Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hello Anirban,

People may spend more than twice as much time looking at the left side of the page than the right, but it is important to take each website as it comes rather than bow to industry standards. For example, a website's layout may make it extremely content heavy on the right side, necessitating user interaction to come from that side of the page.

My advice would be to install heat map software and see what your website users are doing (how they are interacting with your site) and optimizing your content and links accordingly.

In the end, a website that fulfills a user's needs and provides them with value through actionable research will trump generalizations based on data that may or may not be proven through quantitative evidence.

Thanks for providing us with your opinions though!

Rob

Hello Aniket,

When you say you are switching from HTTPs to HTTP version of the site, do you mean that in reverse (i.e. HTTP to HTTPS)? HTTPS is the more recent development and is counted as a ranking factor by Google. Here is an article on the shift:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html

To quote the article: "We've seen positive results, so we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal."

The question of "how significant an advantage will it be?" is anyone's guess. We do know that Google has called for it, and that they are incorporating it as a definitive ranking signal. It still pales in comparison to your SEO bread and butter (on-site, links, etc.) but every advantage you can gain is a step in the right direction.

It sounds like you will be in a competitive market, so anything you can get on your side will be beneficial. HTTPS, however, is likely a small-scale ranking signal and not likely to boost optimization efforts by more than 1%.

Hope this helps and let me know if you have any further questions,

Rob

Hello Bob,

That is a traditional dropdown menu - nothing there is going to other websites, so there are no external links. This is an internal linking situation and one that will reduce your "link juice" flowing to other pages.

In other words, for each internal link initiated on your home page, there will be a reduction in your overall link juice to other internally linked pages.

That being said, this is nothing to worry about. What you are considering is going to improve your technical ranking ability, but reduce your UX and therefore lead to less user interaction, which will hurt your technical ranking ability in the future. This is a situation where you will "fix" one problem but create 2 more in its place.

My suggestion would be to keep it as it is and improve your link profile if you are concerned about "wasting" link juice.

Happy to offer more insight if you want it and best of luck moving forward!

Rob

Agreed with previous responses. domain.xx/blog is the way to go. It doesn't necessarily benefit your home page, but it is the least time-consuming to rank and only takes a small percentage of your "link juice" (the same as any other link coming off your home page.

Given blogs are dynamic content and therefore are less impactful than static content on a site, I would place it in a way you think your incoming traffic would find it most easily. This, again, is why we suggest a domain.xx/blog layout, as this allows your incoming traffic to locate it within 1 click.

Hope this helps!

Rob

Hey Emil,

No worries, we have all been there! If you are looking for next steps, you probably want to conduct a code audit to determine whether there are still any active hacks on the site. Keep in mind that a hack will not necessarily be generating new links or pages if it is active. Once those have been dealt with, your next step should be completely finalizing your on-page SEO with new, optimized content.

Lastly, you should probably look towards generating some good links for your site to boost rankings. If you are worried about a Penguin penalty, the first step should be cleaning up your link profile before moving forward. In fact, if you already performed a reconsideration request, but your domain features spammy links, that could explain why you are dropping rankings. Google's algorithm features code that tracks whether a link problem is actually solved after a partial penalty is enacted.

These are all generic SEO answers, but they do a world of good for rankings. Within 2-3 months you should be operating near full capacity again.

The impact of partial penalties can stick around for some time, and from my experience they typically taper off rather than disappear completely. This can mean some sluggish rankings for months after being hit.

Best of luck moving forward!

Rob

Hello Julie,

This sounds like you might have a hacking issue on your website. You probably need someone to conduct a full code audit of your site to determine whether any files you have uploaded (plugins, for example) were contaminated. If a site is hacked, new pages can be added that are hidden from view and difficult to detect unless handled by a security specialist.

We recently brought on a new client who had this issue and discovered that his site had 1000's of pages dedicated to testosterone pills, etc. We had to go through GWT and the site logs to determine what new pages were created and it was a complete hack job.

In terms of fixing your SEO, the first step is to determine where/if the hack exists. Once that is decided, you have to clean up the site and restore the site's security.

I would be happy to help you with the next steps if you would like. I am always available!

Thanks and best of luck,

Rob

Hello,

I would be happy to put in my 2 cents for this conversation. In general, what you are considering is only a worthwhile investment of time and resources if your website is consistently building content or currently has an enormous load of it. In other words, if this is a huge website with 1000's of pieces of content (I'm thinking something along the lines of a PR company, media hub or entertainment daily), then this is definitely advisable.

If not, you can probably get a bigger bang for your buck in other sectors of SEO.

If you want to discuss or bounce some ideas off of me, feel free to reach out!

Best regards and good luck with moving forward,

Rob

Hello Christopher,

As a general rule, a single directory link to your website is fairly insignificant (assuming you have a strong link profile for your website already). It is unlikely that cancelling this subscription will result in a significant rankings drop, unless it is your business' only inbound link, in which case I would strongly advise you to contact an SEO to provide you with link-building services (or you could do it yourself, there are plenty of link-building guides out there).

