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They have no shame when it comes to link spam LOL. You should know this by now. This person seems no different then the people that email blast cialis discounts.
I was doing a search for a similar topic for a site we manage that has gained 50k links in the past 4 months, and I came across this article. I was a bit shocked at the answers I saw, and some of the ones that were voted as good. It's an old article, but I felt compelled to answer since this is still a relevant topic.
The link structure you showed is completely normal, and I would highly doubt you would see any negative impact from a strategy such as this. New sites and updated sites over time always receive new links. It's not about "how many" but more about "from where". I will address them one by one:
100 directory submissions
Great, as long as you have tested the directories that you are being submitted to. If they have high spam scores and low domain authority, could be a risk. You should ask what directories you were submitted to and research them to see if they have a blacklist history or are penalized. If not, I see no issue here at all. When we launch a site, we submit it to up to 450+ trusted directories, depending on the SEO plan level selected. All directories have been tested via Moz tools and other providers, to ensure the link health.
80 bookmarks
Not sure when you mean by this, but as long as the places you are being added are trustworthy and somewhat related to what you provide, I wouldn't worry. Even non-related links can be beneficial, coming from the right source. Granted, everyone wants the perfect anchor text link such as "awesome product in CITY", but a "visit website" followed anchor link will not do you any harm coming from the right source.
16 search engine submissions
If this is a page or URL submission through Bing or Google webmaster tools, it's a total non-issue. People submit hundreds of URLs per day, or even thousands for larger sites.
15 Article submissions
"Submitted to where?" would be a better question than how many is good or bad. If these are legitimate articles through a legitimate source such as PrWeb or the like, you should have no issues. Just depends on where they are placing your articles, the article quality, and the linking domain.
46 forum links
Could be good, could be bad, depends on how you were linked to, and the trust factor of the linking site. See above. You may also want to see if the linked is followed because if not, it holds little value unless it was posted on a relevant forum as helpful advice, that has good visibility.
10 local classified searches
Not sure what this is indicating, but again, it depends on how the linking was done, and where the links are coming from.
As to the people stating that having a lot of new, varied links is a great way to get banned/penalized, just NO. That is not true. You want link diversity and many places linking to you, and in the business world, you can't always keep posting great blogs/posts/pages/articles hoping and waiting for the links to come to you.
I have also never seen a link campaign that got someone penalized unless it was just blatant disregard for link quality or lack of knowledge.
Hope this helps...years later lol. Or at best, it will help someone that comes across this article in the future.
Not to bring this topic back up, but is this still valued?
I understand the perception point of view, in that a lot of people still trust the BBB as a company that highlights good businesses to work with.
BUT, as the links are now no followed, and the price for the accredited profile is very high, is it worth it? I can see it being so for a contractor, but for an agency?
In looking up some stuff to answer that question, I found these requirements: 1. Ratings must be sourced directly from users.
2. Don't rely on human editors to create, curate or compile ratings information for local businesses. These types of reviews are critic reviews.
3. Sites must collect ratings information directly from users and not from other sites.Here are the guidelines: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/review#review-snippetsDoes this help?
James,
I am assuming you have Moz Pro and are tracking all search engines? You can also look in Analytics to see who is referring traffic to you, and how people are getting there.
In my experience, Bing and Yahoo are a bit more spammy than Google, and like a bit more keyword heavy sites and domains. Of course, you should not go and stuff your site full of garbage, I just wanted to throw that out there.
I think there is some accuracy in that more people are moving to Google, you can see that in this link from Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/whos-really-winning-search-war-204651
To answer the question of "Could it be that my customers (largely aged 60+) are moving over to Google?" What you would want to look for is: Did Google take up the slack in the drop, or did you see a loss in Bing and Yahoo with no equal gain in Google? If you lost 20% of your traffic in Bing and Yahoo, but did not see that increase in Google, you may have some other items that need to be looked at.
Backlinks. Anchor text. Find people that will link to you using the words you want to rank for.
"Their site has no purposeful SEO in it, there is barely any text on the homepage at all and none of the text are the keywords it is ranking for."
The above statement is concerning. If they have a good budget, as their SEO and design advisor I would say what needs to be said. Text can be added in a stylized way to help improve the SEO of any site without taking away from a good design. Google likes words, not CSS and images. Without a reference, it's hard to judge what can be improved, and how you should go about suggesting it to your client. You also mentioned rankings, but what do those rankings look like? Are we talking page one, or top 3?
We have a client that has an old G maps listing that keeps popping up. The newer listing (less than 2 years) has over 150 legit 5-star reviews, but the older, crappy listing (about 4-5 years old) with 5 reviews keeps coming up in maps. I noticed that Google has new options available, and you can now request that the listing be removed from maps.
In the past, this type of option did not "remove" the listing, but rather marked it as "permanently closed." We want to completely remove it from maps altogether but cannot allow the time to reverify and activate if it marks it as permanently closed.
