Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Cygnis!

If you want to get good results in different countries there are no quick fix.

My recommendation:

• Specific TLD´s (Top Level Domains) for each language

or

• .com with sub sections (.com/de/, .com/sv/ etc.). You can specify these sections in Google Webmaster Tools.

Then to one of the most important stuff for great ranking - unique content.

Good luck!

Hi Joel!

Googles recommendation for this is a 301 redirect.

If you need to change the URL of a page as it is shown in search engine results, we recommended that you use a server-side 301 redirect.

More reading: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93633

In other case, if you dont have access to do it server-side, then a canonical is better then nothing.

Good luck!

Hi Roel!

I´ve spoken to people in many different countries about this and they all confirm that the Penguin update is spread everywhere.

Google said this:
_The change will go live for all languages at the same time. For context, the initial Panda change affected about 12% of queries to a significant degree; this algorithm affects about 3.1% of queries in English to a degree that a regular user might notice. The change affects roughly 3% of queries in languages such as German, Chinese, and Arabic, but the impact is higher in more heavily-spammed languages. For example, 5% of Polish queries change to a degree that a regular user might notice. _

More reading: http://insidesearch.blogspot.se/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

Hope this will help you!

Hi Highland!

I know that relative URLs is anything but good, especially when you also use URL rewrite.

The only question is how Google will react to this?

Thanks for your answer!

Hi Cyrus and thanks for your answer!

The client is using the base tag on all pages on the site, but with different URLs. For example:

Root page: <base href="http://domain.com/1.0.1.0/2/1/">

Subpage:
<base href="http://domain.com/1.0.1.0/5/1/"> OR
<base href="http://domain.com/1.0.1.0/13/1/">

Productpage:
<base href="http://domain.com/1.0.1.0/14/1/">

As you can se they are using a lot of different base locations and unfortunately we are unable to change the base URL and test.

We have problems with both broken links and rankings. Whenever a new version of the system is created, all base URLs will be changed. This may mean that old links are still there and will be broken.

What do you think Cyrus, can this hurt us from a SEO perspective? It must be confusing for Google with all the strange base URLs?

I think the best would be to rebuild the structure and remove the base tag!

A customer is using the <base>-tag in an odd way:

<base href="http://domain.com/1.0.0/1/1/">

My own theory is that the subfolders are added as the root because of revision control.

CSS, images and internal links are used like this:

internal link

I ran a test with Xenu Link Sleuth and found many broken links on the site, but I can't say if it is due to the base-tag.

I have read that the base-tag may cause problems in some browsers, but is this usage of base-tag bad in some SEO-perspective? I have a lot of problems with this customer and I want to know if the base-tag is a part of it.

Hi!

Interesting thoughts, I have never tried that.

Google says:
_We're experimenting with using this data to help people find content from great authors in our search results. _

More reading:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.se/2011/06/authorship-markup-and-web-search.html

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/search.py?hl=en&query=rel+author&ctx=en:searchbox

Hi!

What black hat stuff did you do?

My recommendations are:

• Continue to create awesome content (text, videos and photos)
• Increase your social activity (G+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc)
• Try and get some high quality links
• Remove old crap-links (give signals that you are cleaning up)

Unfortunately, when you´ve broke the Google guidelines, they wont fix everything over one night, you have to keep up with the good work to persuade Google that you are good guys, and that you deserve to rank again.

Good luck!

Hi Max!

Facebook still dominates the market and it gives good ranking signals as well.

I would recommend you to use Facebook as the primary network, you will reach the most people with this channel. Then as a complement I would recommend you to start using Google+. I´ve seen a lot of discussions about Google+ and I think that it´s going to be a very important ranking factor (it is already).

Google Google = true

Then we have Twitter, an easy way to create buzz around the subject, customer or whatever you want. - It all creates positive signals to Google, you´re a hot subject in social media -> ranking signals.

Good luck!

Hi Mark!

Check out this site, video + comments about it:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-oh-i-got-a-penalty

Rand Fishkin says this:
"...My experience with a site that's been burned is that 301'ing may not pass the link juice, but it also won't pass the bad reputation/spam association (at least, a majority of the time). "

Use internal links, I´ve seen a lot of pages that use their internal power to increase their rankings. Make sure that they point to the same page and that it looks natural (not over optimizing).

I would also recommend you to start a blog, write posts with good content for your keywords and voila! you have content that drives traffic to your website. And, you can also use the blog for internal linking.

In a long term, I would recommend you to rebuild the site and use flash for design and user experience, and ordinary html for navigation and presenting content.

Good luck!

Hi Mark!

Thats honesty!

I´ve heard that SEO´s recommend NOT to make a reconsideration at Google. Then it is obviously that you broke the rules with purpose. But now you´ve already sent the reconsideration so lets take it from here.

My recommendation now is: Do all you can to increase your trust again.

• Remove as many ugly links as you can
• Ensure that your onpage is not over-optimized
• Be active in social media
• Get links from pages with high trust
• Work with authorship markup
• Add phone number and adress to your website
• Post fresh and good content (gives Google a new argument for indexing the page again)

All those kind of activities give signals to Google, something is changing (is he doing right this time?).

It might take some time, but if you really want to get back on track with the same website, you will succeed!

Good luck!

One important thing to keep in mind is that you need to have a great connection between both parts. if you have a good communication, understand each other and make progress, then its good (even small SEO agencies can deliver).

I would suggest you to try a "pilot project", give them a shot and let them help you with one smaller problem that you have. Then evaluate.

• Satisfied = give them a bigger task and then evaluate again
• Not satisfied = try a pilot project with some one else

Good luck!

Hi!

See the answers in this thread: http://www.seomoz.org/q/does-server-location-impact-seo

See this video with Matt Cutts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt23AXlJJU (What impact does server location have on rankings?)

Hope this will help you!

Hi!

My recommendation is absolutely Wordpress. You get access to hundreds of great SEO plugins and it´s very easy to work with.

Reading and plugins for Wordpress - http://yoast.com/wordpress/.

Simple platform = more time for blogging.

Good Luck!

Done some google:ing and found this:

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&gs_nf=1&tok=U7C9oJQT1ItWxGK9Kf4Jag&cp=17&gs_id=3&xhr=t&q=monkeyball.osa.pl&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&site=&source=hp&oq=monkeyball.osa.pl&aq=0&aqi=g4&aql=&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=91742057bf8938dc&biw=1680&bih=925

Maybe this will help you!

Strange, I get to the page I click on, as expected.

Try and clean your cookies in the browser, then do the search + click again.

Hi!

I´ve followed your instructions but I cant recreate your issue.

What other website are you coming to?

Hi!

An easier way to fix the problem is by Canonical tags (if you´re not familiar with htaccess or server side scripts).

You find Rand Fishkins amazing article about it here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

Good luck!

Hi Sofia!

See this video with Matt Cutts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt23AXlJJU (What impact does server location have on rankings?)

Good luck!