Here are some articles on ways you might build up a link profile:

Basic:

Beginner's Guide: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
Beginning a Link Campaign: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building/campaign
Difference between "Good" and "Bad" links: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building/metrics

Advanced:

Link-Building Tactics:  https://moz.com/blog/high-value-tactics-futureproof-link-building-whiteboard-friday
Link-Building Tactics: https://moz.com/blog/eight-link-building-tips-whiteboard-friday

There are plenty of ways to provide your website with a decent link profile. I would be happy to help you put together some ideas for future SEO work revolving around your link profile. Feel free to reach out any time!

Hope this helps and best regards,

Rob

Hello Anirban,

The main reason large-scale websites like Indeed feature so prominently on SERP's is that there are more ranking factors at work than just content. While Panda has been created to avoid duplicate content issues and it is widely known that duplicate content can lead to penalties and reduced ranking potential, duplicate content can be over-shadowed by other ranking factors, like a website's link profile and it's Authority relative to websites in its niche.

For example, Wikipedia is widely cited by webmasters around the world, but it features a lot of repetition and is an internal linking nightmare where crawling and indexing are concerned. That being said, it is normal to find a Wikipedia page every time a "What Is" query is made.

Youtube is in a similar situation. There are duplicated videos and content galore on that domain, but it is linked to so frequently that it simply cannot be beaten when it comes to domain authority and relevance.

While Indeed is probably being impacted by duplicate content, this pales in comparison to its link profile and the relevance it has in its industry.

Hope this helps! Let me know if I can help with anything else.

Best regards,

Rob

Hello Emil,

It sounds as if you might be dealing with the after effects of the hacking on your website. We dealt with a similar situation with a client of ours last month who saw similar effects after his site was hacked. From that experience, there are a couple of options:

1. There is negative SEO being performed on your website

This would require a link audit to determine whether there are significant negative linking practices being performed on your website. This might also account for the penalties you are suffering (depends on whether you're getting hit by Panda or Penguin). Once this audit is conducted, a good SEO should be able to determine where the issues are and suggest future security actions to avoid it being repeated.

2. There are still active hacks on the website

This is a job for a more security-oriented person. SEO's can general diagnose these problems, but solving them requires a complete site audit to determine whether code has been hidden on your site. I have a team member who solved the problem this way - it is a tedious and time-consuming process, but it is better to solve the problem completely than be hit over and over.

3. Re-consideration request

Given you have been hit by multiple manual penalties, you will have to submit a reconsideration request with Google. Make sure you have solved all of the above problems  before you send that, or you might never recover the site. A client of ours was in this position, and it took them about 2 years to recover fully.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but please feel free to reach out to me and I can give you some further tips and tricks to help with solving this issue.

Hope you can work it out and that this helps a bit!

Best regards,

Rob

Hello Rosemary,

I have found that using Scrapebox (http://www.scrapebox.com/) to scrape the pages and run the list through Screaming Frog (http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/) has always done very well with this in mind. It gives you everything you need to make those reports you're looking for. This is a "practical" instead of a "showy" approach.

Cheers!

Rob

Hello Christopher,

Bolding in and of itself confers no technical SEO advantage. However, it does have a "soft" SEO impact in that it can make content more accessible and readable from a user perspective. This might make it more likely to be shared, linked to, or otherwise cited, improving your potential reach and therefore helping with positive ranking signals to Google.

Dry, basic text can make a reader bored and increase Bounce Rate.

However, well-cited, original content with proper emphasis on relevant topics and words can make all the difference when it comes to user reception.

See the difference? Google will too, over time.

Hope this helps!

Rob

Hello Jez,

This is a fairly straightforward process:

1. Changing your url structure is unlikely to do you much good, especially if you are already established in your industry. You could try it out and see if rankings improve, but chances are it will be a lot of fruitless time and effort for not much (if any) gain. Region can be a strong signal for brick and mortar businesses from a local perspective (at the city/locality level) but it is unlikely to matter if you are serving full regions of an entire country. Google would likely interpret this as irrelevancy in areas that are not centered on a location you choose.

2. The url represents a "hard" ranking factor (as in, it is a technical SEO ranking factor), but probably isn't what you should be focusing on here. Meta data and tags are "soft" ranking factors (as in, they affect customer UX and can affect positive ranking signals from Google based on user metrics), so you might put some time into these if you feel they could use some work. For example, if you are targeting the Western region, you might specify this in meta tags so potential customers in the Western region will be more likely to click through, while Eastern customers might not. This will help with potential Bounce Rate, thereby indirectly helping your ranking potential.

3. Google Local is normally reserved for businesses operating in a given geographic area - for example, a business operating solely in a single city. Improving your Local profile for local customers is a good idea, but given the scope of your project, it is not likely going to be advantageous for you to divert too much of your time or resources to it.

Overall, region in the url is still a ranking factor, but this is trending towards becoming less important as time progresses, especially as "exact match" ranking declines. As I stated above, making alterations and testing the effects will let you know which direction to move for sure, but it carries risk with it. I would focus on maintaining quality (non-duplicate) content in 2 regions set from the same domain - new technical changes will make this more profitable for you in the long run than attempting to make exact matches in your url's or altering your site structure.

