Sort of lost my way - Links, SEO
-
Not sure where to start with this so please bare with me.
I do the SEO for our company website (we're a small family business), I'm not an SEO'er by profession (I'm a carpenter/joiner) but been doing our site for ten or so years.
About 12 months ago sort of let go of work & web things a bit due to very sudden family bereavement which kind of hit me hard. So when I did get back into doing bits on our site I probably then concentrated a little bit too much on content building rather than going after links etc. As a result we've dropped in the SERPS a bit, but having said that still just about clinging within the top ten for our terms.
Since I've started again we've had Panda/Penguin and I'm a little unsure how to go about getting links in, most of my competitors are using things like blog commenting (just random blogs that are do follow) , recip linking (any sites as long as they give a link!) etc basically things that long term will hold no value long term (or possibly none even to begin with).
All this brand stuff leaves me at a loss, we're a small family business as our the majority of our competitors so not 100% sure that the branding stuff I'm reading about is relevant?
As I say I've got some pretty decent content, some of which I am trying to push with mixed results – we're not in a very sexy niche so not much chance of it picking up links naturally!
Another thing I am noticing is in my niche I don't think any SEO companies are involved with my competitors, most of our competitors are ranking their home pages for every single related search term, whilst I've have always tried to create a page for each search term and I have these pages ranking.
For example my main search term, lets say 'wooden doors' I rank an internal page for this term whilst everyone else seems to rank homepages. I'm finding it hard to get new links into this page, so one idea I do have is elsewhere on my site I have a guide to fitting the doors (with videos, pictures and text) so what I'm thinking is place this guide on my 'wooden doors' page making it a bit more linkable (it's fairly new and not yet gained any links, so no loss to move it) and would also mean a variation of anchor text. A good idea do you think?
Some of my other content has been linked to by colleges in the UK, unfortunately all the links are behind moodle log-ins (give me a decent link you leeches! Lol) ! I am thinking of getting in touch with other colleges to see if the content would be useful, but actually getting hold of the person responsible for the subject is proving difficult!
I've also done a bit of guest blogging, however I'm torn between writing decent stuff for our blog or giving it away (I wouldn't like to give something away thats poor, ok or doesn’t make sense) to other blogs.
Sorry for the ramble (if you've made it this far then thanks for reading!)! Would appreciate all advice. Ultimately would love to get an SEO'er involved but looking around the good un's are out of our price range so I may seek some training as it may prove more beneficial.
-
Yes scraper sites are common and again devalued by Google. But, you are judged by the company you keep.
So cleaning up an ugly link profile is important.
-
A few of the links are claimable, so I'm thinking I shall do that and then change the text.
Looking at the list of them I think two are my fault and the rest have just copied and pasted away (thanks!). Never used any link submission software or automated directory stuff.
Just saw a site called 'Find the needle' they have pages and pages of my stuff but I have otherwise never heard of them.
-
Because of the amount of work entailed in having them changed by a third party.
Find the ones you can control and change them- review any link submission, directory submission etc- software that may have been used, for a list of these that you did unintentionally.
Focus on the other recommendations that I made, and then restart your manual submission process, for obtaining HIGH quality links. The majority of these links/ directories etc, will be ignored by google- as they are low quality. Yet I do notice that these are pretty specific to your industry.
These could be scraper sites, which scrape your content and then add a link - because these have been hit by algorythm updates, more than likely they are strongly devalued anyway, but they can appear to be purchased links on your end, which gives the appearance of breaking Google's TOS.
Apply a copyright tag, publisher and author tag on your new site as well to avoid this abuse from scaper sites in the future.
There is no short cut, you have a lot of work ahead of you- I don't envy your situation, but I have seen much worse.
-
I shall get to it, most of these (if not all) seem to have just copied and pasted directly from my site.
How best do you think my time would be spent, getting these changed or writing new copy for
our site (or does this still leave me with the same problem as various places linking to me with duplicated copy) -
While I do have tools, yes- you can use Google to locate these and establish a level of duplication.
You can use copyscape.com as well.
Just a sampling here of using google, as I stated earlier it looks like your content on your home page is what is often used to submit to various directories- causing duplication there are variances in the duplicated numbers, I just took a quick peek:
-
How did you find my content duplicated across 3700 urls?! What tool shows this?
-
Hello again,
Your main focus in my opinion is to remove all the duplicated content that you have within your links, your content is duplicated across approximately 3700 other URLs. This is where we meet the Panda Penalty. Instead of links at this time, focus on "On site" Optimization.
1. Do your keyword research- what are people searching for, choose URL's on your domain that offer value to the visitor and reflective of the keyword query.
a. review your traffic and analysis- what keywords are your current visitors using? Review the traffic on those as well, could they be improved? Are they directing to the correct landing page. Use a variety of keyword tools to review mobile/ desktop and your location.
