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Nothing is for sure, but in my experience keywords in URL help, however very long URL's are probably not recommended. I've heard that keywords in domain names are not so valuable as before (they still are valuable just not so much). I tested keywords in URLs and one of the website were coming above the other website for the keywords. Again every case is different and it is solely your decision.

Hey, that's exactly my approach and it always forms part of a larger picture but good quality articles can help get traffic to and rank a new site so it factors in still for me. Cheers! Marcus

Great, that's good to know!

Hi bdiddy, As a rule of thumb, if you want Google to like you--use their stuff That goes for using the Webmaster tools and as some would argue, the adwords paid search (a little more controversial). But as for your question, maybe you can clarify what it is you're looking for? Are you trying to get your Google Places listing higher in the results, or are you trying to get your website (www.yourdomain.com) higher in the SERPs by using Google Places as a backlink? If it's the latter, understand that all the links on a Google Places page are "rel=nofollow". You won't gain any link juice (or friends at Google) if you make a bunch of place pages and link them back to yourdomain.com If it's the former, and you want to get your places page higher in the local search, see Rand's research. There are a number of factors that go into winning in local search, but chief among them is making sure your business listing is consistent across the web.

Thanks ... now i understand ... There is no wasy way ... ... Perhaps should start my own template company ... Cheers Krish

Thanks for your prompt reply - it pretty much confirmed what I thought. As far as the footprint goes, that's not too much of an issue - we have all the clients listed on our site anyway, so it's no huge drama for people to find this out. Also, we don't work with anyone we would be happy to shout about. Something on the About Us, or possibly the news page for new sites, could be doable. I guess the only thing that caused confusion was the paragraph in the book that implied the authors' experiments showed differing location pages and anchor text throughout the site was treated somewhat nearer linear instead of being ignored.

Yes, link juice will be passed to a URL link, as it is commonly used across the web and is evidenced in many sites that have this type of inbound link. Sorry I couldn't be more clearer.

You might get a small boost in keyword specific SERPS, but i would word it differently perhaps, is your target audience searching for exactly that "official bob marley merch" ?  Maybe it would be better to start the link out with "bob marley merch ..." as the order of the keywords makes a difference, you want to rank well for bob marley more than you want to rank well for official.

Google will count links to different pages on your site. This post from David Naylor illustrates the definition of where the First Link counts.

Yeah one of those obvious things I'd overlooked!

Best thing you can do is check fiverr and maybe digital point and be VERY VERY selective in who you hire. Test them on a site you don't care too much about and be detailed in the tasks you give them. Stay away from mass submission type stuff; directories, articles, etc. I'd look for someone who can truly do niche linking or competitor offset links for you (in house). Maybe someone on craigslist you can train.

I think this was more due to the bad link profile you created, not the PR numbers per se.

It all make sense but let look at one more new york appliance repair . com also using the same technicque in over 30 cities all by liking all on same ip. If you look at the competitors for example appliance - repair - ny . com that has almost 3000 links from different ips get lower rankings.. I'm looking on a way to dominate this niche in any cities and played with the idea but it seems like it too easy if that all that it took them to take over those niches.

Sometime domains which expire are getting hijacked by this types of websites and they take cached content (it is unbelievable) and keep it on their website along with bad content. Not sure what would be the best way to protect from such situations but it would be good to know.

And you will benefit from that in the long run. Keep up the good work and drop me a message if you need any other help. Regards, Andy

Thanks for the tips Lewis it's much appreciated.  I will be keeping a close eye on this and hopefully it will clear up.  If you are interested here is a link to one of the hacked sites containing our link that is still active  http://johnwakefield.co.uk/ifapj/ebods.php?ti=130037 All the bad links I have found seem to be in this format domain.com/something/something.php?=number So i assume they were all made by the same person.  Again thanks for the tips.

Social networking such as replying, liking, updating sites. Forum posts from good quality sites. Not a proper answer just a few ideas that jumped into my head!

Links do not have to be related to the topic of the website that is being linked to. Unfortunately, because google's exact ranking algorithm is unknown, I dont think there is a percentage difference that can be placed on the value. It would be a good idea to keep your overall unrelated links lower, as well as making sure there are no potential spam signals that can be triggered from the domain names who are linking to you.