Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Believe it or not, your goal with press releases, isn't to get backlinks from press release sites or insert keyword rich urls to your page.  It's to raise awareness and get reporters, bloggers, publishers to notice your content or "news".  Once they know about it, they may take action - link to you, contact you for more information, republish your release, or write their own story based on your release.

Don't expect PR sites to count for much, REGARDLESS of their domain authority.  ezinearticles.com has a sweet DA of 95.  Guess how much Google values a link from them ?  PR sites were impacted by Panda just the same as sites like EZ were.

So needless to say I think you're looking at it all wrong.  In choosing a Press release distributor pick one that can offer you the widest distribution for your newsworthy content.  Unfortunately, you're not gonna achieve that with the free options.   Why would you put your awesome content on sites that humans don't read anyway ?

In summary, stick with PRweb/Prnewswire and avoid putting targeted anchor text in your release.

-Just my opinion.

Why isn't a 301 possible?  If the host doesn't have ISAPI_Rewrite, then a custom 404 that contains a 301 will work.

There would be a big impact on rankings otherwise.

Google doesn't usually take individual action on those spam reports.  They prefer to let their algo take care of it.

So you need to stop worrying about them, and concentrate on you.

A 301 redirect is available as an upgrade.   $12 per year.

http://en.support.wordpress.com/site-redirect/

You'll need it if you want to ensure your site continues ranking after you switch to a new self hosted domain.

Before you do the 301, you need to do a Tools > Export on the old site and then Tools > Import on the new site and be sure to tick download attachments.

Good luck.

From following all the talk, I'm pretty sure they are working on points 2, 3 & 4.

While all that is good, I personally feel they should concentrate on updating more often first, then move towards giving those extra features.  The two month stretch between updates has been a real pain in the ass.  But I'm sure they know that.

Prweb.com.

1. only do it if you have something really newsworthy to publish.  Otherwise, you're wasting your money.

2. don't even try to include a bunch of targeted anchor text everywhere possible.    Less links the better.  The point of the press release isn't to get links from press release sites.

Try using 'broken' link building.

There's several guides and posts here on Seomoz.  Just search.

Basically, you scan through the list of links, and you'll probably find a few broken or 404 pages.  Point those out and also recommend the addition of new resources, including your own.  It works extremely well, and you don't come across as the typical emailer that the webmaster probably encounters everyday.

Round off that strategy with a regular guest posts, link bait and other content marketing ...and you're solid.

For WMT, they seem to update "Links to your site" data every 4-5 days.  And when they do, the data is about 10 - 14 days old.

Don't take these times as an indicator for when Google considers a link or not.  It's not kept closely up to date with their index.

Ahrefs/Majestic are pretty fast in my experience.  Sometimes in as little as 1-2 days for links on popular domains.

For OSE, it's once a month.  The last update post says they'll be cutting that time down to weeks -- and eventually more often as they move from amazon to their own hardware.

No reason not to.  It's still a legitimate way of getting links to your site.  I'd only be careful of the anchor text you suggest in your embed.  You don't want to make it too obvious or  spammy.

Ok.

1.  It's a little bit of both gut feeling and more evidence.  Sometimes you can look at a site and just know that it's not a place you want to be.  Just like you can look at a dark alley and know that's not where you should be at 1am in the night.

You gather the "evidence" by answering those questions I provided.

2.  I am sure (almost positive) that a single link from yahoo dir will be better than dozens from the types of directories you're describing.   There's a reason it costs $299.  If you truly do have a quality site, then you shouldn't be quite worried about inclusion.  They are strict, but not that strict.

First look at the Analytics, and try to determine when exactly the drop in traffic happened.  If it coincides with a known panda or penguin update, then you probably found your problem.

If no luck there, I'd do the reconsideration request but don't mention anything about bad links.  You'll get a reply of either "no manual spam actions" or "please remove more bad links and try again"

I'm afraid, there's no "good" software to "build" links.  Yes, some of them if used smartly may work and work quite well.  But all you're doing is bidding time until Google decides one day that they are going further devalue links that are low quality, non-editorial, and obviously manipulative.

