Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Gareth

Has this been a recent drop or more of a gradual decline?  I'm guessing there's been no message in your webmaster tools?

You might be interested to see this post on the ongoing link devaluation updates.  I've certainly seen with a few websites that those sites with not necessarily bad links, as in those that go against Google TOS, but built on somewhat archaic practices, such as directories and article sites, have seen a dropdown in rankings.  If there was ever proof that not all links are created equally, this is it.

One of the ways you can check if this is the case is to check the search engine results for the rankings you've dropped in - what pages used to rank for those terms? Is it the same page for each one? That might suggest link devaluation.

Hi Iain

If you have at least one core keyword you can translate easily (let's use tennis for this example, which is "tenis" in Spanish), then Ubersuggest might be of use to you.

Popping in "tenis" in ubersuggest and setting it search Google.es will give some keyword suggestions.  The best thing about ubersuggest is that these are the keywords that other people are actually searching for - they're real user queries.

With this, you can see what people are searching for when typing in "tenis" as part of their query - it lists the results alphabetically and numerically.

Hope this helps, would also like to hear of other ways from other people.

Hi Ben

If you could break down your traffic data into segments, such as branded keywords vs non-branded keywords, that would be a big help.  A drop in branded keyword traffic would reflect seasonality, whereas a drop in non-brand might suggest the effect of Penguin.  If you have any historical rankings to back up those traffic figures as well, that would help.

We've all made mistakes in SEO - the challenge is to learn from them.  I think LinkDetox is definitely worth the money.  You can also tweet for a discount and I think it still makes the tool free for a short period if you do - so you can try before you buy.  Send Christoph a tweet (he made the tool) to check if this still is the case:

http://twitter.com/cemper

I think by default it now sorts by the highest rated comment:

http://i.imgur.com/10mksaE.png

If you are being penalised, it sounds like you're working on the issue (employ the use of rel=canonical tags while you're rewriting the content). So let's look at ways to see if you have been penalised by Google.

First of all, check your messages in webmaster tools to see if you have received any warnings from Google.  If you have, then you will need to follow their advice on getting the penalty removed.

If there's no warning, your site may have been affected by link devaluation or a strictly algorithmic penalty.  When you type your brand name into Google - what comes up first?  Is it your homepage?  Similarly, if you type in your full web address (http://www.domain.com) into the Google search bar, does that page come up first?

If the answer to either of the last 2 questions is "no", then there may be some penalty involved.  In which case, I would first rule out any possibility of your site being actively penalised by checking webmaster tools and then reviewing what links are pointing your homepage.  If it is a very spammy link profile, you will need to work on improving it with authoritative and editorial links.  I'd only spend time actively trying to remove links if you have a penalty, or you believe that the vast majority of links to your sites homepage or spammy.

Hi Jason

Google will ignore the comma when you type it into a search term - you can check this out yourself (you might have already done so) and you should see the same results.

Matt Cutts also addresses the question in this video, looking at if Google treats the comma as a separator.

In my personal view, I'd maybe use a hyphen in my title tag "Web Design - Manchester | Brand" for example, or perhaps even "Web Design in Manchester", but you run the risk of encountering Google Local results in those SERPs.  You shouldn't have too many problems with a comma in 2013, I wouldn't think, judging from that video.

I can't see that having any effect SEO wise.

The only real concern I would consider is from a user experience perspective.  Does this look neat for a user?  If it was named dueling-pianos-2, one might be inclined to look for the first version of the page.

But even that is a stretch.  I wouldn't worry about it at all and keep it how it is.

Hope you all have a great time!

There's a bit of a problem going on with Google WMT at the moment - might have something to do with the PageRank update.  Here's a link to the thread going on in the Google Products Forum.

Looks as though Google is aware of the problem.  Give it a few days and things should calm down.

Hi Dan

I believe that both SEMRush and KeywordSpy would be able to do this for you.  They are both paid services, but KeywordSpy does come with a free trial, so it's worth checking out to see if it can give you the data you're looking for.

Hope this helps!

That's exactly right.  In fact, a couple of years ago many SEO's believed that sub folders would have more SEO value than subdomains, as it would ensure that all of the SEO "strength", as it were, would pass to the root domain.

We've moved away from this now as people have tested subdomains and found that the strength passes equally to them as well.  Whether you go with subdomains or sub-folders, either way the SEO value will pass.

Hi James

Yes, this is possible (but limited to pages that you yourself own or are an admin for)

Within the Facebook Power Editor, create or select a new advert. Click the "audience" tab and then scroll to the bottom.  You'll see something like:

Connections Target users who are connected to:

Type your brand page in there and you should be able to select your brand page.  That way, only people who have liked your page should see the ad.  Incidentally, you can also target people who are not connected with your page.

From what I can see, I don't think you can see this option in the normal advert creator.

Hope this helps.

I'm not surprised Moz is flagging those pages as duplicate content and I wouldn't be totally surprised if Google did in the future.

Put it this way, the pages are identical bar for a single sentence title description, a price and roughly a 20 word section describing the product.  Everything else is identical. It's duplicate.

