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It's also worth remembering that blocking a URL in a robots.txt file does not automatically mean that the URL will be deindexed.  The robots.txt file will prevent robots, such as the Googlebot, from seeing or accessing the file and that's all.  Now obviously, if a robot repeatedly tries to access a file and gets denied it will eventually stop trying to, which is what leads to the file being deindexed (the same principle applies to 404 and 410 errors).

Therefore, if you want a quicker and more definite deindexing solution, you should use the explicit noindex robot command, as recommended above.  This will tell any visiting robot to not index it straight away, which will reduce the number of revisits and drop the page from the index faster.

Hi there

The Google Related Searches section and the Google suggested searches (the search terms suggested when you start to type in the toolbar) are both intrinsicly linked and are generated in the same way.

There are two great resources on how this works and where they come from.  The first is a Whiteboard Friday from a not-so-bearded-Rand.  The second is a great article by Rishi Lakhani on how it works and how one would go about "influencing it".  Heavy on theory, but a great read.

I hope these help.

Chris makes a fantastic point here.

You almost need to detach "what's reasonable" from what Google wants sometimes.  Chris is right - why shouldn't those two pages have the same content? But we're dealing with algorithms mainly, not reasoning.

Hi Alan

Bear in mind this is me coming in with no prior knowledge of you, your company or your developers - so its worth taking my comment with a pinch of salt.

With that said, I think 9 hours does sound reasonable for all parties.  I'm struggling to think of a WordPress plugin that allows you to accomplish what you're trying to achieve (which also makes good business sense btw). I can think of popup plugins, but I'm not sure if there are any that allow you to alter the popup itself based on historical sessions, nor see which popup someone eventually saw and "converted" (filled in the form) on, or indeed send information to you via a form.

Getting all of things into place and then reliably testing it - I think 9 hours billed is a good estimate (based on my coding experience, albeit by no means expert, and my 'client' experience). What's more, working with a developer you're happy with and trust, one that understands your goals and your business, is worth its weight in gold I can assure you. Having a clear spec before you begin means you'll get a bespoke solution, which will always be better than a ready-made plugin anyway.

I think it's a smart idea and one that is worth doing right - so I'd definitely go with the developer and I think the quote sounds reasonable.  But as I say, that's coming from an outsider.

I hope this helps.

Hey Cole

1. The more you do change, the less risk involved.  Some might tell you that if you change the content enough to pass "copyscape" or other online plagiarism tools, that would protect you from a penalty. I find that to be slightly ridiculous - why would Google judge by those external standards?  The more you can change, the better in my opinion (but I can totally sympathise with the work that entails)

2. Google will know you own the websites if you link them together, share GA code, host them together, contain the same company details and so on - but my question is why would you want to do that?  I think if you tried to tell Google you owned all the sites they would come out you even harder, as they could see it as you being manipulative.

To that point, others will recommend that you only use one domain and target different KWs or locations on different pages/subfolders/subdomains, as it'll look less like a link network. Downside of that is getting Google local listings for each page/location can be a bit of a pain if the pages all come from one domain.

It's not really my place to comment on your strategy and what you should/should not be doing, but suffice to say if you go with individual domains for each location, you should aim to make those domains (and their copy) as unique and independent as possible.

Hi Cole

That kind of duplication will almost certainly negatively impact your ability to rank.

It's the kind of dupe content that Google hates - the kind that's deliberately manipulative and used by sites just trying to rank for as many different KWs or locations as possible, without trying to give people a unique user experience.

Not to say that you couldn't possibly rank like this (I've seen it happen and will probably see it again in the future), but you're leaving yourself wide open to a Panda penalty and, as such, I'd highly recommend that you cater each site and each landing page to your particular audience.  Even by doing that, not only will you be making it unique but you would dramatically improve your chances of ranking by mentioning local things for a local page.

Give each page unique copy and really tailor it to your local audience.

Hope this helps.

Hi there

What I would first do is look at two or more product pages with CSS, JS and images disabled, or run them through a "simple search" in the free SEO Browser tool.

That will show you what the page is going to look like to a Googlebot - how similar does it look to you?  Do the pages look 70% identical? 80%?  You could also use the PlagSpotter tool to see just how similar those pages appear.

The point is, it really would be best practice to get as many product descriptions ready before the site goes live - not only to avoid any duplicate/thin content issues but to also help those pages rank outright to begin with.  The Panda algorithm (that deals with thin content) refreshes monthly (perhaps even quicker), so there is a small window there to get all of the work done, if you were to set it live with no product descriptions.  Would you necessarily be penalised straight away?  Or at all?  I honestly can't say as that would be guess work - but I don't like to take chances on stuff that I can't calculate and so I really would recommend you to get as many product descriptions on there as possible.

