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Hi, We have our existing mobile site that contains interlinking in footer & content and new mobile site that does not have interlinking. We will show existing mobile site to google crawler & new mobile site to users. Will this be taken as black hat by Google. The mobile site & desktop site will have same url across devices & browsers. Regards

Hello, Back Story I have a client (law firm) who has a large .html website. He has been doing his own SEO for years and it shows. I think the only reason he reached out to a professional is because he got a huge penalty from Google last fall and fell very far down in rankings. Although, he still retains a #1 spot in Yahoo for his site for the keyword phrase he wants. I have been creating a new WordPress theme for the client and creating all new pages and updating the formatting/SEO. From the beginning I have told the client that when we delete the old site and install a new WordPress site (same domain name, but different page hierarchy) he will take a bump in the search engines until all the 301 redirects get sorted out. I told him I can't guarantee any time frame of how long the dip in SEO will last. Some sites bounce right back while others take longer. Last week, during a discussion, he tells me that if he loses his #1 ranking on Yahoo for any length of time he thinks he will go out of business. Needless to say I was a little taken back. When it comes to SEO I use best practice techniques, do my research, stay on top of trends but I never guarantee rankings when moving to a new site. I'm thinking of ways I can help elevate any type of huge SEO drop off and help the client. Here is what I was thinking of suggesting to the client and I would love some feedback. Main Question He has another domain he isn't doing anything with. It's pretty much his domain name with pc added. I was thinking about using that domain to create a simple 1-2 page WordPress website with brand new content (no duplicate content) aimed at attracting his keyword phrase. I would do as much SEO as I could with a 1-2 page site and give it a month or so to see if this smaller site can get into the top #10 in Yahoo, or higher. Then, when we move the site he will still have a website on the first page of Yahoo for his keyword phrase. I hope I explained it clearly 🙂 I would be open to any suggestions anyone may have. Thanks

Reading the moz article on internal links, it mentions that the optimal link structure for a website should look like a pyramid. Are these one-way links or reciprocal links? Does it matter when trying to get keyword optimized pages to rank*? If so, under what conditions should one be used instead of the other. Related: 
Are internal reciprocal links weaker than one way? Whiteboard Friday - Sitewide, Reciprocal, and Directory Links I am trying to get the right pages to rank for their corresponding keywords, but under the On-Page optimization, the pages are ranking for the wrong keyword.

Site:  12 year old financial service 'information' site with lead gen business model. Historically has held top 10 positions for top keywords and phrases. Background:  The organic traffic from Google has fallen to 50% of what it was over the past 4 months compared to the same months last year.  While several potential factors could be responsible/contributing (not limited to my pro-active removal of a dozen old emat links that may be perceived as unnatural despite no warning), this drop coincides with the same period the 'mobile site' was launched.  Because I admittedly know the least about this potential cause, I am turning to the forum for assistance. Because the site is ~200 pages and contains many 'custom' pages with financial tables, forms, data pulled from 3rd parties, custom/different layouts we opted for creating a mobile site of only the top 12 most popular pages/topics just to have a mobile presence (instead of re-coding the entire site to make it responsive utilizing a mobile css). -These mobile pages were set up in an "m." subdomain. -We used bi-directional tagging placing a rel=canonical tag on the mobile page, and a rel=alternate tag on the desktop page.  This created a loop between the pages, as advised by Google. -Some mobile pages used content from a sub page, not the primary desktop page for a particular topic.  This may have broken the bi-directional 'loop', meaning the rel=canonical on the mobile page would point to a subpage, where the rel=alternate would point to the primary desktop page, even though the content did not come from that page, necessarily.  The primary desktop page is the one that ranks for related keywords.  In these cases, the "loop" would be broken.  Is this a cause for concern?  Could the authority held by the desktop page not be transferred to the mobile version, or the mobile page 'pull away' or disperse the strength of the desktop page if that 'loop' was not connected?  Could not setting up the bi-directional tags correctly cause a drop in the organic rankings? -Our developer verified the site is set up according to Google's guidelines for identifying device screen size and serving appropriate version of page.  -Are there any tools or utilities that I can use to identify issues, and/or verify everything is configured correctly? -Are we missing anything important in the set-up/configuration? -Could the use of a brand new subdomain 'm.' in and of itself be causing issues? -Have I identified any negative seo practices or pitfalls?  Am I missing or overlooking something? While i would have preferred maintaining a single, responsive, site with mobile css, it was not realistic given the various layouts, and owner's desire to only offer the top pages in mobile format. The mobile site may have nothing to do with the organic drop, but I'd like to rule it out if so, and I have so many questions. If anyone could address my concerns, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Greg

