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spot on, no-follow does leak link juice, it just that it is not awarded to the linked-to page. the only use for it is when you dont vouch for the linked-to page. No-follow for a limited time did not leak link juice, but this made it hard to get links because everyone was trying to hoard link juice, many still believe no-follow does not leak link juice and are still reluctant to give a follow link.

I dont have any evidecne an old link is any better then a new link simply because it is old. A lot depends on the linking web site, if it is gaining authority and rank then your link will also gain value. But this can be the reverse.

The Caffeine udate was claimed to make instant updates to the Index. To me this suggests that as soon as the link is indexed it gives value. However, part of Google's patent suggests evaluation of links over time, so the history of a link could add value to that link. So like fine wine, links with age are worth more.So the value you are looking for may not be achieved until the link itself as aged and increased in value. What you suggest is that in your findings the value of a link is not immediate for ranking. I believe that is heavily dependant on the difficulty of the desired ranking. I have seen a link or two provide imediate value on obscure rankings. Where as, competitive rankings need the added value of time and quantity. Take an average for 10 5-star reviews. Not competitive. Easy to move the average by a few more reviews. Now consider average from 100 reviews. Much harder to move average. Take 10000 reviews and a new review is a drop in a bucket. Very competitive rankings will not see immediate value. Disclaimer, I am a pest control guy.

Yeah there are risks. But if you go about it in a slightly different way then you're perhaps less likely to be penalised. For example if you ask each blogger to place a badge on their website as part of the review then it looks a little more legit, with the badge containing an image or logo and an anchor text link.

Hi Samuel, This is really going to depend on the type of customers the Fortune 500 company is targeting so I will go with your JCPenney example. 1. Partnerships - Find out who heads up business development and review the sites of every partner. If the partner does not have a link to you then get the Biz Dev person to call them up and ask. Another good tactic is to send a gift basket outside of the holidays, then follow up with a call asking. When a partner page already exists on the site it is easy but if you are major partners then you can ask for one to be built. 2. Charity - Does the company or employees participate in any charitable work? Check out the charities for donor pages and get your site listed if not already. Partner with the charity to do a local or national fund raising drive, hit up bloggers who are fans of either the charity or brand. 4. Identify Brand Advocates - Find the mommy bloggers and others online (forums included) that talk about your brand, competitor brands, the products you offer, etc and engage them. Let them hold a contest on thier blog for a gift certificate is a simple example. Coca Cola 5. Sponsored Blog Posts - This falls a little bit on the more risky side but it is an option. Vacations to Go has employed this so take a look at thier backlink profile for further insight. 6. Offline Marketing - Bridge the gap of offline marketing by creating a page or minisite for each offline campaign that points back to the main site. 7. Coupon / Deal websites - There are hundreds if not thousands of sites that feature coupons & deals by major companies. Dig in and find them. A good tactic is searching twitter, google, technorati, etc for words such as coupon, deal, rebate, sale, discount, promo code, promotion, promotional code. Create a list of the sites and submit your coupons & do an outreach campaign to the bloggers / twitter users. 8. Conferences - There are both industry & consumer focused conferences. Become a sponsor or speaker and get listed on the conference website. 9. Create a Youtube Channel - Make videos about interior design, cooking, back to school shopping, etc. However people use your products make videos of that, just be helpful. There is a reason Oprah, Dr. Oz, Food Network are so popular. I could go on but this should give you a good starting point & keep you busy. The idea is you need to energize & engage the people who already use your products and leverage that to expand the customer base.

A link is a link is a link. Throw the right anchor text in there and it will be more powerful.

Thanks for your advice.  I've been offered link building by "Smart Traffic" in the UK.  Any experience of these guys?

In the Philippines we have lots of cheap and great Freelance SEO's as well company's where you at?

