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Great answer!

Hi there

External links in your footer won't hurt your PageRank but it will give a boost to the pages you're linking to (if they are follow). These links should also be relevant to your website, provide value to the user, and there should only be a couple of them as to not come across as a link farm.

That being said, I would be very weary of externally linking from your footer, though. The reason being is that this is on every single page of your website and potentially will take users off of your website. Even then, if they are important external links, most of the time users don't even make it to the footer, so they may never see them to begin with.

If they are important, use them with purpose and place them on and in pages where users will see them and find value. If they are not important, I wouldn't bother linking to them, let alone in the footer.

That's just my two cents, hope this helps!
P

Hi Lindsay

I'm not the most knowledgeable on Wordpress or their plugins, but based on installations / reviews, I would look into All In One Schema Rich Snippets - it looks to have what you will need there. But again, I would talk to your dev team or a member of the community who is more well versed here.

Hope this helps! Good luck!
P

Hi there

If I remember right, this was a form of letting search engines know what URL should be ranking and getting credit for content, kind of like a canonical tag.

I might be wrong here and would love to know if I am!

Hope this helps!
Patrick

Hi there

The best advice I can give here is if it doesn't feel natural or right, then it's more than likely not. Advise your client the best you can and arm yourself with as much information about the sites / the possible repercussions of taking this route as possible. At the end of the day, your job is to guide your client as best as you can and let them make an educated decision.

Last note, based on experience, Google hates link farms / link schemes. If these pages / sites have the scent of that, I'd steer clear.

Hope this helps, good luck!
P

Hey EGOL

The cable and internet comparison is actually a great way of looking at this. I'm going to borrow this for our office download as well. The potential back and forth on pricing from the consumer / publisher perspective is what I'm concerned about. Put the professional aspect of this being my job aside, the idea that people who can't afford access to even the most basic need content or information is something that I find absolutely heartbreaking should this repeal stick.

Oooh, I definitely have opinions on Ajit's videos, but that's a conversation for another time and platform.

Thanks as always for your response!
P

Hey Roberto

This is a great point about the barriers to entry for startups and new businesses. I also really like your points about most funding vs most value, that's definitely a huge consideration here and I think one that a lot of people haven't really considered (myself included) about the repercussions of this repeal.

You did great with your points - there is no right or wrong, just wanted the community insights and get the discussion going! Thanks for your thoughtful response!
P

Hey Rand

Didn't even see you posted this! Thanks for the insights, this was all great stuff, man! Sending it to our office now for a quick digest.

Thanks again,
P

Hi Lindsay

Great to hear you're on the Schema train! I wanted to pass a couple of Schema resources your way to help you get a good foundation going for your own understanding of Schema. I highly recommend Moz's resource on Schema (there are more great resources at the end of the article), as well this great resource from Kissmetrics.

Based on what you've sent over in your screenshot, it looks like Google recognizes a few types of Schema on that page and didn't find an issue or errors with the markup on that page. That's a good thing!

However, one suggestion, when I reviewed your Florida page, I saw that your team implemented WebSite schema (here). I would recommend using WebPage Schema here as this isn't a website, it's a webpage. I would also take advantage of Keywords Schema (which you can implement under WebPage Schema) on key pages for keywords / queries you're specifically targeting there. It gives Google and other search engine crawlers help in understanding what keywords / queries are most important for that page, and gives you a potentially nice boost!

Hope this helps! If you have any questions let me know or shoot me a private message!
Patrick

Hi  there

The best way to assess backlinks are to ask the following questions:

• Does this link help my website?

• Is this link relevant to my website?

• Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it?

• Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website?

• Does it send traffic? How does the audience from that link engage my site and content?

• If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority,Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy?

• Are the links from directory templates? (example)

• Inspect URLs with blatant spam words

• Free

• Porn

• XXX

• Submit

• Directory

• Paid

• Links

• URL

• Sex

• etc.

• Check for multiple domains and URLs on the same IPs

• This can usually show link farms or spam

While this is somewhat high level and general, it's the process I go through when I analyze a backlink, and it hasn't set me wrong yet.

Hope this helps! Good luck!
P

Hey everyone

I was having a discussion with a friend and colleague recently regarding the repeal of net neutrality and what it would mean for marketers and website owners. I wanted to reach out to the community and get your thoughts on what you foresee this FCC decision meaning for your efforts and if your plans have changed at all.

Obviously, there are appeals happening and any changes are said to be subtle and gradual, but I'd still like to see what is on everyone's mind at this time should the repeal stick.

Excited for the conversation!

Hi there

The only way to "get the top spots" in Google is to make sure your site abides by SEO best practices, that great content is being written, and that you are building great backlinks. If you are conducting proper keyword research for your content, then you should be able to find a healthy balance between the language your target audience uses and what keywords get a healthy amount of search volume in search engines. Use these words / phrases naturally in your content and you'll be just fine.