Look at it another through Google's eyes.  Here's how the two pages look when crawled by Google:

http://www.seo-browser.com/index.php?address=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.1010direct.com%2FDGV-DD1165-970-53%2Fdetails.aspx&button0.x=51&button0.y=12&button0=Simple

http://www.seo-browser.com/index.php?address=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.1010direct.com%2FTDV-019-GOLD-50%2Fdetails.aspx&button0.x=58&button0.y=16&button0=Simple

(If that doesn't work, try yourself at http://www.seo-browser.com/)

Just look at how much text and HTML is shared between the two pages.  Yes, there are key differences on the pages (namely the product), but the Google bot nor the Mozbot is going to recognise those elements when it crawls it.

Presuming Google ignores the site nav, it still has a bunch of text and crawlable elements that are shared - pretty much everything under the product description.  It doesn't see the individual images and the flavour text is frankly too small to make any sort of dent in the duplicate content %.

I'd seriously recommend at revising how your product pages look - there's far too much repeated content per page (you can still promote these things on each page but in a much, much smaller way) and the individual descriptions for the products, in my eyes, are not substantial enough.

Hi David

My first question would always be: what do you want the traffic to provide you? Is it merely for exposure to your work (which looks ace by the way), or do you want it specifically to convert?

If it's just to drive traffic and general awareness of the blog, it frees up the keyword choice.  If you want to get people to hire you on a freelance basis, then of course you need to think of the commercial viability of the keyword.  For instance, Jiyugaoka Station may not be too commercial, as you're not targeting people looking for a service, whereas "photographers near Jiyugaoka Station" (just as an example) would be.  This advice is a bit off topic, but always worth keeping in mind.

The keyword difficulty tool in Moz is a great tool, but I'd combine it with a few other tools.  Use the Google Keyword Tool to get a rough idea on monthly search volume for your selected keywords (remember to select [exact] match) and see which keywords have the most search volume - which in turn would probably mean more users to your site should you rank for the term.

The Keyword Tool will also give you a few keyword variations when you enter your keywords - these may also provide some good ideas of other keywords you could target.  Similarly, Ubersuggest is a great free tool that does the same sort of thing.

Once you have a list of keywords with decent search volume, then I'd use the Moz difficulty tool.  The tool will show you how strong the websites are ranking for that keyword and, somewhat proportionatly, you'll get some idea of how much SEO effort you'd need to do to overtake them.  It might be the case that one keyword has a search volume of 800 per month, but looks quite difficult to rank, whereas a 450 per month term looks very easy indeed.  In this case, based on your time, knowledge and budget, you can work out which keyword you'd be better off optimising for.

Hope this helps in some way and if you have any interest I wrote a blog post on a relatively similar subject last week: www.sowhatmedia.co.uk/small-traffic-big-business/

There's a good chance of that - a drop like that would normally mean its PageRank has been penalised.

If you can verify this with some suspicious looking backlinks via Open Site Explorer, then I would steer clear.

Hey Guillaume

That should be possible provided that you can add your Coremetrics tags as UTM values (which I'm sure you can).

Here's what Google says you need to do:

You need to use auto-tagging for non-Analytics purposes

If you need to (1) turn on auto-tagging in your AdWords account for purposes other than Analytics tracking and (2) wish to use manual tagging for Analytics, then you must enable the following setting to avoid data discrepancies:

1. Log in to Analytics.
2. Click Admin in the upper right-hand corner to open the administrative interface.
3. Choose the relevant account and property.
4. Click Property Settings.
5. Click Advanced Settings.
6. Select the Allow manual tagging (UTM values) to override auto-tagging (GCLID values) checkbox.
7. Click Apply.

Source: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033981?hl=en-GB

Hope that helps.

Looks like you've used the right format and that Google will be able to read the text behind the "read more".

You can actually test this by using services that return your website as how the Googlebot sees it.  Seo-browser is one of them, and the simple search is free.

Here is the result for that webpage.

You can see the text behind the "read more" script on that page, which would indicate that Google isn't having a problem seeing it.

Absolutely loving Keyword Snatcher right now. One-off fee and an absolute beast.

Hi there

In theory, the penalty can be either site-wide or page specific.  The majority of the time I've site-wide penalties.

A good way to check is to run your analytics data using the Panguin Tool - which will tell you if traffic drops have coincided with major algorithmic updates.

Similarly, the Chartelligence Chrome Extension allows you to measure traffic for your landing pages in Analytics.  Log into analytics, look at the landing page you wish to test and then activate the extension.  It will show you algorithm updates on your timeline, so any drop that coincides with an update may suggest that the particular page in question has been penalised.

Hope this helps.

Hi Paul

Would it be possible for you to run the website through this free tool? http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

It coincides your organic traffic levels with major Google updates, so you may be able to see on the first Penguin refresh of the new algorithm whether or not the traffic fell with it.  Correlation does not necessarily equal causation, but if there is a drop around the time of the update, it could well be a Penguin penalty.

Worth noting that the new Penguin algorithm looks to be having a stagnated effect on the SERPs - not like the previous update/aftermath/carry on system of old.  So your traffic drop may not coincide with the update on that tool, but the site could still be effected by the algorithm.

Looking at the site's backlinks - there's definitely some evidence that would suggest a penalty could be problem.  Comment spam, such as here, and here looks to make up a large portion of the backlinks to the website.  There is also quite a lot of commercial, exact match anchor text links as well, which could be a problem.

Hope this helps.