Have you considered using Mechanical Turk for this? You could outsource the description writing at a very low cost to hundreds of people, dramatically speeding up the process.  If you give clear criteria in your job spec and provide all that a person would need to complete the job, you have a better chance at quality control.  Rand wrote a blog post on this a while back, and a great blog post, albeit on a different topic, on how someone used MTurk and how they set up their job can be found in this CustomerDevLabs post, which is well worth the read.

I hope this helps.

To be brief:

You get people and other brands paying and bidding on Adwords to appear next to a competitor when people search for that competitor.

I don't see why SEO should be any different (ethically).

Whether it's feasible and worth your time optimise, however, that's different.

Hey

Let's approach this in two parts: SEO and Branding.

If you went for an en.microdesign.nl or microdesign.nl/en structure, would you be able to rank the site in Google US/UK and for English terms?  The answer is a definite yes.  You have a country TLD, but in the end a TLD is just a TLD and it won't prevent you from ranking outside of Google NL.

Two guides from Aleyda Solis on how to set up your international campaign, the international SEO checklist and establish your SEO strategy will help you get set up correctly, in order to rank.

The second consideration, and arguably the more important one, is the issue of branding and appearance.  Will English users want to visit your site or trust your site and services if you are on a .nl domain?  Now, if you had asked me this only a few years ago, I would have said probably not, and would have recommended you do all that you can to move to a global TLD, like .com.  Now, however, with all the different TLDs out there and people and agencies seemingly using any extension to rank (.me, .pro, .anything!), I really don't think it makes much of a difference.  Provided that the search result is fully optimised for the English user and when the person reaches the site, all of what they need (including the nitty gritty like contact details, terms, privacy etc) are presented in English, then I think you would be able to make your current website a success.  Plus, you get to preserve an SEO authority your root domain currently has.

I hope this helps.

Howdy

You would need to define the keywords and the websites you want to track, but LightSERP allows you to track on an hourly basis.

If you'd rather track keywords and just see the top 20 for them, regardless of what website is ranking, and see that data over time, SERPWoo is a great tool for that.  It updates daily, however.

Both options support mobile SERPs, as far as I know.

Hope these can help.

Hey John

If you decide to take action action, then being aggressive with the links is a good approach. Both in Cyrus Shephard's great Moz blog post on the disavow tool and also advice from Google itself says if you suspect an entire domain to be spammy, go ahead and disavow all of it.

However, from my own perspective, I would only go through and create a disavow file if I knew for sure that I was suffering from a manual or algorithmic penalty.  I have seen very little benefit in being proactive with that tool (eg rankings are good, you spot bad links in your link profile and disavow them to be safe) and, in fact, I have seen a number of cases when a disavow was submitted "prematurely" - ie, a site was ranking fine and then disavowed some links and saw rankings fall.

If we want to look at it from a slightly skeptical point of view - if you're not suffering from a Google penalty, do you really want to inform Google that you have suspicious links in your profile?

However, that is a matter of preference based on my own experience.  I would certainly take note of the links you think are bad (and perhaps put together a file ready to go, just in case). Worth noting that prweb.com has made all of its links nofollow anyway, and so as they're not passing on link equity it doesn't seem logical to then disavow them (as they have no SEO benefit) Also, keep in mind though that if you visit the page and the link is not there - and especially if you do a google search for cache:http://www.example.com and see that the cached version contains no link - there's a very good chance that the link has already been discounted anyway and so would not be flagged in a manual or algorithmic check.  Seeing as you have so many links from the domains, that may be occurring.

Hope this helps

Google can be pretty anal about these things.

You'll increase your chance of a penalty removal if you physically remove the links and show evidence of your work and progression.

I can't really put it better than this guide on penalty removal by HitReach.  They've removed hundreds (or thousands) of penalties and this is their methodology.  Having done something similar myself, I can vouch for it, so I highly recommend reading it and implementing it.

And just for fun, here's a comic of theirs

Digital-Rockstars-Issue-39.gif

No experience with any of the companies you've listed, but HitReach offer white label SEO and are some of the best in the business, in my opinion.

Here are their White Label Agreements

Hi Kate

From an SEO perspective - is there anything "wrong" with your current domain, that you can see?  EG - do you have a bad backlink profile, do you think you're affected by a Google penalty?  If the answer to any of these is "yes", you might want to consider a new domain.

As a whole, I don't see any benefit with a subdomain solution.

But really, that's where I think the SEO considerations stop.  Look at it more from a business or branding point of view.  If this is a significant relaunch and rebrand, do you think that a new website would coincide with the relaunch and give it extra emphasis?  Is it a significant change of direction and do you think updating your current website would confuse or isolate your user base (as you're now something completely different)?  If yes, I'd look at a new domain.