Remember - Google is fantastic and making connections between topics and variations. If you are able to write your content that methodically uses these keywords, and your pages are optimized, then look into your link building strategy to begin distributing your content more effectively.

Also - don't forget to be conduct ongoing audits of your website as this will help / hinder ongoing search engine performance.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!
Patrick

Hi there

1. I would check the internal links on your website to see if you accidentally typed the URL wrong. Then, I would check your backlinks (using Open Site Explorer, Majestic, or Ahrefs) to see if any websites are linking to your website with the incorrect URL (then ask them to update the link!)

2. Simply redirect them to the URL you want to be the ranking URL, update your sitemap, and submit that sitemap to Google Search Console.

Hope this helps! Good luck!
Patrick

Hi there

Ultimately, if you're creating great content on your website and are collecting great links to the internal pages of your website, then the entire domain will be performing better overall, increasing domain authority. What you're describing here sounds like you have a few relatively optimized pages that are standing well on their own. I would not say that the other 95 pages are providing much value to the other 5.

What I would do is take a good look at your website (and do it regularly), focusing on structuring your website and optimizing your pages in a way that makes sense for the users and from a crawlability standpoint. From there, I'd begin focusing on developing strong content that's relevant to those users you are trying to target and distribute that content in a way that garners quality backlinks that point back to your website. Doing this will help not only the page, but the entire domain.

All of the resources I have provided should help! Good luck!
Patrick

Hi thereI

I do, overall, find these to be valuable links and listings because ultimately what you want is traffic to your site. You want traffic coming to your website for brand awareness and for users to take action. These listings do just that, they put you in front of audiences looking for your business or services and send traffic. From a SEO standpoint, some of these sites / links may not send ranking or linking value because they are nofollow, but I would not let that you deter you - remember, your purpose in obtaining that link is sending quality traffic to your website to take action, not praying for higher rankings. Just make sure the listings you obtain are relevant and through known entities.

As you said, it's a tedious undertaking to manually list your website in all of these local business directories, but services like Moz Local take all of the work off of you and do this automatically. You can learn more about Moz Local here and focus on other things, like building quality content and obtaining quality links.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!
Patrick

Hi there

Simply put, Google's algorithm feels that both of these pages on that domain and the content that they contain are both relevant to the search the user is conducting. Google may also feel that this website holds a lot of authority in that particular industry or market, and will show multiple pages to give users more options when it comes to their search.

This isn't a bad thing - this just means that this particular website is doing a great job from an SEO standpoint for that particular keyword or query and can be used as an example in optimizing your pages / content.

Hope this helps! Good luck!
Patrick

Hi there

I agree with Kevin here. Relevance is key when it comes to your users (and search engines). You could take it a step further and redirect job URLs on board B to the related job URLs on board A, that way users go directly where they need to go should they have clicked a link from a third party or another site. It might take a minute to do, but the payoff is a better user experience and organic equity being transferred correctly. Here's a tutorial on how to do a redirect map.

Hope this helps! Good luck!
P

Hi there

According to Google (via this article from Search Engine Land), these links are considered unnatural and should either have a "nofollow" tag or be removed entirely. Here is a bit from that article:

Google is reminding widget makers to remove the links from their widgets are add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the links. If they do not, Google said the “webspam team may take manual actions on unnatural links.” If you do get a manual action for this, Google said you need to remove the links or add the rel=”nofollow” before submitting a reconsideration request.

Additionally, those that embed these widgets on their site should “add a rel=”nofollow” attribute on those unnatural links or remove the links entirely from the widget,” Google said later on in their blog post.

I would review different link building strategies and techniques such as those from this guide from Moz. You'll find through this guide and competitive research (with tools like Open Site Explorer, Majestic, and Ahrefs) that there are a ton of great link opportunities that go beyond these embed links.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Good luck!
P

Hi Leslie

Google actually provides an awesome resource right here to help. I heavily suggest reviewing it with your team.

I would also check out these great guides from Moz called Web Site Migration Guide and Recovering Your Organic Search Traffic from a Web Site Migration Gone Wrong. The latter is more post launch but it will help you think of things before you launch and also help you notice things going wrong after.

All of the above are great resources and will help get you on the right path. I would also suggest not forgetting our friends at Bing - while they may not be a huge portion of your organic traffic, every little bit helps.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have further questions or concerns - good luck!
Patrick

Hi there

Piggybacking a bit on Logan's response here - while not a ranking factor, I would make sure that if you do utilize meta descriptions (which I recommend), make sure you're enticing searcher's to click through and using it as a "first point of sale". If you have a great meta description that not only speaks to the content but also speak to the searcher's intent. Doing so will do wonders.

Hope this helps as well! Good luck!
Patrick