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Hi Neil There is no problem with supplying an extra answer especially one as detailed as you have given

The penalties were algorithmic

I would buy it and keep it as a separate site. If he's buying links it might get penalized eventually so i would look to see how shady the links are and anchor text percentages before buying and ask to see their GA account so you can see if their traffic has remained strong. 301'ing a site that has been doing grey hat link building to your white hat site, i probably wouldn't do that.

We update the index every 3-4 weeks, so that would account for much of the variation in the links -- we find sites that no longer have a link to you, or we don't crawl a particular site in that crawl, etc.

Thanks for the insights. It really helps

Thanks for your response Irving, I appreciate it.

Irving, I strongly disagree that just because a mass of spammy links are nofollowed, they are nothing to worry about. It's become pretty clear through 2012's algorithm updates that the search engines are assessing sites based on overall link profile, not just their followed links. Paul

You are dead on with this and now I feel like a idiot I want to point out that below the infographic on my page is a whole bunch of text that I wrote to go along with it. I also did something really stupid a few weeks ago: I updated all my links on Ezine Articles. So, to Google, it looks like my website got a bunch of links all at once - very unnatural and I'm kicking myself for doing that. I just deleted all my article from there because they were shitty and I don't want my name on them anymore. The content I create is far superior now than it was 4 years ago. I am working on cleaning up my link profile for 2013 and i will take your advice about the infographics. They get me a lot of links, but way to fast and all with the same anchor text. I like the idea of just asking people to give me credit if they want to use my infographic. Thanks for the help!

One thing I found works well is to engage with as many of the people you want to use the infographic as possible before you contact them with the image. I try and connect with them on Twitter, leave a comment on a blog post (with a link to my twitter rather than my website so it does not look like I am trying to spam the blog) or help them in some way. Along the help lines I have found an email telling them about a broken link or an error on their site is a good way to get their attention. Then when they say thank you I reply with a question about their work, ask for their advice on something related to what they do and mention I am putting together the graphic, if possible I incorporate the information they have given me into the infographic and let them know. Then when the infographic is ready to send I let them have an advanced copy along with any data used to produce the statistics in it. In my mind I came up with these ideas but I am sure the truth is more along the lines of the day I spent going through the posts in the link Keri has been kind enough to post, it may take a while to read but it is full of great information. I think all the information and tips boil down to give the audience something they want and give them a reason to take it from you. I hope that makes sense Sean

Thank you all.  It's like you should build two sites.  One to make money on and one for long term. LOL

Infringers....  This site is grabbing content and reposting it without permission.

1. i did submitted disavowal for those links - nothing happened for over 3 months 2.i did file 3 reconsideration requests - got same answer "No manual spam action taken..." 3. i have been hit by a penalty im only ranking for my brand and no kw  - i used to rank for kw till september. 2012 4. no warnings in webmaster tools, no warnings at all....

I agree with you. Which is why we avoid multiple submissions. Just wanted few other people to agree so that we could refer our agency clients to answers over here. I would also like to hear anyone who has a counter argument to what you and I agree on.

Hi Stu The tips for finding a link builder here on SEOmoz from Moosa are good and if you have a budget of several thousand $ a month you will be able to get some good people to help with your SEO and content focus, so if the budget is available that is a good way to go. If however the budget is not available you can do a lot yourself, you are already doing the hardest bit, creating interesting and useful content for your market, now all you need to do is let the audience know it is on your site. You can do this by finding other websites that look after the same market but do not compete with you, such as a car insurance company if you sell cars, then offer to write some content for their audience (guest posting). You should also use Twitter to follow people who are influential in your market and find a way to get on their radar (help them in some way or talk about things they care about etc.) then when you have a relationship with these people you can ask them to comment on your content, they share it with the people who follow them and then you have the beginnings of a group of people who think your content is worth talking about. By asking industry influences to help with or talk about your content it will get shared and these shares are all potential links to your site. I hope this helps Sean

Howdy Daniel, Some good information here, let me add my own 2 cents; 1. Mozscape and Open Site Explorer are updated about every 4 weeks. The metrics are entirely link-based, so downtime of your server won't effect the numbers. Because we use a new index every few weeks, there's a natural fluctuation in the number of links we find. There are literally billions and billions of links on the web we have to crawl every month, calculate metrics for each one, and then package them into an index that makes sense. Sometimes links will disappear or re-appear in the index. This is natural and usually minor, although a large jump or decrease in your Domain Authority can be scary - it doesn't mean your traffic or rankings will change. Mozscape may have trouble finding links on pages without a lot of links pointing to them, or links hidden under layers of navigation. For more, see this document: http://www.seomoz.org/help/open-site-explorer-faq 2. Usually Google won't penalize you if your site is down, but if it's down regularly or for an extended period, this could have negative consequences. If you feel your site has suffered because of this, I might suggest submitting a fresh sitemap, or try the "crawl as googlebot" feature as soon as your back up and running. May not do much, but it's worth a shot. 3. Sitelinks - I don't have a definite answer about this, but Google seems to show sitelinks based on user intent, the popularity of your pages, navigation structure, and overall authority. Although Google offers a tool to remove sitelinks, it's pretty hard to influence exactly what they choose to show and when. Hope this information helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

Cheers for the responses everyone. What everyone has said is pretty much in agreement with what I was thinking, and it's nice to have it confirmed. Thanks!

Ryan, thanks for this suggestion. I'm certainly rusty in a few areas! cheers

One approach is to use Google Blog Search and search for: "relevant keyword" "guest post" You can find blogs that have published guest articles in the past. They are more likely to be open to your pitch to contribute an article. Another thing that can help is to write a value-adding comment on the blog or start a conversation with the blog owner in social media. This can make the blog owner more receptive to your request.

Eric- This is great, thanks so much. I usually do send back a "Sorry we are going to penalized so we can't" (though hopefully must more eloquently put than that). And it's rare that I do get a response as well, though if I say it kindly enough I can usually at least begin some kind of conversation. And I see your point. That makes sense. I'll think of something. Thanks again. Elizabeth