potentially spammy domains, but I would note John Mueller’s statements from a Google Webmaster hangout in November 2017.

“With regards to sites that don’t have a manual action for link issues, we do try to take those links out of the equation automatically when we can recognize them.” - JM

Do you know if your site was manually penalized by Google? You can confirm this in Google Search Console: google.com/webmasters/tools/ Dashboard > Search Traffic >> Manual Actions.

Furthermore, Mueller goes on to explain:

“If you’re unsure as to whether or not Google is actually taking those into account or kind of taking those out of the equation then the disavow file is a great way to kind of get peace of mind and to say well I’m sure these won’t get taken into account by any of Google’s algorithms. And that way you’re absolutely certain that you’re not associated with those links to your site that you can’t remove or kind of change.” -JM

Marie Haynes, wrote an awesome start to finish guide on how to build and submit your disavow, which can be found here:

https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool

Note: the article is a bit dated, but the basic premise still applies. Hope this helps!

You may also want to make sure everything was redirected properly when you merged sites and switched to https. Are the old domains still being indexed?

All the best,

Paul

Thanks Meghan, I appreciate the feedback and I understand the need to adjust, but using domain authority as a reliable KPI is becoming increasingly difficult, particularly when the historic data between the 2 models contradict one another. These are changes we have to report out on to clients, can we expect additional roll-outs in the near future?

Thanks as always!

Moz Team,

We are again seeing shifts on how we report on Domain Authority. When Moz moved from OSE to LE, domain authority scores changed (which is fine because our direct competitors in LE also saw similar changes). The problem is it looks like domain authority trends have re-calibrated to show a long term decline instead of a long term increase, which changes the narrative entirely. Please see IMGUR link. Is this a temporary issue, or has Moz again changed the scale in which DA is measured? Is anyone else seeing disparities in their data?

Thanks All!

NfnM4dk.jpg

Hi All,

We are working with an international brand that owns several domains across the EU and in North America. Our team is in the process of setting up international targeting using sitemaps to indicate alternate language pages. This is being done to prevent North American pages from being served in the UK, Spain pages from being served in Portugal, or any other combination of possibilities...

Currently we are mapping duplicate or “equivalent” pages and defining them as rel="alternate" on their respective sitemaps. The problem is, it’s not always explicitly clear what Google considers “equivalent.”

1. In this instance, URL structures vary by domain,
2. in most cases the content is similar (but unique),
3. the landing page templates vary is design and functionality,
4. and lastly, services often contain nuances that make them slightly different from one another (Professional Liability Insurance vs Professional Indemnity Insurance).

All things considered, these pages are offering the same service, but are vastly different (see above).

Q: Is it appropriate to use these attributes to serve the correct language / regional URL to searchers?

Q: Is there a rule of thumb on what should be considered an "equivalent" page?

Thanks All,

Paul