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Hi Tim, Thanks for your reply. I also disawod the links, hope this will keep us safe. It looks like something automatically, like the xrumer forum spam

Hi Remko, Apologies for the slow response here - the alert system that lets us know a question has gone unanswered broke down for a time. The short answer: the ideal is to render the content/information as raw HTML, then use a JS library (whatever suits the animation or chart style you're after) to visualize and add animations. Animations handled with jQuery, for example, won't be processed/"viewed" by Google, so if you're using such a library to add polish to your content, it's best that the page "degrades gracefully" - so that without JS support, the key content/information is still there in the HTML source. While Google has made strides in their ability to render and index content delivered via JS resources, it is computationally expensive and we have seen that relying too heavily on JS to render the content itself is sub-optimal. If you're following the above, any modern and widely-adopted JS animation/chart-building library should be fine. Hope this helps, Mike

Hi Chris, Think you're right. We go for plan B. Thanks

Have you tried contacting your hosting company or CDN to see if there were any gateway issues that might have blocked your home page? It seems a stretch, but it is the only thing I can think of outside of what you have tried. I am assuming you made no changes to your robots.txt file, either.

Hi Remko, Let's work through this scenario together. Let's say that I operate a lead-gen directory for auto dealerships in Texas. Like any business owner, I want to rank well, and my livelihood depends on the traffic I get and the conversions the businesses in my directory receive. So, in violation of Google's guidelines, I list myself in Google My Business, knowing that I'm not supposed to. What can happen then? Any random Google user looking for an auto dealership and encountering my directory in the local pack can feel frustrated by the waste of his time in calling me or driving to my business only to discover I'm not an auto dealership. In his frustration, he can report me to Google for spam. And, he certainly doesn't trust my directory after this experience, seeing that I've misled him. An auto dealership owner in Texas who has been pitched about joining my lead gen directory may look at the local pack and decide that, in essence, I'm stealing a spot in the local pack results that he or any other legitimate dealership can't occupy because I've taken it. Angry about this, he can report me to Google for spam. And, at the same time, he will no longer consider my lead gen directory a place he would want to be listed, because it's not adhering to guidelines. He doesn't feel he can trust such my business. So, I've just lost a customer for life. The SEO team working for an auto dealership in Texas sees I'm violating Google's Guidelines, and can report me for spam. A Local SEO anywhere in the country sees what I'm doing while they're doing their job, and can report me to Google for spam. And, at any time, Google can realize I'm spamming on their own, either as a result of their algorithm detecting that my business doesn't meet their guidelines or because this is detected manually by Google staff. The risks to me of any of the above 5 scenarios are that: Google will take down my listing, so my efforts at rankings will have been in vain and any marketing spend I put into this will be wasted. I now have a black mark against my business in Google's eyes for violating their rules. This could prejudice them against my whole business, and who knows what that might do to my organic rankings? So, these would be the risks I'd be facing. And they are big ones. Most businesses would not want to deal with these risks. What Would Be A Better Way? So, I revisit my marketing plan**,** because I realize I can't afford to risk angering consumers and losing their trust in my brand, auto dealership owners who might become customers of mine, or Google upon which I'm dependent for traffic. I realize that it's not fair to take local pack spots away from legitimate car dealerships. And yet, I need to survive, so what is open to me? I have two options: organic rankings and PPC. So, I'm running a lead-gen directory. In order to be successful, I have to prove to auto dealership owners that I can rank highly in the organic results for their core terms, so that I'm getting leads I can send to them. I have to acquire the organic SEO skills that will enable me to live up to this claim, meaning I've got to learn what it takes to earn those high organic rankings. So, this is where I turn all of my attention: earning organic rankings that I can legitimately have a claim to and without risking my business. Where I can't manage to get organic rankings yet due to high competition, I am going to have to invest in PPC, just like any other business. Hopefully, I can chip away at this over time and move up in the SERPs as my directory becomes of higher value in Google's eyes, but until then, I may have to fill in the blanks with PPC. What I've outlined here would be considered ethical marketing for my business, and respects the idea that I want to stay in business for the long haul. Unlike spam practices which mean the hammer can fall on all my work at any time, the practices my hypothetical directory has determined to take have the goal of building a brand that can be trusted by consumers, customers and Google for years to come. To me, there is no question that this is a much stronger approach to marketing.

hi Ria, thanks, guess thats the best strategy,

yes could be - but I just don't like errors

Hi Remko, Sorry for the late response. Currently you have fietstassen.nl and loodgieter.nl as duplicate content. (as far as I see, you do not have a cross domain canonical, nor a 301 redirect telling Googlebot which version they should index). So it might be a good idea to implement one of them. (301 is usually easier ) Gr., Keszi

The algorithm will use freshness based on the urgency/nature of the keywords. For something like that keyword, I dont see it being a problem at all. If it's a really important page, just move it to a page (im assuming you use WP) -then improve it and use the same url structure.

