Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Adam

First of all - very sorry to see this.  Hope you can get them back on their feet.

For something so dramatic, for me it's only ever one of three things:

1. A manual penalty (as notified in GWT)

2. Website has been hacked

3. A penguin penalty

I think with points 1 and 2, you might have already ruled this out, but be absolutely sure. Run every check under the sun to see whether the site was compromised, look for odd URLs that have been created, check Joomla/WP updates (and plugin updates to make sure they're not injecting malicious code) - just anything.

So that leaves us with point 3 - and I know you've mentioned you've looked at the backlinks already, and apologies in advance if this advice is like teaching you to suck eggs.  Have you tried every backlink source, not just Moz, but WMT, Majestic and Ahrefs?  Have you used tools like Kerboo and URLProfiler for quick classification of the sites?  Have you checked the anchor text distribution?

The big calling card for me is the brand name drop - and that the majority of the time relates to a link/spam penalty.  If you want, you can PM me the URL and I'll quickly pop it into Majestic and Ahrefs for a bit of further analysis - if anything just for a bit of sense checking.

I love URLProfiler for this - here's a blog post and video on how you can use the tool.

As they say, nothing is a substitute for manually reviewing the links, but if you want some quick classification and identify those links that have toxic 'signals', this is the tool for you.

John makes some good points.

It's worth communicating those risks to your client and make them fully aware of what such activity could end up doing to your site.

Now, occasionally, you might get a client who is happy to run the risk - they're happy to try and test and live with the consequences.  While I would usually steer them to try other avenues first, it could be that they're looking to run a test with a disposable domain.  So something like a link broker could come into play.

But then why would you want to use a link broker?  If they're publicly selling links left right and centre, how good are the links going to be? What controls do you have in place? What other sites are on there? What if the broker takes the money and runs?

So in that case, you not only have the penalty looming large over the website, but also the fact that you could literally be throwing money away.

Sometimes trying new tactics can be rewarding - but link brokers? Cons always outweigh the pros, in my opinion.

Very much of the same opinion.

It's one of those 1 percenters. Won't have a big impact, but accumulatively with other things, it's a good idea.

If you can control that element of your SEO, no reason not to do it.

But if you're working on a CMS/Ecommerce system that maybe interferes with this and generates its own title names out-of-the-box, I wouldn't spend too many hours trying to fix it.  Your time is probably better off elsewhere.

Hi there

Just to make sure I understand you correctly:

• You have a yellow pages style of website
• You'd like to rank each category/keyword page when someone searches for that category in Google
• Currently you list the companies in that category on the page - but the rest of the page doesn't have text (or 'rankable content')
• You're thinking of ways to add more content to the page to help it rank better

Would you be able to add a bit more information about each keyword/category?  Maybe information about what those companies do, how they could help someone, what they typically charge etc?  That would allow you to add a bit more content to each of these pages.

I would say, however, that the style of website you're trying to rank might be seen as a doorway site or a directory site, which Google isn't too keen on rewarding when it comes to search.  To combat this, I would look to add additional content ideas to the website in the form of a blog or other information.  Maybe you could interview a business each week as a featured company?  Perhaps you could write articles for small business guides on issues like finance, marketing, tax etc.  Or maybe even do research and whitepapers for the state of certain industries in local areas - if they're booming or in a crisis.

The idea is that you'd be adding additional value to your website for the user - which would not only increase the perceived 'quality' of the website in Google's eyes, but could also help you rank for some long-tail content as well.

Hope this helps.

I disagree with the post above.

The most important thing for your title tag is to make it compelling enough to click.  It's your biggest shop window - you need to use the space.  A "Keyword - Keyword | Brand" isn't going to do that.

You will, of course, want to include your primary keyword in there, but you tell me which of these you'd prefer to click:

"Blue Widgets - Red Widgets | The Widgets Co"

"Cheap Blue Widgets - Free USA Shipping! | The Widgets Co"

Try and get your key selling points in the title tag as often as your keywords.  Give the user a reason to click.

In addition, title tags are truncated/shortened based on character width, not the number characters.  Dr Pete at Moz put together a great preview tool that you can check your title tags in to make sure they won't be shortened.

Hope this helps.

Has your website ever been hacked?

That looks like the kind of thing where someone has compromised your site, built a new page and then redirected users.

If you go to your htaccess file, do you see any rules in place for that redirect?

If you take the URL and put it into OpenSiteExplorer or Majestic, do you see any spammy backlinks going to just that URL?

