Questions
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Web Page Dropped Out of Google?
From what I see, duplicate content has replaced it. The only question is whether it's yours or not. A search for "It is possible to pay for the cover personally from your net income in which case benefits in payment are tax free." shows this page: http://bit.ly/1DnKp1S See how Google only shows one then gives you the "repeat the search" link? They're only showing one version and it's not the one you linked above. It looks like you have duplicate content here as well: http://www.contractorfinancials.com/protection/ And here: http://www.freelancermoney.co.uk/income-protection.php So Google used to rank one but has chosen another to rank now. You seem to have a LOT of sites up and lots of duplicate content not sorted out very well. I didn't dig far enough to see if you own all these sites but the logos & colours are very similar and duplicate so I assume you do.
Technical SEO Issues | | MattAntonino0 -
Why is Google Webmaster Tools showing 404 Page Not Found Errors for web pages that don't have anything to do with my site?
These extensions look like they are attachments. Go into GWT, click on the 404 link, then a box with pop up, click on the "Linked From" tab.. Go to the page and Ctrl U to see the source code. Do a CTRL F and search for the broken link. When you find it in your source code you should be able to figure out what's triggering that response. If you can't find the URLs in your source code, mark them as fixed and it should take care of the problem. Especially if they are older. It looks like it could be a shipment status, a product out of stock message, and a PDF of train schedules. I would check the linked from pages and make sure that there isn't some erroneous code that is creating a page when it doesn't need to.
Technical SEO Issues | | MonicaOConnor0 -
Why has my site dropped out of search rankings?
For the record, this is a great answer. OP, you were initially penalised for poor links, and did the right thing in removing said spammy links. However, who's to say that whilst those links were propping you up **before **the penalty and helping you rank, now that those links have disappeared, you've got a very sparse link profile and need to start linkbuilding all over again. Just make sure you build links 'naturally' this time.
Technical SEO Issues | | ChimplyWebGroup0 -
Page URL Being Picked Up as a Title Tag in SERPS?
Is this still happening? I crawled the URL you listed with tool an old friend built that extracts HTML/CSS elements and reads the page like a search engine would (he's worked on search engines professionally for years), and it extracted the correct title. As referenced above, Google's structred data tester is also showing no errors (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freestyleaccounting.com%2Faccountancy-services%2Fsetting-up-a-limited-company-for-contracting-quick-start-guide%2F). A screenshot of the query and result would be really helpful.
Technical SEO Issues | | alecfwilson0 -
On Page Optimisation Query
Hi, Overall I would agree with Tommy (with the caveat that as far as I know, social signals are not a factor for search algorithms). But I'm a little concerned about so many internal links. Is the page actually that important to the site, or are you only linking for SEO purposes? You have lots of internal links and (from what I saw) no external links to the page. My question is why you have two pages at all. It looks like the content varies slightly, but is there a reason why you can't use a single page for this? You don't want two pages competing for the same keyword. If you do want to keep both pages for UX purposes, I'd recommend canonicalising one to the other (in which case the canonical version should receive the ranking benefits of the other one so it should continue to rank).
On-Page / Site Optimization | | bridget.randolph0 -
How Do I Know which links are bad?
There is a lot that goes into dealing with this issue. You will need some good tools that can be found here http://www.reconsiderationrequests.net/tools/ You need to focus on dofollow links and this may come as a surprise but also links that appear missing. Download the latest links from WMT, Ahrefs & majestic. Combine them and use excel or "ScrapeBox DupeRemove" available from the link above to remove and duplicates. Use "Blackhatlinks.com Free Dofollow / Nofollow Link Checker" to see if the link is dofollow / nofollow or notfound for the webmaster tools links. Once done you can start to look at what is good and bad. Under a manual penalty you are under review by a real person and they are meticulous, they will make you remove links you never even created and all sorts of crazy stuff. Almost all links are bad in Googles eyes, this includes urls, brand mentions and non optimized anchor text like click here. You need to attack it hard and remove as much as possible, because a penguin refresh only comes around every 6 months, the next will probably be in Feb or April. Remove anything that has optimized anchor text no matter what or try to get the text changed if its an incredible link. The most creditable links are ones where multiple sites are mentioned that include your competitors in some form of comparison on a forum, article blog etc... Almost all others are trash. Also some directories are ok, like dmoz, yahoo dir etc... OK I Mentioned before about missing links, you will find links in WMT where the link does not appear anymore, BUT in the case of a directory it may have moved down to page 3 or 4 when it was on page 1 or 2 when first crawled. The link is still on the site and if you see the site itself is trash, add it to the disavow. Dont bother adding links to the disavow file, add domains. example: domain:xyz.com domain:abc.com This will ensure you capture all links on those domains regardless if the move around. If you do not want to do this all yourself there are many tools out there, like Link Detox and rmoov. Feel free to ask me any questions or send me some examples if you are not sure. Its a horrible process I have had to do it myself and helped many others,all with success!
Link Building | | gazzerman10 -
What is the value of having an HTML sitemap on site?
I've asked the same thing in the past and told by authoritative users in this forum the following: "If your site is structurally sound, you shouldn't need a sitemap." I've bought into that principle. If customers scroll to the bottom of my pages without finding or keyword searching what they need, I've probably not done a good job of setting it up. Put into practice, we're in the process of revamping to a top navigation with search suggest features and left nav filtering functionality.
Technical SEO Issues | | AWCthreads0 -
Can I have an H1 tag below an H2?
Hi Rich, Physically having the H2 above the H1 is fine. Like Schwaab and Chris say, you won't be penalized for it - it is more a matter of logical hierarchy on your page. I am guessing you are doing this because you don't have access to the CSS or do not want to modify the stylesheet and you like the look/design of a page with the H2 above the H1 - this is fine, just not best practice necessarily. Typically your page should be structured like: - most important - headline for the page - second most important - sub heading for sections, related to - third most important - headline for sections, related to etc... implementing - tags where correct semantically. You don't "need" to have an on every page if it doesn't make sense (for instance if one page was just a continued section or whatever). If you wanted, you could use the and not include the . Hope this helps. Mike
Technical SEO Issues | | Kara.Wallace0 -
Webmaster Tools Manual Actions - Should I Disavow Spammy Links??
Hi Rich, This is a manual action, which means your site has been penalized. You DO need to take action to get this penalty lifted, especially if you have noticed a decrease in traffic/rankings. In general, the Google Webspam team likes to see ample evidence that you did everything in your power to remove links BEFORE using the disavow. If you submit a reconsideration request after skipping this step, your request will likely be rejected. This process has been well-documented by several webmasters. I highly recommend reading these posts for more background and advice: http://moz.com/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience http://moz.com/blog/google-disavow-tool http://cyrusshepard.com/boom-1-email-60-bad-links-gone-4-tools-for-easy-link-cleanup/
Technical SEO Issues | | Cyrus-Shepard0