Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I can't contact you by PM. There is some kind of error, your name does not pop up in autocomplete. Do you have "Accept Private Messages" setting enabled? I also tried on Linkedin.

Hi Don,

I will send you more details in a PM. Good luck cleaning the links!

Hi  Bongani,

Here are some extra resources that could help you understand better what happens when you do layout / website changes. This is a video by Matt Cutts posted a wile ago, it also includes some other things but it also mentions things related to the layout:

Will changing the code and layout of my pages while moving to new URLs affect their rankings?

Also, besides what EGOL said I would also add another thing:

8. Be very careful about the Wordpress theme you are going to use. It's a good thing you already mentioned that you want it high quality. Just to be sure - I would check for any embeded / hidden links. I had some unpleasent experiences even with "high quality ones".

Hello Don,

Great advice you got from Gary Lee. I have similar experiences and I can also say that it matters a lot.

There are some additional things related to your website's backlink profile I would consider.

For example for the Glass Cottage website has a lot of links from /links page of other websites. There is no particular issue with this kind of links - excepting the fact that they, along with the links from your other websites make up for the majority of the backlinks. If a website grows naturally it's hard to believe it will get mentioned mostly on "/links" pages. It will be the other way around. It will be mentioned in "context" in many websites, and it will also pick up some /link pages. There is not much wrong with what you have, it's mostly what's missing.

And another thing that might be affecting your performance significantly:

In your backlink profile I found one "cloacked link" to your website. It was on some kind of designer's website. The link was not visible for the users, but it was visible for search engines. Along with a few hundred other links to hotels, games and other stuff. It was probably not your doing, it's a big chance it's some kind sabotage. This kind of links could make your sites enter some networks penalized by Google for bad linking practices. I would contact the website owners, tell them their site was hacked and ask to remove the links - or use disavow tool on it if no feedback received.

I would do a thorough analysis on each of your sites backlinks if I were you!

Good luck!

Hi,

I used Copyscapefor these 2 pages:

http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/mediterranea-halal
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/gyros-halal

And found that out of 915 and 918 words - 899 were identical in both documents.

But it's hard to say what happened previously - maybe you can give us more details?

Hi Wesley,

It's better if you do it in stages. A more gradual roll out is also recommended by Matt Cutts. His example is for 200K pages, but 65K is not so far away. I think the approach should be the same.

Check his video, it will help you understand what's better:

Should I add an archive of hundreds of thousands of pages all at once?

I hope this helps, good luck!

Yes. If your website has clear and interesting titles, more people will click on them (as compared to same repeating brand stuff). So, as more people engage with your website, the chance that they talk about your website or link to it increases.

So, this is an additional bonus you get besides the bonus you got when Google Bot understood your content better.

Hi Dan,

Yes, for sure. Assuming that the content of the news pages is unique and valuable.

Having same title gives Google Bot mixed signals which has side effects. Check this post by Rand, I think you'll understand everything:

http://moz.com/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization

Hi Rachel,

There are some pretty cool articles written right here on Moz.

Domain Migrations: Surviving the "Perfect Storm" of Site Changes

Web Site Migration Guide - Tips For SEOs

Domain Migrations: Lessons from the Moz Transition

Achieving an SEO-Friendly Domain Migration - The Infographic

I hope this helps, good luck!

Hi Taysir,

Domain Authority is Moz's calculated metric for how well a given webpage is likely to rank in Google's search results. It uses a machine learning model to predictively find an algorithm that best correlates with rankings across the thousands of search results that we predict against.

In terms of accuracy (the level of correlation with Pagerank and other signals from Google) it's pretty good. A lot of professional SEM's are using it to get a general idea of how competitive a given site is in Google.com. But, in your case, a difference of 7 points does not say anything. If we compare two different websites which have a 7 point difference we can't say that one is ranking better than the other. One of them could focus on very specific terms and rank better there (even with a lower DA) than the other with more general approach for users.

There are a few other things that cause fluctuations in DA, which are not in your control:

• Moz says: "We constantly update the algorithm used to calculate Page Authority, so you may see your score fluctuate from time to time."

• Some of the websites you got links from might loose some of their powerful links - and even if you constantly add more, if the loss is bigger than what you gain - you will see a drop in DA

And a few more things:

• Don't rely on DA to "explain the ranking loss". It was not meant for this. Instead try to match the Mozcast Google Algorithm Change History with the drop in your rankings.

• Webmaster Tools does not tell you if you were hit by Penguin, Panda, or Hummingbird. It tells you if you have a manual penalty which is a totally different thing. If you see a drop in impressions in GWT you could be hit by any of the above. Try to do the timing check mentioned above.

