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When the keyword "acls recertification" (an important keyword for our client) is typed into the Google search box, the word "recertification" is underlined in red.  Note that you only need to type "acls rec" to make the red underline appear.BUT, Google does not underline the word "recertification" when it is typed into the search box alone, nor does Google underline the word "recertification" when the following keywords are searched:

• cpr recertification
• bls recertification
• pals recertification

^These are all closely related to the keyword "acls recertification," so this spell check behavior is very inconsistent.Why does this matter?  Because no matter how close you come to typing "acls recertification," Google's autocomplete suggestions never include "acls recertification" (because of the perceived misspelling?).BUT, Google does suggest "acls recertification online" in the dropdown menu.  If you select the "acls recertification online" suggestion then backspace until the word "online" is gone, the red underline disappears, and "acls recertification" becomes an autocomplete suggestion.  VERY strange behavior...I have replicated this issue on various depersonalized browsers and devices, so I am confident that this is not related to my personal settings.This keyword contributes to a large portion of our client's business (they specialize in acls certification and recertification), so you can imagine how concerning this is for us.  Note that until very recently (3-4 months ago), this keyword did NOT have any spell-check issues. This keyword averages 2400 searches per month according to AdWords which should be enough volume to allow Google to recognize the correct spellingI posted this issue in the Google product forums, where I was advised to submit feedback directly on the search results page via Google's "feedback" link.  I have submitted this feedback to Google, but I thought I would bring this to the MOZ community as well to see if anyone has experienced a similar issue, or has any ideas as to what could be causing this issue.

Hi Jimmy,

I do not have any hard data to refute what you are experiencing; however, I will share it is highly likely the spike is related to other factors and the TLD being .org or .com is completely unrelated. It would be an exceptionally major change for Google to change how they value TLDs. Such a change would be front page news on all the SEO sites.

Hi George. These items you referred to are not mechanical as you suggest.

Title - How do you determine a "good" title? If your site is Wikipedia, a tool can certainly be used. Wikipedia titles are short and focused on a single keyword. The H1 tag and URL match or closely mirror the title. The first words of the first sentence also use the title.

For sites other than Wikipedia, how do you measure the quality of a title? Tools can share whether or not a keyword is identified in the title. They can share whether a title has more than 70 characters. If you desire optimal results for the site, other factors must be evaluated. Let's look at the title of this Q&A and just think of the first part you shared, "Web Site Migration Testing". Should it be "Web Site" or "Website"? "Testing" or "Tests". What about "Website Migration" or "Best Website Migration Tools". Or "What are the Best Website Migration Tools?" There are dozens of other variants. How will a tool decide upon the optimal title? Will it consider keyword research or existing content on the site? What about competitiveness....and so forth.

The same logic applies to the rest of the criteria you mentioned. For ALT tags the first and foremost consideration I use is "Does the ALT tag accurately represent the image? If a blind person heard the ALT tag read to them, would they be able to accurately describe the image?" As an SEO, I base image naming and content first and foremost on the user experience and then make minor adjustments to improve SEO. Theoretically, you can have a tool recognize images, provide the ALT text and adjust for SEO, but we are a long way off from that vision becoming a live tool in the field we can use.

You can certainly use tools to gather that feedback for specific elements such as title length, does a meta description exist, does an ALT tag exist, etc. As to determining whether those elements are ideally optimized to provide the best results for a particular client, that requires the human element in my experience.

You can use Moz, WooRank or other tools to review a site, obtain a grade along with other helpful information; however, you cannot depend on these tools to even come close to performing the type of analysis you are seeking. To use an analogy, you can use a template to draw up a will or other legal document, but if it is really important you would always work directly with a lawyer. The same applies for other fields whether it is a medical opinion or SEO advice.

Let's break down one component of your request: "URLs ok? :: Is the URL mapping ok, old to new, best web page?"

What EXACTLY is meant by URLs ok? A full breakdown would be:

1. Protocol. Are pages served as http or https? Which is best for the site?

2. Is the domain name optimal for the site?

3. What is the best URL paths for the site? If you operate a clothing e-commerce site should the primary category be the brand? gender (men vs women)? kids? something else such as clothing type (shirts / pants / suits / etc). That decision cannot be made by any tool.

4. What about id numbers? For a small site, a url will appear cleanest without product ids. For a large site, an id number is needed in the URL to ensure fast page loads as each URL needs to be delivered by a database and text searches take too much time. Even if you have a small site now, what are the future growth plans? How does a tool adjust for these factors?

