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That's odd that you're seeing different results than I am. I did searches for church(es) in two other cities and saw the same thing - website and description links for church, image for churches. I also tried it with plumber(s) in 3 cities and both plumber and plumbers had website and description. Then I tried it for restaurant(s) in 3 cities and both restaurant and restaurants had the image/icon. Strange.
I'd be curious to hear what others are seeing in their local results.
Keyword rich anchor text on external sites will help your search rankings. But it's also against Google's rules. If an unnaturally high percentage of the links to your site have the same anchor text, you run the risk that Google will ignore their value or will penalize your site. My suggestion would be to get some links with keyword rich anchor text but also get a lot of other links that don't have keyword rich anchor text so your overall link profile looks natural.
I realize that the general results websites can rank differently for singular vs plural keywords, but today when checking local rankings for a client, I noticed that not only does the client rank differently for "church in San Diego" vs "churches in San Diego" but the layout and info of the local results pages are different.
"Church in San Diego" (screenshot) shows the phone number and has links for Website and Directions
"Churches in San Diego" (screenshot) doesn't show any of that instead has an image. If you click on the image, it brings up a card almost like a popup with info, reviews, and links for the organization.
Anyone ever noticed that before? Anyone know why the difference? And if there are different optimization strategies?
I have the same question. While I appreciate the replies from Andy and Miriam, neither backed up their answers with evidence. Has Google ever stated specifically that too many reviews too quickly could get a site penalized or have the reviews not "count?" Or has anyone ever published research or examples?
Thanks,
Paul
Thanks Max.
So, as long as I optimize the content, especially in the alternative HTML version of the page, there shouldn't be any negative effects for rankings, correct?
Does it affect link building to internal pages? Would I encourage people to link to/share the nicer URLs with #! or the escaped_fragment URLs? Do I need to setup canonical tags for the escaped_fragment URLs?
Thanks.
Kurt
Hey Everyone,
I had a potential client contact me about doing SEO for their site and I see that they have an AJAX site where all the content is rendered dynamically via AJAX. I've been doing SEO for years, but never had a client with an AJAX site. I did a little research and see how you can setup alternative pages (or snapshots as Google calls them) with the actual content so the pages are crawlable and will get indexed, but I'm wondering if that is as effective as optimizing static HTML pages or if Google treats AJAX page alternatives as less trustworthy/valuable.
Also, does having the site in AJAX effect link building and social sharing? With the link structure, it seems there could be some issues with pointing links and passing link juice to internal pages
Thanks!
Kurt
Kim,
Thanks for the update. Most people just do what ever they decide to do and never report back. So, thanks!
I'm glad you were able to get the penalty removed. I actually was just helping someone out who got a penalty and saw something similar, a bunch of blog sites that were nondescript with a ridiculously wide range of topics and even languages, which screams private link network to me. The client said they weren't responsible. It seems that negative SEO is something being done more often.
Thanks again.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
I actually like the second option (active landing page) for it's tracking benefits. I'm trying to think through whether it's risky from a search engine perspective. I don't think you'd have any issues with it. And if you're not trying to build it up in the search rankings (i.e. you're really only interested in it for tracking) then even if the search engines don't rank it very well, who cares?
The main thing I'd be concerned about is branding and user experience. In terms of branding, you're radio ads are all telling people one or two or more different domains and all of them are different from the Dr.'s actual domain. That could weaken branding. In terms of user experience, it's always a little suspicious to users when you go to one site and then get taken to a second site. To deal with that, I'd try to make the landing page similar to the main site's appearance and make it clear that the landing page belongs to the Dr.
Whichever way you choose to go, let us know how it works out.
I know it's probably matter of curiosity and frustration. You just want to know why. In the end, however, we know what tends to win out over time, a good site that is well optimized and created quality, new content that is remarkable and getting that content in front of people. Oh, and doing an awesome job with your business. So, just focus on what you need to do to grow your own company/website and don't worry so much about your competition. It usually just wastes your time and makes you mad. Not worth it.
