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Hi Blake

In the source code, at the beginning of the tag, you have a <a href="<a href="http://www.directcolors.com/products/liquid-colored-antique/top" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">top"> bit of code.</a href="<a>

This won't be doing anything apart from creating a 404 error, so you can remove it.

Incidentally, if your client or you are looking at how to place internal anchors on a page, this is a great guide on how to do it.

As the article says, for any link like this to work it would need to be in the of the HTML, not the as it currently is.

Hope this helps

Hi there

I often find that it is easier to take value out of the equation when looking to removing/disavowing links, and focus more on how that link got there.

Your first example, the link may not be doing any good or harm and it might look out of place, but there's no doubt the link is a "natural" recommendation, in a sense that it hasn't been deliberately built by the company it links to.  Such links wouldn't be a problem at all, in my opinion.

For the second example, again while this looks like an odd link, I believe it is clear to see that a webmaster has not gone out and built that link deliberately.  That is what Google is ultimately looking for.  Automatic crawlers, particular statlog and others that will be well known to Google, won't need removing or disavowing - as I'm pretty sure the algorithm (plus manual reviewers) just discounts them anyway.

If a link looks deliberately placed or produced by someone with a vested interest, automated or otherwise, that's where I think the alarm bells start ringing for quality checks etc.  I believe it's why terms like "link earning" - getting people to link to you purely on the strength of the content and assets you produce - has proven to be so popular recently.  Google will reward those kind of links all day.  Your first example is an example of that, albeit a small one.  Links like in your second example will just be discounted, but not actively penalised.

It's interesting to consider that, once you see links as being "earned" or "natural", such as the client recommendation in the first example, this is where some SEOs have manipulated the algorithm and done so quite well.  They replicate these "natural" looking links.  Where most slip up is that they leave a footprint or visible clues that they're doing it deliberately.  I don't advocate you do that at all - earn those links by being an awesome company - but it's always good to know how things can work and/or be exploited, as you can learn to avoid pitfalls that way.

Hope this helps!

Probably a bit too late now in March, but ways that you can recycle your tree is an idea for Jan/Feb. There's this 70 old retired man near where I work who takes in everyone's old trees and makes the most beautiful furniture out of it. A feature on that or a guide of what you can do in the home with left over trees would probably get some traction.

Might be a chance to look at all the hard work and conservation that goes into growing the trees. With all the razzmatazz of Christmas gone, the unsung heroes as it were are still planting away, with soft pines taking about 2-3 years for a small tree and bigger ones 5+. That's a lot of work for something we put up for about 1 month a year - maybe a piece on those that make a key part of Christmas happen might be interesting.

Hi Colin

That's correct, you shouldn't have to worry about those.  Webmaster tools can be notoriously slow to update when links have been removed and no longer exist, but you should be alright having faith in the fact that if the link doesn't exist, then Google has seen it and doesn't count it any more.

If you want to be ultrasafe, pop them in the disavow file anyway as it won't do any harm.  Also, you can follow Google's advice and disavow the entire domain, rather than half a dozen or so URLs from the same domain, in order to save time.  You can do that by adding this to the disavow file:

domain:example.com

Hope this helps.

Hi Tom

(Great name)

If you preference is to have the all.html page (and more.html page) indexed and potentially ranked, rather than the subset/filtered pages, then you should do just as you say.

It's worth double checking if your "more.html" page is being indexed as well (just paste the URL into a Google search bar).  If so, if you can point any of the subset pages to that one, if it is more accurate, then that's an option.  Google, when crawling the page, won't see the dynamically loaded content (at least I think - you can test this by pasting the URL into the SEO Browser, running a 'simple' analysis, and seeing what the Googlebot sees), so it might be wise to point the subset pages to the URL that it matches most closely.

If that isn't an option though, there won't be an issue with adding the canonicals to the subset pages to point to the all.html - even if the content isn't an exact match.  You're taking steps to prevent any duplicate indexation and Google will appreciate that.  Another idea, which is probably more robust, is to add the tag to the code in the HTML, if the listing pages physically exist and are not dynamically created with search queries.

Having said that, I do believe your solution would work fine. Hope this helps

There's no magic number/ratio/percentage for nofollow links.  You shouldn't aim to replicate another website's number of nofollow links specifically, as there'd just be no benefit in doing this.