5. Should the brand name be included in the URL? How about the product name? How about the product description?

6. Best web page? Sites often provide numerous pages on closely related topics. Let's say you asked on Moz what is the best page to discuss web crawling tools. There are numerous articles discussing Moz's tool, Zenu, Screaming Frog and other tools. There are articles which compare web crawlers. How can a tool look at your URL and decide which page is ideal? By date? Text match? Google has billions invested in trying to provide such feedback and they clearly get it wrong at times.

There is certainly feedback a tool can offer. For example, if a url ends in .html the tool can recognize the technology extension and recommend to drop it. Very simple. With enough time and money, tools can be built to do almost anything. You presented a laundry list of needs, each of which requires a professional opinion. Even if you were to find a tool which provided responses to all of the inquiries you shared, I am highly confident the responses would not be optimal.

I hope you find this response helpful.

-Ryan

@Teginder, you asked "But I think, it is really tough to understand what type of a link is organic ? Sometime I feel a links seems pretty natural is also gets caught under Google violation radar. WHY?"

The likely answer is your thoughts about whether a link is organic or manipulative are not calibrated to how Google views links. It takes a lot of time and experience to consistently reach the proper diagnosis for each link.

@Monali, you asked about links from "your sister websites". In my experience, people who ask this type of question have many "sister websites" and the links are likely deemed to be manipulative. Why offer the link from "500 pages"? Is the link relevant for users on all those pages?

You need to be VERY careful when you create a link from one of your owned websites to another, especially if you have been already caught violating Google's Quality Guidelines. The safest approach is to either remove, nofollow or 302 the links from your own websites which point at each other.

If you operate two websites where website A sells sneakers and website B sells socks, then it may make sense to provide links from the sneaker site to the sock site on most pages. With that said, it would likely be best to simply combine the websites into a single site.

The summary here: it is possible for a site owner to provide links between two sites which are not manipulative, but the links need to be presented in a high quality manner. The overwhelming majority of site owners who ask me this type of question operate many websites, have a manipulative link issue, and the interlinking between their own websites is a contributing factor to that issue.

Hi Monali,

You asked "do we need to contact websites which have domain authority more than 75 or 85 ? Or the point is, even if the website is 99 domain authority , do we need to contact them to remove it?"

Once you compile a list of site backlinks, the next step is to review links from each domain to determine if the links are organic (i.e. comply with Google's Quality Guidelines) or manipulative in nature. To that end, DA is irrelevant.

I am sure no one at Google considers the DA or PR of a page when making a determination of a link's authenticity. For example, all links from any subdomain on wordpress.com, blogspot.com, plus.google.com and so forth have very high DA, but they can still be manipulative. There are new sites created daily with a DA of 1, yet their links are organic.

You also asked "There are few forums and websites, where our links are showing from forum signatures, etc. "

In most cases, forum signature links would likely be considered manipulative. If you provided a forum signature which sincerely added value to each and every post, those links could be considered organic, but if you are asking the question, that is likely not the case.

@Teginder, you commented "...you just need to remove links only if those domains have no relevancy to your niche"

Relevancy to a site's niche is not a metric in determining whether a link is organic or manipulative. The link's compliance to Google's Quality Guidelines should be the focus.

I could have a site which sells shirts and gain links from a graphic design or UX site that talks how good or bad my web site design looks. That link would not be relevant to selling shirts but would still be perfectly organic. On the other hand, many links are built from relevant sites that are manipulative.

You each are focusing on what value a link offers to the site. The link's value is not relevant to determining if it is organic vs manipulative.

There are tens of millions of active websites will ???trillions / quadrillions or some other number which is beyond the boundaries of human concept of web pages. Each company, including Google, sets their servers to crawl the web each month. Even large companies cannot provide enough web servers to crawl every page every month, not to mention every day.

Accordingly, each offers a piece of the puzzle. Google's WMT report shows approximately 50% of the backlinks for your site. The other reports each fill in part of the remaining data.

If you earn a link from high quality sites like the New York Times, it is likely all the tools will show the link. When you are dealing with web spam, a lot of it comes from low quality sites which are not frequently crawled. OSE is a fantastic tool but you cannot depend on it to show all the links to your site.

There are numerous tools which provide backlink data. You will find each tool provides different data, which can be frustrating. The best solution is to use a combination of tools. In my experience, the combination which always works to resolves Google penalties is: Google WMT + Bing WMT + OSE + AHREFS + Majestic.

OSE, for example, provides a maximum of 25 links per domain. The important thing is to obtain a representative sample of links from each domain to determine if the domain is providing organic or manipulative links. In most cases, if you have more than 25 links from a domain, you likely have a site wide link or a common link, such as in the sidebar.