So you have a choice. Either you adopt a strategy of EARNING LINKS rather than "BUILDING" them.  Or you use software and other tactics to artificially inflate your rankings for what will be likely short term gains.

I suggest looking at the graphic at the end of this post:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-seo-it-fing-works-12421

And spend a few weeks going through these posts:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4

You won't regret it.

Pagerank just measures your link popularity.  Rankings are determined by it and hundreds of other factors.  That's why Google and good SEOs will tell you not to focus on PageRank.

You can be PR7 and not rank for anything worthwhile.

Depends.

If it has alot of bad links, it might be better (and alot faster) to start over on a fresh domain with legitimate whitehat tactics.

If you have fewer links to clean up and alot of good links, then I'd try to resurrect.

If you have 50/50 good and bad links, my preference again is to start over on a new domain.  From experience, it is MUCH easier to get GOOD links updated to point to the new domain than it is to get BAD links removed as sites which allow themselves to be spammed with easy links or sites which accept low quality content are often not actively managed or maintained.

5 years old, but still true.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-wisdom-folly-of-directory-link-building

You don't have to worry about the emanuel update just yet.  It's just one notice.

If you filled the counter form, then no, you don't have to do anything else.  There's no need to file a reconsideration request.

I would "noindex,follow" them.  Don't block them with robots.txt.
With that many pages, you're certainly running the risk of being hit by Panda.

Those tag pages shouldn't be ranking, instead the individual posts should be in those positions.  If I were you, I would take the chance and do the noindex, with the expectation that Google will appropriately rank the posts in their place.

I'd say those are better odds as against losing 50 - 80% of traffic in a panda update.

I've had two different sites recover from manual spam actions.  The first one regained all of it search positions (and even ranks better now) within one week after receiving the "manual spam action - revoked" message.

The second one received the same message, but hasn't been able to regain its rankings.

The difference between them is that first had really good links and some bad ones that Google probably wasn't even counting in the first.  So when the penalty was revoked, the rankings returned as they were before.

The second though had alot of bad links.  Many of those were helping it rank, so when they were removed ...the rankings went with them.   But it was clear that the penalty was lifted at about 10 days after receiving the revoked message.

I lost "megasitelinks" as well recently.  I think it may be due to changes or tweaks they are making.

Terms I had sitelinks for before were:

domain.com;
domain

Now I only have sitelinks for:

www.domain.com;
http://www.domain.com

Your site shows similar behavior.  I expect the megasitelinks will reappear soon as they make further changes.

Try this guide. Some templates here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/broken-link-building-guide-from-noob-to-novice

Customize and tailor each email as much as possible.  Really look at the target site, follow them on twitter, learn about them, etc

For example, I recently started following a target.  I was going to do a broken link email, but soon enough, they were ranting in a blog post about their brand usernames being taken by squatters and inactive accounts on twitter/facebook.  I used that to reach out to them and suggest what to do to claim their usernames since I actually had the same problem.  I didn't even mention or request links, but they are now linking to our homepage and referencing other pages on my site.  All I did was sign my emails with my domain name, so they know who i am, where i'm from.

Essentially I made a friend by offering value, and asking for nothing in exchange.  That target would have been tough to get a link from otherwise.

In case that hadn't worked out, I WOULD have eventually asked directly for the link after having made a great first impression.

My experience, has been a few days usually.  It really depends on how deep the categories are.

I wouldn't expect a large boost immediately after them being indexed or cached.

If search results are ranking ....why don't you identify those terms and create a category or index page for each of them.  Write a few sentences about the term in general and then list pages that otherwise would have been returned as search results.

You get Improved navigation + more link juice flow + less issues with Panda.

Press releases really should be saved for content that is really newsworthy.   Does that happen for you every week?

