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Hello Kashif,
By "Google Updates" do you mean crawls of your site, or updates to the algorithm? It sounds as if your site has not been crawled/indexed since you made the changes, which is why GWT isn't indicating the issues have been fixed. This sounds like an issue that some time and patience will solve.
How long has it been since you made the updates?
Thanks,
Rob
Hi Joseph,
I will give you a list of the tools I use/have used for auditing purposes of a website and you can pick and choose what you think might be useful:
On-Site - These will help you with on-site penalties (Panda)
1. SEMrush (http://www.semrush.com/)
Beautiful on-site auditing tool. Provides you with knowledge of the site from the perspective of Googlebot and outlines all issues with URL's included so you know where to go/what to fix with minimal involvement from you. It is a monthly subscription service and also incorporates keyword-tracking software, among other things. Deliverables include PDF's and CSV's of data.
2. SEO Powersuite SiteAuditor (www.seopowersuite.com)
This is a one-time cost piece of software. It is less flexible and in-depth than SEMrush in my opinion, but it gets the job done. The primary selling point is that SEO Powersuite provides you with multiple SEO tools for a one-time fee.
Off-Site (Link Profile) - These will help you with off-site penalties (Penguin)
1. Majestic (https://majestic.com/)
Great link-profile tool that allows you to conduct link audits of a website. I use this tool to develop competition analysis reports, and to determine the value of links, whether they are worth keeping, what links I might pursue from competitors, etc. It is a monthly service and you can compare your client's site to others in their niche/industry directly from an off-site perspective. Reports are in CSV format.
2. Ahrefs (https://ahrefs.com)
This is a more in-depth tool that many of my co-workers prefer compared to Majestic. They perform much the same service, but Ahrefs has a more extensive database. It is a more "techy" option than Majestic, which is geared more for client presentation.
You will also want to make sure that they are providing you with all the tools you need to conduct the technical audit - GA access, GWT access, etc.
Hope this helps and let me know if you need any further pointers!
Rob
Hello,
There is a great article I read some time ago that probably plays into your wheelhouse based on your question. Find it here:
http://blog.crazyegg.com/2014/08/18/opt-pop-ups/
Neil Patel and a gentleman named George Mathew really did their homework on this list of pop-up options. You should take a look and see what kind of tactics you intend to employ on your site and see if the services offered might help.
Some numbers that were featured in the article are pretty astounding - pop-ups get such a bad rep, but it seems that they are conversion machines.
You can always go the route of performing your own work to create pop-ups, but I would still read the article to get some ideas before beginning.
Cheers and best of luck!
Rob
In my experience, there is no such thing as "too far" with this tactic. We had a page with 5,000 words on it, but only about 1,000 showing, and it ranked just fine (extremely well, in fact). As long as your content is registered in your source code so Google can crawl/index it, you're golden. At the end of the day, Google doesn't register what a user can see in this context. It sees all the content and treats its ranking process of the page accordingly.
Hello Chad,
Absolutely, depending on how you structure your tags. The biggest problem with multiple H1's is that using different keywords can confuse Google and Users about what a page is attempting to rank for. If you have multiple keywords you are attempting to rank for, you are better off creating different pages with a small number of H1's optimized to each keyword respectively. This will help Google contextualize the page.
This comes up frequently on Moz Q&A, and opinion has shifted throughout the years, but it is now considered best practice to use a single keyword/H1 tag for each page for best ranking potential.
Hope this helps,
Rob
Hello,
From your example, I see nothing wrong with your strategy. Hiding the text will retain the optimization and content when the page is crawled, but also makes the page/products readily available from a UX perspective. In this case, Google is crawling the Source Code and isn't worried about what a user sees.
We used a similar tactic on our Home Page to create content a user could read without stuffing the page/making it inaccessible. Our rankings were unaffected when we made the change.
As long as your content is withheld using a "Read More" button and doesn't appear on a separate page/URL, you are in good shape with what you have done here. You are still within Google's "Good Practice" realm.
Good luck moving forward with your site changes!
Rob
Hi Robert,
It sounds to me like you might just be getting out-competed. Gradual declines in rankings in the absence of content changes or penalties are typically the result of competition. If it had something to do with your link profile, you would expect to see large-scale drops - ditto for Panda-related issues.
I can't see any problem with your anchors, so my guess is that you just have to get back on the link-building grind and perhaps add some new content to freshen up the site itself.
Sucks, but that's the game!
Best of luck moving forward,
Rob
Hello Joshua,
What you are describing is nothing to be concerned about. It is a completely natural process when content is being created for there to be some form of reciprocal linking. This is especially true in list-pieces such as the one you are describing. There is no real need to avoid linking directly to them, and certainly nothing to worry about with regards to their social media accounts.