I am working on a moz blog post which will include an e-mail template. I'll get back to you on this request.

You are welcome to use nofollow links in any manner you see fit. If these links actually drive quality traffic to your site, go ahead and leave them.

As a note, not all vB forums provide nofollow links. It is up to each forum operator.

Your data sources are correct (AHREFs, Bing, Ose & Majestic) but I recommend including Bing as well. The data is free and you will find at least some links not shown in other sources.

The link prioritization you shared is absolutely incorrect.

"Priority 1: Clean up site-wide links with money-words; if possible keep a single-page link"

While it is true site-wide links are commonly manipulative, removing the site wide link and keeping a single one does not necessarily make it less manipulative. You have only removed one of the elements which are often used to identify manipulative links.

"Priority 2: Clean up or rename all money keyword links for money keywords in the top 10 anchor link name distribution"

A manipulative link is still manipulative regardless of the anchor text used. Based in April 2012, Google used anchor text as a means to identify manipulative links. That was over 18 months ago and Google's link identification process has evolved substantially since that time.

"Priority 3: Clean up no-brand sitewide links; if possible keep a single-page link"

Same response as #1 & 2

"Priority 4: Clean up low-quality links (other niche or no link juice)"

See below

"Priority 5: Clean up multiple links from same IP C class"

The IP address should not be given any consideration whatsoever. You are using a concept that had validity years ago and is completely outdated.

bonegear.net  IP address 66.7.211.83

vitopian.com  IP address 64.37.49.163

There are no commonalities between the above two IP addresses, be it C block or otherwise, yet they are both hosted on the same server.

You have identified the issue affecting your site (Step 1) and collected a solid list of your backlinks using multiple sources (Step 2). The backlink report is an excellent step which places you well above most site owners and SEOs in your situation.

Step 3 - Identify links from every linking domain.

a. Have an experienced, knowledgeable human visit each and every linking domain. Yes, that is a lot of work but it is what's necessary if you are going to accurately identify all of the manipulative links. Prior to beginning this step, be absolutely sure the person can accurately identify manipulative links with AT LEAST 95% accuracy, although 100% is strongly desired.

b. Document the effort. I have had 3 clients who approached me with a Penguin issue, we confirmed there was not any manual action in place at the time we began the clean up process, but before we finished the sites incurred a manual penalty. Solid documentation of the clean up effort is required by Google in case the Penguin issue morphs into a manual penalty. Also, it just makes sense. You mentioned 50+ web properties so clearly others will be performing these tasks.

c. Audit the effort. A wise former boss once stated "You must inspect what you expect". Unless you carefully audit the work, the process will fail. Evaluators will mis-identify links. You will lose some quality links and manipulative links will be missed as well.

d. While you are on the site, capture manipulative site's e-mail address and contact forum URL (if any). This information is helpful to contact site owners to request link removal.

Step 4 - Conduct a Webmaster Outreach Campaign. Each manipulative domain needs to be contacted in a comprehensive manner. In my experience, most SEOs and site owners do not put in the required level of effort.

a. Send a professional request to the site's WHOIS e-mail address.

b. After 3 business days if no response is received, send the same letter to the site's e-mail address found on the website.

c. After another 3 business days, if no response is received submit the e-mail via the site's contact form. Take a screenshot of the submission on the site (not required for Penguin as no documentation is, but it is helpful for the process).

All of the manipulative link penalties (Penguin and manual) I have worked with have been cleaned up manually. With that said, we use Rmoov to manage the Webmaster Outreach process. It sends and maintains a copy of every e-mail sent. It even has a place to add the Contact Form URL. A big time saver.

If a site owner responds and removes the link, that's great. CHECK IT! If there are only a few links, manually confirm link removal. If there are many URLs, use Screaming Frog or another tool to confirm link removal.

If a site owner refuses or requests money, you can often achieve link removal by having further respectful conversations.

If a site owner does not respond, you can use "extra measures". Call the phone number listed in WHOIS. Send a physical letter to the WHOIS address. Reach out to them on social media sites. Is it a .com domain with missing WHOIS information? You can report them on INTERNIC. Is it a spammy wordpress.com or blogspot site? You can report that as well.

When Matt Cutts introduced the Disavow Tool, he clearly said "...at the point where you have written to as many people as you can, multiple times, you have really tried hard to get in touch and you have only been able to get a fraction of those links down and there is still a small fraction of those links left, that's where you can use our Disavow Tool".

