Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi guys, what are your thoughts using bit.ly links as internal links on blog posts of a website? Some posts have 4/5 bit.ly links going to other pages of our website (noindexed pages). I have nofollowed them so no seo value is lost, also the links are going to noindexed pages so no need to pass seo value directly. However what are your thoughts on how Google will see internal links which have essential become re-direct links? They are bit.ly links going to result pages basically. Am I also to assume the tracking for internal links would also be better using google analytics functionality? is bit.ly accurate for tracking clicks? Any advice much appreciated, I just wanted to double check this.

I cannot strip out brand data on the 'not provided' keywords in Google analytics. Is this not possible anymore? I understand we cannot get specific keywords but can we no longer strip out brand on organic traffic in Google analytics for keywords that are 'not provided' ?

Hello, i am using the free mozscape api to get the domain and page authority of urls. i am batching the url as shown in the sample code however i have over 500 URL i need to check and when running the request i get the following: stdClass Object ( [status] => 413 [error_message] => Too many urls in batch. Batches must be less than or equal to 200 urls. ) When i change it to 200 urls the request works fine, now is there a way to enable me to batch all 500 urls at once? i did read that the beta api is capable of batching urls in one request : http://moz.com/blog/400-higher-throughput-mozscape-api-now-in-beta-and-seeking-testers Has this been implemented yet into the current api? Thanks

Hi there, recently I have been getting failed reconsideration requests back within 7 days. The last one i submitted (third) is now 2 weeks and no message back. Does this mean do you think it's gone to the next stage of auditing? is it a good sign? Typically when failed I have always has that response within 7 days. I also noticed a slight improvement in rankings but no message back in webmaster tools. Does anyone have experience with this? if so does this sound about right? thanks guys.

So some agency did horrendous article submissions on mass in 08/09. Since I have been tidying this up by manually getting the domains removed in our back-link profile. Some however i just cannot get rid of. Recent penguin update obviously penalised me for this, so i disavowed the rest i could not remove and did a reconsideration request. The reply from Google was still that it violates guidelines and it used 3 blogspot domains (which no crawler i used had previously found) as examples. Now there is NOONE at Google to contact about this and the sites are abandoned, so they just sit there doing damage. I will ofcourse add these to the disavow but can i disavow the whole of blogspot.com ? What if all are in the disavow but they still use it against us in the reconsideration request and i cannot remove them as noone to contact at Google? Really appreciate the help, thanks,  2 years of hell tidying up bad agency work!

Hi there, is is bad practice in seo to have search results for products indexed? For example a search result of holidays to Ibiza, with lots of deals coming up? its a search query url that would be indexed, with just an image and price per product on the page, with about 10 per page? Any advice appreciated.

Ok so I have this message in manual actions (with no examples of links): Manual Actions
Site-wide matches None
Partial matches Some manual actions apply to specific pages, sections, or links
    Reason    Affects
    Unnatural links to your site—impacts links
Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole. Learn more. I am not surprised by this as an agency a few years ago did mass aritcle submissions for the same anchor text, I have manually removed 119 or so domains in the last year and a half and 4 weeks ago i disavowed the last 40ish domains left. Obviously the back-link profile can be seen to have an unnatural anchor-text distribution still but not as bad. In terms of rankings we lost some core terms on the homepage, not completely but most have gone from say page one to page 2/3/4 etc We are still getting good traffic to internal pages, so i am assuming action was taken to the homepage - where the mass of those links are pointing to. Where do you guys recommend I go from here, shall i go ahead and click the reconsideration request? or wait longer for the disavow. I am still also trying to remove bad links. Any advice much appreciated.

Hi guys, so we are on feefo and noticed links coming in per review for different anchor text, this will be done on mass due to the amount of reviews we will get - this is all natural but in SEO site-wide links are typically not. How if at all do you think Google will react to this?

