Yeah, should be fine.

Anyone big enough is generally fine. I've nothing against hostgator, rackspace, ukfast, etc. I'd only really stay away from GoDaddy hosting.

I use - http://www.5quidhost.co.uk/ - for a lot of sites.

I believe these guys are pretty good and run by a bunch of goons from the SA forums - http://www.lithiumhosting.com/

Yeah, sorry, would get rid of the 1-to-1s (can't think of a work around just now).

See if you can find out why they can't do it. If it is something like MX records then change those and put the 301 in normally.

You could also put a meta refresh in to take customers to the new page; no real SEO value though.

User-agent: * 
Disallow: /call_backrequest.php*

Should work

However if the 'rid' parameter is only used here you might want this instead

Disallow: /*?rid

If 'rid' is used elsewhere that you want indexed, then don't do that.

You could also exclude the 'rid' parameter in WMT - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1235687

I'd take it out of ITs hands.

Can't think of a reason why they can't 301 it, it but you can forward it (no masking) at registrar level.

If they need to keep the MX records or something they can do that there as well.

You know what, I tell people to ignore PR so often, I completely glossed over the server issues!

Yes, should definitely change host, though any shared hosting runs the risk of having less than desirable neighbours.

Esaky, can you be sure your site is clean?

Site is not currently listed as dodgy - http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=www.animhut.com%2F - which is good.

Worth checking for exploits anyway. Some advice here (pdf) - http://docs.apwg.org/reports/APWG_WTD_HackedWebsite.pdf

Does it matter?

If you're ranking better and getting better traffic then why worry about your PR?

Unless you're selling links, in which case you've maybe found your problem.

TBPR is not important on its own for ranking. Don't worry about it and focus on getting more traffic instead.

Not tested and I'm very sleepy this Friday afternoon, but the below should fix it.

NB, this will also redirect any subdomains.

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^neatstuff.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.neatstuff.com$
RewriteRule (.*)$ http://www.neat-stuff.com/$1 [R=301,L]

EDIT

As per JP above, this is a solution using .htaccess. If you're on a Windows server you'll need to use IIS. The below might help

<match url="(.*)"></match>    
<add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^neatstuff.com$"></add> <action type="Redirect" url="http://www.neat-stuff.com/{R:1}}" redirecttype="Permanent"></action>

But again, I'm sleepy, so test things first

Hi Jo,

Simply that your blog is only linked to in a footer link, it's not really integrated in to the site.

Footer links are still an okay form of navigation, though I usually use them for less important pages like privacy or terms and conditions.

Since most of your content is in there I would consider having it in the side or top nav instead.

Hi Ken,

While staff do browse these forums, it's mostly a peer-to-peer Q&A site.

To get a response from SEOmoz directly please contact help@seomoz.org or submit a ticket here - http://www.seomoz.org/help

You can literally put anything in the category part of the URL and it will resolve.

Try www.website.com/fhqwhgads/shirts and it will still resolve, heck throw another directory in there and it will still work www.website.com/fhqwhgads/zomg/shirts

As for why it does that, I'm probably not the best person to explain, but WP effectively just looks for the end of the URL, which is sometimes why naming pages and posts the same can cause problems.

I'm not sure what would happen if you 301'd /shirts to /clothes/shirts as it may just be looking at the last part anyway (could quickly try).

I'd consider adding a canonical tag instead.

As I said, no easy way; you need to change how you get links.

Having a look at your links:

33.6% are dead
28.7% are from directories
13.5% are from link lists

The rest are primarily affiliate sites and a handful of things like profiles, comments, forum posts.

You don't have any editorially given links coming in.

Your site doesn't look bad, most of the content in the blog which is hidden in the footer. I don't think I'm going to blow any minds by suggesting that you look to add more content of the type that people might want to link to.

Don't just write to keywords and spun titles. Create content that people will want to read and share. It doesn't have to be perfectly on topic. Read the SEOmoz blog to get ideas - http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results#stq=content&stp=1

Stop seeding the comments on there with crap - http://www.paidsurveys.uk.com/blog/earn-an-extra-income-from-paid-surveys#comment-6 - you're not telling me even half of these are legit. If it's other people spamming your blog then delete the comments. Engage with the people that are actually real.

Get a social campaign going. Seems to me that this is the kind of thing that would do well via word of mouth. Do you have a Facebook Page or Twitter account? Get on Google Plus and set yourself up to be found.

Start an outreach campaign. Make contacts on competition and survey forums. Get people to write about you on their blogs. Find out what they need and give it to them.

No shortcuts coming back from here I'm afraid.

If you want to investigate some things you can do to get rid of the penalty you can start by reading here - [http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results#stq=recover penguin&stp=1 ](http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results#stq=recover penguin&stp=1 ) No guarantees of course, but might be worth looking to remove links or disavow links at worst.

Hi Jo, when did you notice that you stopped ranking?

At a guess, the fact that all your anchor text contains the words "Paid Surveys" in some form or another, with almost all of them that exact phrase; I suspect you've been hit by a Penguin update (or whatever this mysterious update was around the 17th of last month).

Your links themselves don't really seem to be coming from terribly relevant sites and overall it looks a bit spammy.

No easy fix on this one if it's the case, but please provide some more information if you can.

Not quite up to date with their latest offering, but I've used it in the past along with many other content networks.

Unlike many people here I don't think something should be ignored just because it's against search engine guidelines. If nothing else it's worth testing what's working, then figuring out why it's working.

