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If it shows in your analytics account as an incoming traffic source, they know about it. Have you linked out from your webpage or website to your new link? I would add a link on your site to that particular post, since it links back to you, and use fetch as Google to get them to recrawl your page. Couldn't hurt, and it only take a few minutes. And yes, it is common.

Hi Denis, The thing is: if a website offers inbound links that pass PageRank then by definition they do not comply with the Google guidelines. Google is quick to call all things not compliant spam and sometimes makes arbitrary choices as to what are considered bought links. During a conference I once asked an ex Googler who was a webspam specialist that I thought that an advertorial on big websites are de facto paid links if they pass PageRank? I never got a real answer but I guess it all depends on the standing a website has with Google. If a small blog asks a fee for an advertisement with an followed link then it's a slippery slope, large news sites are not a problem. All being true the link they offer is not an advertorial and is an paid link in a link directory and in the end has a high risk of being classified as such. But if you would need to put a price on it: the DA in combination with the anchor text of the link makes it more or less valuable. A DA of 30 is significantly more then 20 and will pass significantly more PageRank so us more valuable. How much more is up to the person who is in the market for buying I guess. Hope this helps. Gr Daniel

Thanks Irving. When you say stuffing the blog and knowledgebase tags. Do you mean stuffing on specific blog or knowledgebase article pages? Thanks!

Thanks!

I'd look at what is posted on those sites. Are they posting quality information? Is the information relevant to your topic? Do their guidelines mention any quality control process?

You can always inform Google about it : https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1

Open Site Explorer can be filtered just to show links that we think pass equity - it's under the [Show] pulldown: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ ...then set the [to] pulldown to "pages on this root domain". Sorry, I'm not sure I'm fully understanding what you're looking for (and may have misunderstood), so please feel free to provide more details.

destinationbigbear.com/blog would be ideal. You should stop posting to http://destinationbigbear.wordpress.com/ asap and put all future content onto your main site. Does http://destinationbigbear.wordpress.com/ get any traffic? If not, i'd copy over all of the posts and 301 from old urls to new ones.

Yes, Resubmit the total file with the "good links" omitted. It takes a little time but Google will start giving you link credit again for them.

How does one know that one is being penalized for linking blog pages on one site to the ecommerce pages on the mother site? Thanks, DIane Diane Kramer, Doggie-diva.com

Thanks Andy for the infographic point, it is something we have not not done yet but we are conducting a client survey and have generated a lot of good feedback that lends itself to this approach. I guess for all of us the issue is one of client buy in. We are very good at coming up with the ideas and carrying out the campaigns and outreach in house but if we need to go and stand on the street corner for a few days talking to end users that has to be paid for. How does everyone else manage this? Tom Roberts - I would appreciate your views on 'green light' back links for 2014 excluding  Ezine. Thanks a million everyone. K

Yeah, then just let it be and keep doing what you're doing

Hi Andrew, Welcome to the SEO world and as Devanur mentions in his response below, you need to change focus from looking for followed / nofollowed links to building great content which will automatically attract links coming through to you. Alternatively, though, you can still focus on the traditional linking methods by joining industry associations in your field and being listed on their websites as verified members which will get you links back to your site (follow / nofollow really depends on each site in this instance). Good luck and stick to white hat techniques!

Depending on how many total backlinks you have coming to your client sites, you may not see the yellow pages one if it is marked with a nofollow showing up in GWT. You may need to dig a little deeper through MajesticSEO or AHREFs to see it. I doubt whether having a free or a paid option should matter. Isn't the link the same either way? Also, have you verified that your client's yellow pages pages with the link have been recently crawled by Google to note that the link has been captured / viewed?

Thanks Tom.

Thank you for this, it answers the question. I am going to get the sites which shouldn't of been cleaned out back into the mix.

Thank you for your responses. It seems it's not quite as clear cut as I was hoping! I think using your definition Tom, they would appear to be far from natural then.  Afraid I can't fathom out how the links are being labelled ameliavargo.... I'm still trying to understand how to decipher the data that moz is providing me. It's interesting because if this is in fact a valid "loophole" to gain links then it seems pretty effective!  Looking at my example, this method is generating thousands of links for the individual businesses listed within the internal directory which I'm imagining must do wonders for SERP's. So is it fair to assume that the reason this does not get picked up by Google is because all of the links are of businesses in the same field of work?  I guess what I'm asking in effect is, how does Google go about assessing the integrity of the links?

The Google quality guidelines say that "excessive" creation of partner pages for the purpose of cross linking is against the guidelines.  But, they don't tell us what constitutes excessive. This is not always a bad idea.  Here are some criteria I would use to make this decision: -Would having a page like this actually be good for your readers/clients to use?  Or does it just exist for search engines.  For example, if you are a realtor, having a resource page to list local home inspectors, mortgage brokers, etc. is a good idea and being listed on their resource pages is probably ok. But, if that page contained mostly links to realtors in other cities and unrelated businesses like local casinos or payday loans companies or car insurance businesses then you'd start to think that this page was created just for links. -What is the quality like on the pages that are linking to you?  Do they look like they were set up just for links? -Avoid using exact match anchor text.  If your resource page contains links to Realtor in Seattle and Best Home Inspector in New York then that's a sign that it's set up for SEO purposes.

Hi Arta, Sorry, I was out for most of yesterday. And not quite sure what happened to the link. This is the tool I was referring to: http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php If you break your page up, you have basic information and cost at the top left with the image to the right - nothing wrong with that, but the buy button should also be in the Product Details up there at the top. As it stands, you have a price match and accessories before you get to it. Then you have a big block of Special Offers. It is important to say if it comes with something free, but this doesn't look right at all. The heading for that (included free with this stove) is smaller than the product headings below. You need to box this off somehow and make it stand out. Then you come to the drop downs and additional information. There is so much going on here - the use of the collapsable ones and horizontal tabs don't really work well together. Why not use all horizontal tabs? And I would get rid of any duplication you have in the Additional Information. -Andy

This should not cause a problem. As soralsokal says, internal anchor text linking isn't a regular problem for over-optimisation; the only way you'd be in danger of attracting unwanted search engine attention is if you were churning out hundreds of low-quality blog posts, linking internally over and over again to commercial pages with spammy anchor text. Google is used to seeing navigational links on ecommerce sites, the vast majority of which are "optimised". The optimisation is fine; it's for users. You wouldn't link to your wine page with any other anchor than "wine" because it tells people what the page will be about Google knows this; navigational elements like this are fine as a result.