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I find your words of wisdom both thoughtful and inspiring. Thanks for the generous feedback Hans.

I think it works for now but since more and more will use it as a primary link building channel and more and more people will push it to the limit (already the case in some areas) this technique will be soon subject to more tight regulation from Google's side. I remember 2003-2004 when forum posting was some how in the "beginning".  Some people from Google said - it's natural , it make sense then yes, it's aceptable - what about now ? Who things forum signature posting is a "good" approach to  link building ? Same with guest posting. I would say in the future you will need to have a no follow in those links since you should do it for the content, referral traffic not the link.

Have you recently made any changes to an affiliate program or banner ads campaign? An extra 100,000 links is actually pretty easy to come by - it could be one site with dynamically generated pages linking to you. I wouldn't be too worried about this but you may want to look into it for your own peace of mind. With regard to your linking root domains dropping - do you have any records that show what type of sites have been removed? It could be that you had a lot of directory links which Google has removed from the index. If this drop in LRDs hasn't already led to a drop in rankings then, again, I wouldn't worry about it but you may want to look into it further for your own peace of mind.

One sitewide link probably isn't going to hurt you too much. On the other hand it's probably not going to help you too much either. It is worth pointing out that removing the no-follow from the banner would be a violation of Google's T&Cs regarding paying for links to manipulate Page Rank.

Thanks Ben and Adam, I will avoid them and concentrate on natural links and links to quality relavent content. This SEO business. The more i learn the more i know I don't know. Ignorance was bliss thanks again for all the advice. Great stuff Aidan

Eliathah, This is a good way to build links. Having a relationship with webmasters of other quality sites is worthwhile. Be careful though, because I tried to call an SEOMoz member and they freaked out. The telephone may be old technology but it is much more valuable than email and posting in forums You can also explain much more. Be sure to get a single, relevant link, not site wide.

On the OSE home page click the _View update calendar _link. The next OSE update is scheduled for  June 27th. Depending on when the issue was resolved on the linking site, the results may be removed on that update or the following one.

If you are able to find out the companies that picked articles, that would be ideal. We don't track articles that are being posted through the forum (people just send articles manually there), but we do track articles that get posted through the Articles Gallery. To find the list of most active publishers (those who published most articles), go Search -> Site Search -> and sort by "Articles Posted"

Yep, WW. We reckoned keeping it to the 3 main areas wold help from a promotional point of (at least keeping us away from the tee shirt market anyway)  My DA is low so have to start somewhere so I think i'll go with the better directories and one or two of the SEOMOZ list and see how it goes. Definitely no reciprocal links ones though or I get the feeling I'll end up with a Penguin at my door! Thanks a heap for your help, much appreciated

Makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

No problem, Hope it turns out well for you.

Great article!  Thanks for the link.  I totally agree as well. P.S. I love his Grumpy Old Man image.

I think the best way to comment on a blog is to make a useful point that furthers the discussion of the blog post. Use your real name as the anchor text. Link it to your 'About' page that features your bio. If you don't have an about page, consider linking it to your home page, twitter profile or your G+ profile. If your comment is awesome, the blogger will figure out who you are and what your site it about. Then, they should realize that your site is also awesome and become a fan. Comment to build relationships and advance discussions. Not to build links. Also: the Mozbar is an easy way to check follow/nofollow links. Works in chrome and firefox. Although, I don't think you should let that sway you from making a comment. If you have something good to say, say it. If you don't, stay quiet on that post.

Is there a typo in the hover text in SEOMoz Competitive Domain Analysis page? For External Followed Links, it is: "Number of followed links from outside the source domain." And for Total External Links, it is: "Total number of followed links from outside the source domain." These seem to me to be the same thing. Should the latter be "Total number of followed and no followed..."?

I've used the same basic tactics on some of my sites before. Sure it works, but you'll get caught out eventually. Half of these sites were hit by Panda/Penguin and now the rankings are way off in page 5+. My advice - create a real SEO plan that is built with the future in mind. Don't go after short term gains. Try to predict where you want to be in 6-12 months and create a plan around that. Remember, content is king, so start developing some great content on your site and sharing it amongst your social profiles. If you're unsure about the other more technical aspects of SEO, hire a reputable SEO firm. Have a look at their past clients, their site, their social profiles. Do they look spammy/too good to be true? If so, give them a miss and move along.

Thanks Andrea, that is already done, I use lots of different anchors and lots of different pages to link to.

To be honest I think the best thing to do is look at the back link profiles of big e-commerce websites for your direct niche. If you look at the link profile for Amazon for example it may be too diverse. Also giving an exact number of no follows or do follows for links and also the exact numbers is going to be hard every one is going to use different numbers, my advice look at your e-commerce niches, work out who is doign well and reverse engineer what they are going, you can get an estimate on all your above figures by looking at the top 10 websites for your niche.

My opinion - if you're posting on blogs/articles purely for SEO value, you're wasting your time. most comment sections provide only "nofollow" links most good comment sections have so many comments that even if the link is "dofollow" the share of influence passed will be negligible However! If you're posting good, useful comments on blogs that are relevant to your business, you are contributing to the process of making yourself a subject matter expert/influential. Others will see your helpful contribution and perhaps follow you back to your own site/blog. If you're lucky, you may even be able to generate some interaction with the blog owner, resulting in new promotional opportunities (guest posting?) or social media interaction. The one SEO side benefit that you do get from good blog commenting is your backlink profile will be more natural with quality nofollow backlinks to go with all your dofollow links. As we've just seen with the Penguin update, the best backlinks aren't just the ones made to "look" natural, but that actually "are" natural! So - focusing your commenting efforts on a smaller number of relevant blogs and designed to help build your reputation (rather than a huge "spray and pray" approach) will be a better use of your time. Paul

I'm agree with you... Better on about page(and much better as a little link inside the content of homepage) A link on the footer can help to be known for anyone who likes web design and thinks "Wow... Great job. Who has done it? Let's go to the footer" Maybe a new client...

Sorry for the late response, still getting use to the Q&A and didn't know how to view the questions I had answered. I would suggest anchor texts that are natural but nothing too unrelative. Links like www.example.com as the anchor text will still be better than "click here". As long as its not being spammed too much, it would be fine to request a certain anchor text, but nothing obsessive, try to keep it even.