Good luck with your site.
Hi Kristin,
Sounds like a bit of a nightmare. Personally, I would go ahead and set the URLs to lowercase in the new design. I would also take a closer look at what's going on with your site's pages. I've moved lots of sites with changing URLs and I typically don't see that kind of dramatic rankings drop if the optimization is maintained and the pages are properly redirected. So, there may be something else going on.
As for the switch back, did you create redirects from the old lowercase URLs to the new capitalized URLs? If so, be sure to removed those 301's when you launch the new site. You can also setup new 301s from the capitalized URLs to the lowercase versions using the .htaccess file (if your using an apache server). The following link may help you in setting up the redirects:
Also, I wouldn't worry about the Pagerank. It's not reliable. Better to pay attention to your rankings, traffic, and links.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
I know it's probably matter of curiosity and frustration. You just want to know why. In the end, however, we know what tends to win out over time, a good site that is well optimized and created quality, new content that is remarkable and getting that content in front of people. Oh, and doing an awesome job with your business. So, just focus on what you need to do to grow your own company/website and don't worry so much about your competition. It usually just wastes your time and makes you mad. Not worth it.
Good luck with your site.
Hi Anthony,
It sounds like your on the right path. Make sure the site has good, quality, optimized content. Analyze the link profile and deal with the issues you find. Create new quality content that is remarkable and get it in front of people via social networks, guest blogging, etc.
It's not a quick process, though. It sounds like the site you are working on was in pretty bad shape, dealing with both Panda and Penguin issues, including spammy links and over-optimized anchor text. It's a lot to fix and Google doesn't just bounce you right back to where you were. First, Google wants to see that you are really back on the straight and narrow and aren't going to try any more spammy stuff. Secondly, the rankings the site had before weren't legit. The site had them because of manipulative strategies which are no longer working. Think of it this way...
If I weighed 250 lbs and I wanted to lose weight. If, instead of working out and eating right, I decided to lose weight by adjusting the scale and I adjust it to the point where it says I weigh 200 lbs. The scale may indicate I'm losing weight, but I'm not. It's fake. If someone then comes in and fixes the scale so it can't be adjusted, I shouldn't expect that the scale would still say I'm 200 lbs because that wasn't real. It'll say I way 250 lbs (or may more). In a similar way, if you manipulate the search engines to give certain rankings instead of getting those rankings by creating great content and getting links naturally, then when the search engines change so you can't manipulate them anymore, you shouldn't expect to keep those fake rankings. You'll be back to where you were at the start, possibly worse off if you get penalized.
So, you are on the right path, but you (and your client) need to have the proper expectations. You may have more issues to deal with and you probably need to be creating new, remarkable content so people will share/like/link the content and build the site's authority up...the right way.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
It sounds to me like you don't want the search engines to know that your moving the content, but rather have them think that you have dropped the pages from your site because you don't want the search engines associating those pages with your site, correct?
If that's the case, then you do want to keep the noindex on the old pages and setup 301 redirects as well. The redirects are for real users who happen to use any links/bookmarks to the old pages. By keeping the old pages noindexed, then hopefully the search engines won't crawl them and won't follow the redirects. I'd also remove the pages from the Google and Bing indexes in their webmaster tools for good measure.
If you are linking from your site to the new location of the user content, you may want to nofollow those links or, better yet, create the links in javascript or something to hide them. If all the links to the content just shift to the new location, Google and Bing may still associate it your site with the new site. Then again, if all the content from the old pages is all the new site, then they may figure it all out anyway.
These types of reports, whether it's the Moz DA, Majestic SEO link report, or even ranking reports, are tricky. They tend to fluctuate quite a bit. I'd recommend trying to get the client off of focusing on these types of reports and get them focused on either traffic to the site or (ideally) conversions. These other reports are really just tools. They are indicators to help you do your work. After all, would the client be happy if you got them a DA increase of 30 points if at the same time their conversions dropped by 50%?