Cheers!

Rob

Yes there are a lot of overlaps when it comes to GWT - for the most part if you are making a submission request for crawling, it is indexed simultaneously - I believe the difference lies in some approaches which allow you to crawl as Google as opposed to submitting for official index.

In other words, what you have done is a definitive step in crawling and indexing, as opposed to seeing what Google would find if it were to crawl your site (as a test). "Submit to Index" is normally something I reserve for completed sites (as opposed to Stub content) to avoid accidental de-indexing.

In your circumstances, however, I don't think it will hurt you and it may help you identify any outstanding issues. Just remember to avoid it if you don't want a site indexed before it is ready!

Hope this helps,

Rob

Hello benseb,

You mention that you have de-prioritized past events in the sitemap. You could go the nofollow route although this is a somewhat clumsy way to go about it.

I think based on what you have described, your best bet is to leave it as is (after moving forward with the hint Matt Cutts dropped) rather than eliminating a load of content which is sending Google positive signals. My guess is that these positive signals overpower any negative signals that might be resulting from aging content.

If everything has been properly indexed and current events are showing up, I wouldn't make any big alterations - why mess with a good thing?

If you begin seeing drastic declines in traffic or user interaction, that might be the time to take a harder stance. For now though, let it be.

Best of luck!

Rob

Hello again, Dan,

From what I can tell from your description, you have done what you can to make this work. We would expect JS to be blocked by that robots.txt file.

To answer your questions:

Fetch & render does allow Google to re-crawl the page using GWT. A request of this nature typically takes between 1-3 days to process, so you should know where you stand at that point.

Feel free to put an update here and if there is further information I will see what I can do to help out.

Cheers!

Rob

Hello Julio,

Yoast is a great plugin to use as a general framework for SEO practice - this does not mean you have to follow the instructions to the letter, but it does give you some ideas in how to create quality content and it is extremely easy to use. I use it as my go-to plug-in whenever I am setting up a site on Wordpress.

Somewhat dated, but still fairly effective, guide to using Wordpress:

http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success

Here are some more plugin options for you to consider:

http://moz.com/ugc/roundup-of-35-wordpress-seo-plugins

Help with optimizing Wordpress:

http://moz.com/webinars/advanced-wordpress-seo

These will all help - in short, I would strongly suggest Yoast as an SEO tool for Wordpress. Feel free to fire any questions you have my way.

Rob

It is widely agreed that direct-match keywords are declining in importance compared to user experience-based forms of communication in terms of ranking in SERP's.

In other words, it is generally accepted that having all keywords you are targeting in a sentence is best practice, although it is not required that they be together exactly as the phrase you are targeting. In your case, "luxury car rental miami" would be represented better on your site as:

"Use the best luxury car rental service in Miami."

than it would by

"Use the best luxury car rental Miami service."

Even though the second option is a direct match, it would probably rank lower than the first option.

Hope this helps!

If you are a brick and mortar business located only in the Miami area, localization is always a great way to go. In this case, the first option is probably your best bet.

There are so many resources out there to help you with an up-to-date SEO campaign:

General information:

http://moz.com/blog/how-to-have-a-successful-local-seo-campaign-in-2015

Using Moz Analytics to improve your marketing:

http://moz.com/blog/local-rankings-in-moz-analytics

Conducting an audit on your website:

http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit

Local SEO Tools (Free and Paid):

http://moz.com/blog/free-local-seo-tools
semrush.com
brightlocal.com

Remember that keywords are a factor in ranking, but a good site experience for users, quality content and accessibility for crawlers are all huge factors as well. Don't limit your approach to a single facet - really open up to multiple subjects and your marketing will take off.

All the best,

Rob

Hello Julio,

The plugin you are using is horrifically outdated. There are a few things you should know ahead of time:

1. Many of the ranking factors (technical SEO factors) shown in your screen shots are irrelevant by today's standards. "Keyword density" and meta description do not carry weight in ranking terms.

2. Exact Term Match (keyword in the permalink or url) is also on its way out and is being replaced by user intent metrics by learning machines (algorithms).

3. Your content contains use of your keywords that sounds unnatural: "...offers every client far more than just a luxury car rental miami,..." - Google picks up on this and will rank it negatively. It is far better to use content that sounds grammatically correct and includes the keywords (Such as "...offers every client far more than a luxury car rental experience in the Miami area,..." would do better). If I had to guess, I would bet that you got this content from iwriter.com or an equivalent freelance writing site for extremely cheap and the resulting lack of quality is unlikely to do your rankings in SERP's any favors.

4. If Moz is ranking this site as an F, I would fix it according to their guidelines rather than your plugins. Create content that is likely to engage users and encourage them to share. Avoid "over-optimizing" and focus on user experience more.

It's better to solve the root of the problem rather than perform poor technical SEO and cost yourself time and money.

Cheers and the best of luck!

Rob