The above process satisfies that requirement. In my experience, not much less than the above process meets that need. The overwhelming majority of those tackling these penalties try to perform the minimal amount of work possible, which is why forums are flooded with complaints about numerous attempts to remove manipulative link penalties and failing.

Upon completion of the above, THEN upload a Disavow list of the links you could not remove after every reasonable human effort. In my experience you should have removed at least 20% of the linking DOMAINS (with rare exceptions).

It can take up to 60 days thereafter, but if you truly cleaned up the links in a quality manner, then the Penguin issues should be fully resolved.

The top factors in determining whether you succeed or fail are:

1. Your determination to follow the above process thoroughly

2. The experience, training and focus of your team

You can resolve the issue in one round of effort and have the Penguin issue resolved within a few months....or you can be one of those site owners who thinks it is impossible and be struggling with the same issue a year later. If you are not 100% committed, RUN AWAY. By that I mean change domain names and start over.

Good Luck.

TLDR - Don't try to fool Google. Anchor text and site wide links are part of the MECHANISM used to identify manipulative links. Don't confuse the mechanism with the message. Google's clear message: EARN links, don't "build" links. Polishing up the old manipulative links is a complete waste of your time. AT BEST, you will enjoy limited success for a period of time until Google catches up. Many site owners and SEOs have already been there, and it is a painful process.

I have gained a lot of experience cleaning up spammy links over the past 6 months. This task is the most time consuming and unrewarding task in SEO. It is also necessary if your site has been manually penalized for "inorganic" links.

Does anyone have any suggestions on getting these removed?

I worked with Google on this topic for a client. My client's site was manually penalized specifically for "inorganic links". The client is an industry leader in their niche doing about $20 million in sales per year. They had millions of manipulative links pointed to their site from over 1000 linking root domains.

Step one: Google was absolutely firm in their expectation the links be removed prior to the penalty being lifted. This client had over 100 websites which were various forms of their main site (i.e. duplicate content). All the duplicate content sites were removed except the legitimate, human translated language variations of the site. We reported to Google these efforts which resulted in about 97% of the links being removed. Google responded that it was not enough and they required the links from the other external sites to be removed.

Step two of the process: we created an Excel spreadsheet to contact the sites giving priority to the sites with the most links. We tracked the following information: date of contact, initials of employee who performed contact, URL of domain, method of contact (e-mail / phone / contact us page), we provided a link to a copy of each e-mail we sent (see notes below), the date a response was received (if any), and a confirmation of whether the link was still visible.

Regarding the e-mails which were sent, they were very polite customized letters for each site. The letter format was as follows: introduction, description of the problem (i.e. our website has been penalized by Google...), the request to remove links, the location (URL) of all known links within their domain, and we thanked them for their efforts.

The results were we contacted hundreds of domains. The response rate was 14%. In this case, the company had these links built by another "SEO company" mostly between 2007 - 2009.

We reported our results to Google, shared the documentation and their response was:

"Thank you for your request and all of the follow up analysis. We've reviewed your case again, and unfortunately there are still many inorganic links pointing to the site. For example:..."

That led to step three: we went back to the original list of linking sites. For each and every site we covered four methods of contact: e-mail (if their address could be located), phone call (if a phone number could be located), contact us page (if the site offered one) and we looked up their WHOIS information and used that method of contact if the information was different then what was previously available.

Additionally, we went ahead and completed the list of contacting EVERY site who showed a link in Google WMT, even the hundreds of sites with only a single link. We knew our efforts would fail (14% rate of success) prior to starting so our focus was providing solid documentation. If you named a link we could present a copy of an e-mail request sent to remove the link, the date/time of when it was sent along with who sent it. That was the goal.

After submitting this final information to Google, they "partially" removed the manual penalty. The site seemed to rank normally but not as well as before. Google's response:

"Hello Ryan,

Thank you for your follow up email and all of the information provided. The documentation you provided was very helpful in processing and understanding this case.

After re-evaluating your site’s backlinks we are able to partially revoke a manual action. There are still inorganic links pointing to your site that we have taken action on. Once you’ve been able to make further progress in getting these links removed, feel free to reply to this email with the details of your clean-up effort"

Another client was also penalized but they had a single SEO company build most of their inorganic links. In this instance, the SEO company was able to remove almost all the links directly. They had control over many of the linking sites, they had retained their usernames / passwords to forums, etc. The success rate of link removal clearly depends on how long ago the links were built, how spammy the sites are (i.e. if you build links on disposable sites which are not monitored, you clearly wont find help having them removed) and how the links were built.