Hi guys, so recently Google released the 'manual actions' tab under 'search traffic' in Google webmaster tools. Recently hit by panda i checked this and got: " Unnatural links to your site—impacts links Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole." However was this not the message before saying it was not a complete manual ban, just affecting a few bad links? I was hit badly in the rankings but still have some good terms and traffic is not that bad still from organic non-brand. I have fixed many of the bad links (horrible articles submissions that went out of control in 2009) - do i do a reconsideratikn request? i have disavowed the bad links that are left 3 weeks ago? so do i wait to see if disavow works or do a reconsideration request?I was sure this was like the message sent out before which meant it wasn't that bad for your site, just a few links ignored? Any advice much appreciated, thank you.

If i submit links via Google webmaster tools disvow tools - do i get any kind of confirmation it worked or not from Google? I have a standard message saying 'disvow links updated' as soon as i submitted it. Also how long roughly does this take to work, does it work much? I removed as many links as i could and the remaining ones submitted to this tool in the correct format. Any info much appreciated as usual people.

After reading there will be a drop down arrow on product listing adverts, which will push organic results down to display 16 products: http://searchengineland.com/google-testing-pla-expansion-to-show-16-product-listing-ads-166942?utm_source=twbutton&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=tweet I wondered how badly this is going to affect anyone in organic e-commerce? is this going to be rolled out for every term and have a drop down arrow for each one? Is organic going to die with e-commerce now? Thoughts much appreciated.

Hi guys, is there any way to group specific pages together in analytics and just see how they have peroformed visit wise, etc? I need to group some resort guides all with different names, it's tedious going through each one manually. Help much appreciated as always!

My frustration with Google currently has led me to try bing out more. I don't rank as good in bing as Google, so I was wondering if anyone had any great tips of what bing looks for to rank website well? So far I can see they seem to favour keyword domains, take 'cheap holidays' for example. Always reading about what Google want but what do bing want? Any advice much appreciated.

Hi there, we uploaded a page but unfortunately didn't realise it had noindex,nofollow in the meta tags. Google had cached it then decached it (i guess thats possible) it seems? now it will not cache even though the correct meta tags have been put in and we have sent links to it internally and externally. Anyone know why this page isn't being cached, the internal link to it is on the homepage and that gets cached almost every day. I even submitted it to webmaster tools to index.

Hi there, due to so much traffic coming through to our e-commerce site our host is going to do an apache re-direct for over flow traffic from www.mywebsite.com to a ww2.mywebsite.com canonical tags will be in, but if there is a re-direct this is surely bad for seo, telling on onccasions the page has moved? Any advice on this and the best way to re-direct users when there is too much traffic please let me know.

Hi guys, what is the difference between a manual penalty in the results and an algorithm? If its algorithm its usually a couple of pages but a manual do you get deindexed or put say 10 pages back? Any advice on how to best determin if a push back in results is manual or algorithm would be great. This will best help me judge how long it will take to get back to where I was with one of my sites once i have cleaned up some of my back-link profile. Thanks.

Hi guys, i received traffic off a yearly based term, this year for '2013' i noticed it is nowhere near what the yearly term was for the year before. I believe that Google has stopped the yearly term appearing in a drop-down menu from a big volume related term, my question is how do they determine what goes in the drop down menu for related/relevant searches?

Here's my issue I have the same page twice for content but on different url for the country, for example: www.example.com/gb/page/ and www.example.com/us/page So one for USA and one for Great Britain. Or it could be a subdomain gb. or us. etc. Now is it duplicate content is US version indexes the page and UK indexes other page (same content different url), the UK search engine will only see the UK page and the US the us page, different urls but same content. Is this bad for the panda update? or does this get away with it? People suggest it is ok and good for localised search for an international website - im not so sure. Really appreciate advice.

Hi guys and gals, i noticed in the results today Google has been changing my title tags so that brand: is in the front of it all. This is not in the code but my title tag structure site-wide is keywords and then always | brand on the end. Why has this happened does anyone know? does it affect my first keyword in the title tag, i guess Google might do it as it recognises the brand and wants users to know it?

Hi guys i have a big e-commerce website, we have put rel=publisher on our homepage and linked it up with our google + profile. We sell holidays and have a big resort guide full of quality content, do i need to put rel=publisher on those too? It doesn't seem right to put a personal author with a personal google + page on content as the author. Do i simply as a business page use rel=publisher instead? Any advice much appreciated, i find this confusing in all honesty on what benefits the most.