I believe links that come directly from press release sites (such as PRWeb) and the sites that immediately republish them (such as news.yahoo.com) offer very little or no seo value.  The real value comes when a journalist, publisher or blogger notices your release decides to write about you or your product.

Also ...If you must do them weekly, I'd avoid including any targeted anchor text in the releases.

If your idea is to slap on your signature with anchor text heavy links on every forum possible, then no they are not a very good thing to be doing post-2012.

There's a place for them though.  If you're participating on a forum that's relevant to your website then I don't see why you can't place a link or two to your website in the signature.  But I would avoid trying to put manipulative anchor text in there.  Just use the plain URL or a branded term like your business or domain name.

Also, google recently updated their webmaster guidelines with a forum signature example of what you should not be doing:

Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature, for example:
_Thanks, that’s great info!

• Paul
  paul’s pizza san diego pizza best pizza san diego_

Some blackhats/greyhats make it a point to block Mozbot, Majestic and other crawlers from their private networks.   That prevents links from appearing in competitive reports.

So try using Bing's Link Explorer given that they usually allow Bingbot and Googlebot to crawl.

That's a not so light topic, to put into a visual.  If you pursue it, I don't think you should use the exact copy.  Re-work it (but still give attribution) to make it more digestible, fun, and relatable; add examples, references, etc.  That will increases the chances of it being popular.

Here's an example of a "What is" type of content.  It's a video, but it could have easily been an infographic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfRVCaA5o18

Those are mini-site links.

No one will be able to tell you when you'll get the big ones.  But from the looks of it, it'll very soon for you.  I'm seeing you at positions 1 - 4 for that keyword.  I would try to acquire more links and social mentions for each those four URLs.

Edit: Very nice site btw.  Sending to my nieces

Changing that isn't likely to result in much improvement.   It might actually have a negative effect if proper 301 redirects aren't in place.  And even if you do the 301's correctly, there's no guarantee the search engines will see it the same.

You'll get better mileage if you change the page's titles and the content to better satisfy those keywords.

Also rather than listening to what other people say, you should probably check the actual search volume of these keywords and compare.

My thoughts are you should avoid these types of directories (especially the ones that let you in only after you link to them).

Stick with the few general ones that are worth it: Yahoo, DMOZ, Business.com and maybe BOTW.

For the niche related ones you're looking at, have a set of criteria for them to meet in order for you to consider paying them for a link.  I go by:

• Does the directory rank for its homepage keywords and related keywords?
• What's the quality of sites already in the directory ?  Do they rank ?
• Does the directory list sites which you would expect to be listed?  For example, if the directory has a "Social Media Blogs" category, you would expect "Mashable" to be listed even though the owners of mashable may not have submitted their site to it.  In order words, Does the directory add sites on its own or do they just wait on submissions?
• If there is a fee, do they make it clear that the fee is for a review and that a listing is not guaranteed?
• What types of incoming links does the directory itself have?  If they are all spammy, you should avoid it.
• There's a few others, but i forget.

You've no doubt removed alot of links that might have been helping you rank as well as did before.  That may very well be why you haven't regained much of that traffic.

Another reason might be, the site is still under an algo filter like Penguin.  The links you removed may have been enough for the manual reviewer, but not enough for Penguin.  Or maybe it's enough for Penguin, but since it hasn't been refreshed since October ..you can't recover yet.

I've been seeing lawyers, doctors, and dentists doing it with authorship directly to their profile pages.  It stands out, so why not.  Google+ Pages don't display however.   But you should link that with rel=publisher.  [you can do both]

Blocking it in robots.txt will work to hide it from search engines.

If you want to hide it from users or people to who type in the url, you can simply drop a blank "index.html" in the /pdf folder.

I'm listed in those two.  They both have editorial staff. I think they are safe to use.  Also listed in Yahoo Directory, BOTW, business.com, goguides.  Have been trying to get listed in DMOZ, but my competitor is the editor

In addition to directories, look for general and niche reference sites/desks.