What Google is trying to get away from is people creating websites to link to each other using the same hosting or from the same webmaster. This is what leads to penalties. From their perspective, you are all (likely) on separate hosting, you all have different webmasters, and you are clearly recognized brands that are completely separate from one another. This is the kind of article they would want to see show up and is unlikely to create any unwelcome attention.
The links you receive will have plenty of value, assuming you are not being linked-to extravagantly over and over from the same domain. It's totally normal to see a couple of pages on a single domain link to another, but it gets to be spammy when you begin seeing 10's, 100's or even 1000's of links coming from a single source.
What you are describing is normal content creation - something Google has been adamant about for years. I don't think there's anything for you to worry about here.
Best of luck with the launch!
Rob
Hello KJ,
You absolutely don't want to begin creating subdomains for different locations. That will split your link flow across multiple domains (rather than consolidating it within a single domain).
It sounds like you are attempting a silo structure for your website (multiple locations targeting the same keyword) but this can be seen as stuffing if performed incorrectly. Using multiple pages to rank for a single keyword is problematic as it hits both Panda and Penguin red flags. What you want to do is begin ranking for different keywords or at least ensuring that your content for each of these locations pages is unique and sufficiently long (500 words+) to avoid arousing suspicion.
Your site structure sounds like it is okay. For example, a silo we put in place for one of our clients followed the following pattern:
domain.com/country/region/city/service
We hit about 15 cities using this tactic, and they have been sitting 1st page for the last year or so. We also built sufficient links to the home page and relevant pages and ensured that our technical SEO was spotless, so perhaps these are the areas you might engage your team to move forward on.
If you want to know more about our process, feel free to touch base and I will provide what advice I can.
Hope this helps and best of luck moving forward!
Rob
Hello,
There's not really a "best way" to build links. Everyone has their own strategy that works best for them. You can begin with the Beginner's Guide to Link Building.
In terms of "high-domain and page trust" links, you best bet would probably be to start with a competitor analysis of your closest competitors in your region, and begin the process with websites that have shown a propensity for linking to others in your niche or industry.
For an in-depth look at link building tactics, the Little Blue linkbuilding Book is a great place to start:
https://blog.ahrefs.com/little-blue-book/Little-Blue-Book-by-Ahrefs.pdf
Hope this helps!
Rob
There are several concerns to be addressed with this scenario:
This is going to be very difficult to keep track of. If you are well-organized or the pages will not need much adjusting, this is probably okay.
This is going to be a pain the behind. That being said, most site auditing tools will allow you to make adjustments as necessary.
With a site of this size, broken links and 404's are going to be inevitable. This could lead to some negative SEO impacts and will have to be kept on top of.
This is a big reason why some sites have enormous numbers of URLs. This would likely be the biggest concern on my mind and worth looking in to. Going through that many pages will be impossible, so it might be worth taking a look at the link profile and determining where most of your links are coming from. If these are coming from spammy sites, you may have a problem there.
All this being said, the size of a website is normally not a cause for concern. Just make sure that your main pages (Home, Landing Pages) are properly handled and optimized and you shouldn't have too much trouble. I would add that unwieldy htaccess files (large ones) can result in slower loading times, which can impact your rankings with Google.
Let me know if there is anything specific concerning you and I will be happy to help. Congrats on the upgrade and hope it works out!
Rob
Hello Peter,
There is only 1 strategy I can think of that will make this possible, and I'm sure other Mozzers will have their own tactics.
For me, you are looking at building a silo into your site architecture. Basically, you use the website folders to create geo-targeted locations pages for areas you wish to rank for. You always start from the largest geographical area (country) and work your way down to the smallest (city). For example:
yoursite.com/United-States/New-York/New-York
would be found through Google.com.
It follows that:
yoursite.co.uk/UK/Suffolk/Ipswich will be found in the UK and
yoursite.ie/ireland/leinster/dublin will be found in Ireland
This will result in you building a link to a "Locations" page through your Home Page from which you can break down your service areas according to regions and cities. A direct example you can use for your client is:
yoursite.com/uk/suffolk/ipswich
yoursite.com/ireland/leinster/dublin
This way you retain geographical relevance but are able to hit multiple countries/regions/cities from the same domain TLD. Don't forget to add the keyword you are targeting for topical relevance!
For example:
yoursite.com/uk/suffolk/ipswich/ipswich-plumber
I have several clients I have performed this service for in the US and the UK who have service areas that are separated geographically but serviced by the same company. Google has responded quite well, with most of them featuring 1st page rankings within 3-6 months. You might even shorten the internal link path to reduce the amount of drain on your link juice from your Home Page.