But if you're just updating the look and feel of your site, or even if you're changing your marketing message, look and approach, but in essence you're the same company with the same values and user base, then I would stay on your current domain.  You'd get the benefit of your currently existing links yes, but really you'll be keeping continuity and you won't be interrupting your current users' journeys at all.

So there is a small SEO consideration here, but beyond that this is more of a business decision.  If you're completely changing the way you're doing business, go with a new domain.  If you're updating the brand and its appearance, but keeping the core values, then stay as you are.

Hope this helps.

It's an interesting discussion and one that I hope that the other commentor's won't dismiss out of hand.  The main hypothesis is: Does having a larger social following increase a brand's legitimacy/authenticity/trust with a consumer?

Unfortunately, there are not any case studies that I can see that test this theory, and certainly not any that bought Facebook likes outright.  As you'd expect, there are a number of sources that say it's a bad idea, such as this, and this.

On a complete hunch, I'd guess that it would help increase your perceived "trust" with a potential client, but due to a lack of evidence I can't recommend you doing so - in this way at least.

I would, however, encourage you to promote your Facebook page to increase your likes and followers with targeted and engaged users. You can do this through promoted advertising on Facebook itself, or other places like Twitter or reddit.  It will cost more to reach a figure of, say, 1000 likes than just outright buying them - but this way you'll know that the people liking your page, if targeted correctly, will be of a relevant audience and much more likely to engage with your brand.  If you have a Facebook page bursting with user activity, that will certainly help to build trust too.

I suppose it comes down to like most things in life, if you cut corners you risk doing more harm than good.  Promoting your Facebook page in a proper way will not only increase likes (and potentially perceived trust), but in doing so you are introducing your brand to your target audience - meaning you could get conversions out of it you might not have done before.

These links will help you out:

How to Use Promoted Page Ads to Get Tons of New Likes on Facebook

A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Ads

The Ultimate Guide to Running Online Competitions

As for testing whether just buying likes increases "trust", it would be an interesting study to see that's for sure.

Hope this helps.

Hi Frank

A 301 would take care of the problem very well, but where that may not be possible, using a canonical tag would do the trick.  If you can make sure that the page, in either http or https form uses a consistent canonical (one version for both), that will protect you from any duplicate issues as well.

For more information on canonicals you can read the Moz guide on them.

Hope this helps.

Hey P

If you're set on taking action, then being aggressive with them is actually a good approach. Both in Cyrus Shephard's great Moz blog post on the disavow tool and also advice from Google itself says if you suspect an entire domain to be spammy, go ahead and disavow all of it.

However, from my own perspective, I would only go through and create a disavow file if I knew for sure that I was suffering from a manual or algorithmic penalty.  I have seen very little benefit in being proactive with that tool (eg rankings are good, you spot bad links in your link profile and disavow them to be safe) and, in fact, I have seen a number of cases when a disavow was submitted "prematurely" - ie, a site was ranking fine and then disavowed some links and saw rankings fall.

If we want to look at it from a slightly skeptical point of view - if you're not suffering from a Google penalty, do you really want to inform Google that you have suspicious links in your profile?

However, that is a matter of preference based on my own experience.  I would certainly take note of the links you think are bad (and perhaps put together a file ready to go, just in case). Keep in mind though that if you visit the page and the link is not there - and especially if you do a google search for cache:http://www.example.com and see that the cached version contains no link - there's a very good chance that the link has already been discounted anyway and so would not be flagged in a manual or algorithmic check.

Hope this helps

I very much doubt it.  So long as the SSL certificate is genuine and from a reputable source, that should do the trick.

Really, we're still waiting to see whether SSL is in fact having a positive impact on rankings.  Despite what Google's claimed, it's too early to tell without a few more weeks/months data.  However, if you're going to make the change or start a new site with SSL from the outset, using a reputable SSL certificate provider will provide all of the trust and SEO benefit you need (if and when that comes).

Hope this helps.

Hi Ben

OSE and the Moz index runs on scheduled updates. You can check when it was last updated and when the next update will happen right here.

You can see the last update was 3 weeks ago, with the next update on the 1st Oct. Hence why you're links aren't showing yet.

Moz is working hard on making the updates more regular and in the past have had them every week or fortnight, so hopefully it'll get back to there soon.

Hope this helps.

Just make sure you no follow them.  If the links were do follow it could be seen as a paid link scheme - I know that sounds quite contrived, but that is how Google might (and has) viewed affiliate links that pass link equity in the past.  They are, in effect, paid links that may help improve organic visibility.

You don't want to risk being a part of that "link scheme", so make sure you no follow your links.  It does seem quite absurd I know and you'd think that common sense would prevail if someone was using affiliate links and wasn't aware of the SEO ramifications, but it's better to be safe than sorry.