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Gareth

Do you have experience of sites being penalised on this fashion?

Thanks

Google clearly understands this deal was primarily designed to bypass their policy and views these directories as paid links. Use of these sites can lead to penalties.

This may be an often asked question, however here goes; If Google penalises sites for paid links, paid directories, etc  what is there to stop competitors buying links to a site to get you penalised. How can Google tell the difference? Or is more likely that they will stop any linkjuice passing from these sites which is not quite the same as a penalty. You would still have the linkjuice of your legitimate links**. Indeed as effect from these paid directories is little in any case, loss of their linkjuice might have little or no effect.**

I note you state So unless you have done any known link building with paid links I don't think you have anything to worry about

That is the question I have.. How can Google tell whether you have paid for any bought spammy backlinks or your competitor has organised these backlinks to get you penalised??

1. Yes, it's really free, regardless of whether you use it with Google Checkout or not.

2. You can upload your product file here:
http://www.google.com/merchants/bulkuploads

you can find out more about the specification for the feed file for the US here,

http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=188494

different countries require slightly different specs.

3. Google merchant SEO is all about providing accurate data, giving your customers as much information as possible in your product feed file, and updating your feed as regularly as possible.

I have used OSE to look at links of a competitors site and notice they have dozens for links from Google Notebook pages eg http://www.google.pl/notebook/public/05275990022886032509/BDQExDQoQs8r3ls4j

This page has a PA of 48

Is this a legitimate linking strategy?

We would like to rank better for specific keywords in Australia. We rank pretty well in our home tld .co.uk but would like to do so in .com.au I would appreciate your thoughts and recommendations.

Is that the case even if below 64 chars? If so, there are very many of us who think anything up to 64 is fine and have added unnecessary keywords or other text. eg a very common approach is for a product page title Cheap Blue Widget | Widgetsrus.com Online. You are suggesting anything past the pipe is reducing power of title tag? As most domain names will already rank bvery well placing them in title tag would therefore be bad practice?

Personally I would make it the first post in the thread. When searching and arriving on forums, people are generally looking for a specific  bit of information which is answered in that thread. Often the first post is a question, so if you can get that question to appear in the meta description in the SERPS, the user is immediately going tho think "hey, that person has asked the same question I did" and click through.

For questions like this, that relate to issues/bugs with SEOMoz, you're best off submitting a support request here:

http://seomoz.zendesk.com/anonymous_requests/new

Aaron

This will take a little time, perhaps a few months. In my experience it is not necessarily linked to SEO, more to traffic. Therefore if there is decent traffic without good serps you should achieve sitelinks shortly.

Title tags are important not only for SEO but also for CTR. Google doesn't care which order you put your keywords nor give any weight to repeats. As far as I am aware their is some advantage to having your main keywords at start of title tag, otherwise write a title tag attractive to humans. eg Cheap Size 9 Work shoes | greatshoes.co.uk. From this Google will extract cheap shoes, size 9 shoes, cheap work shoes are give your site relevance when any combination of these words is the search term. (The title doesn't have to include the url though is no harm for branding. Another closely linked point not to be overlooked is your meta description)

There appears to be some difference of opinion on this matter. One thought is that yes, spammy link profiles could under manual review by Google result in your site being penalised, removed from the index. Others claim that the worst that can happen is that any link juice flowing from these sites would be removed. In this case were your competitor not to have links other than the type you point to then they would have a huge drop in traffic. Either way the result would be bad news.

We have had some experience recently with just this task. First I would make sure that our on site optimization is correct for local search therefore title tags should be appropriate eg Toyota Car Sales and Service. Also that there is relevant on page local content and also that your meta descriptions have local context.

Second, I would follow Rand's direction to getlisted.org which will get you on 5 of the most important local directories, qype, yelp etc. Follow this with any other local directories you can find. These all help with local search rankings.

Third build links with local businesses. These local backlinks will help Google localise you and determine  that your car dealership is the 'most popular' in anytown.

Fourth Google Places Signup will hopefully mean you will appear google place search

Apart from this general link acquisition will help boulster your position.

I can see that Open Site Explorer's Advanced Reports feature is very powerful in terms of sifting through large amounts of link data, but does anyone have any useful tips on how to get the most out it?

I want to use my 5 reports a month, but I want to make to maker sure I'm making the most of that allowance.

Hi although you may be a little reluctant to make changes to a site which is performing well I would take some direction from the error report. It will help. You may find that you start ranking better for main keywords and also start picking up some other keywords also. Too many links; this is not always straightforward if you are an ecommerce site, though if your links are in footer and for seo purposes it may be worth deciding which are important. 302 redirect. Google prefer 301 permanent redirects Title tag too long. This may be a good exercise in that perhaps your title tags are not as well optimised as they might be, not only for SEO purposes but also for human consumption because this is what is bolded inorganic results. A good title tag will increase click through, therefore it could be the case that lower ranking competitors with better title tags are actually getting more visits from organic. Meta description. The same advice here. You should have a unique meta description for all your important pages. This is what will appear in the organic results snippet and again better meta descriptions achieve more traffic. Sean

Hi although you may be a little reluctant to make changes to a site which is performing well I would take some direction from the error report. It will help. You may find that you start ranking better for main keywords and also start picking up some other keywords also. Too many links; this is not always straightforward if you are an ecommerce site, though if your links are in footer and for seo purposes it may be worth deciding which are important. 302 redirect. Google prefer 301 permanent redirects Title tag too long. This may be a good exercise in that perhaps your title tags are not as well optimised as they might be, not only for SEO purposes but also for human consumption because this is what is bolded inorganic results. A good title tag will increase click through, therefore it could be the case that lower ranking competitors with better title tags are actually getting more visits from organic. Meta description. The same advice here. You should have a unique meta description for all your important pages. This is what will appear in the organic results snippet and again better meta descriptions achieve more traffic. Sean

Hi We have used a few different systems over the last year finally settling on snap engage. This system is particularly useful for proactive chat where a small pop up appears after a specified time on specified pages. We have found that this is improving conversions. It uses skype or google talk and has quod functionality whilst remaining simple to use and install.

I can see that Open Site Explorer's Advanced Reports feature is very powerful in terms of sifting through large amounts of link data, but does anyone have any useful tips on how to get the most out it?

I want to use my 5 reports a month, but I want to make to maker sure I'm making the most of that allowance.

You've received some good advice above and there's only one suggestion I would make. Although, I'm not a huge social networking fan I do think that Twitter can be a very useful tool. Although a little grey hat, the strategy is to follow users who you would like to follow you. A fair percentage will follow back. Then, mention them in your tweets, which they usually appreciate, followed by any other means of building a relationship. Once you have some sort of rapport opportunities can arise for back links.

I believe that Google do take this into account, though the effect you describe here is quite marked. Google will rightly see your client's site as providing a poor customer journey is letting them down by being down when they have suggested it as a good source for keyword destination. Therefore they will penalise. Can they not solve server issues?