Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Andrew,

If you can send me the domain I'll have a look at the DNS and see if there's anything that looks unusual. Drop me a message on here, or email me on david@bringdigital.co.uk

Cheers

David

Hi Andrew,

This can be solved, you have a couple of options:

• Do you have Google Analytics accounts for these subdomains? If so you could register search console via GA and remove the subdomains from there

• Even if you don't have web hosting for these subdomains, as long as you have control over the main domain you can still take control of these subdomains. Is the core domain still under your control? If so you can register for search console via the 'domain name provider' option.

Thanks,

David

Yep - attached. I've redacted the title as it showed the client's name but would be good to see whether you think this is properly optimised?

lTsMcoJ

Does anyone have any experience with SVG image files and on-page SEO?

A client is using them and it seems they use the title tag in the same way a regular image (JPG/PNG) would use an image ALT tag. I'm concerned that search engines will see the multiple title tags on the page and that this will cause SEO issues.

Regular crawlers like Moz flag it as a second title tag, however it's outside the header and in a SVG wrap so the crawlers really should understand that this is a SVG title rather than a second page title. But is this the case?

If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear about it.

Hi Sarah,

I wouldn't recommend using iframes to deliver the product descriptions. From my experience, sites with small-scale duplicate content issues will consistently perform better than sites with little to no content (which your site ultimately would be if content was delivered via iframe)

There are a few variables that effect things, most importantly the volume of the duplicate content. If it's 8 pages, then I wouldn't consider this a high-risk problem. The solution would be to add as much valuable additional content as you can to these pages, whilst keeping the core (descriptions) content in place.

If I've misunderstood and the scale is much bigger, it may be worth considering an alternative solution. Rather than using alternate content delivery methods, I'd recommend putting your focus on adding additional unique content. Once of the simplest ways of doing this is encouraging (or manually adding) user generated reviews of the two similar products. This way your customers can compare apples with apples in regards to the descriptions, but there's plenty of unique and helpful information on the page too.

I hope that helps

Cheers

That's how I got started many moons ago.

You're welcome Kristy, I'll have my fingers crossed that you see a nice jump up next month

Anything I can ever help with just give me a shout on here, or tweet me @mrdavidingram

David

Hi Gareth,

I've sent you a private message with some more details of link building services.

In regards to finding relevant websites, it's just a case of thinking outside the box. My primary work is for a kitchen appliance retailer, which is a generally boring topic, however we've build great relationships (and links!) by matching our products to industries such as interior design, eco/green sites, money saving sites etc etc

I've not worked with a client yet who's industry we can't match to an active online community, it just takes a bit of creative thinking.

If you want to let me know some more details of your site or industry I'll come up with some communities you can get in to.

Cheers

David

Hi Gareth,

The one thing to be wary of with direct link selling companies is that the patterns left on their networks or members sites usually leave a footprint. There have been some pretty cases this year of link networks being completely removed by Google, for example:

http://www.potpiegirl.com/2012/03/the-sky-is-falling/

http://www.buildmyrank.com/news/its-been-a-great-run

Text link ads isn't a network per se, they act as a broken to introduce sites looking to sell links with Webmasters willing to buy them. It's all done through their own software, and they take a cut of a fee. There are two issues that I have personally with these sites:

1. As above, they leave a footprint. For one, when I land on a site I know a text-link-ads.com ad block when I see one, and if I can spot it then you can be pretty confident that Google can find a way to spot it too.

2. When a site is willing to sell text links to the highest bidder, you suddenly find yourself in very spammy company. Do you want a link to your site sat between a link to a casino and a link to a Viagra store? You're putting yourself in bad company.

Actually, as a third point; I often find the kind of sites that are willing to trade links are the kind that are willing to partake in shady SEO practices across the board. You don't want to be relying on links from a site that could get slapped by Google any minute.

I'm not condemning these services, as I know they can work. The problem is they are not really a viable medium/long term strategy, as you're really dancing with the devil. If you want a quick boost, then fill your boots, but if you are concerned about protecting the brand and reputation of your company (or your clients), then I would recommend going down a cleaner root.

The 'white hat' answer to this issue is to hire a professional link builder to go out and obtain you some 'natural' links - by this I mean editorial links on genuine websites that have been earned through outreach and relationships. It might sound like a slower solution, but this isn't necessarily the case as good quality link builders can make the process scalable.

