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Agreed - Trying to capitalize on the blackhat techniques, regardless of opportunity, is still short-term thought. Concentrate on the long-term.
If you've identified the exact blackhat technique being used and that technique has been used successfully for over 1 year, then you may want to bring this type of conversation up to the client.
You can pretty much disregard the 'first link rule'
However, it is important to understand that if you have a link to a page in your main navigation, that link usually exists across the entire domain (whatever pages use the main navigation). Forget the first link, look at the quantity of links created!
G also understands the difference between a link in the navigation and an inline link. I would have your team add contextual links to the page desired from related products/categories. Differentiate your anchor text from the main navigation link anchor text since you already have X links with that anchor text from the navigation link. That'll help build authority to the page in question.
My advice would be to understand that to be successful with SEO you need to look at the long-term. Your competitors may be 'winning' in the SERPs because of blackhat techniques now, but it is not a sustainable strategy and you should feel confident that they will get Google Slapped in the near term.
Concentrate on the long-term success of the website, identify the blackhat competitors, and watch their fluctuation and eventual departure from the SERPs closely.
Hi Ram.Babu,
The short answer is, yes your server location can impact the SERPs.
What is your page load time like for a visitor coming from India? If it is very long, that could be impacting your SERPs.
If it is in their footer, than I'm guessing that a link to your home page is best; unless the home page to your store is separate and you want the authority to go to that page (i.e. you're trying to rank the store higher in the SERPs).
I would try and get highly relevant, contextual links to deep pages of your site from them, if possible.
Google does discount links in the footer. However, they still do carry weight and if you could get a footer link from a website that is relevant and good quality (i.e. doesn't have a ton of spammy links, or an abundance of external links) then I would try and capture that.
Image / text link is fine, just don't have it be spammy anchor text.
I caution against purchasing a link building service, you're most likely to be throwing money away or doing your site harm. Instead, identify the quality directories (should be a very small subset of websites, use Moz Local) your site needs to be listed on and add them yourself. Then, since you do not have a large budget, focus on the quality of the content and wait for links to come naturally.
This would be correct and a simple job. Find a WordPress developer and have them make an edit to the theme to include an H1 tag.
Send me a message and I could help.
Hi,
Paramaya raises a good point, you should use Google Webmaster Tools to set certain URL parameters to be crawled, ignored, ect. However, I wouldn't rush to say you don't want Google crawling those pages, since they may add value in some way.
I think you should add canonical tags to the pages with URL parameters that point back to your site's main page. This way, Google knows and crawls the URLs with parameters and attributes value and relevancy to the page being pointed to through the canonical tag.
I help run a top 50k ecommerce website, we use canonical tags and GWT to handle such issues.
I would also keep looking or stick with www.thephotoboothguys.com.au
the .gy or .co are not worth a switch, imo.
Regardless of the platform, you do not need to worry about meta description being duplicate content from your page content. Meta descriptions are used to help CTR from the SERPs.
However, you shouldn't have duplicate meta descriptions across multiple pages.
Hi HireSpace,
a) The negative impact depends on:
If so, then yes it is probably hurting your site. If a visitor sees a 403 page a common response is to go directly back to the referring page, i.e. they leave your site.
If yes, then a 403 error would cause the link authority to drop, since you do not redirect that page to another page on your site.
When Google sees a 403 error they pretty much handle it like any other 400 error. They wont penalize you, however, having a lot of 400 errors could be an indication of poor usability and we know how Google loves to introduce new ranking factors for the SERPs.
b) Can I fix it?
Yes, I suggest, for any page removed from your site, that you 301 the page to its closest related page. This tells G that the page is permanently moved to a new page, pass any authority to that page, and anyone landing on the old page is automatically redirected to the new page. You'll see the 403 errors decrease as G crawls your site and recognizes the 301 redirect.
Bidding on your brand name(s) is, most often, a very good idea. Many case studies, and my personal experience, have shown that bidding on your brand increases CTR for your organic listings as well. In addition, the CPA for branded campaigns tends to be extremely low and well worth the spend.
Preventing competitors is less of a reason to continue to bid. Even with you bidding, they can still bid on your brand. However, it will cost them much higher CPCs since their Qscore will most likely be poor.
What they've eluded to is that you want to consume as much of the above the fold positioning as possible and having a paid listing next to your organic listing helps achieve that goal.
If you PM me the domain I can take a look myself.
Does the robots.txt have anything funny in there?
An 'aged domain' is desirable for SEO. However, don't put too much clout into the age of the domain, focus on the content, usability, and accessibility. With those taken care of AND an aged domain, you should benefit a little from its 12 years.
Being parked is indifferent - just make sure to connect with Google through GWT (and all its other services) so G knows the domain is starting to be used for value-added content (and no longer parked).
You'll probably get better answers in a Magento specific forum with a question like this. If you're using a tag manager, like Google Tag Manager, then adding the pixel is fairly easy. If not, you'll need someone with specific Magento experience to steer your in the correct direction.
Yes, the host you use for your website can have an effect on your SEO.
Bryan mentioned some aspects of website hosting that would impact SEO:
The last point is particularly important, you don't want to be dragged down by a low quality network of websites and their suspicious activity simply because your site is hosted in the same environment.
If the sub department has authority that you'd like to retain, 301 the department to its closest parent.
From a usability stance, this makes sense. If a visitor came to your site for that content and finds it no longer there, it is better to redirect them to the closest related content rather than showing them a simple error page and not guiding them to a better area of the site.