Hi there, on the panda update a few weeks ago i noticed i dropped 8 places for a very competitive keyword. All my content in the site is unique and quality. Its also not published elsewhere. I think the update did knock this one keyword down for me - no others got hti though. Perhaps the landing page got it? too many mentions of the keyword? however i didn't think i spammed it on the page, perhaps jsut mentioned once or twice - any ideas? Any help aprpeciated 🙂

So you can auth pages with personal google+ profiles - and its being suggested by some that this could now help rankings if that person has lots of people in their circles. So what about brand/companies content? why cant they auth the content with their Google+ profile to get the content ranking better. It doesn't seem right an individual blogger can do this but a company cannot who has written lots of guides. An example is a holiday company has written some awesome content on resorts around the World - how to use the auth for that content to rank higher? - currently only possible to link up an individual as writing the content not the brand/company itself. Any suggestions on this much appreciated. I do not want to lose any gain there might be from this new bonus given from Google.

Do you need exact url brand match to get the benefits of social media noise in the google organic rankings? EG: twitter.com/brandname facebook.com/brandname my url extensions have my brnad but other words in, if i get noise does my website stil benefit in the rankings because it has the url in the profile? or do i need exact match in the url?

Hi there, are there any implications for organic seo for implementing google experiment. Where you send users to a new page?

Hi guys i wanted you views on changing the anchor text of links. I have quality links coming in but with year terms such as 2012 in there, if i want to change them all to 2013 for example would it be badly seen by Google? I cant say i feel comfortable about doing it but they are my links and are related to our products. Any advice much appreciated.

How do you find out sites banned from Google? I know how to find out sites no longer cached, or is it the same thing once deindexed? As always aprpeciate your advice everyone.

Hi there, I am having alot of difficulty in removing links to my domain name from .blogspot.com blogs which are inactive and i cannot contact the user. Not so great previous seo works were done and i now need to clean it up, however no idea how to get rid of these blogspot ones. As Google own it, do they have a contact form for it, where i can complain and get pages removed? Any help MUCH appreciated guys and gals.

THe links people can add in the about part of a google+ profile - do they have any effect on rankings? is this worth doing for link building?

I am an e-commerce website with a blog, creating content on my website but also guest posting for others. I also have a Google + page. Do i need to do the rel=author rel=me? does it benefit me? I am confused on how it works, can someone outline the basics please? i gather i put rel=me in the page that is about me and author on the blog posts i do/gues posts? Any help much appreciated.

Hi there for linkbuilding what is better, building with / or without / www.domain.com www.domain.com/ I have been told it depends what your webserver is doing, also i was told they are the same? what does Google see? I know i need to stay consistent, just wondering which practice is better? Any help as always much appreciated.

For seo reasons is it better to have: +1's on your profile on google+ +1's on the website +1 button I believe both are different, getting a +1 on your site does not add to the number on your profile and vise versa? Any advice much appreciated.

Hi there what is the best type of domain name if i have a keyword im targetting. Lets use 'very cool' as an example: www.verycool.com www.verycool.co.uk www.very-cool.com www.very-cool.co.uk I am led to believe the .co.uk would be better in a UK index. I also got told - count as a space, therefore the best one above for Google UK is www.very-cool.co.uk ?

Hi everyone, i need some help with this rel=author and google auth which has come into place. Some questions: 1., I write a blog on our e-commerce site, do i need rel=authort? 2., i write on other sites do i need rel=author If so is there an easy way to implement this, i know it links in with the Google+ profile but i am confussed as i keep seeing different ways to do it. I've also been told to do good auth, what is this? ive been given a piece of code to use in my site to auth it? is this worth it? Any help really appreciated 🙂

Getting social signals is important it seems now. Is having a facebook comments box on your website where people can comment worth any social noise? if it posts to their facebook page its only seen by their friends, not google. So basically wondering do you get social signals of people commenting on your page in a facebook comments feature?

Do links count when they are online but in a power point, doc or pdf format?

