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Open Site Explorer can show you if your site has sitewide backlinks, but I would not rely only on OSE for a link analysis of that kind, because the total amount of URLs its crawls in not the biggest one around. As Ray-pp you can use also other tools like Ahrefs or Majestic SEO (or Cognitive SEO, which is particularly effective when it comes to link analysis), but I would always start from the "incoming links" page of Google Webmaster Tools. To answer to your first question (how to detect sitewide links): sitewide links are very easy to detect. If you see that a domain is linking to yours with hundreds or even thousands backlinks, that is because they are sitewide links, or - classifying them - a single link published in a website element that repeated as it in every page of a site (i.e.: footer, sidebar, header). In the specific case of your sites, the interlinking due to the "flag" menu is a classic. Normally they should not represent a problem, because Google recognizes they are systemic to certain kind of web design for multi-country or multilingual websites. On the other hand, though, Matt Cutts once suggested that a better solution would be creating a country selector page reachable via internal linking from the header or the footer, so to avoid the creation of an always increasing number of sitewide sitelinks.

It took me a while to come back, but I made it. Link building is all about leveraging your assets.  You have a great blog with great images, so this opens up a number of strategies that you can follow to maximise the links that come back your way.  The ones that interest me in your case do involve giving a little something away, and that can be uncomfortable at first as it can feel like devaluing your work. However quality links have value, so there is a return to be had. I'd be tempted to start by thinking about what you might be prepared to give away for the right credit.  For instance would you be happy for people to use smaller versions of your images on their website if they linked back to you?  How about if that only applied to some images?  Would you let "the right website" use a full sized image in exchange for a credit? Consider what you are comfortable with and then communicate that.  Having a link to "use this image on your website" that explained the rules would encourage more to do it. You could even upload specific images to Flickr as creative commons with the required attribution being a credit link. On a smaller scale you could target high quality sites that have poor imagery and just offer them the use of a relevant image in exchange for a credit.  That can be a very effective way of getting some very high quality links.  My photos are rubbish, but I've done this successfully for even related things in the past. If you are not doing so already I'd also look at something like imageraider.  Imageraider will monitor the web for places where your images are used and alert you.  This can be equally useful for protecting your IP as it is for link building.

Hi Alex, Most of the time it's up to each SEOer on what they think and down to some judgment. I stay away from cheesy directories. I do sometimes submit to niche directories that I think people may be using to look for very niche sites etc. You can also consider the big boys like yahoo etc. but I never think you get a return on the cost to submit (I've also a feeling the yahoo directory is closing soon!) Sorry I can't say this is good this is bad its just a call you've got to way up.  is it worth the risk for the return?

Thank you Linda, this really helped me further!

FYI, the "keyword I'm trying to rank for in my link example" is referred to as anchor text. Don't worry, I didn't know it either until someone told me. Also, you need to be careful with anchor text. The safest way is to get your brand in the anchor text, not a keyword. Too much anchor text targeted at a keyword could get you in trouble with the google. However, obviously, some matching keywords will definitely help your cause....as long as it is balanced and natural. In terms of creative ways to get backlinks, I would suggest you read Paddy Moogan's http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building. It has a lot of helpful information and ideas. Best, Ruben

If you've got viagra spam pointing at your site you likely won't be able to remove them.  So should you disavow?  Disavowing a nofollowed link won't accomplish anything as disavowing is simply asking Google not to count the link and a nofollow link is already not being counted.  However, when you have loads of nofollowed links from spam attacks this is one situation where I often do go ahead and disavow these.  The reason for this is that one tactic that spammers can use is to point a bunch of nofollowed links at a site and then one day turn them all to followed.  If you've got them disavowed then you've got that covered. Also, if you have viagra links pointing to your site, make sure you don't have a hack within your site.  Try doing a google search for site:yourdomain.com viagra and see what comes up. For directories, I don't worry about things like dmoz scrapers and 100searchengines and stuff like that, unless somehow you managed to sneak a keyword anchored link into dmoz.  I wrote a thorough article on my thought process for auditing directory links here: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2360254/is-that-directory-link-unnatural

Profile links aren't generally great links.  It is however quite natural to have some of them. Like many things in SEO it is a good idea to try to look objectively at them and ask yourself why they exist.  If the links exist because there is genuine involvement in a number of sites (includin niche relevant ones) and those sites are of an acceptable quality then there is no real reason to disavow them.  If they existing because someone thought they would be a good way of getting links or they're in unnatural proportions or the sites are very poor quality then you might want to do somthing about them.  If you have the logins removal might even be better than disavow.

I've done this at times at pretty large volume (100s of outreach emails), and typically I've gotten about a 10% response rate. Keep in mind that didn't necessarily mean we got a link, but some type of relationship was formed, potential for the business to earn more work (better than links, btw), or something else productive. Even if it was just a citation we consider that a "win." But some advice, do not employ this tactic at large scale unless you are in a web-saavy, tech-based industry. Online marketing, design, and photography businesses, for example, are far more likely to earn links via broken link building than a manufacturing plant. In my experience, there are just some industries this tactic is a complete and utter waste of time. If you find success in this tactic early-on though, there are some great social tools that help you automate some of this email work. I've heard very good things about BuzzStream. Oh, and make sure it's not your only link earning/building tactic.

As others have said, it depends on how you do it! Like so many things in life, eh?