He has a wordpress.com site.  How is he going to install plugins?

ugggh...in bold  "We provides Innovative" solutions.

1.  He won't last long.

2.  OSE is updated once a month.  So don't expect fresh links to appear in the index.

Majestic says he's got 11,000 backlinks, Ahrefs says 15,000. All using just "seo" and "seo company" as anchor text.  He's also ranking #9 for seo. Check out the links created per day over at ahrefs:

https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/backlinks-new/subdomains/www.greencowseo.com

Yep, definitely a rank and bank operation.

With a 301 all those links will follow over to the new site.

Start over on a new domain with the same content.

It's easier to get GOOD links updated to point to your new domain, than it is to get BAD ones removed.

Create a sitemap.xml file on website that updates whenever you add new content.  Then go to Webmaster tools and add the sitemap.  That'll be enough.

I would cut down the sitewide links, in particular the ones on other domains you own.  I see the edublogs "main site" has a image link to wpmu.org; too lazy to check the user blogs.  Other than that, I don't see anything that would get you hit by the penguin update.

You might have better luck if you posted in the Webmaster product forums at google.

They also just release this form for people who think they've been wrongly affected.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEVxdmdRWFJRTjRoLWZVTHZkaTBQbkE6MQ&ndplr=1

Does Google really reward white hat?

Yes.

_Since this is now obvious to us as to what he's doing, it begs the question as to WHY Big G can't tell what's going on here. _

The internet is a big place, sites go viral all the time and exhibit the same kind of link velocities.  Given that ..I think they do a good jump of weeding out those who are faking it.

A 301 will transfer those unwanted inbound links to the new url.  You'll essentially have the same problem.

A google employee said recently that if you want to disavow inbound links, you should make the target page 404.  So create a new url for the "damaged" pages, but don't 301 them.  Let the "damaged" pages go to a hard 404 (no softies).

If your site comes up for a reconsideration request, I feel they will count against you.  Just because they are nofollow, doesn't decrease the fact that they are manipulative.

Likewise, nofollow doesn't stop spammers from spamming blogs.  Why should it stop google from determining who's spamming or not.

Pingdom says your page is 5.5mb big.  But it loads pretty quick for me.

You can do alot better.  Here's my recommendations.

1.  Optimize your images before uploading.  I would recommend the WP-Smushit plugin which does it on the fly, but lately the yahoo api hasn't been working.

2.  Switch the W3 Total Cache.  It does the same thing as Super cache, but there's some additional goodies.

3.  Using W3TC, you should enable minify and combine for all the css and js.   The plugin allows you to combine all your css and js in two files (from both your theme and other plugins).

4.  Consider using a CDN.  Again W3TC makes it easy.  I use amazon cloudfront, and it's amazingly cheap.  Essentially, you keep your current hosting, but actually serve all css, js, and images from the CDN.  It makes an enormous difference.

The current data is from around the middle of April.

They're rolling out another update today that should take us into May at least.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156449

Head down to the pattern matching section.

I think

User-agent: *
Disallow: /default.aspx?z=review*

should do the trick though.

That's what I'm saying.  Other than traffic, there's little or no SEO value in the links on these press release sites.  No sense trying to put keywords in there that have the potential to get your caught up in a Penguin filter.  The real SEO value comes when the press releases are picked up and written about.

Looks like he's already implemented many changes since this question was posted.  At the time, he was running just Supercache, now he's got W3TC, MaxCDN and he seems to have optimized some of the images.

Definitely agree with aiming for 1Mb or less per page, though.

Go to Bing.com

Put:

linkfromdomain:yourwebsite.com

into the search box.

The obvious drawback is that Bing's index isn't very quick to update ...especially for sites with little authority.  But it's still handy for a quick check, rather than crawling the target website.

Also remember that blocking in robots.txt doesn't prevent Google from indexing those URLs.  If the URLs are already indexed or if they are linked to, either internally or externally they may still in appear in the index with limited snippet information.  If so, you'll need to add a noindex meta tag to those pages.