Both have the exact same address and different business names. Both are located in our Google manager account. What is the fastest and most efficient way of getting this removed without risking the "permanently closed" showing up and having to re-verify/reclaim? Calling GMB directly?
Looking for a more advanced answer.
We have Moz Local, Yext, and a TON of manual listings outside of those two. All match, all are accurate and have the same info displayed.
I am wanting to know what influences the Google map listings directly. It's strange because you will also see businesses that do not rank organically on page one in search but do show up in the maps pack. And sometimes the opposite. Sites that rank in the top 5 not showing in the maps pack.
We have a client who's law firm is the highest google reviewed, on page two or three of St. Louis personal injury lawyer, but does not show in the map listing. Any ideas why this would happen or how to ensure they are viewable in the map listing?
I have noticed that some directory or profile sites are showing a longer than normal meta description in search results. How is this accomplished? All regular sites are only showing the normal amount, but these sites are showing a higher character limit in search results.
Just wanted to chime in and add my experience with both providers.
To be clear, Yext is more expensive. It also is a direct feed into more listings. If you are trying to get listings published quickly and need to show results (or reports) to a client, Yext would be a better way to go. As a subscriber, you can also give your clients discounts from the Yext pricing page, which can help add to your overall total commitment from the client. As far as data being removed, the additional data that is added via Yext's api is no longer valid or displayed once you stop paying (they call it no longer a "trusted" listing). I have never had one revert back to a pre listing status. Yext uses one of the many large databases: Factual. Chances are that by submitting to factual the other data aggregators will pick up your listing with time, even if you have not submitted to them.
Moz local is a great resource for companies that have the time to wait. The data aggregators they submit to take time to publish the listing. Acxiom, Nuestar and the others can sometimes make it confusing or even very expensive to list on their data networks. Acxiom is one of the stronger databases, having been known to be a direct feed to Google.
My advice:
If you can afford to wait the 2-3 months to have the listing start to appear, then use Moz. The time period you have to wait is not necessarily the fault of Moz, as even if you submit directly to Acxiom yourself it will take 2-3 months to go live. Ultimately, your listing will appear on the other citation sites, it will just take longer to do so.
If you are looking for an additional source of income and are a great salesman, use Yext. Yext has a much better interface of showing how many listings are incorrect, (even if many of the ones that are listed are from their own proprietary citation sites. ). This makes it an easier sale to your clients, and also easier for you as an agency to get an idea of how bad your clients current citation status really is. Yext will get your listings posted very quickly, and give you a place to link to off of your main domain, giving your clients additional sources of validation very quickly. Some of the sites they submit to are a bit dinky, but hey, a link and validation source is just that. Pricing is higher, but I think its fair considering the speed and extras you get for the money.
AND... the elephant in the room is of course.. do it all yourself! This will offer the most control over all your listings and control over who and what to submit where. You will lose out on some of the other benefits of MOZ (cheaper cost vs your time and long wait) and YEXT (faster speed, lots of directories but higher cost). It's worth noting that some of the YEXT directories that they are partnered with you cannot actually submit to, as they are either created by YEXT or locked so that you have to use their service to submit your listing there.
It can help, but if you are expecting a single MOZ link to skyrocket you ahead of all your competitors, that will not happen. Google looks at the complete link profile for a site, and not one singular instance. Will it help? Sure! Will it make a night and day difference? NO.
The best way to use your MOZ profile is to make yourself an active member of the community, and show that you know what you are talking about. MOZ is a leading authority of not only industry experts, but also of people looking for help and advice. Link from your website to your profile page. Link to your social accounts from your profile page. If it is something you would like to promote, then have a space on your site that states you are a member of the MOZ community. We get link referrals from MOZ all the time, and we have also gotten leads from members on here looking for help.
In short, for it to be the most effective, don't think of just the link. Think of how you can use the community to broaden your reach and exposure.
Depends on what you are trying to do. If you have very little content, but a lot of links then they may frown upon it, frowning meaning take action against your site.
If you just have a large menu with a lot of links, and frequently link to other pages then I doubt it will be counted against you.
I understand trying to abide by Google guidelines, but it's much easier to simply look at your paqge and say "Does this make sense?" Am I trying to add links to manipulate search engine rankings, or am I trying to help users find helpful/relevant/related information? Once you look at it from that standpoint, it becomes easier to see where you have problem areas.
Since you are doing a genre based site, think of how you can organize your URL and menu structure, to make your articles easier to find, and link to. (I would imagine you want people to share your content, right?)
As long as your pulldown menus are linking to individual articles, even if the link count is high I dount think you will run into any issues.
Best advice: Do it right the first time. What does that mean:
1. Having the sitemap.xml file accurate and ready to be submitted.
2. Not focusing just on Google. Submit your site and links links to all webmasters.
3. Making sure your site is complete, meaning all meta, titles, and urls are all unique and filled out with relevant information. Some of your titles are not specific, such as:
http://www.sbat.com/livescores/ - Page title is Live scores...think of how users will search for your page. A More appropriate title would be "LIve Sports Scores | Live Soccer Scores from Around the World" or something similar.
