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Hello, I want to ask if two domains which r hosted on the same server and have the same ip ( usually happens with shared hosts ) tries to rank for the same keywords in google, does the same ip affects them or not.

Hello all, my question is if my website targets a country abc and I have server in the same country abc compared to suppose I shift my server to country xyz can it effect SEO and ranking of my website ?

Hello community! We are planning to clean up TM and R in the URLs on the website.  Google has indexed these pages but some TM pages are have " " " instead displaying in URL from SERP.    What's your thoughts on a "spring cleaning" effort to remove all TM and R and other unsafe characters in URLs?  Will this impact indexed pages and ranking etc? Thank you! b.dig

Hello, We've been experiencing rank drop in all major keywords for the past 9 months. I've had different people say different things here at Moz about how backlinks effect rank drop. Brilliant answers, but different opinions. Nothing is showing up in GWT for this site. Here's the backlink breakdown: 72 linking root domains. 20 of those are blogs. These blogs have no backlinks in and of themselves, and were created originally as easy links. Not white hat stuff. Three additional root domains are still paid links in this profile, though all but one was made to look editorial. The one that doesn't look editorial has links sprinkled throughout their website, among other paid links. The rest of the linking root domains (49) are legitimate. Again, nothing shows up in GWT. We had 96 root domains last March but in March of 2013 we cut most of the paid links and half (20) of the blogs. This brought our ranking down immediately by 2 or 3 slots. We've been slipping every since. I would like people to speak from experience and let me know if you think the backlinks could be causing the ranking drop and what to do about it. Thanks!

So recently we decided to change the URL structure of our online e-commerce catalogue - to make it easier to maintain in the future. But since the change, we have (partially expected) +30K 404's in GWT - when we did the change, I was doing 301 redirects from our Apache server logs but it's just escalated. Should I be concerned of "plugging" these 404's, by either removing them via URL removal tool or carry on doing 301 redirections? It's quite labour intensive - no incoming links to most of these URL's, so is there any point? Thanks, Ben

Hi, I've attached a copy of our Google ranking for one of our keywords for our site and a competitor. Also shown is the number of external links over time for the same 2 sites. There seems to be a striking resemblance between the 2 sites so could this be the result of negative SEO? What's the best way to determine whether you've been targeted for negative SEO? Thanks, site-analysis.jpg

So, you've recently begun as a SEO manager for a new company who's just launched a lovely, gleaming corporate site to boot. The onsite stuff is taken care of and your attention turns to link building. Now you've been in the game for a few years. You've seen things change in that time. Directories are out. Link networks are done. You're not going to embark on reciprocal linking either because it's bad and looks horribly tacky. Black Hat, White Hat - you know the score. You're lucky that the company produces a page or two of news a day - it's original, informative, is great for keeping your clients informed and you punt this on Twitter and FB. A bit of link bait, eh? But there's a rub: your competitors, with their bigger budgets, and industry clout, have been around for a some time longer than your company has been. They've snapped up all the good (industry-related) sites to get links from. You've approached all potential targets with the offer of good, relevant content and affiliate partnerships but they aren't having any of it. You're simply out-sized by the big boys next door - you can't compete. They're rich kids. There just seems nowhere to get links from. Do you just go the route of press releases and articles? Do you use paid blogging services? Grovel at doorsteps. The industry you're in is incredibly commercial - no meek altruist is going to take pity and give you  a couple backlinks out of kindness. What do you do? What indeed...?

Do bad links "hurt" your ranking or just not add any value. By this I mean, if you do have links from link farms and bad neighbourhoods, would it effectively pull you down in search engine rankings. Or is it more that it's just a waste of time to get these links, as it adds no value to your ranking. Are google saying avoid them because it will not have a positive effect, or avoid them becuase it will have a negative effect. I am under the opinion that it will not harm, but it will not help either. I think this because at the end of the day you are not 100% in control of your inbound links, any bad site could add you and if a competitor, god forbid, wanted to play some black hat games, couldn't they just add you to thousands of bad sites to pull your ranking down? Interested to hear your opinions on the matter, or any "facts" if they are out there.