Good Luck,

-Ryan

Hi Greg.

Having a site scraped is unfortunately common. It is a frustrating experience which takes time and effort to address. Below are some suggestions:

• going forward you can copyright at least some pages within your site. Even if you do not wish to copyright every page, by having some pages copyrighted you will have very clear legal rights if your entire site is scraped.

• add the canonical tag to each page, along with various clues throughout the site to indicate it really belongs to you. Generally speaking, these operations are a bit lazy which is why they steal from others rather then create their own content. If they do not recognize the canonical tag then you might receive all the SEO credit for the second site, and either way Google will understand to index your site as the primary source of the content.

• You might rename a random image to mysite.com.jpg as a suggestion. There are numerous other means by which you can drop indicators the content is really yours. The reason this step is helpful is clearly the site which stole your content fall into the no ethics category. They clearly know what they are doing and likely have used this practice before and will do so again. As part of the process, they often will deny everything and may even claim you stole the site from them.These clues can assist proving you are the true owner.

• you should contact the offending site via registered mail with a "Cease and Desist" notification. Be certain to provide a deadline. I use 10 days as a timeline.

• If the C&D does not work, contact their web host with a DMCA notice. If the host is reputable, they will honor the DMCA and take down the site. The problem is the host is required to contact the site and share your claim with the site owner. The site owner can respond with a statement saying the content is theirs, and then there is nothing further the host can do UNLESS you have a registered copyright or you have a helpful host who is willing to consider your evidence (i.e. the clues you left) and help you (their non-customer) over their paying customer. Some hosts are good this way.

• You can always take legal action and sue the website and host in court. Again, the copyright is very important in court as it provides you with a significant advantage. Some sites will actually defend themselves in court with the intention to delay the trial as long as possible and drive up your expenses to literally tens of thousands of dollars so you give up.

The above process will work in a lot of cases, but not all. When it doesn't work, you have to take other approaches. Sometimes the site is owned, operated and hosted in a foreign country. Sometimes the country does not have enforceable copyright laws. In these cases, and in the others above, you can file the complaint with Google and they have the ability to remove the offending site from their index.

Does anybody really think that SEOMoz provides much value?

When measuring the value of anything, it is important to align metrics. More specifically, how do YOU measure value?

For some users, access to the Q&A alone is easily worth $99/month. The ability to ask a specific question and receive fast, custom feedback easily exceeds the subscription price. Furthermore, you have the ability to ask one question per month directly to the SEOmoz staff. Many SEOs are subscribers and use that feature when they are stuck on a problem.

You seem to be measuring the value of SEOmoz based on two factors: crawl tool and keyword reporting. I would first share there are many other tools SEOmoz offers such as access to Followerwonk, Open Site Explorer and the SEO toolbar. Personally, I subscribe to AHREFs solely for their backlink reporting and their lowest plan is currently $79/month. SEOmoz offers a suite of tools and other valuable assets worth hundreds of dollars easily justifying the monthly price if you benefit from even a small portion of their toolset.

With respect to the keyword rank, how exactly are you measuring your keyword rank? The SEOmoz toolbar has a function which allows you to depersonalize your search results. If you are not doing such, any rankings you see are skewed by your personal data. A few examples: your search history on that browser (cache), your search history with Google (if you are logged into Google), your search location, your +1s, etc. Also, search results vary by physical location as well.

With respect to the crawl tool, are you sure you have truly corrected the error? I am sure you took action to correct the error, but the question is whether you truly fixed the issue. Are you using a CMS such as WordPress? If so, many site owners who lack professional training in web development lose control of their site URLs which causes crawl issues.

In summary, you brought up two specific issues. My first suggestion is to assume the issue is with your work rather then the tool. Ask for help with each issue in the Q&A to better understand the problem. If there is indeed a problem with the SEOmoz tools, report it to the help desk. In the upper-right corner of your screen, use the Help drop down. The team is available every weekday. http://www.seomoz.org/help

Hi Bryan.

I like the concept of what you are trying to do. Basically you wish to partner with someone, gain positive results then share the profit. It sounds great. Below are some reasons why the two approaches you propose aren't the right ones for you nor the SEO.

Option A (buy a SEO package) is a good deal for the SEO, but not for the client. My suggestion would be to avoid most SEO "packages". From a marketing perspective, a SEO package sounds good. The provider and client both have a clear, measurable understanding of what is involved. Most packages involve quantifiable results such a produce 5 articles, 200 backlinks, reporting, "setup" of blogs/landing pages and many other seo related functions. An example of such a page: http://www.seogodfather.com/seo-packages.php

I wish to clarify I have never used the above service and I have no feedback about the company, good or bad. I am using the link solely as an example of a common form of seo packages.

