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bcgroup, As long as your navigation isn't obfuscated by javascript, flash, or iframes, and links from your homepage are followed (vs. nofollowed) the tranference of pagerank from your home page to your internal pages normally takes place naturally.  Be sure to verify for the above issues and then make sure your architecture is well laid-out: Internal Links - SEO Best Practices - Moz Successful Site Architecture for SEO [SES London 2011] - Moz

Hi Papp, What you are asking is the million dollar question... there's no right answer. To get traffic you need basically 2 things: A great Website. And excellent content (whatever the niche is, it could also be the "best products" if you were selling something, or the "best service"). The real question here is: do your websites have what they need to rank in the SERPs? I'm quite sure, that 10 - 30 "seo'ed" articles are not even near enough unless those articles that you published are something really extraordinary that you can't find anywhere else, say a medical research for example. My advice? Take one of the sites first, and try to do something amazing. If you are able to monetize that first one with AdSense, then you would have learned what is needed to do it with the other sites.

Thanks for your suggestions. The client owns the domain name so will consider all your suggestions.

Local directories are definitely important, this post has a great overview of where you should post: http://moz.com/blog/2013-local-search-ecosystems.  I'd recommend printing it out and going through each. On a global scale, the only other directories that provide serious value are those that are very specific to your niche, and offer some sort of objective ranking or specific information on your page.  Specific directories for your industry can be very helpful in gaining a relevant link that will look good for search and draw direct traffic.  Google has made it clear that anything that anyone can submit to has little if no value going forward.  I'd stay away from those types of directories.

Hi Nick Thanks for your response. Yes, creating fresh new content is the stronghold for any digital marketing strategy. However after reading the article you sent me has only increased my desire never to touch a directory. It seems to me directories, however much impact they play right now, may become a thing of the past tomorrow... We'll stick to developing relevant content for our clients and publishing digitally using authoritative sites, blogs, social media's extra. Thanks again Nick and a Happy New Year to you. Gary Victory - Elite Group Marketing, London

Just a quick note that all links in the Moz Q&A forum and in the comments have the nofollow attribute automatically added to them.

I love that you made the tweet joke yourself. If you create this as your site (your site is the Pinterest looking site), you are hoping to maximize others linking to your site? I think it might drive good interest socially, but I am not sure that type of site lends itself well to links. If you do go with this type of site, I would focus your efforts on collections of pins and do promotions around those. I think that would be the best way to get link attention. Focus less on the pins and more on the boards. It's early Monday, so does that make sense?

Thanks Andriy.  They are all do-follow links.  I will put less focus on trying to get links with keywords as anchors.

Hi Sebastian - unfortunately, I'm not sure there's much help I can give you on your question (I'll explain why below), but I did want to pop in to say that I'm worried about the goals you're attempting to achieve and how they conflict with what Google and its users are seeking from websites. The build + flip model of creating an exact match domain (which have been trending down in Google's results and no longer provide much benefit) along with the concept of hosting many sites and simply publishing articles without regard for the quality or the broader mission or the end-user's goals and experience in mind is dangerous. Years ago, those types of systems worked and today, they can still work ocassionally and temporarily, but given the amount of effort required, I'm certain you could find other ways to accomplish far greater financial returns and give the web something truly excellent - something Google wants to rank and people want to visit, rather than a gallery of article-heavy built-to-flip sites. The last point I'll add is that the links you might find to sites like these are not going to be high-quality, editorially given endorsements from trusted sources. They're far more likely to be the kind of links that get you into trouble. And, generally speaking, the Moz Q+A community doesn't focus on those and may not have great recommendations for how to acquire them. That said, we welcome all kinds, and I wish you luck whatever you choose.