This is a much safer option, protects you from being penalised by Google, and puts you in a much safer neighbourhood than dealing with link dealers.

The real beauty of this route (in my opinion), is that you get higher quality links and it actually works out a fair bit cheaper too.

I wrote an answer earlier in regards to what to look for when outsourcing your link building:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/reputable-link-building-company

And of course, if you want me to show you the kind of links that can be built, drop me a message

Good luck,

David

Hi Kristy,

The first thing to say is that Domain Authority is a third party metric, so unless you have seen a drop in your traffic then there should be no need for immediate alarm. Although DA correlates with successful rankings, there is still no guarantee that a change in DA will effect your rankings in any way.

The solution for your issue might be quite simple. In last months update the number of links in the index was around 50% smaller than the previous update. This meant that a lot of links that where contributing towards your DA score are no longer in SeoMoz's index, and can therefore not contribute towards your DA score.

In no way does this mean that these links are no longer in Google, as the Google index and the Mozscape index are two entirely separate entities and are in no way connected.

After this month's update, it has been noted that the index is even smaller than last month (albeit by a much smaller margin). If you read the Q&A entries following last month’s update you'll see lots of people asking the same question, and it was confirmed that the drop in DA was due to the smaller index.

I expect we'll see the same over the next week.

Personally, I saw my clients DA drop by an average of 3-4 points.

If your drop in score correlates with this pattern, then you have nothing to worry about at all. Especially if your traffic hasn't been effected.

Here are the details of the smaller update from last month:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/july-mozscape-update

And here are this month’s details:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/august-mozscape-update

If your drop in score doesn't coincide with this, then it most likely means that you've lost one/some links that were contributing to your overall Domain Authority score. You can get to the bottom of this by using the historical link date in Majestic to figure out what links where lost, and when.

If this is the case then you can either try and rebuild the lost links, or create some new ones. Or ideally, both!

Best of luck.

David

Yeh, I've just done some testing and it seems pretty random. Hmmm...

In terms of how the search engines treat it, the above is correct, but OSE doesn't seem to have a hard and fast rule. I wonder how much this effects the sites they are linking to?

Hi,

This isn't necessarily an OSE bug, it is mainlydown to the differentiation between the sub domain and original root domain.

For example, if the following domain existing:

mrdavidingram.tumblr.com

What you are saying is the domain is tumblr.com, and should be reported as a DA90+.

However sub-domains are classed as their own domains and not part of the original root domain, so if this sub-domain hasn't built any authority then it would be reported as a DA1.

So basically a sub-domain doesn't benefit from the power of the main domain and the links pointing at it, otherwise all tumblr, wordpress.com and blogspot sites would be massively authoritative and dominiating the search results (which would be a nightmare for users!).

So if you ever see a example.tumblr.com or example.wordpress.com; even though you can see the domain of the host site in there, it is still being treated as a totally unique domain and website, just as if it was example.com

I think the confusion has come down to OSE, as there does seem to be some inconsistency between how they report these sites. Some they will report as a unique domain (DA1 for example), but others they will give a DA of the original host domaing (DA90+). I'm not sure why this is, hopefully one of the team can shed some light...

Hope that helps.

David

Morning,

Yep, the first step I would take is suppliers, contractors, partners etc etc. Basically anyone you have a business connection with that has a website. A lot of these will simply be happy to do this as a favour, some will want something in return such a reciprocal link (if it makes sense, go for it). Some you might need to be a little smarter with and play a bit of hustle to get. One great way we got in with a couple of software companies we were using was to offer a glowing testimonal for their website. It was win/win, they got a great review, we got a great link.

When it comes to thinking of suppliers and partners, really be creative. Think about every aspect of your business, right down to the cleaners/caterers. If they have a website you want to be on there.

In terms of directories, I would generally say avoid, however there are a few big national ones that pass value, and depending on your resource there are usually a few websites and directories that curate lists of local businesses. For me, the big key when decided whether to use a directory or not is down to whether their results are indexed and ranking. Follow the directory through to an obscure business page (e.g outdoor supplies > gardening > landscape gardening > turf suppliers) pick on of the business on their and search for their name. If the directory isn't showing up in the first few pages, it's really not worth being on.

Regarding competitions; one benefit is the competition websites themselves, however the real win comes from the entrants. The blogging community are very active with competitions, and if you can think of a campaign that is particularly fun, engaging or has a kick ass prize, then you will see a lot of links coming from the blogosphere.

