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This is definitely something that can be pulled off. The answer above correctly states that contacting the right person is going to give you the most chance of making this happen, as well as making it as easy as possible for them to do it. However, a few things that could improve your chances: Pick up the phone, if you can speak to the right person this is better than email. If email, make sure your email is super polite and massages their ego. If emailing the webmaster, talk about how you like their site and mention something specific (a new article that you read recently and why it was interesting), no need for this to be long, but show you like and use their site and are not just emailing for a link never to return. If speaking with the article writer, talk about some of their other articles etc. State the benefits of making this link active... why should they do it? I presume your site is of value (thus the mention) so say that, say how you believe this article is still of value and how a link to your site would provide their users with a better experience etc.

I am experiencing the same thing! I just added my URL to Yahoo! directory (not search results), and I am getting the same error. Maybe, there is some kind of maintenance issue they're having? I tried it with 3 different browsers for my site.

That was what I meant by the question. By the way thanks for both sides of the spectrum guys very informative.

If it's a new link, it's not going to show up in OpenSiteExplorer just yet, because OSE crawls about once a month. The new crawl data is coming out next week I believe, but the crawl may have been already made before your link was in place, so you may need to wait until August to see that link.

Thanks for the input guys. I'm going to point the link towards our blog for now. -Bryant

Hi guys, some good answers above, however in regards to Panda I do not believe link building is directly connected. Are links from Panda hit sites as valuable as they used to be? That is still being debated and I am yet to see any clear tests on it. Although commons sense tells me links from pages Google deems poor should have less value! However you can read a little about it on question 3 here: http://www.sugarrae.com/link-development/link-building-with-the-experts-2011-edition/ (although it is worth reading the whole article!)

Hi Steven. Depending on the type of business and geography it caters to, I generally advise clients to start at local and branch out. This helps establish your business as a bonafide, real business with a physical location. I believe it helps build significant trust. Be sure to align your phone numbers, physical business address and other details (synchronization) between profile accounts. In terms of links always build the most authority links you can first. For obvious and unobvious reasons. Authority links build trust faster and allow more cushion in terms of both profile build rate and the types of links you can build moving forward. Also, more trusted links in my experience actually help improve the weight or other links in parallel in the campaign when built correctly. Hope this helps, Todd

Thousand thanks!

Hello qlkasdjfw, I think it really depends on your niche. I don't particularly like Yahoo Answers because they are super well known, and are therefore more prone to spam. I try to find not-for-profit sites, local niche resource sites,  government directories (like the chamber of commerce) and some relevant social platforms (but interaction is the primary goal with these of course).

My rankings dropped as well, although we got a relevant link from bbc (linked with only the url)... I didn't see any positive impact on that yet.

As a testament to the concept of a highly informative resource page a-la the TNJ example, I went there to see what it was like, and just read the entire page's content, it was that interesting.  So that would be a good start, though the 2nd "very ugly" example is of course, more likely for long-term success.  Throw in an infographic of facts related to the topic you're creating resource pages for, and then promote through social media. The concept it's got to be highly note-worthy, unique, or uniquely grouped content.

Crawling the web can be complex and problems can pop up like they did this month. We are working to increase the speed at which we release updates and this crawl we ran into a problem that forced us to start over, hence the longer delay.  Otherwise it was going to be out on the 11th of July.  Sorry for the delay.

Search engines understand footer links and therefore the total value of a footer link is greatly diminished. Per a Bing rep, if a footer link exists and is relevant then the value is 1 link from that site, not 10,000. So I don't believe you will get as big of a bump as you might believe. However, I do believe that cross linking your domains is not a bad practice. We host our blog on a separate site and link back and forth. It only seems to help us and not hurt us. But you do run a risk of looking manipulative and therefore being penalized. I would suggest testing one link in the footer. See if it gives you a bump or gets penalized. If you get a bump, keep it. If you get dinged. Get rid of it.

Just average articles with a link pointing back. The blogs/websites pointing to these article have very low rank though.

I would try both and see what happens The problem with rel canonical though, is that your not using it as intended and could get caught out or have the link devalued I dont see any problem with a plain text link. personally i would KISS and use the text link As to whether its worth it, it depends how good the linkbait is and how many links/power it gathers. The only way you can know is to try and then see the effect on your rankings. You could certainly get more value than one link out of it though; link out to other articles that link back to your ecom site. When you have this type of  powerful 3rd party site, you can then start swapping links from your site in return for links from theirs to your ecommerce site

I currently have a home page with a "select your area" link to the area pages. Are you saying that it would be better to create 36 links form the directory site Are you saying that it would be better to create 36 links pointing to the home page or make 36 links pointing to the individual area pages?