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Here's some more advice about what to do if bad links are pointing at your site, from some SEOmoz blog posts. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-ways-to-recover-from-bad-links http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-if-my-competitors-point-spammy-links-to-my-site

Think of any social media signal like a Like, +1, or Tweet as just another type of link. Like Keri put it, Google frowns on bought links. They also don't like it when you try to game their search engine. Your visitors aren't all clicking that +1 to "vote" for your site's quality or relevance. They're doing it because, for all intents and purposes, they have to if they don't want to keep seeing that pop-up. Sure, you're not doing anything that's going to hurt your visitors. You are, as they see it, deceiving Google. Let me give you an example of just how ruthless Google can be with this type of stuff. I worked with a company long ago that came up with an idea to give out award badges (a graphic with a link back to their site) to a ton of high-quality blogs. Best 100 Animal Rights Blogs type of stuff. Seemed great at the time. They got a ton of links from some great sites. Google came along after they noticed them climbing the SERPS and hand-penalized the entire site. It took months to undo that mistake. Now that example is nowhere near as dicey as your Google+ technique, and it inspired a penalty that cost the company thousands, if not millions. Your technique, although not directly referenced in the webmaster guidelines, really does walk that fine line. It was a great idea, but it really will eventually get you in trouble. Google makes their own rules, and there's nothing to stop them from penalizing you if they want for anything they see as manipulating their search engine results. I also want to add that I'm just as concerned for how your visitors will respond to your technique as I am with how Google responds. Many of your potential clients will have some understanding of SEO. How will they feel about the authenticity and legitimacy of your SEO services when they see something like that on your site? It may not necessarily be, but it screams black hat SEO to me. Mike

Just to clarify the tool I'm talking about in my response, I'm thinking of something like this: Having a hard time choosing a gift for that special someone? Enter some details to find great gift ideas now! [input 1 + interests] = card games, mountain biking, skiing, scrapbooking [input 2 + marital status] = married, has kids [input 3 + sex] = female [input 4 + age] = 35 [input 5 + location] = dallas, tx [output 1] = winter scarf, coat, word teaser origins, etc. (top 10 list maybe?) We're talking about a lot of work, of course. Although most of it could be outsourced on the cheap to data entry people. This is just something off the top of my head, so you might refine it a bit. Just thinking of an idea to increase time on site, upsell, and create something useful above and beyond simply promoting products. To cut down on development time, I'd make visitors choose interests rather than letting them enter them in a field. Simply start a tag system matching certain combinations to gifts algorithmically. It doesn't have to be all-inclusive at first, as long as it functions. You can always add new interests and gifts as time goes on, and can see if it even works for you before going all-in. Mike

Nop, not true at all, I ranked a a fairly competitive keyword No.1 with an exact match keyword domain name, we only focused on 2 variations of a keywords and no penalty.

Thanks. That was helpful. So I can use Google's Feedburner and that's sufficient to get maximum exposure? Or do I also have to use others like Bloglines? As previously mentioned, I was using "RSS Builder" some time back. Any recommendations for managing the actual feed given it's being used for a website? Can I start a new feed based on the newer pages added over the last so many months?

You need to make up your mind if you want high quality and relevant, or if you want a bundle of over 1000 links at once. It just doesn't work that way.

Hello Donford, The easiest thing to do if you are really only concerned about providing a link to more information for the distributor's visitors is to nofollow that link. This way you're not going to chance getting "dinged" for adding 10,000 links all at once. If you have a few product pages on the manufacturing site that you'd like to improve you can selectively remove the nofollow tag from the link pointing to those pages from the distributor side, but I wouldn't recommend 10,000 followable links from a single domain all at once. Questions like this are always difficult to answer because Google doesn't treat every site the same. A well-known brand with thousands of high quality links and a trusted, established site that has been in operation for a long time with good user metrics, and has never been penalized can get away with a LOT more than a relatively unknown brand or an "average" site. That is why I recommend starting with the nofollowed links and, if you want, testing the waters by allowing a few of them to be followed. Please let me know if you feel your question has still not been adequately answered. Cheers, Everett

The example you are giving has 130 links in total. The recommendation is maximum 100. Also, the page you link to seems to have a lot of links compared to the total amount of text. I could be seen as a bit spammy....og at the least a bit "linky" Read this blog on the issue: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many Regards, Rasmus

Thanks

Guest blogger is a great way to communicate with those in the blog category so I do not mind giving websites link juice. They take time out of their lives to create quality content for us so the least we can do is link back to their site. That is why when we started letting guest blog posting we publish our website's demographic to show bloggers the traffic our blog gets. It would be a shame if I stripped away all their links and publish their content

If I were to take the same content that's on this blog and post it on a Blogger account we have, would Google consider that duplicate content? Duplicate content is duplicate content. I can tell you that if you have a link connecting these two sites that at least one of them (maybe both) will be filtered from the SERPs. If you don't connect them with a link then there is still a good chance that google will find them and filter one.

Thanka Andrea for your reply much appreciated. Glad im not missing anything then as hopefully my site is firly well optimised! Have a good week.

Is it a relevant website?  Or would your link just be in amongst a bunch of other irrelevant websites hoping to reap some PR? The name of the game is relevance.  When approaching a site for a backlink, check their backlinks too to see where they are coming from. Ages ago, before I really knew what I was doing (and I'm still learning after all these years), I managed to get my website a link on a homepage that was a PR9.  I was pumped.  However, the site had absolutely, and I mean absolutely nothing to do with the niche of my site.  All-in-all, that link did nothing for me. After learning from that mistake, I only seek out sites that are in my niche, and have have links pointing to them that are also in my niche.  Keeps it in a nice trusted grouping of complete relevancy.

Jon, Here's a couple of ideas for you - none of which will actually save you the hard work that is link building. Is all your content visible or is some of it hidden behind a subscribers firewall? If all your content is visible make check to see if your CMS has SEO functions and that your editors or "online content" folks know how to handle the on page aspects of the news story - good title tag, SEO relevant headline, etc. Your best stories to generate links are going to be positive pieces on local business or organizations. You'll have to request these links - contact the business and offer to provide them with the html link. Organizations will be glad to have been featured and it will raise their credibility to link to a story in the local newspaper. Your newspaper probably puts out some guides - like the Spring Wedding Guide or Annual Guide on Senior Citizens. Be sure you aggregate this content online and request links from advertisers and anyone who may have been featured in the product that has a website. List your site on local directories pointing to specific sections - classifieds, for example. Your newspaper no doubt ranks very high for "news" and "newspaper" on all local searches - but maybe not for Real Estate, or Weddings or Pets. Find sites that compliment this content and request links with the right anchor text. You've got an awesome problem - every site should have so much new, quality content developed everyday!\

I have a very similar situation to Limens. Are you guys saying that i should have sites such as: http://goo.gl/RxU9M & http://goo.gl/AbUKV redirected (via a 301 redirect ) to my main site which is: http://goo.gl/JgK1e  ? If the answer is yes, should they be redirected to the home page (http://goo.gl/JgK1e) or to the specific pages they are about such as http://goo.gl/oiEeG & http://goo.gl/7nA9E Sorry if this got a little confusing.  Thanks in advance for any advice you guys may have...