Dan Petrovic: 10 ways to screw up in Google & 10 ways to fix it

"Great content, structure and clean code – that’s SEO." and then you learn about panda, penguin and top heavy. It could have been indexable tags, browsable search results or a link in your widget. Either way the traffic is dwindling and your client is furious. What do you do? In this session Dan Petrovic explains how people screw up with Google and offers practical ways to recover.

Transcript

1. by Dan Petrovic © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ 10 ways to screw up in Google 10 ways to fix it. &
2. #1 Various Levels of Facepalm. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/
3. Level:
4. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ www.dejanseo.com.au dejanseo.com.au Solution: 301 redirect Alternative: rel=“canonical”
5. Level:
6. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ http://staging.noao.edu/ http://noao.edu/ inurl:"http://staging." Solution: noindex
7. Level:
8. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ <META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”> Solution: admin > options > privacy >
9. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ Feeding Panda.
10. #2 Index Fluff. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/
11. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ Indexable Fluff Categories & Tags
12. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ Indexable Fluff Search Results & Pagination http://dejanseo.com.au/google-pagination-rel-link-element/ http://dejanseo.com.au/dealing-with-pagination-issues/
13. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ Indexable Fluff Infinite Navigational Structures
14. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ Indexable Fluff Infinite Faceted Navigation
15. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ Indexable Fluff Infinite Faceted Navigation
16. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ Indexable Fluff Infinite Faceted Navigation
17. #3 Lost & Found. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/
18. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ 404 F ILS Says it’s a 404 page. Returns 200. Indexed.
19. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ 404 F ILS Looks like a 200 page. Returns 404. Not Indexed!
20. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ 404 F ILS gets a .gov link changes URL structure return 404 instead of 301
21. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ 404 F ILS Winner.
22. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ 404 F ILS Returns: http://www.istockphoto.com/search/text/404/source/basic Wildcard 302 redirects it to an actual 404 page: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-404-black-panthers.php Winner.
23. #4 Being Ugly. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/
24. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ Being Ugly Top Heavy, Poor UX, Trust Factors • Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site? • Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors? • Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced? • Does this article have an excessive amount of ads? • Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail? Reference: googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
25. Smells Fishy! © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/
26. #5 Unguarded UGC © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/
27. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ Solution: rel=“nofollow”
28. #6 Link Schemes. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/
29. Link Schemes • Automated Links • Blog Networks • Web Spam • Mass-Scale ‘Clever’ Tactics • Your Own Sites • Automated Reciprocal Links Reference: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/why-link-schemes-fail http://cdn.dejanseo.com.au/Google-Link-Disavow-Tool-Guide.pdf https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main
30. Traffic / Rankings Affected No Yes Link Warning No Yes Technical Audit Technical Issues? No Yes Fix Preventative Link Audit Sitewide No Yes Selective Link Audit De-indexed Yes No Link Removal Determine Affected Pages & Keywords Reconsideration Request Disavow
31. #7 Being Generic. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/
32. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ Product Title Generic product description supplied by manufacturer which describes product only vaguely and provides no additional information and value to other sites selling the same product. $120.00 + Shipping Product Image (ALT TAG) ADD TO CART
33. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ Unique Product Title Unique description designed to inform and educate buyer on both research and purchase decision level and enable them to make a decision while they are on your website. $120.00 + $20 Shipping Customer Rating: Seller Recommendations | Detailed Specifications Payment Methods | Shipping Options 12 of your friends recommend this. User Generated Content: - Social Media Sharing - Tips - Reviews - Recommendations Product Image (ALT TAG) + Gallery ADD TO CART Price Trends
34. #8 Location & Language. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/
35. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ dejanseo.com.au dejanseo.co.uk dejanseo.com dejanseo.co.nz
36. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ rel="alternate" hreflang="x“ hreflang="x-default" <link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-gb" hreflang="en-gb" /> <link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-us" hreflang="en-us" /> <link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-au" hreflang="en-au" /> <link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/" hreflang="x-default" />
37. #9 Viagra. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/
38. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ SECURITY F IL site:edu.au viagra
39. #10 PageRank Hijack © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/
40. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ http://dejanseo.com.au/hijacked/
41. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ http://dejanseo.com.au/hijacked/ Test Page
42. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ http://dejanseo.com.au/google-against-content-scrapers/ Manual Action
43. • rel="alternate" hreflang="x" • rel="next" and rel="prev" • rel="canonical" • rel="nofollow" • noindex, follow • 301 • 404 (really!) Your Best Friends
45. Helpful Tips. And time savers.
46. Inbound links with rel=“nofollow” Not part of Google’s link graph. Can’t help. Can’t harm. Period.
47. Links from de-indexed networks No longer have the capacity to harm you Can harm if re-included, which is unlikely.
48. Google Webmaster Tools It’s enough to clean links exported from GWT No need to pay for additional tools. Nice!
49. Don’t remove all your links Identify bad links and remove in stages. Document and communicate frequently.
50. Social Signal Canonicalisation http://dejanseo.com.au/social-signal-consolidation/ © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/
51. © 2013 Dejan SEO - http://dejanseo.com.au/ http://algoroo.com/