Focus on earning links in the proper way - by producing quality content and offering a first class service.  You're not going to be seen any more or less trustworthy by Google if you have 1%, 5% or 10% nofollow - it won't make a lick of difference to them.

Short answer is definitely yes.

If you want to pass on the link equity/juice/strength, you'll want to implement a 301 redirect ASAP.

However, some studies have shown that over time a 302 may pass equity.  So it's not a completely lost cause, but we're looking at months (possibly years) for that to pass with a 302, so where you can just use a 301.

Hi there

John Mueller is right, if you have a canonical tag in place like that then you shouldn't have to worry about those duplicate pages.

The reason why your page variations are being indexed is because you've implemented the canonical tag incorrectly.  At the moment, you have it written like this:

Your missing the quotations from the canonical section.  It should read like this:

That should fix the problem and also fix the duplicate URLs from being indexed.

Hope this helps.

I've not come across them before, nor really heard of them, so can't offer much insight there.  I believe that this may be the URL? (Not linking directly, just in case):

http://bit.ly/16p7aBc

First glance is that the site doesn't look too professional - for instance some of the text in the boxes is way out. Similarly, I can't see a meta description or XML sitemap. These are things that I'd expect any digital marketing agency to have implemented, if I'm honest.

I also like to look at testimonials and look at the link profiles of those sites, as they're pretty much an example of the company's work, but I'm drawing a blank on this too. Their own link profile looks pretty clean, nothing extraordinary however.

My gut says to stay clear, as there's not a lot of information on them that I can find. But by all means give them a call - could just be that they're only getting their site together very recently, and so it's not really fair to judge them solely on that.  See what they say on the phone and try to go LinkedIn stalking from some people that work there - have a look at their previous experience.

Hi Denis

I'm afraid this isn't possible.  Therefore, if you plan on keeping both, make sure the blogspot has unique content from your main website and offers good value for people who come across it.

You can redirect domain > blogspot, however.

Hi Oscar

I think this could be a very good idea.  Not only does the new URL structure look more SEO friendly for bots and also more friendly for users, creating a category page can be a great way at ranking an ecommerce site.

One of the main problems with an ecommerce site is the requirement for each product page to have its own unique content on it of some substantial length, let's say 200+ words.  If you have hundreds or thousands of products, this quickly becomes a problem.

Conversely, creating a category page that covers your main search terms - eg "sunglasses", "sunglasses for sale"  - can also cover some long-tail keywords as well: "best sunglasses for summer", "sport sunglasses" and so on.

In order to do that you should make your category page as rich as possible - include a healthy amount of content and even things like reviews and videos of some of your top selling products.  Make it informational as well as promoting your shop, so that it could also be seen as an educational resource as well as your shop front.

I think having a static category page over a search result page to promote in organic search is a very good idea. Make sure it is content rich and worthy of ranking and that any necessary redirects are taken care of.

You and I both, Ted!

It's very annoying I know, but I think we can be a bit optimistic over the matter.  If those links are just a one-off and are not replicated en masse, then I'd be pretty confident that Google wouldn't penalise you for it.  I'm of the opinion that it would treat the links like an anomaly in the data - an exception to the rule and not indicative of the actual website.  It's quite a sophisticated algorithm after all and, despite the flak that they get (definitely from me), Google site reviewers are pretty reasonable folk.

Hi Zachary

I really can't be sure if it's having an adverse affect, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.

Having looked at just 3 of the product pages, there is a problem with content being repeated, but I think it is being compounded by there being no other content on the page either to make it look unique.

Both are the hallmarks to a potential Panda penalty, which could affect the pages performance themselves and/or the whole domain.  So, if you're seeing subpar performance (and even if you're performing well it's worth reading on) I would look at the following solution.

For every product that you do not intend to restock or reuse, I would either add a  tag, add a 301 redirect or simply remove the page and serve a 404.  If we're talking tens of thousands, then having that many redirects might bloat out your .htaccess file (making it larger and longer to load/process) and having an instant drop of 20k URLs and 404 errors might look a bit odd to Google as well.  However, adding 20k tags is a bit of a nightmare as well.

You might want to try a combination of all 3 - a few 404 errors is nothing to worry about - but the logic is that you will be removing a number of pages that have this duplicate content on it, thus improving the quality of the domain.  For your remaining 'live' pages, I'd highly recommend taking the time to add 200+ words of unique content about the product in order to avoid this happening again.

