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Heyo, I'd start with OSE and export the data compare it to GWT "Your Site on the Web" tab (specifically the Internal Links as well as the Links to your Site). Then take a trip down to good old: http://www.backlinks.in/ This is a great way to analyze Second Tier Links if the first site contains links with the secondary URL. Also consider analyze the anchor text with this process. Will probably take a bit of elbow grease, but this is a good start. Good Luck and good on ya! Shameless Plug: follow me @derZukunft on the Tweeter. Cheers, Brian

Yea I use the cufon replace thing. SEOMOZ picks it up as a h1 with the right text. I would like to get more feedback on this though if anybody knows the effect of cufon on seo

EGOL, Good to know, That's interesting to know about filtering of weaker domains. I have very big question in my mind. I have given too much efforts to create these contents for distribution in external websites. Now, I have internal platform to share my content or knowledge associated to products for my buyers. Because, this will give me good benefits rather than external websites. I am not focusing about external links. I am selling patio umbrellas and have 20+ How to, DIY or related content which may helpful to my buyers. So, I have big question about my organic performance which is associated to products level. Google will find out duplication due to my blog section. That's for sure. But, will it create negative impact to my organic ranking which is associated to product level pages or categories?

Thanks - They do look pretty dubious - I will have a scout around.

While I like Simon's answer, it's also important to note that linking strategies are a natural part of SEO. While it's preferable that you pretend Google doesn't exist, Google DOES exist and they DO like links. As such, you have to have a linking strategy. When you go to build your links, you have 3 basic concepts of linking (from an SEO view). These concepts have very different ROI. One-way links (they link to you only). These are universally accepted as the best kind of link and it's well known that Google likes these best. Most common SEO tactics to get these are called "link bait", where you write a high quality content page and draw interest to it. Incidentally, social media links (including blog comments) don't fall into this category because they typically employ nofollow, which passes no PR (doesn't mean they have no value, only that you won't gain the "link juice" from a normal link). Three-way links. "A" links to you and you link to "B", where "A" and "B" are run by the same person or someone with a vested interest. Harder to track but also riskier because a common tactic employed is that "A" is a worthless link farm and "B" is a high quality site, meaning you're not getting any real PR value. Reciprocal links typically have the least value of any strategy. As Simon pointed out, a common mistake here is to build solely for SEO purposes. Back in the day these were all the rage, but they had a hidden pitfall: they can waste your time. Say you sell tires. Along comes a florist and you reciprocate links. But what relationship do you have to them? If you don't pay attention and do this right, you might not lose "link juice" (and this is a bad way to look at outbound links) but you might waste your time that you could have been spending doing something productive (like writing a blog entry). Anytime you put a link on your site for reciprocal purposes, ask yourself what the value of it is. Because this does take a fair amount of time to properly vet links, it's not something that people advocate as a primary link strategy.

Thank you Jane, actually I have a customer that ask me to put all their external links this way. Ie, linking to a page of his website and this page redirects to the other websites. I'm looking read opinions about what kind of benefit or harm it might cause, since I don't have any formed opinion about it.

You're not blocked by Google, your site is indexed in G no probs. You do need to cultivate some backlinks to earn pagerank. The site's fairly new, looks like the domain was purchased only a few months ago. Pagerank takes time, and consider that the pagerank number in the toolbar is updated only 1-4 times a year. Concentrate on building your mozrank with quality links. The easiest way to get started would be some of the directories with better reputations as seen here http://www.seomoz.org/directories , fill out your profile on aboutus.org/davincidrivers.com and request a dofollow link, and work on getting links from relevant sources.

The Stackoverflow site is likely a very bad example to try and follow for two main reasons. First off, it has millions of links and is the #105 most trafficked site in the world. Does your site have similar stats? Also, it is a forum site. In many senses, a site is a site, but you also need to consider business models. I have used Stack Overflow for years, but today is the first time I have ever been to the site's home page. Would that be ok for your site? You mention their home page does not hinder usability? I disagree. If you offer 100 links on a page, some people still struggle to locate the right link. When you offer 700 links on a page, many users will be lost. In short, stackoverflow has a good business model but you will likely not be happy with your SEO results if you attempt to emulate their home page.

I don't think you didn't mentioned that you were paying for the link! RISK / REWARD / EFFORT(COST) Personally I wouldn't pay $200-300 for one such link on the kind of page you're talking about. Think about how much difference the one link is likely to make. Are you going to see a change in your rankings, or any direct traffic how much additional traffic will it take to make it worthwhile (what's your goal conversion rate, and what's the value of these goals) You can get higher quality links for much less!

Give it a Google.. More than anything you just need to make the email sound personalised, follow up the emails asking did you get my last email etc?.. So they know you’re not just some robot sending out hundreds of links. Make sure the links are relative to their content and also make sure that you can offer them something, they are not likely going to link up to your website if there is nothing in it for them. Hope this helps. -h

Hi Diane. Its not $20 per url but per campaing. For free you can submit into 150 directories. For 20$ you can submit into all the directories in the program database.

Here are a few footprints which Google can use when evaluating your links (some are algorithmic and some manual if you are under audit/review and some are cross-referenced): Time of the link placement and any related groups of links generated within the same timeframe Link location (blog roll, footer vs content and navigation) Pattern of buying from known link sellers Strict use of exact match commercial terms in anchor text IP address / C-class Author name in article submission Open calls and invitations for link exchanges, selling, buying Widget anchor text manipulation Or anything else that can be seen as a link scheme.

Hi Robert, Google has traditionally not passed value on links from affiliate programs - the reason being that the site is receiving financial incentives for including those links on the page. However, Paddy Moogan wrote an SEO blog post on SEOmoz on how to optimize your affiliate program to get some links that will create some SEO value.  The link to the blog post is: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-seo-value-from-your-affiliate-links His suggestions include: Use of a Dedicated Landing Page for Big Affiliates Affiliates Linking to the Right Page Help Affiliates Make Their Content More Valuable Add More Value to Widgets and IFrames That Affiliates Use Hopefully this was helpful- If you have any specific questions, please ask away! Best, Stephanie

Works for me, perhaps the one is being penalized slightly for irrelevant links or something.

I was just contacted by such an agency that offers free link building. They just want me to link from my nice, original, human-built site about RC boats to a site about a casino, and in return I'd get a link from an auto-generated site with little content that's about military robots that also links out to a casino. I would rather have no link at all than that link.

While i have no evidence that they are passing link juice, it stands to reason that they are. I believe that that it the reason they are following them so that you can not get around passing link juice. In the passt people used js links to avoid passing link juice.