If the answer is yes to either - it would suggest your site has been compromised.  Remove the redirect/disavow the links and do a clean sweep of your website to make sure it's all OK.

If none of the above is true, it might just be an error on Google's side.  As this post suggests, Google's site: command isn't entirely reliable.

I would set up a new profile for your Philippines pages in Google Webmaster Tools.

Whether you're on a country sub-domain and sub-directory structure (ph.example.com or example.com/ph/) won't matter - you can set up a new profile in WMT.  Go to WMT and add a new site, then enter the URL for the Philippines part of your site.

Once this is done, you can then instruct Google that those pages in your subdomain/directory are targeting Filipinos.  From the International Targeting section, choose the Country tab - then Check the Geographic target checkbox and choose your country target.

Hope this helps.

Hi Joshua

From personal experience (won't cite external sources here) working with a number of sites:

The mobile friendly update - I've definitely seen an impact in mobile search.  I think there's quite a clear handicap in mobile search if the webpage you're trying to rank for isn't mobile friendly (while desktop search looks to be unaffected).

Regarding SSL - I'm yet to be convinced.  I've yet to see a strong correlation - or any correlation for that matter - between websites switching to HTTPS and seeing their rankings improved.  I've followed my own sites, competitor sites, and industry trackers like SerpWoo on this and I don't think the impact is quite there (yet).  In fact, I've seen more cases of companies migrating to SSL seeing rankings drop than improve, because of the problems they have faced in the migration.

In short:

Mobile Friendly - I do see this as a must for SEO.

SSL - treat it as a business decision, not an SEO one.  If you're looking to integrate an onsite payment solution, for example, it makes sense for the site to be SSL.

Hope you all have a great time!

Alick

It wouldn't surprise me if Google already discounts the major coupon sites in their algorithm for this very reason.  It doesn't want to reward link building like this (if some were inclined to do it this way), while equally it wouldn't want to penalise legitimate sites that use them.

I think you'd be fine.

If you do this - do it for the reader, not Google.

If the article has been refreshed with some great value and you think your audience would benefit from seeing it again, then I would update the date.  However, if you're trying to game Google by making out that the content/URL is new and fresh (by trying to take advantage of its freshness algorithm), not only would that be frowned upon, but I think I'm right in saying Google has clamped down on that effectiveness quite a lot since 2013.

Hi Hitesh

Just to double check - did the Coffee page use to be a separate URL that is now redirecting the homepage?

If so, you could demote the old coffee page URL using the above tool and that should do the trick.  However, if the page has been redirected, the URL should automatically be removed from the Sitelinks eventually, once Google has caught up and processed it fully.

Hi Mike

I'm looking at your link profile now and there are quite a few links in there that could be perceived to be unnatural (what betting site doesn't have these though, right?  Used to work for a big brand in-house myself), however, I'm with you in being concerned about these Russian links and anchors.

It looks like your forum has been getting spammed massively.  I can see russian anchors with anchor text like "useful links" and "useful products" - I can even see some Minecraft anchor text in there.  It almost looks as though someone is using your forum to build forum links to rank their spam site.

Have you had trouble recently with spam hitting your forums?  I worry that some people have been ploughing your forum with spam - and thus your site with spammy links - and it may have had a negative effect.

Hi Nikola

It certainly won't be the case that, if you have a big rankings drop, that might have a ripple effect on other rankings.  There's no way the two will be directly related and Google won't adjust your other rankings because of one falling.

However, the reason behind the ranking drop might well have contributed to other keywords falling, particularly if they are related keywords.  So, if a competitor has had a successful link building campaign and risen above you, you yourself have lost links, made onsite changes etc etc.  Those ranking factors can all increase or decrease your keyword positioning - and if all of your keywords are related and possibly ranking for the same page, that might explain why other keywords have fallen as well.

Hi Astrid

I've made the assumption here that the site you are talking about is the one in your Moz Profile, where you're a business owner.  I won't post it here just in case, and please correct me if I'm wrong.

I've been looking at the backlinks that have been built to that site and I'm sorry to say that it is not good news.  The links they have been building are pretty awful.  They all seem to be autoblog spam on websites with hundreds of outbound links per page, linking to all different kinds of sites, with no contextual relevance to your business at all.

I'm not surprised that what they've been doing so far hasn't been working because, frankly, what they've done is crap.

I'd look to terminate your service with them ASAP and move on.