The other benefit of this approach is it automatically creates landing pages that you can use for additional targeted link-building campaigns.
Hope this helps and let me know if you need further clarification - always happy to help!
Best regards,
Rob
That's correct. If your link profile is showing a 2% spam rate, you are easily in the 99th percentile of all sites I have ever audited. Most "at risk" sites show a 10-50% spam rate. Any higher and you are looking at an inevitable penalty without immediate action.
This is a bit of red herring, however, as you want to make sure that your link profile shows strong relevancy and authority.
In order of priority:
If your link profile is good to begin with, there's no need to remove anything. In other words, if it isn't broken, don't fix it.
Hi John,
Sorry to jump in halfway through the discussion, but I think I can be of some help here.
First and foremost, Google knows that link profiles are never going to be perfect. They expect every website to attract spam from time to time, so they don't typically assess penalties for this (i.e. Penguin). In other words, I have seen websites with astoundingly good link profiles go downhill because Google thinks they are trying to "game the system" by using tactics such as PBN's (Private Blog Networks) to generate decent links and gain rankings.
If your link profile is made up of 100 links, and 20 of them are of poor quality, that is not the end of the world. For some time, my job at my current agency was to conduct link audits, and my threshold for removal was between 10-20%. In other words, if more than 20% of a link profile was spam, it needed action. If less, then the most likely road to success was simply to build better links moving forward.
If you are set on removing these links, the best way to proceed is not to use a tool at all, but conduct a manual link audit. I used to go through sites with link profiles in the tens of thousands in about an hour using a system I created myself. I used Ahrefs or Majestic to find the links, and my own system to brand which ones needed removal. Then it is a matter of outreach, which is best done through a tool like rmoov (as Joey suggested).
Once you have performed outreach, contact Google for a disavow, and send any documentation of your outreach efforts so they know you are completely dedicated to cleaning up your link profile and have taken the necessary steps before running straight to them. That always seemed to go over well when I did it.
I would be hesitant to use a tool to determine which links should disappear - every time one was suggested to me, I found that a manual system worked much better. It took a bit more time, but at the end of the day, an extra hour or two means a better result which is what optimization is all about.
If you like, I would be happy to take a look at what you have and see how I can help. Feel free to reach out!
Hope this helps and best of luck!
Rob
Hello Heidi,
Some additional information may be necessary here. From what I understand of what you are saying, however, it seems as if your site is showcasing the same content on multiple pages which is a problem if your website is not featuring canonical tags.
There are some concerns I would have with the way your correction is laid out. I don't know what your webmaster has given you in terms of advice, but you generally want to limit commercial keywords in your Title Tags (Page Titles). From what I am seeing, you might get slapped with a Panda penalty if Google crawls your site and sees something like:
Texture Classes - Timeless Creations - Wall Designs Ideas | mysite - Learn. Be Inspired
To break it down on a keyword level, your title is saying:
Texture Classes - Timeless Creations - Wall Designs Ideas | mysite - Learn. Be Inspired
Commercial Keyword - Confusion - Commercial Keyword | Brand - Slogan
Generally speaking, Google doesn't like to see commercial keyword-heavy Titles, instead opting for a more "natural" approach. If you asked me to optimize this Title, I would suggest:
Texture Classes | Brand
Wall Designs Ideas | Brand
OR
Brand | Texture Classes
Brand | Wall Designs Ideas
We made this adjustment to the afore-mentioned client, and their traffic shot skywards almost over night, once the penalty was removed. In addition to solving the technical ranking problem associated with keyword stuffing, it is also more approachable from a UX (User Experience) perspective, meaning that people are more likely to click a link that provides them with all the information they are seeking. If I am a potential customer and I see the original line, I will likely get confused over what the page is offering. The optimization I am suggesting is straight to the point and likely to bring in more attention.
To fix this problem overall, I think the coding may have to take a back seat to site architecture, and you may have to look into adjusting your sitemap and internal linking habits.
Could you please explain what you mean by "11 links point to the same page." ?
Happy to offer any assistance I can to help you out! Feel free to reach out and we can go over this in more depth.
Hope this helps and best of luck moving forward!
Rob
Hello Emil - to answer your questions:
On-Site Content
For starters, your best bet is probably to initiate a campaign to produce a fair amount of static content for your website which will form the "backbone" of your on-site ranking factors. For any site, you want to make sure your Home Page and any landing pages feature a fair amount of content (estimates range between 500 and 2000 words, on average) in order to maximize ranking potential. Text-based content is huge, especially if your site is primarily based in images/Javascript, etc.