The other option (and in my opinion the quickest way of getting quality links) is through Blogger and Webmaster outreach. Make a list of 100 target sites and approach them. The good old days of simply asking for a link a sadly gone, but there are plenty of ways you can reach out that will result in a link (offer a guest post, offer an interview, form a partnership etc etc). It can be time consuming, although you can make this scalable and see lots of high quality links flying in fast.

Like you mentioned the answer you're going to get from a lot of people is 'make great content' which is pretty vague in itself. The logic behind it is if your site hosts great content, then it will naturally attract links and social shares across the web. There are many ways of doing this, from writing consistently good posts around your industry, to making infographics or videos with the intention of going viral. As a long term strategy, it's a great approach, but it is something that will need a lot of thought, time and often investment.

Best of luck.

David

Hi Van,

Unfortunately it's near on impossible to obtain a ranking position that will show universally for yourselves, your clients and their customers.

The best option you have is spending the time getting your customers to truly understand personalised and localised search, as well as the various methods of turning personalisation off. Once they understand this, they will be on board with the fact that the results they see will differ nationally/globally.

I work with a large number of clients on this basis, and they are happy with the logic. The know they can turn personalisation off (to an extent) using '&pws=0' or incognito mode, and to be honest these methods usually match pretty spot on with the rank tracking I'm providing them (probably because the rank checkers obtaining the results using these de-personalised methods)

Person A is always going to see different results than Person B, but if your clients can understand that the rankings reports are providing the positions the majority will see, then they should be happy.

As you mentioned, the main metrics should always be visitors and sales, but tying these to rankings is always a great way of showing the ROI of their natural search efforts.

Best of luck.

David

Hi Jon,

I do freelance link building for a dozen UK companies, as well as the white label link building for several digital agencies. Naturally, I'd recommend myself, however if you are shopping around the market then here are some points that I think it's essential to check prior to outsourcing any link building.

• Firstly, the company should be willing to disclose exactly how they go about obtaining the links, including showing examples of outreach and results. If they aren't willing to disclose this, then I would stay clear (would you really trust someone to represent your business without telling you how they intend on doing it)

• Also, as simple as it sounds, ask to see some example links they have built. I have found that a few outsourced link builders who preach the white hat quality links spiel, but then send you a list of footer links they've added to their own blog network. Again, if they are not willing to provide examples then I would avoid.

• Find out what metrics they use to determine a quality link. A worrying number of link builders still base link value solely on the score showing in the PageRank toolbar, which can deliver mixed results at best. Make sure they are using metrics you trust, or ask them to provide a few examples of sites they would target for your business, with an explanation as to why.

• Find out exactly who will be doing the link building. Many companies outsource their link building, so if you're arranging a contract with an incredibly knowledgeable and pleasant SEO, don't make the assumption that it will be them doing the link building for you. If it will be someone else in the company (or a sub-contractor) building the links, ask to see specific examples of their work.

• When you're agreeing on a contract, be very specific about what you expect in terms of quality and quantity of links. Ideally, pick a specific minimum number at a specific minimum quality (for example; they will build 15 links a calendar month at a minimum Domain Authority of 45)

• Ask them to take a look at your backlink profile and recommend the type of links you need, and the kind of sources they should be from. This will give you a great insight into their knowledge and philosophy of link building, and will hopefully give you some great ideas too.

This might all sound a lot to ask from a company, but remember they are going to be representing you and your brand, and to many Webmasters and Bloggers they will become the face of your business. You want to show the same level of thoroughness as if you were making a full time hire, and any link building company worth their salt will understand why and be happy to co-operate.

Best of luck with your search, and let me know if you'd like to see any of my work

David

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your problems.

This could be a penalty, however I'd say it's more likely that it's the natural fluctuation you'd expect to see with a large scale move like this. I've never seen a major revamp like this have rankings settle within a few days, and I'd expect you to see similar fluctuations for the next month.

One question regarding the 301; did you redirect the old sites on a page level (e.g did you redirect oldsite.com/blue-widgets to newsite.com/blue-widgets), or did you just redirect the whole domain to the new home page? If you did the later, this would explain why you lost rankings.

However...

There are lots of rumours of another penguin update this week, so depending on the timescale it could be something to do with this. What where the link profiles of the previous sites like? If they contained loads of exact match anchor text, and a poor % of branded anchor text, then this could well be the issue.

