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Thanks, Adam! I really appreciate your taking the time. Best...MJ

Ok so the domain is www.ensorbuilding.com The keyword is "rubbercover". The URL which used to rank until around a week ago is http://www.ensorbuilding.com/section.php/43/2/firestone-epdm-rubbercover-flat-roofing I submitted to a few directorys, not many maybe 5-6. On my home page I did have the keyword in the META keywords and the Title tag but have removed them to avoid cannibalization as you mentioned.

Hi Ben. Have you checked to see the articles themselves have been indexed by Google? In other words using the site:search or the article title in ""? If they are indexed and you are looking for the links themselves i.e. link: then it is probably because Google doesn't show everything, just a sample of links pointing to your site. If you use Open Site Explorer or MajesticSEO you will get more reliable link figures, but again you should bear in mind that OSE and MSEO don't contain the entire web so may not have picked the links up yet either.

Unfortunately, there are no specifics any of us could give you in that regard. The results (number of visitors) you'll get from x number of links depends on many factors, including your keywords, onsite optimization, link quality, etc. The best way you could estimate would be to take each keyword and determine: How many exact match searches are their on Google for this keyword each month? If we achieve a #X ranking, what CTR could we expect? The answer to those two questions will tell you how many visitors you might expect from the keyword. Then you'll need to analyze your competitors keywords and estimate how many and what type of links you'll need to achieve the ranking you want. Together, that will give you a very rough estimate of how much traffic you might expect from your link building efforts.

I agree, they are a very strong directory that I'm sure Google respects.  At 300/yr you may want to consider a few different directory options. How is the Yahoo directory category compared to the business.com one?  Less links on page?  Higher mozRank?  You might also consider Best of the Web and then a few other smaller (but trusted directories) that maybe your competitor isn't listed in.  You could also look for quality niche directories.  If you could get 3-4 strong links that your competitor lacks compared to one very strong link that your competitor has you may be in good shape.  Some of the other directories may offer lifetime links too, to get the most bang for your buck. Cheers, Vinnie

Hey, can you post the phrase and the page you want to rank? Happy to take a look and kick in some feedback.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. I would expect Google to discount the duplicate links, but not penalize you. I have had my articles picked up and syndicated across spammy site networks and get a bunch of links before - I don't think it helped me much, but it didn't hurt either. Just focus on getting more high quality links to improve their link profile and give them a greater variety.

You can't rely on SEOMoz and Majestic to give you Google data as these two use their own crawling. My warmest recommendation would be to gain access to GWT and learn about what Google knows about your links.

Thanks, this website is a custom build.  The company that built the site will not allow FTP access for some reason.  Like I would want to rip off their generic looking template.   I just reoptimized all the png's on my own website after a speedtest but thanks for the tips

Spammy links will often have a low Moztrust and a medium  or high Moz rank. Sites penalised by Google can often be spotted if there is a considerable difference between Moz Rank and Page Rank. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply Frank. I thought there wern't any videos when I first looked, thanks for clearing that up I'll go and watch the videos now.

Appreciate the response. I couldn't agree more with focusing time and resources on the site itself and other quality backlinks. I really just needed some reassurance so I can focus our attention on what is more important. As mentioned, this question arises from a co-worker (who doesn't understand SEO) doing some research and reading a forum response from last fall about using these "content farm" sites... Initially, I told him that it was a waste of time, but everyone seems to panic when they find a new median source to use without consulting me or doing the research.

I'd export the links into excel each month and then use VLOOKUP to check which existed the previous month with those that didn't being the new links.

Google doesn't know if it's a landing page or a regular page. It just sees a 'page'. Pages have on-page optimization (for a single keyword), and off-page optimization (other pages (internal and external) that point to them with different anchor text, relevancy, and authority). The page with the highest overall score is the one Google will rank highest. If you want your landing page to rank highest then do more SEO for it than for your non-landing-page. Of course, sometimes the best landing pages are really just regular pages that are relevant and well-optimized for the phrase in question...

And OpenSiteExplorer, of course.