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Thanks xoffie, Saw the blog but was wondering if there was actually any value in it as Majestic SEO attribute a decent value to it and it did seem to boost the rankings in the month he took it on. As to the crystal ball, wish I had one too! Cheers Jonathan

Mr. Thomas is correct - BMR was no better than any other article marketing service. They didn't do spun content, but they let anything through the review process. They also had extremely poor support for creating an article with any type of media or custom styles -- they set themselves up for disaster. And their special 100-word  blog post service was by definition a grave SEO mistake. I canceled my membership six months before they bit the dust because they ignored my suggestions to fix these simple items. To add, I also would not call this a private network. Anyone with $67 could get into the network. That isn't very private is it? So is article marketing dead? No. You just have to focus more on guest posting unique content and participating in networks that require quality content. Even Unique Article Wizard was hit but isn't completely dead. They still practice spun content though, so I'd suppose it's not exactly still a long term solution (although they got through panda just fine) The owner of One Hour Backlinks made a comment a few days back about his service, recommending it as a supplement to your link building campaign. Maybe commenting on auto-approve blogs worked for him, but I'd strongly recommend staying away from this. SEO is quickly becoming synonymous with marketing, building PR, and networking. Rand did a post on this not too long ago I believe.

Using a cross domain rel canonical should fix any issues with this and mean that you as the original author get the link juice. Rand explains the usage of cross domain canonical links in the following whiteboard friday:- http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday hope this helps

EGOL's "Free Beer" post is awesome. I think what I am suffering from is just the other sites are more authoritative than me. That's an awesome recommendation What kind of title you think I should go with?

First step is to visit that site and visualy confirm if they are linking to your site. If you find the link then use the seomoz bar for Firefox to make sure the link is being followed. If you can't find the link that way then I would suggest heading over to Google Webmasters and checking inbound links from there. You can do this in both analytics and the regular webmasters tools. If that doesn't work you can also try going to the google search bar and typing in link:www.mysite.com and getting a preview of links to the site. You can of course use the link tool on this site to get info but remember it is updated once per week I believe. If all else fails you can contact the site owner or webmaster and ask them where the link is so that you can do your part and promote that page.

Sounds like you're trying to outsmart Google. Here's my advice: If you have a legitimate reason for creating independent blogs, then by all means do so, but do it out in the open where everyone, including Google can see it, because Google will see it anyway. They have tools of detecting "administratively related" sites that we can't even comprehend. It goes way beyond ip addresses, class c subnets, Google analytics profiles or whois registration data. if you have a relationship with a group of sites, chances are they will figure it out algorithmically. As an example, the Theme Forrest folks do a great job of this with their collection of websites (try the drop-down navigation in the header to see the relationships) But aside from navigation, there is not a lot of inter-linking between these sites to my knowledge. It's actually pretty common to run a number of sites under the same company. Danny Sullivan runs Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, and has a number of other sites. These all link to each other naturally. But be careful. If you're doing this solely for SEO benefits, the temptation to optimize your links and overdo it may be too great, and you may end up in a place you didn't intend. If, on the other hand, the different sites can all stand alone on their own merit, this may be a great idea. Best of luck!

HI Dariusz, Hopefully I understand your question correctly. Let me answer each in turn. 1. If I understand correctly, you're asking if text contained within elements like tabs is viewed the same as text clearly visible on the page. For the most part, Google will easily crawl and index this text, but keep in mind that Google tends to place more weight on body text above the fold than text place in other areas of the page. That means that content within sidebars, pushed to the bottom of the page, or hidden in navigation, while important, probably doesn't count as much in most circumstances. If putting the text there makes sense to your visitors, by all means go ahead and do it. On the other hand, if you're doing it for SEO reasons, you might be asking for trouble. 2. Depends on the context. If it is a footer link with off-topic anchor text, then Google will possibly devalue the link. On the other hand, if the medical company writes a glowing blog post about their great printing company, then the link will likely carry lots of value and Google will consider it highly relevant. Most likely, your link will fall somewhere in-between. The best links are unique (not-sitewide) Surrounded by relevant text (not just a bunch of other links) in the body of the text (not the footer, bottom of the page or sidebar) on a relevant page with anchor text varied from other similar links to your URL My favorite blog post of all time: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

Thanks for the response!

Keri That's a pretty amazing example of using locally sourced content to create unique pages for each city/state and to build local trust.

try google >> -inlink seomoz.org -site:seomoz.org

Benjamin, keep in mind that the three dominant social outlets that are now being calibrated within googles algorithm are Facebook, twitter and google plus. This means a site ranking first page first spot will almost need to ensure a healthy spread of authoritive on topic links along with social outlets including low boune rates on your site. Hope this helps

I think sponsored reviews the way you suggesting to do them, getting a review by sending samples, is a good idea and is alright. Guest posting also should be possible on different food related blogs, some quick examples of blogs I found from a search in Google [they may not be directly relevant to your line of business but I believe you still can write something for them and get a reasonably relevant link in return]: http://www.farmtotableonline.org/write-for-us/ http://www.eatwithme.com/about-us/ http://eatdrinkbetter.com/write-for-us/ Apart from that, I believe you should also have a blog section on your site and create interesting "link worthy" content that when properly promoted could draw you a few good links. Link building is not only about "building" links but also about "attracting" enough links. So you have to work on that as well. I personally believe submitting to directories whether they're the free general directories, the paid directories or relevant food industry specific directories, they all would offer you some amount of value in the link that you get from them. Just make sure you don't target a single term when building links with the directories, you want to target a large set of seemingly "natural" terms so that you don't suffer from any possible "over-optimization" penalty in having too many links with one or two anchor text.

I think it is normal to have some strong sites in other niches link to you  and it would help to have such guest posts on quality sites- just make sure the content of the piece is niche related somehow (dont look at just domain authority you want a strong quality site) as long as most your links are from your niche and you don't abuse that practice it should help you.

Does anyone know if Mark and Barry's answers still hold true (nearly 1 year later)? We have a disproportionate amount of NoFollowed Linking Root Domains and I'm worried that it's having a negative effect on our rankings. Thanks! Eric

Hey there rush IMPRINT, great to see someone else from Pittsburgh on the SEOmoz forum. Since I represent Eyeflow I'm obviously biased.  We have been long-time SEOmoz members and typically recommend this website to anyone who wants to learn more about SEO as this site is a very honest and reliable source. We work to keep our own blog updated with great content as well. Learn More about us: History of Eyeflow Client Testimonials Case Studies If you need a few more reasons here's 5 more reasons why clients typically chose us. Our website has a lot more information as well as links to our profiles on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Look forward to hearing from you. I believe you'll find us very honest and passionate about SEO.

Joakim If you were a blog owner, would you accept a free pc optimization/computer speed up in exchange for a review?

I think the drop has already happened - so that's why I'm re-writing/improving the content for that area of the site and just starting fresh with it. I'm sure with the right bit of promoting (through social media, etc.) the new section will pick up a bit of traffic. It's a tough decision about the re-direct though - because the SEOMoz Page Authority for the affected pages is close to 50. Thanks for your replies guys - really appreciate the insight!