To answer your question; of the many large and small content networks I tested, SEOLinkVine produced the worst results by far. ALN and 10LAD both produced results, either in combination with other linking or on their own (before being decimated). SEOLinkVine did not.

I see they claim to have updated but are selling the same results as before. If it didn't work then, I'm not convinced it will work now.

Thoughts on proceeding.

Personally curated content networks, or even joining some smaller editor driven content networks will still probably get you results, if done well. However when they get found out and discounted you'll be in trouble. Sites that I had propped up by these networks ended up with a penalty from which they've still not recovered.

If you're after some shorter term success, might be worth doing, but in the long run you'll be better putting efforts into improving the site and relationships.

.

Something's going on but not determined what yet. I've seem a fair amount of movement in the SERPs for non-US territories (UK, IE, SE, IN, DE, FR, CH, +).

Assuming Google are denying a Pan-guin update of any sort there are a few theories about what it could be.

1. Crawl based link devaluation.
   I'm inclined to think that this has something to do with linking but it would make sense that they include Penguin within the main algo if they can do it as they go. Specifically might have an effect on old links as well as spammy links. Alternatively might be ignoring anchor text on low PR sites. Maybe ignoring some directories specifically.

2. Disavow data.
   Doubt they've had time to sort through the amount of data they've been getting, but they'll have to look at it at some point.

3. User metrics.
   CTR, return to SERPs within same session, refined searches. I'm not leaning towards this one as most of what I've seen slip has been among the (if not 'the') best result.

4. Social signal devaluation
   If Facebook can figure out what likes are fake then Google can probably see which 'authors' are fake. They're definitely pushing for authorship, rolling out something to figure out who's legit could have an impact, but I'm not sure authorship rank is a big enough of a part of the algo currently to affect this kind of change.

5. EMD update.
   Not keen on this as a theory. Not seen anything to back it up and plenty of EMDs still up there.

6. Google are telling lies!
   Somebody's made a change and they're not letting on or haven't told the people communicating the changes.

Ultimately I'm shooting in the dark here. Although I'm seeing a lot of changes not all of my sites have been effected and I'm doing similar promotion for most.

If anybody wants to chime in maybe we can put our heads together. I'm seeing a bit more clustering again with the same domain showing up more often in the results (though not as bad as it was). Anybody else seeing any sort of pattern?

Very reasonable observation.

I think that some of the exclusive rank tracking software will continue to operate though, so won't really affect me.

While I'm here, do you not have hyphens as word separators in your URLs or is it just for these examples that you're not putting them in?

i.e. Why have you gone for www.domainname.nl/eventname2013 vs www.domainname.nl/event-name-2013?

Tough one these annual events, few paths you may want to consider.

**1) Create a new url - www.domainname.nl/event-name-2013 **

Reasonable idea if the event is searched by year i.e. they'll search "event name 2013". As you probably can't be sure about what people are going to do I'd suggest not relying on that and keeping the original URL. Make sure and link to all future years from here though (link to 2013, 2014 when it comes, etc.)

PROS - You'll now have a naming convention and never have to worry about this problem again You don't need to worry about what to do with last year's info You build up your site's relevancy for the term with multiple pages on the same topic

CONS - You lose any authority and link equity the main page has built up If the pages are highly similar you may have trouble ranking the newer ones (or older ones, I dunno how Google works it out)

2) Replace it - Simply put up the new content for 2013 and overwrite the 2012 content.

Not great for a number of reasons. Significantly changing the content may lose some of your relevancy and the archived content may still have value to users.

PROS - You get to keep the same URL and it will always be the most recent information (if you update it) You get to keep your authority and link equity (caveat: If the content changes entirely search engines may strongly devalue previous links to that page)

CONS - You lose content You may lose relevancy

3) You update the content with 2013's schedule and place the older content on a new page - http://www.domainname.nl/event-name-2012

This way you can keep working on the existing URL but don't lose the old content.

PROS - You build up your site's relevancy for the term with multiple pages on the same topic

CONS - You may confuse search engines by moving the content they expected to another page

3.1) Canonicalise the 2012 content

As above but you add a canonical tag to the 'archived' page telling search engines that the main page is the one they're looking for

PROS - Users still have access to the older content

CONS - The old content no longer counts for much

4) You add the new content to the main page and keep 2012's underneath

You could simply update the page with a

<header>

combo in HTML5 or demote the previous year's to

s and use

for this year. You can even somewhat hide the 2012 stuff by using css, jquery or js (maybe ajax, I dunno), that would mean that the page can still pretty much look like you want.

PROS - Adding more relevant content to a page can improve the pages quality All content accessible from one location for the user

CONS - If it is year specific you may dilute the relevancy Shouldn't be seen as hiding content, but if there's a lot of keyword heavy text in the hidden divs it may trigger sore sort of alert

What would I do? Depends on the event/type of site I guess. Most likely 3.1 or 4 but as I'm not 100% happy with what canonicalisation does, probably 4.

If anybody wants to jump in with other ideas or other pros and cons there's probably a lot I've not thought about.

</header>

Hi Alsvik,

While moderated these forums are primarily peer-to-peer answers, so no guarantee anybody from SEOmoz will see them.

Please contact help@seomoz.org with your problem and they'll sort you out

If you have any other problems with something else you can get more info from the contact page - http://www.seomoz.org/about/contact

I can't 100% confirm that it does but...

Pipes have been used as separators for years. Many sites still have "Sitename.com | Real title here", so I can't see why it wouldn't read it.