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That's the answer I was hoping for, thanks Tom!

Sorry Tom, forgot to ask.. will the fact that the website is hosted on a UK server (having a UK IP address) hinder the performance of the US campaign?

We could move it over to a US server however this may effect the (currently very good) UK rankings.

Thanks in advance, Lee.

Many thanks Tom, great answer!

Yes, the client would like to rank in both UK and US.. so your suggestions sound ideal, and pretty easy to implement.

I'll read Aleyda's article tonight, sounds interesting.

Thanks again Tom, much appreciated.

Lee.

Hi, I've done some research on this but couldn't find any definitive answer I can trust!

We have a client who resides in the UK. They have '.com' domain, hosted on a UK server, using UK spelling.

Their business objective for this year is to expand in the USA, including the opening of a warehouse over there.

They are wanting us to rank their website on both Google.co.uk and Google.com (North America); besides changing the geolocation settings in GWT's, and building links from .com websites is there anything else we can do to increase their visibility on Google.com?

Many thanks in advance, appreciated!
Lee.

Well that explains that then Marie! Many thanks

I have read your article (impressive!) and everything now makes sense, we can stop wandering!

I'll share your article on Twitter shortly (@webpresenceUK).. the least we can do.

Thanks again, you really have helped.

Lee.

Thanks again Karl,

Their backlink profile now looks limited, but natural if the disavowed links are taken away.

We are outreaching to build quality links to address the balance, and participating on social media etc.

It wasn't an alogorithmic penalty as it was listed in the 'manual sections' of WMT's.. and there's no duplicate content.

It's all guess work at the moment, we have no idea if our disavow file has been considered, or if the penalty still exists! Organic traffic has increased slightly but that may just be down to our recent on-page and off-page work.

All the best, Lee.

Many thanks for the response Karl, appreciated!

No such message, no. I thought that google would have sent us this kind of message too, they have in the past.

The last response we received from them was in April saying that the reconsideration request had failed as there were still artificial links pointing to the site. We've spent a lot of time and money trying to get them removed since, but are now unable to send a new reconsideration request.

The only thing I can think of is that Google are eventually taking notice of our disavow file, but that's only a guess.

If anyone else can shed some light on this that would be great, we're just not sure if it's worth spending more resources on the link audit and removal process.. if the penalty has been lifted there isn't much point.

Very confused!

Lee.

Hi,

We have been trying to remove a ‘partial’ google penalty for a new client by the way of removing unnatural backlinks over a period of time and then submitting a reconsideration request, and uploading a disavow file etc.

Previously Google listed the partial penalty in the ‘manual actions’ section of webmaster tools, making it possible for us to submit a reconsideration request.

Having just logged in however we get the message ‘no manual webspam actions found’. So there isn’t any way we can submit a reconsideration request.

Does this mean that the penalty has been lifted? Or could it still exist? If the latter is there any other way to submit a reconsideration request?

Many thanks in advance, Lee.

Thanks for this Jane, good to know that we're doing it right.. am still a little unsure why the metrics are identical but as you say it's better to be safe than sorry

Hi, our client has switched from a non-secure server to a secure (SSL) server.. but the non secure pages still exist, i.e.

http://www.stainlesshandrailsystems.co.uk/balustrade-systems.html (non-secure)
https://www.stainlesshandrailsystems.co.uk/balustrade-systems.html (secure)

We assumed that we should 301 redirect the http pages to the new https pages using the following htaccess rule;

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R,L]

HOWEVER! both of the above pages show the same Page Authority (PA) and Pagerank (PR).. does this mean that they are being seen as the same page, do we really need to employ 301 redirects?

Many thanks in advance, much appreciated.

Lee

Thanks Rand.. have just re-read this response and I totally agree with the SEO tactics you have mentioned.. but in my opinion you are assuming that the client has an endless budget for SEO.

Unfortunately this isn’t the case for a lot of ‘smaller’ clients, they have limited budgets in comparison to their nationwide ‘bigger’ competitors.. Creating videos isn’t cheap, hosting events isn’t cheap etc..

Google favours big brands who have the resources to make them happy.. it’s a lose lose situation for smaller companies.. how can they compete?

Thanks kerry, appreciate the feedback.

Do you not think that links within an author bio may be a target for upcoming google updates? They seem too easy to get, and therefore could be classed as spam!

Thanks in advance, Lee.

Many thanks for this Rand.. certainly makes sense!

Can't wait for the upcoming Whiteboard Friday you mentioned.. the sooner the better

Hi, have just watched the latest Whiteboard Friday entitled 'Why Guest Posting and Blogging is a Slippery Slope'. Rand mentions '"guest posting at scale", but what does he actually mean?

For the purpose of building website authority and brand awareness we post around 1-4 blog posts per month for our clients, all on authoirty sites, some of which accept guest posts with little editorial restriction, some we have to jump through hoops for.

We don't use KW specific anchor text, instead we link to the clients site with semantically related, varied anchor text, as well as linking to other useful third party sources. We also publish regular useful content on our clients blogs in the hope of getting natural backlinks.

Would this be classed as 'guest posting at scale'? Do you think we could we be targeted and penalised by the upcoming guest post algorithm?

Many thanks in advance, Lee.

Wow, what a great response Oli, many thanks!

There are certainly some things we can do from this list, but others require additional budget which the client doesn't have.

Just one last question if you don't mind?

2. Have all of the ebooks for this client live on a subdomain such as get.clientsite.com/ebook1/  get.clientsite.com/ebook2/ - We currently use www.domain.com/ebooks, is there a particular reason you suggest using a sub-domain?

Thanks again, have a great weekend.

Lee.

Many thanks Ocelot, it's not possible to 'frame' or embed Unbounce landing pages within an external webpage.. looked into this yesterday! It would be the ideal solution too.

Hi, am hoping someone can give me a little advice..

We have created an Ebook for a client, which we will ‘hide’ behind a landing page for the purpose of collecting email addresses in return for a link to the Ebook.

We are thinking of using Unbounce landing pages, integrated with Mailchimp. The problem however is that I’m assuming it will not be possible for Unbounce landing pages to rank well in the SERPs.. which is essential.

The obvious solution would be to write a blog post detailing the contents of the Ebook, and then to ‘SEO’ this post.. this however will not provide a positive user experience as below;

1. Visitor lands on blog post
2. Visitor then has to click through to Ubounce landing page (very similar content)
3. Visitor completes form to download Ebook

My question is; What’s the best way to rank a direct landing page in the SERP’s, whilst providing the best possible user experience (less steps)?

Many thanks in advance, your time is appreciated

Lee.