2. Review all your title tags for duplication - as well as description tags
3. Review your on page links, is the anchor text your keywords ?
4.Shorten your ALT tags on the images- why? Because they are crammed in there like sardines!
5. I am glad to know you are building a new site - be careful with duplications in Wordpress platform.
6. Add at least *400 words of content on your main pages- all of which contain your main keywords.
That is just the beginning, but in truth your site needs a top to bottom overhaul for SEO and the easiest and oftentimes ( with lack of substantial competitors) most effective is the basics. Once the basics are done, we can look then at link building- your site isn't ready for that, as your duplication problems are very obvious to me, therefore- very obvious to the big G.
I hope this helps.
-
Thanks, wasn't sure whether I was allowed to post a url! Don't want it showing up in search so I've shortened it (and broken it in half -- please take the DELETE bit out)
Design is old (Was doing this originally last year but as I say I lost my way a bit) and being redone at the moment in a Wordpress style (Genesis based theme) to make it easier to navigate.
-
A url would really assist a positive response with suggestions. Because there is so much more to seo than sexy niche and link bait.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Grr SEO linking.. I am not understanding why I wouldn't have lots more links.. Please help. Thanks
I have done the whole moz open exploer and I am not understanding why my site wouldn’t have more links registering to my website.. I have lots of sites(directorys and 3rd party) with my website domain in them. The only one that is linking to my site is BBB.com and my advertsing with saint paul press. www.somerersetautodealer.com But if I have links with all kinds of automotive directories why wouldn’t they register? I am sure this a simply answer or that I am not understanding something. Thanks for your help! Scott
Link Building | | Scott12340 -
Link Building
I noticed another SEO builds backlinks (tons) on a social media profile that then has a link to his client's site. Another site he builds backlinks are a bitly account that 301's to the clients account. Why would you do this? Is it that you can build links indiscriminately to build a page up in PR to 3-4-5 PR, then pass that higher PR to your site (safe). Is that PR building method better than placing 100's of smaller PR links on your site? It seems logical that if you passed in a tremendous amount of juice to juice a site up to PR4, you won't make your main site PR4 by JUST that link. You would need to build a lot of PR4 sites to make your site PR4. Why not just put all the backlinks on the main page instead of building up secondary social profiles etc... Please reveal this secret. I know a lot of SEOs are using this method. Help 🙂
Link Building | | JML11790 -
Link Building the Right Way?
There are still a few things that I need clarifications for link building. I have joined many forums and I am following some big website (Seomoz / search engine watch / search engine land) and such for ideas about link building. There are various different suggestions among them for example about Create a blog, Profile links, Article directories,Web 2.0 submission,Press release submission, Infographic submissions,Company directory submissions,Video submissions,Niche specific directories,Logo/Graphic/Web design directories,Free web directories,Non-English directories,RSS directories,Guest posting,Games Submission's and social bookmarking, Blog commenting, Forum posting.Q&A,Wiki Links,Local listings,Getting trackbacks. one would say to use it the other would say not to, can you please guide as to what is the right way to follow these suggestions. Also nofollow backlinks have any effect on the SERP? Thanks.
Link Building | | KLLC1 -
Advetorial links
How do you scientifically value advertorial links. I have a site who is willing to buy advertorial in large online sites which will contain links. (I would prefer they invested in content on their own site). The DA on these sites is universally extremely strong. the PA of the examples I've seen is pretty low. The site has strong DA matching it's main competition and is performing pretty well in terms of ranking. Question: how do you value this kind of link in terms of the amount of £ the publications want to charge. Anybody have a formula or a logical process which would provide solid advice rather than don't infringe Google's T&C's which I've already mentioned to them. Any thoughts appreciated.
Link Building | | Shivvyt0 -
Text Link vs image link?
Which passes most link juice a text link or an image with the correct 'alt' attribute? Do the pass the same amount or is one more valuable than the other?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
For a new site, does it matter which sites I get back links from first? I.e., are the first back links more important than later ones?
I've heard that when a site is new, the sources from which it gets its first back links are very important -- that the early links are more important for ranking than later links. Is this true. If so, what would be some good places to get these very first links? Thanks.
Link Building | | sigma3x0 -
Why does my website have 2,000+ links, but only 16 linking root domains?
Why does my website have 2,000+ links, but only 16 linking root domains?
Link Building | | thestudio40 -
Page links vs. domain links
Hello all, I am trying to find out how Google weighs page inbound links vs. domain inbound links. I have a domain with about 100,000 inbound links and am adding a new page to my domain which at this time has 0 links. I will be trying to outrank a competitors page that has 6,000 inbound links to the competitors page, but only has 26,000 inbound links to my competitors domain . Is there a formula or a way to know how Google values a page link vs. a domain link?
Link Building | | digitalops0