Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Your of course right, aiming to have the best user experience for the user is the best long term strategy for ranking in surps ( and building a loyal customer base)

I also completely agree, blog content should be for users not for search engines (should have made that clear in my original post).  I tell people unless you make a real effort in you blog to make good content that people want to read/ link to, then the blog is pointless. I would use the "first link rule" as an technical example as why a crappy keyword blog is pointless ( was telling this to a small business owner just last night).  Reading Michaels comments made me think twice.

Sorry I can't give you a link for these "SEO experts" as it normally from cold callers selling SEO services, and it part of their package.

I read this to day http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718

I thought  to myself, yep, thats what I been reading in Moz for years ( pitty Matt could not confirm that still the case for 2014)

But reading though the comments Michael Martinez of http://www.seo-theory.com/  pointed out that Mat says "...the last time I checked, was 2009, and back then -- uh, we might, for example, only have selected one of the links from a given page."
Which would imply that is does not not mean it always the first link.

Michael goes on to say "Back in 2008 when Rand WRONGLY claimed that Google was only counting the first link (I shared results of a test where it passed anchor text from TWO links on the same page)"  then goes on to say " In practice the search engine sometimes skipped over links and took anchor text from a second or third link down the page."

For me this is significant.  I know people that have had "SEO experts" recommend that they should have a blog attached to there e-commence site and post blog posts (with no real interest for readers) with anchor text links to you landing pages.  I thought that posting blog post just for anchor text link was a waste of time if you are already linking to the landing page with in a main navigation as google would see that link first. But if Michael is correct then these type of blog posts anchor text link blog posts would have value

But who is' right Rand or Michael?

I tried it again about 20 mins later, and its now working

I was running some backlink reports in OSE and exporting  them on different domains (external only, root domain), the first exported fine, but the last 3 have been blank ( one was a redo incase it was just a one off error).

"noindex" takes precedents over "index" so basicly if it says "noindex" anywhere google will follow that.

The title  is "Our ranking as not returned after penalty, Why" So I would take that their rankings are not well

When they said looking at "Moz tools we have great results" I took that to mean PA/DA, Domain trust etc.

Generally the reason is it was the bad links is what was making you rank so well in the first place, now they are removed you don't get the benefit they where giving you.

I had a quick look at you backlink profile with OSE, and I can see some good links there (channel 4), but also aload of junk directories.  OSE just does not consider the quality of the back link so in the stats you may have better PA and DA but when you look at the backlinks your competitors might have better qualty links (not spam)

also there is a chance that the "seo company" you used might have disavowed some good links by mistake, but if they are any good they would not have done that.

Hi Evan

It can take 5-8 weeks for a link to show in OSE, its just depends when in the OSE crawl cycle you got the link. The last update was on the 21st april but that is based on data gathered from the 4+ weeks before that date so if that link appeared in the middle of that craw it could have been missed.  Also there is a chance it just missed that page during the last crawl.

The next update is on the 19th of May, so hopefully your link will show then.

Btw if the link is showing under "Just-Discovered Links" is OSE then you know it will be picked up.  (

more info http://moz.com/products/api/updates

google might recognise it as an affiliate link and therefore unnatural and so reduce or remove its seo value.

That is a weird one, even googling the url its not showing it.  Stinks of a penalty but you have no msg in GWTs and the backlinks look clean (even a backlink from RTE, which should be golden).  And it seems google is caching it ok

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZXKkuLuk6UkJ:www.yourdairygold.ie/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie

The only thing I noticed is that www.butteritwithdairygold.ie is 301 redirecting to it, and I thought that maybe that domain is burnt, but again its backlink profile seems clean.

Skimlinks is a automated affiliate marketing company.  My first guess it whatever cms they are using (word press?) is using a plug in that automaticly put that into all there links.

As far as I'm aware is still the case

I had the same problem with conversion data not matching up.  Adwords and Analytics track conversion differently. Adwords takes credit for any conversion from that visitor up to 30days after they clicked on the ad, while analytics tracks the direct visit that lead to the sale.

So for example, customer A clicks on an ad on Monday, looks at the site but does not buy then.  He comes back on Thursday via directly typing in your address ( or clicked on an organic link), he then buys.  Adwords will claim that sale, while analytics will say it was a direct visit sale (or organic link, or wherever was the direct visit come from).

Only thing is it should be  Adwords showing more conversion (not analytics's) normally.

I would be very surprised that the hidden text is actually working, and I would think that google is just ignoring it and other factors are making it rank. Something like font size = 0 or same colour as the background, would be so easily picked up by a bot/algorithm compared  to some complex things it can pickup on.

Gregory is on the money with adwords, and I agree with organic, its not worth the effort.  Also ips address are not always right, I have seen some ip ranges for UK visitors show as Ireland and some Ip ranges for Ireland visitors showing as Austria!!

If you have it setup in WMT that the .CA site is for Canada and .com is for US, then it should be fine

Generally it can its about 4-8 weeks before mozscape will start showing the new back link.

More info about when the mozscape updates:
http://moz.com/products/api/updates

As far as I'm aware there is no such tool, and I would be surprised if there was.

"We have set the GEO targeting for the respective Countries"  I'm guessing you mean in WMTs.  Normally that is enough, but I think considering that the .ie is very strong compared the the .co.uk backlink wise, google is deciding that the .ie is a better result.

Just to be clear for me the .ie Is no.1 and .co.uk is no.2

I haven't looked at your backline profile but if you have alot of links from the UK pointing to the .ie domain, that could be working against your .co.uk ranking higher than .ie in the surps.  changing or adding local links to the uk site might swing to the No.1 spot.

You could use geo ip to auto redirect or maybe a light box popup asking if they want the uk or ireland site.  Note that alot of N.Ireland IPs register as London (thanks virgin media), and I have also heard some some UK ips registering as Dublin (isp servers in dublin),

S_Curtis is correct

Your actually lucky, my "not provided" is closer to 90%