We've recently changed our site over to a new hosting system, we've got similar pages and are now looking at changing the URL's to ensure we do not loose our link juice from our previous site. My question is regarding the URL's, is it worth us changing our URL's to MVC friendly URL have a good or bad affect on our rankings and or link juice? Thanks

I have a static html site which I cannot update myself. What solutions/ programs would you recommend for gaining the ability to update it myself? I'm reluctant to switch to WordPress because the sites that use any CMS that are hosted by my web hosting company get routinely hacked. Thank you!

We have an issue with our recently introduced ‘mega-menu’, which has increased our link count on all pages (as it is a global menu across the entire website). Is it acceptable to load our mega-menu drop-down content onto the page via AJAX in order to reduce the number of on-page links, leaving only the department headings as on-page links (in order to keep the user experience the same/similar)? Or is dynamic loading of link content frowned upon by Google? We would still have the ‘AJAX'd’ links available as on-page/crawlable links in the left menu of the department landing pages, by navigating via the department headings. Any help/advice that could be offered is welcomed. Thanks

So we have operated one of our retail sites, BonitaJ.com for many years now.  Through a lot of work, link building and optimizing around 2009, we were in a prominent spot on the 1st page in google for just about every main term we were targeting. Towards the end of 2009, nearing December or so, we started slipping here and there, and began being displaced for our main terms by newer sites that according to several factors, don't have near the strength our site holds.  And by strength, I simply mean, based on link volume, mozbar stats and many other factors, it seems we should rank well above most, but still find ourselves just hanging to 8-10 positions on page one, and in many cases somewhere on page two for terms it seems like we should be in the top 5 positions for. I believe some of our slippage is due to google's devaluing of many of our incoming links.  We achieved our early ranking dominence off a lot of directory links and things like that over time, but ever since 2009 when links began getting devalued we immediately broke into getting quality blog links via LEGIT blog relationships where we'd offer up contests, bloggers would review our products and so on, and these relationships continue through today.  We also do a lot of guest blog writing, article postings on various networks, as well as press releases, all with the goal of keeping our link profile happy and healthy.  So we still have work to do there, but we're on the right track. So my thought is that to get back over the hump, we simply need to continue with the legit link building methods, but I'm also thinking that maybe we need to improve some things navigationally. Things I was hoping people would chime in on are.... 1.  If we're mainly trying to target bridal/wedding related jewelry terms, should we ditch the "Jewelry Sets, Pearl Jewelry & Swarovski Crystal Jewerly" terms from our main navbar.  They are featured inside each of the categories, and in the end, we don't rank or pull traffic for them anyway.  Would ditching them from the main nav, help pass more juice from home page and other pages to the pages that better target our niche? 2.  A while back, we ditched including actual product on each of the main category pages.  I'm leaning towards breaking the main category pages up into sections, for instance once on the "Bridal Jewelry" page, it would list each of the sub-cats, with a 5-10 product sampling of the most popular items, with a link that says "view all necklaces" at the end of each sub-section.  Do you think that more wise than just trying to direct them into the sub-cats with no actual product offering? 3.  Anything else you see glaringly wrong with what we're trying to do?  This site is just on the edge of blowing up from a ranking perspective if I can just get some confirmation on some things that I know I should do, but I'm wary due to fear of screwing things up.  If I can get some solid feedback, the rest is history.