Hi guys,

it seems that now days it is almost impossible to achieve 0 (Zero) Errors when testing a site via (The W3C Markup Validation Service - https://validator.w3.org). With analytic codes, pixels and all kind of tracking and social media scripts gunning it seems to be an unachievable task.

My questions to you fellow SEO'rs out there are 2:

1. How important and to what degree of effort do you go when you technically review a site and make the decision as to what needs to be fixed and what you shouldn't bother with.

2. How do you argue your corner when explaining to your clients that its impossible to active 100% validation.

*As a note i will say that i mostly refer to Wordpress driven sites.

would love ot hear your take.

Daniel.

Thanks for that John. You were lucky to actually get through to semrush support. i tried a few times and all i get is an answering machine. :(.

Are you saying that they actually told you that the data they collect has an error with it that is pending a fix?

Hi there mozzers..Been struggling with what seems as a simple question:
Whilst using semrush to estimate competitors spend on Paid PPC it seems that the numbers they provide are way off from what reality is.

For example, i have a client who spend approx £2,000 per month on Google PPC (so i know exactly the figure) however, the SEMRUSH indicates a monthly spend of $41 (yes USD).

I7StmZG

I used it recently and managed to remove a manual penalty removal with the first attempt by using Link Detox. I can say that 80% of the efforts were put into reviewing "moderate" toxic links and manually removing those who we think are bad for our site.

A software tool can be as good as you tbh. I do not think that submitting a disavow file will lift a penalty in 3 days. Manual removal of links on the other hand can help a lot so they need to make clear that part tbh.

A couple of things I did and I think Google liked:

1. 20% manual link removal of rich text anchor texts
2. Uploaded backlink files from Majestic SEO, Open site Explorer AND Webmaster tools and connected all accounts to link detox. That way you make sure you do not miss anything.
3. Built fresh branded and compound links at the same time

Hope this helps

HI,

Just to add my 2 cents. As already mentioned, links are THE most important factor in rankings. You only have to see who and what Google is after with penalties to make that conclusion or run your own tests. Having said that your SEO company is right but it also means that if they dont do it properly or abuse it or focus too much only on building links and doing nothing else, you will probably end up with a bunch of links from their netword (or some rented) and that wont do any good to you.

Hope it helps

You can do this on a mass scale so that you can extract all outbound links, just did it yesterday

Dont put me on the same line with this guy cause I mentioned I have seen examples. You can find my blog by googling my name and find posts proving bad techniques that rank on page one (with screenshots etc) for more than a month, its not that hard. Also I did not say that I CAN SHOW YOU THOUSANDS of examples of successful business rankings. I said in pure copy paste " But that does not cancel million cases where there is simply not a reason for someone to rank". I also say And yes I know google will ban them/penalise them one day, someday, so again your "long-haul" claim (which you claim, i didnt) does not put me to a different direction to what I truly believe or what most people say in this post. Thanks

In regards to branding, ofcourse black hat will never work. To me black hat is a popular practised to micro niche small web sites that makes revenue from adsense and amazon for keywords that are low competitive and the owner is lucky enough to own an EMD or do good SEO because he actually cares. But even in this case in the long-haul as you say I am pretty sure they will be beaten.

Hope you find these clarifications useful.

"If you answer a query in the meta description and then you give the person who clicked on it exactly what they wanted, you are going to do just fine with ranking at some point and probably some point soon."

Plus one and thumbs up!

Hi eyepaq and thanks for your reply, much appreciated

The reason I do not want to use the disavow tool is because

1. Google sent on the message that "took targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole", meaning they took care of the problem 2) Ranking and traffic looking solid
2. I have seen a lot of cases where people used it and lost rankings (some never recovered).

My thoughts were to block the spammy links and monitor if the traffic will be affected (which I doubt as it seems most of it is for branded searches). If then I face de-index, drops then use the disavow/reconsideration request.

What do you think?

Hello all,

We got a new client recently who had a warning from Google Webmasters tools for manual soft penalty. I did a lot of search and I found out one particular site that sounds roughly 100k links to one page and has been potentialy a high risk site.

I wish to block those links from coming in to my site but their webmaster is nowhere to be seen and I do not want to use the disavow tool.

Is there a way I can use code to our htaccess file or any other method?

Would appreciate anyone's immediate response.

Kind Regards

Jesse I think personal appearance is totally irrelevant with someone's skills in an area and I do not think that can be much of an argument (or appropriate).

In regards now to what the article says as opposed to the MoZ one I can see both points. Rand goes by the book (his tweet reply confirms this) and i agree with 99,9% of everything he mentions, it is definitely what SEOs should be doing these days. But that does not cancel million cases where there is simply not a reason for someone to rank. I mean NONE - Keyword stuffing, cloacking, 10,000 site wide links pointin in 1 page for 1 anchor text, sites with a non-content default wordpress theme ranking on page one due EMD, domain 301 redirects with affiliate directories to other domains for link juice passing etc etc and all this in 2013. And yes I know google will ban them/penalise them one day, someday.

I think that what the blogger tried to say was that the abovementioned techniques unfortunately bring results too and some times faster or easier with what Google dictate us to do. Either we like it or not black hat SEO works in many cases, especially if you are working on low competitive/profitable keywords.

Dont put me on the same line with this guy cause I mentioned I have seen examples. You can find my blog by googling my name and find posts proving bad techniques that rank on page one (with screenshots etc) for more than a month, its not that hard. Also I did not say that I CAN SHOW YOU THOUSANDS of examples of successful business rankings. I said in pure copy paste " But that does not cancel million cases where there is simply not a reason for someone to rank". I also say And yes I know google will ban them/penalise them one day, someday, so again your "long-haul" claim (which you claim, i didnt) does not put me to a different direction to what I truly believe or what most people say in this post. Thanks

In regards to branding, ofcourse black hat will never work. To me black hat is a popular practised to micro niche small web sites that makes revenue from adsense and amazon for keywords that are low competitive and the owner is lucky enough to own an EMD or do good SEO because he actually cares. But even in this case in the long-haul as you say I am pretty sure they will be beaten.

Hope you find these clarifications useful.

The idea in engaging with people in forums is to drive traffic, become a source of information and eventually achieve sales. been there done it.

Do not focus solely on link building, SEO now is more of a complete digital marketing package than link building.

Unfortunately I do not remember the source I saw this but I am 99,9% sure that signature links might be penalised by Google so i wouldnt go with that direction (should you insist in pure link building ofcourse).

Hello, I agree with Lesley here. Google stated recently that: “Google recommends webmasters follow the industry best practice of using responsive web design, namely serving the same HTML for all devices.“

take a minute from your time and read this article, am sure you will find it useful http://www.atladasmedia.co.uk/blog/why-google-loves-responsive-design/

HI,

Just to add my 2 cents. As already mentioned, links are THE most important factor in rankings. You only have to see who and what Google is after with penalties to make that conclusion or run your own tests. Having said that your SEO company is right but it also means that if they dont do it properly or abuse it or focus too much only on building links and doing nothing else, you will probably end up with a bunch of links from their netword (or some rented) and that wont do any good to you.

Hope it helps