Frankly, I dislike the concept. Why? Because the provider can offer every one of those services and the client may not receive any tangible benefit (i.e. increased sales/profits).

When I began offering SEO my primary focus was rankings. Backlinks, articles, and other SEO "stuff" mostly were a means to an end, and the purpose of performing those tasks was to earn better rankings, right? Or so I thought until I had worked with a client, earned great rankings but the client was still unhappy. A similar story to my experience can be found here: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/seo-better-webdesign.html

TL;DR - A main reason for SEO packages is so a SEO company can say "hey, I did my job. Look at the checklist." Your SEO results will be better if you avoid the packages and retain a knowledgeable SEO who is focused on improving your sales/profits, not working on a package checklist which may not help you achieve your business goals.

**Option B **(offer a % of sales increase) is a good deal for the SEO, but not necessarily for you. The SEO's incentive is sales. One proven means to obtain sales is by using AdWords or other online advertising. At the SEO's direction you spend $50k on AdWords and maybe you earn $60k in sales, but since you have operating expenses you take a loss, but still have to pay the SEO their $6k fee. There are many other ways this scenario can be manipulated but the end conclusion is a sales-based contract is probably not in your best interest as a business.

The next logical suggestion would be Option C, a profit-based contract. The goal of your business isn't just to improve sales, but to profitably grow sales. You could adjust your contract to account for profits. You would face challenges similar to those mentioned above. You would need to open your books up to the SEO. All aspects of your offline business could be analyzed and this line of thinking may take you to places you really don't wish to go.

Some random thoughts on the SEO / client relationship.....

SEO works best when the provider becomes entrenched in your business. EVERYTHING can impact SEO. You can have #1 rankings in search engines, a great site and then have a customer service issue which is completely outside the scope of the SEO's responsibilities. In a worst-case scenario, the customer can complain to the BBB or otherwise provide online complaints which can rise almost immediately to the top of search results and cause major SEO issues. There are many other means by which this can happen to varying degrees ranging from product quality issues, customer service issues, market changes, etc.

Normally the SEO and client have clearly defined roles, but when you offer a sales or profit-based contract then many offline practices come into play. This can be a benefit as the SEO can analyze your business and offer feedback to be considered. The challenge is most SEOs are not necessarily trained nor experienced at the offline aspects of your business, and you may not desire feedback on your company's offline operations.

From the SEO perspective, there are often challenges where recommendations are made but the site owner either doesn't make the requested changes, or doesn't perform them in a reasonable amount of time. This lack of responsiveness can impact the SEO results.

So the question is, how can a SEO-client relationship be formed which is fair to both the client and SEO? How can the client ensure they are obtaining the best value? I have two suggestions on this topic.

Option 1 - a traditional money for services agreement. This agreement is really no different then when you see a doctor, lawyer, accountant or other professional. You are paying for advice and indirect access to the expert's tools. If you are satisfied with the results, you maintain the relationship. If you are not happy with the results, you find another expert.

The risk with option 1 is there is a lot of upfront work in SEO. A typical first month will involve a thorough analysis of your website, business model, keywords, competitors and industry. The amount of work involved can vary substantially and it offers no immediate results. The information gathered is very important as it is the basis for all future work. The information gathering offers no tangible benefits in and of itself. In other words, you will pay for month #1 and not see any sales nor profit increase. From a business standpoint, you wont like the first month but you need to TRUST the SEO.

The second month is where the change recommendations are implemented. It may take time to modify or rebuild a website. Sending legal papers such as trademark infringement notices to competitors takes time as well. The actual SEO work which will benefit your site has begun, but you probably wont notice the impact yet.

The third month is where you MAY begin to see the benefits of the SEO work. It depends on many factors and it may be more months before the results are actually seen. There is a lot of variability here. During these months you simply need to TRUST the SEO. Trust is very hard to earn. As for myself, I send a thorough report to each client at the end of the month. The report covers all work performed during the past month, along with plans for the following month. This report, along with constant communications via e-mail and telephone are what help establish and maintain the trusted relationship.

Option 2 - a variation of option 1 where the contract is divided between a standard agreement and an incentive agreement (i.e. sales increase).