4. Getting rid of duplicate URL's. If you are using a CMS, then you want to make sure you follow this rule: One url to one page of content. View more on this topic here: http://www.webdesignandcompany.com/5-htaccess-rules-to-avoid-duplicate-content
5. Making sure your images and alt text is properly filled out. For example: Dont label images image123.jpg, name them what you want to rank for, such as stl-cardinals-jersey.jpg or something like that. You never know how users will search for content or answers, so optimize as broad as possible.
6. Submit all pages in webmaster tools using "Fetch as google". This allows you to submit individual and sitewide crawls of your site. Helps in getting pages indexed/reindexed faster
7. Plan ahead. Launch of a website then hoping it will rank well is a fast way to not rank. Think of ways to gain additional validation and backlinks. Press releases can be a great way to do this when you are just starting out.
That should get you started. Hope this helps!
We never place a link without the site owners permission.
Are your individual product pages optimized? Getting a user to visit your site doesn't mean they have to come in through the main category page. You could have your Widget category page optimized around the widget (or types, styles colors) or a more general page that is optimized around the widget product and what it is for.
By optimizing the widget product pages, you may have an additional page on which to rank. What I mean is, is you are on the widget page only for green widgets, then optimize only around that phrase. If you have multiple color options or filters from within that page, state that "this widget is available in black, green, blue" etc. Also make sure to have relevant related items shown so that if a user does happen upon that page, they know you sell more than one type. Optimizing the product pages can also be done quickly, as this can be completed when you are entering in the item details. If you add a lot of products all the time, create a template that you can use to quickly add details to any product, and then edit the details that only pertain to that specific item.
In your sitemaps, you can choose what filters get included in your index. If you are worried about duplicates, don't include them, or block the generated URL's in robots.txt
Something wise my father once told me "Something is only worth how much someone is willing to pay for it."
It depends. First, how much of your time is going to be invested in creating, optimizing, and ranking this site? Since it sounds like this is something you are going to do with multiple domains, it could get pretty time-consuming.
Also, if you know how to get websites to page one, why are you not marketing that to potential clients and consumers? Trying to get a keyword driven domain to rank high and sell it off for a quick buck doesn't really seem like a good investment, either time wise, or for the success of your company. I would use sites that you have ranked high as an example of what you can do for clients, and sign them up for a monthly fee, rather than trying to sell them a "get rich quick" domain.
Why do I think this way? Here's the theoretical math:
Gained vs Invested = $2000-1900=$100. Also this negates the fact that you can make additional money from this client again, unless you start the process over again.
Option 2:
Demonstrate SEO prowess to potential client using existing sites as proof of results
Sign up client for basic SEO services at $500 per month.
Invest 20-30 hours making client's site soar in results.
Client is happy. Refers friends and other business owners your way.
You make more money, and gain a positive reputation for being a quality seo provider.
Although I'd rather not upload our actual document that we send to clients, I will tell you what we include. First, we do not charge based upon setting up the campaign, we charge based upon spend. Generally, higher spending accounts wil require more maintenance and time, especially if they have a large keyword range. This helps tie into our existing business model of charging over time, rather than large bulk sums.
Also, we include links to our developer profiles, that have links to their Adwords certifications, etc so potential clients can see that they are qualified.
If you want the most accurate traffic report possible, then I would set up a custom goal in analytics using your landing page URL. Depending upon what you are trying to do, you could set up a page that is targeted directly to your YouTube refferals, and focus on promoting conversions. Or another option is to just clone the home page to a different URL and set it to NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW and have them land on that when they click the link.
It's a grey area to be sure. Lots of the things that Google states can contradict one another, such as in your case: They want you to have authoritative backlinks from reliable sources, but they dont want you to pay for it. (Might get in their way of getting your Adwords dollars, lol)
In this case, look closely at what you are getting. Sites like YP, Chamber of Commerce all offer paid profile creations, with the paid profile links being of a higher visibility within their website. If you are getting a full profile page, with lots of ways for you to support your business or company then it could be beneficial. If you are getting a small, otherwise unfindable profile page with a anchor text optimized link directly to your site, I would stay away.
Think of the benefits of having the link. Is your link going to be placed somewhere it can be found, and when found, does the page that will be linking offer the user anything. How does the profile page help build upon your brand?
"If I were to pay for a profile with them, would I request for a "nofollow" link back to my site? "
Again, it depends on how they set up the profile, and how they set up their profiles for all the other businesses on that site. If Google sees the site as just a way to milk money out of people for paid backlinks, they will get hit and eventually so will you. I would do some investigating into the other businesses that have profiles on there, and see how they do in search results. Either way, one link will most likely not do a ton of damage to your reputation, but is that a risk you would be willing to take? Just boils down to what you feel comfortable with.
7/2/2014 So, is buying a domain with the intention of selling it a good idea? Let's break down the details, and talk to some people that actively pursue this method. Yeah, we know a guy.