Vince,
There are different kinds of manual action that Google can take on a site. In some cases, it's necessary to clean up the offending links and in others it's not. It's not quite as black and white, however, as to which manual actions do not require clean up. I've seen some sites that received the same message you did where there was no noticeable effect on their rankings. For them, there really wasn't any need to do anything. Other sites, however, there was a noticeable effect on their rankings and it appeared that the manual action Google had taken was not just to ignore the offending links, but Google was actually penalizing the rankings of sites for certain keywords. For those sites, it was advisable to clean up the bad links.
So, if your rankings have been effected, then go ahead and clean up the links. If not, it up to you, but I'd agree with Patrick that it's probably still a good idea anyway.
Lastly, note that Google's examples may not be the only type of link that is causing an issue. They are just a couple of examples. When you request reconsideration, you may find that Google denies it and gives different examples as to why. Just a heads up that the issue may be bigger than you think.
Good luck.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
Hi Serkie,
Is there a reason you want to noindex your category pages? I don't know of any SEO benefit you would gain from this. I guess if you don't want people going to those pages or finding them in the search engines, then you can noindex the category pages.
Setting up schema is good. I'd recommend you do that.
It's also good that you are spending time focusing on user experience. Getting traffic to a site that has a bad user experience can actually be worse than not getting traffic at all. People remember bad experiences...and good ones.
As to your main issue, no traffic, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
Hmm. I'm doubtful that a PPC campaign would knock you down like that in the organic results. When did the drop happen? Google has done several updates in the past few weeks, including a Penguin update, that may have happened at the same time. I noticed that in Open Site Explorer you only have two "external" sites linking to the page, cnsmosaic and cnsgroup. From the links on the hut3 site, I'm assuming these are all part of the same company.
It's possible, however, that Google sees the links from those sites as external links. Since it would appear that the links to the penetration testing page are sitewide accross the cns sites, I wonder if Google is treating those as external sitewide links, all with targeted keywords, and has penalized you for it, either manually or by algorithm.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
To answer your specific question, I'd target different keywords.
That said, why do you have two different websites selling the same products? If you are just trying to get two rankings in the top ten or rank for more keywords, I'd suggest that you are better off just having one site and building the authority of that one site up instead of trying split your efforts. If there is a legit user-based reason to have two sites than I would think the two different target groups may have their own search phrases and way of speaking which should determine your keywords and the text on your site
I'm guessing that "public webshop" and "trade webshop" indicate that you are targeting the general public with one site and people working in the industry with the other. You'll need to familiarize yourself (if you aren't already familiar) with the terminology that the two groups use and have that guide your decisions. It's not something you'll be able to pick up on from keyword tools since they would just give raw data not indicating which group was searching for what keywords.
Even if you are targeting two different groups, I wonder if you couldn't just have two sections withing a single site instead of two completely different sites. I'm not saying two sites is always bad or anything, there are good reasons to do it in some situations, I just think that when building the authority of websites, it's almost always easier and more effective to focus on just one site instead of two or more.
Hope this helps.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
That stinks that those publishers did that. I'm a little suspicious that this would happen from a single press release. Usually, it takes Google a bit more than that to trip a manual action. Are you sure there aren't other links, maybe other press releases, that are suspicious? I only ask because Google usually responds to a pattern of manipulation, not a single action.
In regards to your actual question, natural links typically aren't "tainted" by a previous penalty. In fact it would probably work in the exact opposite way. With manual actions Google thinks that you are trying to manipulate them. In order to get the manual action removed, Google is looking for you to clean up the old links, apologize, and demonstrate that you have changed your ways. So, getting new links that are completely natural demonstrates that you have changed your ways.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
Sometimes it takes a little while for the disavow tool to remove links. So, you may need to give it some time if you just did that. You can always include the disavow request in the documents for your reconsideration request. Beyond that, I'd take a closer look at your other links to see if there are other links causing an issue.