Hi Amelia

Would a subfolder not achieve the job equally as well?  If we take out the SEO perspective (I think any links the forum eventually gets you would have virtually the same benefit in a sub domain or sub folder), let's look at it from a user POV.

As you say, your audience responds very well to forums.  How do you think those users usually find them?  Would they be more likely to type in www.example.com/forum/ or would they type: forum.example.com?  My gut feeling (based on no data) would be the subfolder solution - as it's the same way you might go about finding a contact page or an about us page.

You could attempt to quantify that by doing a google search.  Try this Google search:

inurl:forum "keyword"

Replace keyword with your industry keywords, of course.

Take a look at some of the results that come up and note which ones use a /forum/ structure or a forum.site.com structure.  Both variants have the chance of turning up (like in this search).  That will give you some idea on what the typical structure is.  Now, that doesn't mean you have to be typical!  But it might give a slight correlation between what structure users in your niche might expect.

Ultimately, I don't think it would make a huge amount of difference - so maybe giving the devs an easy ride could be a good shout!

Hi Paul

Let's take PA and DA out of the equation here, for the time being.

My first question would be: Is your current website ranking for anything?

If it is and it is ranking well, I would question any site migration.  "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" springs to mind.

With that aside - let's consider the user experience element:

"Will you have more trust to UK customers with a .co.uk vs a .com?"

As a UK business myself, I don't think that buyers have any preferential trust to one TLD or another - so long that it is clear on the website that you are UK based (UK numbers, locations, £ signs etc).

"Would a .com domain be more suitable for international clients?"

If you have aspirations to grow the company and target international regions, I would say that having a .com would be more suitable than a .co.uk - given that it is the global TLD.  If this is a serious business consideration, that would make me lean more to the side of choosing .com.

"Will you rank better in Google.co.uk if you use a .co.uk domain?"

In short, no.  In long, no - not really.  Google uses many factors when deciding to rank a site well in a region or location - the TLD used is somewhere near the bottom of that pile.  The other elements I talked about - UK address, numbers, spelling, server location, local citations etc - they will have a much, much greater impact to ranking.  You'll see yourself that probably millions of .com sites are ranking well in Google UK.

I would look at all of those factors before I'd begin to think about PA/DA or the links a domain has.  I'll be honest, it sounds a pretty poor suggestion from your last SEO company - particularly if they did nothing to justify their reasoning.  Having a .co.uk domain is by no means a pre-requisite to rank well in Google UK.  I'd ask yourself all of the above questions before reaching a decision on whether to switch or not.

Hope this helps.

Hi Richard

Honestly, I really don't know.  A lot of me wants to say that: "Surely Google will know this isn't deliberate and manipulative duplicate content".  You could take a couple of those URLs and do a Google search with them.  Do:

site:www.example.com/page?query1
info:www.example.com/page?query1

With the first result, if your URL hasn't been indexed, that's a good thing.  For the second result, if the info search returns the original URL (without the parameters), that's also good, as it means Google will be counting the one with parameters as just a variation and to be ignored.  However, if it's returning the result with the parameters, that would indicate that the web crawler is indexing the version with parameters and treating it as a separate URL - raising the duplicate content risk.  Silly Google!

Regardless of those results, I would look to implement the canonical tag anyway as it takes any guesswork out of the equation.  And ultimately, a lot of this work with Google is guesswork as we can't see the algorithm - although it's an informed guess due to experience etc.

Hi Richard

It is something you should address ASAP.  While I believe that Google is a lot better at recognising 'accidental' duplicate content - IE URLs with URL parameters - and distinguishing it from 'deliberate' duplicate content - just outright stealing someone's work or trying to rank several pages for multiple terms - that is only my assumption.  To be completely sure, let's stop any chance of Google penalising these pages.

I think, in this instance, a rel canonical tag should do the trick.  You can read more on the tag here in Moz's guide. Basically, on the page(s) where you're having this problem add a "self-referring" canonical tag.  For example, if the page was http://www.example.com/blue-widgets/, the tag would be:

Make sure that, when you implement this, the pages that are generated with the URL parameters aren't also creating canonical tags like:

They should all have the original canonical tag.

What this will do is tell Google that "If you see any pages with this tag, we're aware that they might be duplicate, but please only count and index the http://www.example.com/blue-widgets/".  It works just like a 301 redirect in that sense.

I think this would be the simplest solution for you to implement.  If you're having problems, there would be a way of blocking access to pages with certain query/URL parameters by using the robots.txt file, but that could get quite messy.

Hope this helps