Here's a great article on SEO for Amazon: http://moz.com/blog/amazon-seo-organic-search-ranking-factors

Great advice.  Thank you very much for helping me think this through.

Yeah i agree with Hutch42, aim to create content which is high quality and people will genuinely want to link to it. The blog would also allow you to target the content much more effectively. Do some keyword research and figure out what kind of things people are searching for in your industry and create some unique content around this.

It does seem like you may be setting up some obvious patterns of backlinking for SEO gains, which Google Penguin can penalize. It especially depends on what anchor text you are using. Remember that Google prefers linking to be "natural." This means that you produce great content, and then in turn, others will want to share that content by linking to it. A backlink to your website should be seen as an "editorial vote" from one website to another, as opposed to you going out and creating all of your backlinks yourself. Here is a video from a bald Matt Cutts on techniques for building links. If your primary SEO strategy is to go about linking to yourself on various forums and blogs, and especially if you are using money anchor text like "seo company new york" then you may be setting yourself up for an over-optimization penalty of some kind. In regards to the discussion forum you participate in, I would check to see if those links you are creating are marked with a rel="nofollow" attribute. If they are, then I would not worry so much about them harming you, but also know that they can't really directly boost your ranking either.

I agree with Hutch42 and RangeMarketing. In most cases, the best practice for SEO is to create a self-hosted blog under the same domain as your main business website, if applicable. There's no reason to create more than one website (or blog) to achieve the same purpose. It dilutes your link equity (juice). Creating a separate blog for the purpose of creating a bunch of links back to your website could be seen as spammy and cause more harm than good. There are much more effective ways to get links to your website with good quality content and digital PR.

I was trying to politely say that you have some old advice that I don't think is worth investing any time on. If you want nitty-gritty details read the moz blogs and seo starter guides for newbies. Read from 2014 onwards (SEO info gets out-dated very quickly and you kind of have to keep up-to-date with it regularly - the longer you do it the more adept you'll become at sorting the wheat from the chaff in terms of 'advice' - I have read newly published SEO guides this year offering advice that if followed could potentially get a site blacklisted today but would have worked in 2009! - it's annoying because any Tom, Dick or Harry can say they are and SEO expert - it doesn't mean they are one!) Ignore any 'advice' that says 'this is an easy fix' because there aren't any. Good luck.

Hi Wayne Thanks for the response - to be honest there about 15 websites all in different industries and sectors.. We want to find a reliable company (possibly India as we have heard they are cheap to outsource too) this is because mainly of the time it takes to outsource all of the link building... If you do know of any companies please can you let me know ? Thanks Gareth

There is really nothing to say about the mistakes made by SMB owners who believe that they've contracted with a great SEO firm - and find out later that is not so true... Which gets me to the real value of a referral. Look for - always look for an SEO firm that has the 'added value' of offering up a set of referral clients for you to check on yourownself. That is so important in that a real live SEO firm will always be able to supply that list- long or short - but that you can call on the phone or email to the CEO and ask "...hey, the XYZ SEO firm said you're a client...tell me about your experiences with using them...." type of contact. Without that - on what core values are you really buying an SEO contractor? Oh - the "recommended" list of companies can also be a great starting place too - use that list to drill down on, visit each of your final candidates from and THEN call/email their list of referral clients.... Anything else I'm afraid is just "burning" your money....sad to say...

I caution against purchasing a link building service, you're most likely to be throwing money away or doing your site harm. Instead, identify the quality directories (should be a very small subset of websites, use Moz Local) your site needs to be listed on and add them yourself. Then, since you do not have a large budget, focus on the quality of the content and wait for links to come naturally.

First, let me begin with full disclosure. I am Russ Jones, CTO of Angular (formerly Virante) and creator of Remove'em. I will do my best not to make this an advertisement in any way and answer the question more generally about link removal services. "My question is, has anyone used them, and did you see any results?" The answer here is a definite yes. We should probably distinguish between link removal tools and link removal services. There are some tools out there that assist with the link removal process (Remove'em, LinkRisk, LinkDetox, and Remove'em etc.) and other tool/service blends that perform a degree of the link removal process (Remove'em Full Service, RMoov, etc.) and finally some service-only models (LinkDelete, etc.). I will say that I am personally unfamiliar with the service-only models so I will refrain from comment on them out of ignorance, not because they couldn't very well be useful and effective. The blended services, by and large, appear to be effective. We have researched our competitors and I assure you if they were a sham, we would have made that clear in our marketing material by now These services tend to provide the following improvements upon DIY... 1. Existing relationships with link purveyors to accelerate link removal. 2. Outreach technology that allows them to better find contact info. 3. Existing databases of contact information tailored to this industry. 4. Knowledge of Google expectations for successful reconsideration However, you don't need any of this to run a successful recovery, the question is just a balance of your time and money. If your lost revenue from lack of rankings, cost of time/services (ie: employees or existing SEO firm running removal campaign) are greater than the costs of these services, they are well worth your consideration. If you have an specific questions about these services beyond their efficacy, feel free to respond here - I would be more than willing to help.

I would agree with Pixel by Pixel, DA is all about links, but its not the quantity you need to worry about, its the relevancy of the links. Also you don't want to get links, you need to earn links - then you don't need to worry about penalties from Google and other search engines. To earn links there is plenty of great articles on Moz about improving your DA but I would start from this one http://moz.com/learn/seo/page-authority Thanks Andy