Hi Jonathan Although Google's guidelines don't explicitly mention "discounts" I do feel this would be considered a paid or manipulated link as the company is offering a monetary benefit in exchange for a link. Google's Guidelines state that any link that is paid must be disclosed in a machine readable format and nofollowed -Dan

Hey Ashley I want to just clarify - do you mean to say people were spamming links to your site in order to receive automatic trackbacks from your site? Otherwise, having comment/trackback spam on your site is a separate issue from having incoming spammy links. So, if your automatic trackbacks were like a magnet attracting poor links, and you have now shut off this function, in theory the bad links should spot coming in, which they seem to have stopped. So your next step as Chris suggests is to disavow all the bad domains. But aside from that, in general I would think you would want comments and maybe even trackbacks to be active on your site, in which case I would enable them but require moderator approval on all first-time comments/trackbacks - this should deter spammers etc. Then what you also want to do in order to activate comments is go through all of your old posts and completely delete all comment and trackback spam and leave only the real ones. -Dan

On top of Dana's answer, it's worth looking here - http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change - to see if your traffic started dropping again after any particular updates.

Thanks. I did make the links nofollow, as the purpose wasn't to pass rank, but to show the user a site that is also helpful to them, and related as well. (And I get nervous even making links nofollow, as it could be a signal to Google that I'm trying to page sculpt of something -- just can't win.) Without giving away the exact sites, I'll try to describe with made-up site topics.  Let's say Site A is about how people can receive tax credits for installing solar in their home, and Site B is about saving money on electricity usage in the home.  Not the same products, but both interest the same user.  In my case, the sites are in the home telecommunications areas.

Sounds like you're on the right track, nice job! And, I agree with you, I wouldn't pay a company to remove links, even if I paid them to put them up in the first place. Especially since you have the power of the disavow tool. Good luck!

You could try searching NerdyData for a search operator like below: href="http://example.com Make sure to leave the closing quotation mark out to account for any sub pages. This may or may not  return some different results, it's worth a shot.

My last site (10 months old) i paid for links, had outsourced cheap quality back links. Do you think starting over is an option ? A new site (with content and everything from my old site) and doing manual high quality seo myself ?  or will Google spam my new one as well ?

Hey tcolling! Whatever you decide, I would guard against looking for a "good deal" in terms of price. REAL, quality link building efforts that have the potential to drive real results for you is not going to be cheap. If you have the budget, I would consult with Eric Ward before you do anything. He is THE expert in the field and can provide a great consultation for you that details the type of outreach and specific targets that will benefit your efforts the most. Eric had a quote somewhere that went something like this... Links can do 1 of 4 things: a) help search rankings b) help drive quality web traffic c)neither d)both I'd make sure whomever you use is focused on link acquisition efforts designed to do both. THOSE are the links that Google generally values the most anyways. There are many people who would be happy  (myself included) to provide link building services, but anyone who does it the RIGHT way will need a fairly large time investment to do so (especially since you are dealing with multiple sites). I would say $1000/month/site would be a realistic starting point for someone qualified to produce for you. Link building is no longer a manipulative task centered around manual link placement. It IS a process of outreach, networking, relationship building and research that (when done properly) can drive business to your sites, increase brand awareness and drive search rankings! Check out Moz approved companies here...http://moz.com/community/recommended

Hi Margaret 301 redirects! I have just gone through the same process as you will be. You may find this blog post of use, Its simple and quick. http://blog.search-mojo.com/2010/10/14/301-redirects-formatting-bulk-redirects-in-4-quick-steps/ Also checkout http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ which will help you also.

How are you checking their backlinks? Keep in mind that even the best link checkers can find only a fraction of the links pointing to a site. It could be that there are more links going to the site that you're not aware of, that Google knows about. Ahrefs has the largest index of links, in my experience. It's also possible that the site has a lot of other positive signals going to the site. Generally, the more authoritative and trustworthy a site is in Google's eyes, the more it can get away with in terms of spammy tactics without getting penalized. You also don't know which of those links are helping with the rankings, if any. It's entirely possible that the company has already disavowed most of those links in Webmaster tools, or Google is discounting them automatically. Or maybe they will end up getting penalized in the next Penguin update. In short, don't rely too much on competitive backlink analysis. It can give you a few ideas of links to go after, but it doesn't always give you the full picture.