To summarize, you HAVE to trust your SEO. You are free to measure the SEO's performance in any manner, but ultimately you need to trust the SEO and follow through on the recommendations offered. I am not suggesting blind trust, but a significant measure of trust is required to make the relationship work. Personally, I don't work with contracts. If a client is not happy with my service I do not wish to enforce a contractual relationship with which they are unhappy. I work upfront to understand the client's needs, I provide an upfront analysis of how I will work on their needs, I maintain an open line of communication throughout the month and follow it up with a summary at the end of the month. In essence, I am fighting for my job each month. If the client is happy with my work, they can "re-hire" me again the following month. There are risks on my end from this type of relationship and it wont work for everyone.

As a postnote, some of my peers may be unhappy with my viewpoints on this topic. I welcome any feedback and criticism. I like the question which has been asked and it is one which all of our clients face. The ultimate question is, what is the best form of financial relationship between a small or medium sized business and a SEO. The relationship should be fair to both sides and measurable. If you disagree with the suggestions above, what do you recommend?

I have never heard of this company. After a brief review of their site, my advice is to stay away.

When reviewing an SEO company, I typically examine their site to see if they have any major SEO issues. If a SEO company has major issues on their own site, how will they manage your site? Of course, this logic can be faulty. You can have a great roofer whose own house has a leaky roof.

Some things I noticed immediately:

• the site has a logo, but the favicon is the default joomla favicon

• the site is duplicated in both the www and non-www domains. This is an SEO issue which simply should not happen on a live site.

• their backlink profile is very spammy. I would expect the site to be penalized either manually or experience Penguin issues. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=greencowseo.com%2F&sort=page_authority&filter=follow&source=external&target=domain&group=0

• their logo file name is logo.png and there is no ALT text

• their address is 8383 Wilshire Blvd.Beverly Hills, CA 90211. If you Google the address it is an office building, but the website does not list any suite number. Seems suspicious.

• one of the URLs from their site: http://www.greencowseo.com/2-uncategorised?start=4. This type of URL should not be seen on a live site.

• they have some complaints on the official Google forums: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/uYzKH4RWrIg/tnP_KXe28OcJ

• they claim to represent Dell, Toyota and numerous other high profile clients. There is absolutely zero evidence on the site to support their claim to represent these clients.

• the site lacks a privacy policy, which I believe violates some laws

• no signs of social media, BBB registration or anything to show there is any legitimacy to this company

I could go on....but the above should be more then sufficient.

Truth be told, you do not want to trust anyone with anything. Movies, television and stories are filled with tales of trust and betrayal.

With that said, if you are going to trust a company, then SEOmoz has all the right indicators.

1. It is the largest SEO-focused site in the world in terms of traffic.

2. The CEO, Rand, has been trusted to represent the US in international matters related to SEO

3. SEOmoz began in 2004. 8 years is a long time in today's internet world. SEOs from around the world have entrusted SEOmoz since that time.

You can always go with the TRUST NO ONE approach. If you own or perform work for any small business type of site, your are trusting a lot more people then you realize.

• Do you own your own server? If not, you are paying for hosting with a provider. My hosting provider has 200 employees, many of whom are network engineers or various level techs. A large number of these people have full access to your server and logs.

• Do you have employees? You are trusting them with your data.

• How secure is your site really? Numerous of the world's largest companies have had serious security breaches. What type of security testing have you performed on your site? I am not speaking of running some sort of free or inexpensive testing, but rather have a security expert examine your site's code line by line looking for vulnerabilities.

• How secure is your office network? Your laptop or pc's? Your internet network? Your internet browser?

I take security very seriously, moreso then most of my colleagues. I have custom built Dell laptops with Intel vPro chips for encrypted hard drives and CompuTrace Complete for the ability to disable and recover lost or stolen laptops. I have a paper shredder in the office, and I use it. I maintain my own dedicated server with custom scripts for added protection. These are just a few examples of basic security practices.

I choose to trust SEOmoz with my data. I would suggest if you perform a full security audit on your business practices, SEOmoz data sharing is not likely to be even a blip on the radar compared to the numerous gaping holes many businesses share. With that said, this would be a great time for a SEO staff member to share the practices used to secure our data.

Please let me know your thoughts

My thought is....MOVE FAST! More specifically, run as fast as you can AWAY from any site like that.

Here are some questions to consider:

1. What is the name of the person who will be working on your site? If a company cannot tell you, there is a good chance they do not know. Many companies advertise SEO and other services and then simply outsource the work to India, the Philippines or other areas for $3/hr.

2. Ask where the work will be done. What is the address of the office where you can stop by and visit? It is ok to work with a SEO consultant working out of his home, but you probably want to know that information up front. My main concern is outsourcing to foreign countries where the work is usually exceptionally low quality.