Next Steps:
This is the way to go if you get significant traffic to your website but not your social media accounts, or you don't have the time/resources to be on social media all the time. The idea here is to create static content on your site which Google typically reacts more positively to.
This is the way to go if you want to extend brand awareness and build it up. From what you tell me, this sounds like something that is occurring naturally and something you can leverage for future traffic/rankings. Social media signals don't directly impact rankings, but they do create traffic which can produce positive signals to Google if your content is well-received on social media. This requires a bit more time and dedication to social media, but the results are there for the taking. It also doesn't require lengthy articles.
Social Media Platforms:
In terms of what social media outlets to use - Instagram and Pinterest are great places to start, and you can utilize twitter and Facebook as well. If you have something more business-oriented, linkedin is a decent option. For you, though, Instagram should be your bread and butter. There's no reason why you can't have a blog on your domain and an instagram account with the same set of images, etc.
Duplicate content is a bit of red herring as it tends to be seen as a penalty-causing factor when in reality it is generally neutral to a website's rankings. The only way this would cause concern to me is if you are using spammy tactics or literally duplicating another website verbatim. If your content is reoccurring on your site (and no one else's) then you are probably fine from a Panda perspective.
Hope this helps and feel free to bounce any ideas off of me moving forward - love to help!
Rob
Hello Rodney,
From what you can see, have there been any significant changes in your website's rankings to go along with the traffic drop? I have a client who had some web development work done by their team and they accidentally deleted the GA tracking code, leading to an enormous drop in registered traffic but no difference in rankings.
If your rankings are still intact, try seeking out the UA on your homepage to ensure it hasn't been tampered with. If it is still there and GA is accurately tracking your data, then you probably have a lingering hack that was sprung after the cleanup occurred. These things can come back to bite you if a code audit isn't performed by a security tech to ensure the site is properly cleaned.
The loss of indexed pages sounds like there might be an issue in your robots.txt file or with your sitemap.
The last part of this might be an automated Panda penalty, but this is probably the least likely option.
During the hack, was there any nefarious link-building conducted that you're aware of? What you're experiencing might be the lingering effects of an automated Penguin penalty (there can be several months of sluggish rankings following one of these).
Let me know about the above and I will see what else I can do to help!
Thanks and best of luck,
Rob
Hello,
There are a lot of factors to consider here. In addition to Bryan's excellent breakdown of time vs. reward, another thing to consider is where these pages are sitting in the rankings, how long it might take to put them in an excellent traffic-gaining situation, and what you can leverage out of them in terms of value.
In situations like this, if I choose to take action and begin ranking pages, I give myself 6 months to see what kind of rewards I can reap. If within 6 months I haven't seen promising movement of the bottom line, then I move on to a new tactic.
Hopefully this helps - best of luck moving forward!
Rob
Hello Mick,
What you are describing here sounds like an on-page Silo to me. It will not generate any negative feedback from Google if you do it correctly. We actually recently instituted this strategy with a windows and doors company in the UK (windows & doors London, windows & doors Suffolk, windows & doors Ipswich, etc.) and have had tremendous results. Combined with a solid link-building campaign, they shot up the rankings to be #1 and have held it for over a year now. We have not seen any negative attention or penalties.
The upshot is that this tactic, if properly implemented, will generate significant ranking boosts alongside a decent link-building approach. You will do quite well if you are going after geo-specific keywords and you build your site architecture around them. I cannot vouch for individual pages put together piecemeal, however. The structure we put in place took about 2 months and was well-researched beforehand.
If you want, feel free to reach out and I would be happy to send along more advice regarding our process.
Hope this helps and best of luck with moving forward!
Rob
Hello,
The reporting tools are not particularly useful in this scenario as duplicate content is not a penalty-worthy situation. While Panda is used to destroy spam-oriented content, duplicate content is treated as more of a null/void situation than as a penalty.
For example, when you place your newly-created original content and it is crawled and indexed, Google attributes your domain with being the origin of said content. If another website showcases this content, it is recognized as duplicate by Google (which has compared it to your indexed version) and given no benefit or penalty. In effect, using duplicate content is merely a neutral practice - it's the spam that Google is really after.
Here's a beginner's report on duplicate content that spells it out quite nicely:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content
As Charles mentioned, copied content is not an automatic ban sentence. If it is within "acceptable limits" there is not a detrimental impact to the website. However, if the website is made up of purely copied content from multiple sources, and spams links or keyword stuffs, it will be dealt with accordingly.
In short, this website will not be penalized in the fashion you desire unless they are spamming or keyword stuffing (among other penalty-worthy offences). Your best bet is to beat them out by building up your link profile and continuing to post valuable, original content.
Let me know if there is anything else I can help with.
Rob