In my opinion... 1. I would use the most descriptive URL for the product at hand. That being said, if you want to rank for all three keyword variations, I would go with /big-shiny-blue-widgets. 2. No, inbound anchor text of "shiny blue widgets" will not help the page rank equally for "blue widgets" and "shiny blue widgets". It will help both, but lean toward the latter. That being said, you want to vary the anchor text so this is almost a non-issue (see #3). 3. Vary the anchor text and include all three variations (and possibly others). Here are some other things to consider... 1. The title of the page is a very important indicator for the search engines. If you want to rank for all three variations, you should use "big shiny blue widgets" in your title tag. 2. The content on the page (text) should include all three variations of the text you want to rank for - without stuffing it in. This is a tough one to call out a rule for. If you read the text and it sounds too keyword heavy, it probably is. 3. Another place to inject the keywords you want to rank for is in relation to images of said products. You could include specific product descriptions as captions and in the image alt tag. 4. The page description is another place to possible put all three variations. However, this could be considered overkill. Also, don't forget people will be looking at this text in the SERPs. You want the description to be compelling to a human as well as a searchbot or else your clickthrough rate may suffer. 5. The competitive landscape of the product at hand is important to consider. If you are trying to rank for multiple variations of an obscure keyword set, you may find it easy to rank well for all three keyword variations without a lot of link building. If, on the other hand, you are attempting to rank for highly competitive keywords, you may find yourself needing to pick one to focus on or build lots of links. Hope this helps! If anyone else feels differently, I would love to hear what you have to say.

i believe it is not just where the content was seen first,  thinks like up time, loading time and other thinks can decide what page will be seen as the original. Rand did and article on it somewhere.

Yes, there were some changes in rankings after the algorithm update. I lost ~10-20 positions ( I mean from position 3-4 to 23-24 ) for some keywords, for others just 1-2 positions ( from 1st place to 2nd, or from 1st place to 3rd ) . No, the pages above do not have a greater link popularity.

Not cheap but you could maybe get a lot out of - http://www.syntryx.com/ It'll give you IP, other sites that person owns, what vertical they're in, strength of sites and dozens of other things.

Thanks, good advice.  I wonder what their policy is on revealing links.  If I pursue I'll post here.

Considering you can't get penalised by a backlink form a spammy site ("negative" SEO), I would submit the site to the travel platform if it does no cost much time/money. Reading your response to Gianluca, it looks like the backlinks are not so spammy so you should do it without fears.

Richard makes a great point Jan (no surprise there eh?)and it makes me realize that I completely neglected addressing user experience in my answer. I was assuming that you would  redirect to an appropriate page. To give you an example of good and bad (from a users perspective), Let's say you had a page dedicated toa yellow 6 man camping tent. It would be acceptable to redirect that to a page listing all your camping tents especially if the yellow 6 man tent was included among them. It would not be OK(again, from a users perspective) to redirect that yellow 6 man tent page to a page dedicated to sleeping bags.

Consider how your related articles are handled. At the end of an article you could have related content which is great for both search engines and readers.

Rodney, Google spiders not only reads the anchor text on the link but also take into consideration ton of other factors including the text around the link, website url, domain name,  domain authority, page authority, title tag and several on page elements to decide the worthiness of a link. "Keyword 1 Keyword 2" anchor text definitely has more weight than "Keyword 1 Keyword 2 another word" or any other variation but that alone is not enough to rank for the keyword. I have seen direct improvement in keyword rank due to exact anchor text vs anchor text with extra words but too many backlinks with exact anchor text will be considered a forced attempt to gain ranking and Google could disqualify the link juice completely. Google is already beefing up their algorithm to disqualify paid and farm links. One of the most common themes in all paid links is the exact anchor text so it will be easier for Google to identify a set of exact anchor text links on a website with dofollow. Always try to use anchor text variations in the link building campaign. There are far better chances of rank improvement with an organic link building strategy compared to a forced anchor text tactic. Hope this helps. Thanks Sameer

unfortunately, paid links do work, just ask J.C. Penney! you will find more value long term getting organic links and those you build through participation.