Hi everyone, does anyone know where i can install a comments box which when people see a post of page they can add a comment - which also goes to facebook? however i would like to preapprove this? I have seen this kind of thing on websites and wondered how it is done? im assuming it can help obtain more social noise? Any help much appreciated.

Hi everyone, i'm trying to understand the rel=author thing for cotent, i need some clarification please. Firstly do you only use it for content on your site or can you have it for a guest post you have done on another domain which is not your own - linking to your author profile on your domain? Secondly implementing it, i understand it's 3 links: 1., Link on your content where the blog post is with a rel=author going to your domain authort page. 2., a link from your domain author page going to your google + profile. This is rel=me 3 a link on your google+ profile to your blog? if so how do i do this? i only have an option to edit about page and add recommended links? there is no 'contributor' section. I am UK profile also. Any help really appreciated, thanks guys.

Has anyone seen any benefit from using schema in the html of their website and gaining better oganic resultsi n Google? Is tagging up pieces of content with this mark up language worth doing? Any advice much appreciated as always.

Has anyone here managed to beat a keyword/exact match domain to top spot? I am currently second and wondering if it is worth the time and effort to knock it off the top spot. How hard is it to get these very annoyingly favoured domains off 1st? Any help and advice much appreciated.

Hi there, i have been looking into schema and noticed some articles on it recently too. Who here has used schema/mark-up language in their code? I heard Google will be looking for at this soon to interpret data better. Is it schema .org where i can get the code information from? Any help much appreciated.

Hi everyone, just noticed the default new red button go onto my website. Is there anyway to go back to the blue button or customise it? it doesn't really fit in with our colour sceheme 😞 Thanks, any info much appreciated as always.

Hi guys, as we know there's been some Google updates today. Has anyone noticed a change in ppc? is there any connection? Any info much appreciated.

The new algo update says any images at the top of the page negatively affect user experience if they are adverts? how does google know if its an advert or relevant banner? When trying to put text as far up as possible on the page, is it ok to make it appear higher in the code but appear further down using css? Or does Google not go from the code top to bottom when working this out, more how it renders? Any advice much appreciated.

Has anyone else had the issue for a couple of months now where ose is showing links that are live when they are not. I am doing seo for a big e-commerce website so it is important i can find out what the anchor text distribution is for the domain. How is this possible when ose shows me links which are not live? There's been 2 or 3 updates and still showing expired links in our back-link profile. This is very frustrating and has led me to see if anyone else can recommend an alternative which is more up to date? And yes before seomoz reply, i know you only update a certain percentage of the web.

Hi everyone, an interesting question here. How do you determien what link volume you should try and get into your website? What analysis do you do to determine the number of links you feel is right to go into a back-link profiel every month? obviously there is no magic number but its an interesting question to know what others do. Obviously you don't want to build too many or too little. If you have been penalised for bad links in the past and are now back on track - how do you calculate the volume? Do you take links dropping out into consideration?

If I have an image that is well optimiswed for a keyword that the page it is on is ranking for but i put a no follow in the image link - is this going to lose the value of the image on that page. A strange question i know but this image i have on my homepage is optimised around a keyword, the image is also a link but when i changed the link in the image to no follow i seem to have dropped rankings for that keyword. Probably consicidence but i thought i would throw this question out there and get some views?

Hi everyone, hope you've all had a good new years celebration. Just a quick one on page load speed? how important do you think it is to organic rankings, especially on competitive terms? Any tips on improving it? do i need to improve just the landing page im trying to rank or every page as its looked at as a qualtiy score as a whole? Kind Regards,

Is making the alt and title tags in an image the same bad for seo? Does anyone have any recommendations? any help much appreciated.

Is there a link between ranking higher in organic search rankings and having a good social media presence. I think there is, the more likes and followers you have the better. The real question is how to you utilise it, do you regulary share content, put keywords in the share info for the ones you want to rank, how best can you utilise social media to help in organic search? I suspect social noise is used towards some kind of overall quality score in the search engines.

Has there been a chance in the adwords quality score/review thing recently? We have noticed our score up and competitors down by quite alot and wondered if there had been an update perhaps?