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Hi, We have recently received the "deceptive content" warning from Google about some of our website pages. We couldn't able to find the exact reason behind this. However, we placed some script outside the HTML tag in some pages (Not in the same pages with the above warning). We wonder whether this caused an issue to Google to flag our pages. Please help. Thanks

Hello everyone, I have no idea how to ask this question, so I'm going to give it a shot and hopefully someone can help me!! My company is called Eteach, so when you type in Eteach into Google, we come in the top position (phew!) but there are 6 links that appear underneath it (I've added a picture to show what I mean). How do you change these links?? I don't even know what to call them, so if there is a particular name for these then please let me know! They seem to be an organic rank rather than PPC...but if I'm wrong then do correct me! Thanks! zorIsxH.jpg

I wanted to throw this out where we have been seeing so much emphasis on Google cracking down on bad linking, have they let up enforcement on manipulative on-page tactics that have faded in current years? I've been seeing hidden text popping up again and ranking. Here is an example. Google "landscaping Portsmouth NH" and find the #1 result. Now find "Portsmouth" on the page. So what I find interesting, the site has a clean backilnk profile, but that's a pretty blatant manipulation hiding those keywords. What I find interesting is I filled out a report on it a year ago. (I'm not a big "fill out spam report" guy, I was curious if Google would take action). A year later it is still #1 for the competitive keyword. So I'm curious if others have seemed similar trends like font-size:0px, or text color as the background popping back up and ranking. I would love other's thoughts on it.

There are a number of low-quality “exact-match” domains that are ranking well for the term “locum tenens”. I don’t want to specifically mention any sites, but there are some with poor content and very few quality backlinks that are on page one. The only reason I can see for them ranking so well is the fact that “locum” and/or “tenens” are in the URL. It’s very frustrating because we have worked hard to do all the right things (regular blogging, high-quality content, quality backlinks, etc.) to build our domain authority and page authority so they are better than these sites, yet they still out-rank us. Our site is www.bartonassociates.com. Could it have something to do with the term “locum tenens”, which is a latin phrase? Is it possible that because it is a latin term that it somehow slipped through the cracks and avoided the update that was supposed to eliminate this? If so, what can we do to get some justice?

Hello, One of my client's sites is ranking lower than he should. This happened when we took off backlinks (20 little blogs, several site-wide paid links. It really dropped the site, but it had to be done. Since then we've increased his # of root domains by 10% through white hat link building in his non-competitive niche, and rankings are still poor. I know that's not much in the way of added backlink value, but we're working on it. My question is, how have the recent (and coming) updates possibly effected us. We want to take the remaining problem areas off right away, but another drop in traffic is not a good idea. Even though the blogs (see below) have no backlinks of themselves, they cause drops when taken off) He still has -20 little blog backlinks w/ a quarter of them being exact match anchor text.
-1 sitewide paid link - an image,  exact match alt tag anchor text
-1 non-site-wide paid links that is an image near the footer, exact match alt tag anchor text.
-3 links on a domain, this one looks fairly editorial, but there are a bunch of paid links on that page. Changing to non-exact-match  anchor text
-2 links on two domains that look completely editorial with no other paid links on that page. non-exact-match anchor text -70 backlinks total with about 1/3 being problematic. How does this site look in regards to updates and when to take links off without tanking our site even more? Thanks.

Hi Guys, Will creating a new Google places listing for a business have any effect their current position one spot for their major geo location keyword? I.e restaurants perth - say they are ranking no 1 above all the places listings if they set up a places listing would they lose that position and merge with all the other places accounts? Or would they have that listing as well as the places listing? I have been advised it could be detrimental to set up the places account if this is the case does anyone know any ways around this issue as the business really needs a places page for google maps etc. Appreciate some guidance Thanks. BC

We have a client in the moving business and I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the "local" results and the number of them that are not following Google's guidelines for Google Local accounts. 3 of them are using exact match keyword strings as their company names. I've reported all 3, every week for the last 2 months and have not seen a single dip in the rankings. Meanwhile our client has a duplicate listing we've verified and "suspended" and it hasn't changed for 4 months! Any tips? I've attached a photo of the listings as well. xwWZWyT.gif

Greetings everyone! I've really been enjoying my Moz membership these past few weeks after studying my data and comparing it with my competitors I think it's high time I started asking some questions. The website I manage has a very good ranking history but over the past year we've seen a slight decline in our SERP positions.  I don't think this has anything to do with on-page optimization but rather with our link profile.  We have only about 10k links total while they have 175k - our mozranks are nearly identical, but his moztrust is 4.46 and our's is 3.51. I am guessing, on our end, I need to remove some of these low-quality nofollow links (though I'll be honest I have no idea how we obtained them to begin with) but what I don't understand is how our competitor is ranking so well because when I browse their link profile, it is filled with paid link and traded link directories that don't appear to be penalized for what they are.  I was under the impression that this was bad SEO, but now I am thinking I should just play his own game and submit to these sites too. Looking for any advice or ideas on a better way to compete... ❤ Jennifer