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.

Hello Chanpreet,

Like Yiannis says, it's probably related to "over optimized anchor text". To get more info you could compare your anchor text link profile with one for a competitor that still ranks well in SERP's.

Hi Michael, very good question.

For some unknown reason the contact and report pages for Google Plus are not easy to find. I had some friends who wanted to contact them as well and, after long hours of search they came up with this email:

profiles-support@google.com

They basically saw it in some discussions posted by people on the web.

I think you should give it a try and report them, you got nothing to loose!

Hello Eran,

I'm 100% with kadesmith at each point he covers. So we are two now (small community :). I can add a few more things:

-> It's easy to fall in the "over optimized anchor text" pit when working with directories. At least if they do it like most of the people did it in the past. I had at least 1 website penalized because of these. If I were you I would approach them in this way: I would ask for what details do they need to submit to directories and then check if they would use the same anchor text in all directories. If they use the brand name as anchor text they might be aware of last changes. If not they are probably just doing it to get some money and don't really care for what happens.

-> link velocity -> is related to the historical changes in link profiles - and it mentioned by Google in some of their patents. If people submit to directories like they did in the past they will get a lot of links in a short amount of time. Google is able to detect this, and at least in theory is able to do some interesting stuff like: temporarily rank the website lower and wait to see if the owner of the website takes action to remove the links. This is not 100% confirmed, but personally I would take it into account.

So, directories are not necessarily a problem. But if they handle it the "old school" way, then probably it will be.

Hi,

1. Like Ash said, it's probably an algorithmic ranking penalty. Especially if you do not have anything in the Manual Actions section of Webmaster Tools. Just fixing the problems will solve the ranking issues, but it will take a wile. A lot of people have experience with these kind of  issues, and they regained back the rankings. Don't worry, it can be done Just read on Moz or other SEO resources about concrete examples if you need some facts.

2. If it's a penalty caused only by the linking practices then you should not worry about the content. But be careful, because we see a lot of penalties caused by the actual content. If you paid for the content, chances are even higher. If I were you I would check:

• if there are other linking issues besides inter-blog link

• if content is really unique and has high quality.

And start fixing the problems.

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.

Hi Simon, from their answer it looks like they did not understood the problem.

My oppinion is that you don't necessarily have to use 301, you could easily use canonicalization.

Here you got everything explained -> http://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization

Maybe you should give them this link also.

Essentially all the domains listed are linking to the same index.html page hosted at 1 location

"... when multiple pages have the same content but different URLs, links that are intended to go to the same page get split up among multiple URLs. This means that the popularity of the pages gets split up." and ..."Each of these URLs spreads out the value of inbound links to the homepage. "

So, it does not matter only were all the domains are linking too -> this is just a small part of the problem -> even more, links that are intended to go to the homepage -> they will be split up as a result.

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,

If you are searching for studies about this topic then here is a very good paper you have to read. It's named Impact Of Ranking Of Organic Search Results On The Incrementality Of Search Ads

http://research.google.com/pubs/pub37731.html

I have read it a few times, there are some interesting findings in it. Try to extract the facts and maybe then draw your own conclusion. And just after this read their conclusion!

Hi Yiannis,

I did not say they will be blacklisted. But they will have consequences for sure.

Listen to Matt Cutts video about the disavow tool, starting with min 6.20:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA

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!