Hi Bob, some ideas for new keywords/content to cover:

weight loss before and after

weight loss attitude change

weight loss motivation quotes and pictures

Hello,

Yes, it looks like you might be the victim of some kind of attack.

I just have one question, are these links:

• linking to your website

• posted on your website.

If they are just links to your website, then there is an answer to all your following questions:

The Google Disavow Links Tool - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

You can read more about it here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

First contact them to remove the links, if it does not work, use this tool.

If the links are posted on your website just clean everything up, then remove backdors and stuff

Hello EGOL, I can give you a detailed answer for the Adwords ads. Probably it's similar for SEO

In Adwords they are enabled through the product reviews ad extension.

To get them enabled:

1. You have to submit our product data to Google. I understand that this was meant for products. I have seen in my research that they might show for loans or services, but I'm not 100% sure.
2. You have to be a client of the reviewcentre.com (or other few selected review web sites) and be reviewed by the users on their website. To be listed on reviewcentre.com you have to contact them at contactus@reviewcentre.com and provide the following information:

* Company or product name
    * Image or logo (Jpeg preferably)
    * Any information about the product or company we would like to be included on the page

3. After this you have to notify reviewcentre.com that you want to submit your reviews to Google.
4. For Google Product Search ratings to appear we must have at least 30 unique seller reviews.
5. We have to have a 4 star rating or above to have the review extension enabled.

Good luck, it will stars will surely improve CTR and draw more attention!

Hello Joanne,

You should not worry about it, unless it's taken to an extreme.

Here's a video from Matt Cutts that explains this very clearly:

Will multiple internal links with the same anchor text hurt a site's ranking?

So basically you can't be penalized by links similar to breadcrumbs or links used for navigation. Unless their number is amazingly high. And like you said - if the pages are not keyword stuffed and they're well written - this should not be the problem.

Hello Don,

Great advice you got from Gary Lee. I have similar experiences and I can also say that it matters a lot.

There are some additional things related to your website's backlink profile I would consider.

For example for the Glass Cottage website has a lot of links from /links page of other websites. There is no particular issue with this kind of links - excepting the fact that they, along with the links from your other websites make up for the majority of the backlinks. If a website grows naturally it's hard to believe it will get mentioned mostly on "/links" pages. It will be the other way around. It will be mentioned in "context" in many websites, and it will also pick up some /link pages. There is not much wrong with what you have, it's mostly what's missing.

And another thing that might be affecting your performance significantly:

In your backlink profile I found one "cloacked link" to your website. It was on some kind of designer's website. The link was not visible for the users, but it was visible for search engines. Along with a few hundred other links to hotels, games and other stuff. It was probably not your doing, it's a big chance it's some kind sabotage. This kind of links could make your sites enter some networks penalized by Google for bad linking practices. I would contact the website owners, tell them their site was hacked and ask to remove the links - or use disavow tool on it if no feedback received.

I would do a thorough analysis on each of your sites backlinks if I were you!

Good luck!

Hi Rachel,

There are some pretty cool articles written right here on Moz.

Domain Migrations: Surviving the "Perfect Storm" of Site Changes

Web Site Migration Guide - Tips For SEOs

Domain Migrations: Lessons from the Moz Transition

Achieving an SEO-Friendly Domain Migration - The Infographic

I hope this helps, good luck!

Hi Andy,

You do not have to pay the webmasters to remove the links.

Here is a detailed article that could help you:

Google: Don't Pay The Link Mobster For Link Removals, Just Disavow Them

On the long term they will suffer if you use the dissavow tool, so it's in their interest also. The more people will use it against them the worse it will be for them!

Hi Jarrod,

You are in a very complicated situation. I hope you can find a solution.

This video posted by Matt Cutts a wile ago might help you with a few additional tips:

How can I make sure that Google knows my content is original?

- DMCA request: http://www.google.com/dmca.html

- Google News source attribution metatags: link here

- Or even spam report like Matt Cutts suggests.

Here is the question you posted:

Just because the link is picked up by OSE does that mean that the search engines value it too?

The answer is very simple: no.

However, there is a relationship between the OSE data and Google data. This relationship is not causation. It's correlation. This doens't mean that if you have a link picked up by OSE it will necessarily be picked up by Google. It means that links that tend to be picked up by OSE also tend to be picked up by Google.

I hope this helps!

Hi,

I used Copyscapefor these 2 pages:

http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/mediterranea-halal
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/gyros-halal

And found that out of 915 and 918 words - 899 were identical in both documents.

But it's hard to say what happened previously - maybe you can give us more details?