An alternative solution would be to block the bots from accessing the /shop/ subfolder in your robots.txt file - and then setting up the shop and the currently active product listings on a different subdomain.  You'd lose the ability to use the /shop/ folder, but it would be quicker than manually adding tags or 301 redirects.

That's the method I would use if I wanted to address the issue.  However, this **may not be necessary **if your site is not performing badly.  You can check this to a degree with the Panguin Tool - this overlays your organic traffic in analytics with Google updates - if a drop in traffic coincides with a Panda penalty, you may be under the affect of one - in which case you should take action ASAP.

Hope this helps.

Hi Sagar

If the link profile is bad - which isn't a Panda issue - I would not redirect the domain.  Not sure if there is confusion here in your penalty definitions, so I'll cover all bases.

In terms of a Panda penalty, ie a thin content/duplicate/spammy on-page website, I've yet to see that penalty pass on to a new domain when redirected.  However, a bad link profile penalty (often a Penguin penalty) I have definitely seen passed on through a 301 redirect.  The penalty doesn't take hold immediately on a new domain, but it does eventually and is something of a ticking time bomb.

For that reason, I wouldn't want to 301 redirect the domain until I removed a good majority of the bad links in the link profile of the old domain.

I hope that helps.

Hi there

I was able to dig up these moz posts:

How to write a good meta description

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/meta-description

Whats is important when i am writing a blog(or any other back link source) that would link to my website

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-advanced-guest-blogging

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/content-curation-guide-for-seo

What is important when creating a site tree

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/site-architecture-for-seo

Hope these links help!

Hi there

Well there's a couple of things to check here.  You mention you had a manual penalty on the site, but that you were affected by the penguin 2.0 update?

Penguin is algorithmic, not manual.  If you had the manual penalty removed, in theory you could still be under the effects of the Penguin penalty, if your backlink profile is still over-optimised for example.  I think this is unlikely, however.

Your onsite errors may be causing a problem if it is affecting the crawling of your site.  If access to the site is being consistently interrupted, or the Googlebot is crawling the wrong stuff for example, that may be having an impact.

What I think is the real problem though is that you're now left with a much smaller amount of links now that you've conducted a link removal.  In essence, without those links (good or bad), you've set your site's SEO value to zero again.  In order to recover rankings, you need to replenish and replace those links removed with more high quality ones - ones that are contextual, relevant and on authoritative websites.

Hope this helps.

Hi there Jordan

I've just run the page in the Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool and it's found lots of internal inbound links to it.  I can only presume this means it's an error in the Moz tool, so I'll let one of the support team address it.

From where I'm standing, however, it doesn't look like the page has been orphaned, so you're good.

The disavow tool will effectively block the site, but it is not removed in the WMT report or any OSE, Majestic report etc.

To actually do that, the link itself must be removed.  Best way to do that, of course, is to contact the webmaster of the site.  I understand you probably don't want to visit the site in question, so you can enter the URL on domaintools.com and it will give the registrar data and hopefully an email.

Sounds like you have a right royal mess on your hands.  For both SEO and branding purposes, I'd seriously consider the possibility of moving to a completely new domain.  The amount of time to outreach and/or disavow those links would be substantial and as you say if you cannot get that particular link removed, only disavowed, it could be very, very bad.

Hi there

Well, your page is still there in the SERPs (#11 searching from London), so that's the main thing!

It could be an issue with the Moz crawler missing the page, or it could have been some short downtime on your site (best to double check that in webmaster tools if you have them set up - look for any crawl errors around Friday, where the rankings update).  Rank checkers can be a bit temprimental, Moz's included.  I know that they're working hard on the tool to improve it - it's pretty difficult considering that Google don't want sites/apps/programs scraping their results or data.  Some good reading on that topic can be found here, when Raven Tools stopped offering ranking positions.

So given all that, every now and then you'll get errors and anomalies.  Try to supplement your data where you can with a couple of free alternatives - both Rank Checker Ace (cloud based) and Rankerizer (download) give you a free keyword ranking tool.  Run all three to get a stronger idea of rankings from different sources.

Frustrating I know, but just as much for the Moz team and Google's awkward stance.  At the least most important thing is intact, and that's your site's actual position in the rankings!

While I can't help with the second part of your question just now, I can help with the first.  There have been a couple of studies that have argued that 302 redirects are eventually treated as 301s.  Here is one example.