Yes but what do you think about the old date which is visible in the results. Isnt content freshnes a factor?

Thanks, Pigeon could really be the problem since the ranking lost happend at the same time.

Hi, The sites I work on are both on SSL certificates (entire sites). This was not something I wanted but the powers that be above me in my organisation made it clear that there wasn't a choice. The two sites are in financial services (we are a mortgage broker) which is why we had to have it, even though it isn't a necessity as far as our regulators are concerned. Just a company policy. Thank you for posting this information it gives me hope that my sites may start performing even better throughout 2014. I don't have bad listings (in fact we're position 1 for a few things on both sites) and since completing redesigns on both sites one in March one in April this year (one is on a new domain as we created a new company for commercial mortgages as opposed to residential ones) we've seen a real improvement in rankings and conversions. All I'm saying is SSL shouldn't be a barrier to rankings and it isn't one for our rankings. Though I was extremely worried by it when they decided we had to have it! Best wishes, Amelia

Hi Remko, This depends on where you'd like to direct the majority of your authority, so if your primary target for authority / rankings is the "real estate in 2015" page (which acts as a page and a subfolder under which other content sits), your perfect example could look like: www.example.com/real-estate-2015/find-best-prices. I would consider placing both guides and news like this, without a separate subfolder for /news/ and /guides/ after /real-estate-2015/. A few years ago, the British newspaper Evening Standard resolved its home page on www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/ (they used the "This Is London" domain until recently). Articles sat on www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article1234. They redirected their home page to the root - www.thisislondon.co.uk. All articles continued to sit on URLs like www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article1234 Soon thereafter, their share of voice and traffic took a very big drop. It looks like redirecting authority away from the /standard/ subfolder was the cause: all the millions of articles sitting under /standard/ appeared to lose authority. Reversing the redirect reversed this trend and the site gained its lost rankings / traffic back. In your case, I'd suggest that 2015 real estate authority should focus on the subfolder (acting also as a page in its own right) that you wish to have rank for related terms, unless it's more important to you to direct authority to a guides or news subfolder. This is different from the tummy tuck example, and in truth you will be able to build authority to the 2015 section with either option, but it does appear that Google sees subfolders as accumulating authority in the manner you suspected initially. Thanks, Jane

Thanks for the question: "To maintain or improve our rankings i'm looking for specific information for the link structure. For example, is it better to have the 'about us'/rel=author on each domain, with contributors on that specific domain or is it better to have them all in the (umbrella) brand domain." I'd say that it comes down to how much you want to differentiate your current brands from each other. If you want to keep them quite distinct and each one has it's own team / writers / USPs etc, then you are best to have each domain have it's own sections. "I think to maintain the rankings it is best to keep specific content (like blog/ about us) on the domain. So is it the best to just do side wide links with a logo (like health.com) and what about hosting? We work with wordpress, so all domains will be hosted on one ip? when we use the multiple site option of WP?" In terms of cross-linking, I'd say that you should try to do this where relevant and as James has pointed out below, as long as you're not doing this in huge volumes, you should be fine and not trigger any problems with Google. The only time you may want to be careful is where your domains are competing for the same types of keywords. I would avoid cross-linking too much with exact match keywords as this could be seen as manipulate, I'd keep it on brand and to relevant pages. If the domains you own are in the same niches, then you may hit problems of them competing against each other. I'm not sure if this is the case? If they are in the same niche, then Google certainly can look at things like IP address and footprints that links the sites together, it is hard to know to what extent this would harm you but Google certainly prefer to show diversity in search results rather than having multiple sites from the same company.

Hi Martijn thanks, hope this will work.

Yes we're going to disavow the links. The spam is exactly targeting the right keyword/anchors. And we're the only one receiving spam.

Thanks Everett, we're going to try to hack wp

Thanks for the respons. Responsive design is probably the best option with the best usability users.