There was also a Panda update recently, however if you are confident about the quality and originality of your content then it's less likely to be this.

Cheers

David

Hi Liam,

There is always a natural delay between crawling and indexing, and it's rarely instantaneous. Although I can see why you'd want a news site to be getting indexed pretty quickly.

The one thing that stands out is from the example is the <changefreq>tag, which you've got set on 'never'. This is essentially for archived pages, and tells crawlers that it's low importance (even though you've given it high priority). Even if you're not intending to change the article, I'd still recommend giving it a change frequency of 1 month so you're inviting the crawlers to come and check it more often. Saying that, this doesn't mean that if you set the frequency to hourly that the crawlers would come back every hour, as they'd soon figure out that nothings changing.</changefreq>

Really I'd have your home and catergory pages on daily, the articles on monthly, and the static pages on monthly or yearly.

In terms of getting them indexed quicker after the crawl, this is just a case of establishing trust and importance from the search engines. They need to know that you have news content that requires a quicker indexed. You can gain this trust by providing regular, high quality pages. When their crawlers pick up that there are new pages going live daily you will see the index get quicker.

Depending what CMS you are using, it is also worth getting a script or plugin that pings the search engines with an updated site map every time a new page or post is added. I've done this through Wordpress and articles get indexed within 4 hours. Again though, it didn't start this way and it only got this quick once I was putting up 4 posts a week like clockwork.

Good luck.

Cheers

David

Hi Dan,

Not necessarily, there are plenty of occassions when hiding content is valid. and actually adds value to the user especially with the rise in popularity of jQuery (some of the coolest transition effects rely on the display:none mark-up).

The real question is why you are wanting to hide your H1 tag? If there is a valid reason then you're not going to have any issues, however if you are hiding a keyword stuffed title for the sole benefit of SEO, then you could come into trouble.

For example, I know some sites use images for H1 titles so they can get the design quality they simply can't achieve with CSS, however they also include a written title to back it up. Technically verging away from the rules, but it's not going to see your site penalised.

The thing to remember is that a small thing like this isn't going to get you struck out of Google's indexed. If you follow their best practices but the occasion arises when it's necessary to bend the rules a little with a trick like this they are not going to outcast your site. It would only be a problem if it was part of a larger set of tactics that were violating Google's guidelines, and it was clear you are out to manipulate the search results.

So in summary:

• If the trick benefits your visitors, then don't worry
• If it is solely for SEO benefit, then make sure everything else is whiter than white
• If it is part of a larger campaign to hide things from users but not Googlebot, then stay well clear

Thanks,

David

Hi Igor,

Although keyword rich domains do seem to hold weight with Google, I wouldn't recommend going so specific as to include the location (itsupportla)

To me itsupport.net is a great domain name, it's short, it's professional, and it tells both Google and your users exactly what you do.

If you have that domain, then it sounds like a winner to me.

Saying that, if itsupport.com is available but only showing a parking page, it might be worth finding the owner via WHOIS and seeing what it would take to get them to part ways with it. I've had some success with this in the past, often the domains belong to people who simply never got around to finishing projects they started, and are delighted to let them go for a few hundred dollars.

Best of luck

David

Hi Igor,

The quality of the domain extension will only play a minuscule role in your overall SEO efforts, so it's not something that should keep you up at night. However, you should take note of the following points:

• If you are looking at localised TLD's (.us, .co.uk etc), you will essentially telling Google that your site is primarily directed at that country, and it means you could struggle to rank elsewhere. I would therefore suggest always using a multi-national domain (.com, .net etc) if you intend to market your site globally

• From a user point of view, a more recognisable domain extension indicates more trust in a site, and correlation data suggests that Google reflects this in their algorithm. By this, I mean that if a user looks at your domain and thinks 'that looks a bit spammy', then it would be justified to think that Google would think the same.

This doesn't just mean the domain extension, but the domain as a whole. There are occasions where people are so desperate to get a .com they get a ridiculous domain that no one would trust.

Look at these domains, which seems more trustworthy:

www.your-product-online-4u.com

**www.yourproduct.net **

You want your overall domain name to be short, memorable and as clean as possible.

Although people will generally trust a .com over a .net, don't make the mistake of sacrificing the entire domain for a better extension (as it the example above)

Thanks,

David