3. The services mentioned above...I would not accept them for free. They are far more likely to damage your site (i.e. penalize the site) then offer any benefit in the long term. In the short term you MAY receive a ranking boost but I don't care about varying anchor text or other such nonsense. These activities are black hat seo, they will get caught in time and will likely cost you tens of thousands of dollars to clean up, or force you to abandon your domain.

Focus on activities which build REAL value for your customers. A solid SEO plan is:

A) Focus on your website architecture. Ensure the site is built with best SEO, HTML and security practices. Provide single sign-on, valid code, automatic internal linking, a quality 404 page, etc etc.

B) Focus on creating BEST ON THE WEB content. Anything you write should be better then the top articles which focus the same keywords. Try to make the internet a better place for having your site in it.

C) EARN links. Collect links that cannot be "built" but must be earned.

It sounds like you are looking for a cheap way out and you are about to quickly find out just how painful it is trying to steal rankings from others with black hat tactics.

All your answers can be found in Google Webmaster Tools. Google is who removed your site and they have all the answers. You will definitely need to log into your Google WMT account to resolve this issue. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Why was my homepage kicked out from results, but not my internal pages?

When Malware is detected, Google will take whatever action it deems necessary to protect their search results. If Malware was only detected on your home page, and the rest of your site is clean, then they may only remove the affected home page from the search results.

How can I make my homepage appear again in the results?

Step 1 - Ensure your page is free of malware

Step 2 - Log into Google WMT then navigate Dashboard > Diagnostics > Malware. Run the diagnostic to confirm Google sees your site as malware free. There are many cases where a site owner believes their site to be malware free, but Google still detects an issue. Use their tools.

Step 3 - One you have confirmed your site is fine then click "Request A Review". Google will then confirm your site is malware free and can remove any warnings they have placed on your site.

Step 4 - Once your site is cleared, you can then submit a Reconsideration Request. Expect the process to take a month. The last time I experienced an issue it took a solid 3 weeks. From what I have heard that is better then average.

Best of luck.

Hi Christopher.

When using OSE, I always set the top filters as follows:

Show followed + 301 - I only wish to see followed links which help DA/PA

links from only external - internal links are not helpful for my backlink analysis

pages to pages on this root domain - usually I wish to see all links to the domain and not just links to the given page

and group by domain - usually I am trying to learn which domains are providing the link and do not need to see each individual link

Before applying the filter I notice the site has 4646 total links from 51 domains. That's an average of close to 100 links per domain. With a high link average it's common to find some site-wide links. Site-wide links muddy the waters a bit and make it difficult to see the links which offer value. You can work hard, obtain 50 links from 50 domains and then obtain one site-wide footer link from a 10k page forum site which has little value, but then your backlink profile will show 10,050 links from 51 domains.

With the above in mind I apply the filter and see this site only has links from 44 domains. That is not a large number. When I scanned the link I noticed a michigan.gov link which stood out, but when I tried to follow the link it is to a file. The Linkscape index upon which OSE is dependent had an issue with the last crawl of the web and some files showed links which are not actually there. This issue should be resolved during the next crawl.

Many of the remaining links appear to be from a network of classified ad sites. When I check the first OSE link www.vancouverclassifieds.com/ it shows the "Custom New Homes Portland" anchor text at the top of the page. As you can see from the backlink profile, this link appears on many of the other network classified sites. The site presents itself as a free classified ad site and I could not find anywhere which mentioned how to pay or otherwise receive an anchor link in that location. Either I missed something, or this site owner has a friend or otherwise paid someone to receive a link in that location.

As I look at other sites, the links seem to be paid links that are not otherwise obvious. They are links from sidebars such as found at http://oregoncatalyst.com/. There is no apparent reason for the link.

You could try contacting the sites and ask what you can do to earn a link like your competitor. The answer you receive may offer further clarity.

This has been said before, and will probably be etched on the SEO tombstone should the concept ever die.....

Create compelling content that people will want to link to!

• Since you are in the industry, find a celebrity or person of interest who is getting married in Maui and write an article about it. Article title: Maui Wedding Bells Ring for Jennifer Anniston

• Do research and find an interesting statistic to talk about. Article title: Maui Weddings - The Secret to a Happy Marriage. Did you know that according to the latest statistics couple who wed in Hawaii have longer lasting marriages?....

Somehow you MUST generate unique, compelling content that people will WANT to link to and talk about. Otherwise you are simply a beggar asking for a handout. The world is full of them.