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I don't think that is correct, I have watched the video also, and I think matt has been deliberately vague. If you have a link that points to pageA that is 301 redirected to pageB, then you lose PR with the link to pageA then lose again when it is 301 redirected to pageB. You have made 2 requests both lose PR True the lose is the same, but it is twice. If you link directly to pageB, them you only leak PR once.

Thanks heaps Charles and lesterj as well. I've had a look into Google's view on widgets and it looks like you might be right so we've just changed the code on the widget so that the link back to us is nofollow (somewhat counter-intuitive!) We've also just submitted a disavow on the worst offending links/domains. .... so fingers crossed! Guess we have to wait for Google to crawl all of these sites to see an impact though.

Hi Stacey, Last update to that list was in October 2012, since then some of those sites closed and some may have been hit with a penalty, so check carefully if the site is well indexed in Google before using them.

I agree i was referring to no local targeted business online.

Hi Adam, Oh yeah, I understand your point. And I do agree with you competitors can be ruthless in fact some people can have no moral center whatsoever. I was simply bringing to light the fact of what Google actually goes to people that they do catch rather be something that happens very only or more frequently. I apologize I came across as scolding or trying to tell you that you're doing something wrong. You actually did bring up something that is important for people to understand and I think it's important that anyone practicing search engine optimization should definitely never use the method of pointing bad links at competitors as Google I know that you understand I was not lying at all when I said how harsh Google is when they catch people that do practice illegitimate forms of search engine optimization or black hat methods in order to beat competitors vs beating them fair and square by creating higher quality content sharing it more frequently using all the tools at your disposal to essentially outrank somebody fair and square for the keywords that you want to record and hopefully they want reports well. I did not mean to say that you were doing anything bad. Please except my apology if it came across as me saying that you were actually practicing those methods as I did not mean it to. Respectfully, Thomas

Just want to agree with both @Karl and @Glen - you can disavow the domain, but I'd also reach out directly to Blogpost, as they're your best bet for a takedown. Past that, you could file a DMCA request. Honestly, though, if you're just talking about one obviously bad site on Blogspot, your risk is pretty low here. There are bad sites out there, and Google knows it. Until you've got a pattern of bad links, they're not going to penalize you for something you can't control (the vast majority of the time, at least).

Why would you stick with the platform? You seem to already clearly understand it is not future proof for your client. Cut bait now and move to a better platform that will give you all the SEO advantages. IMHO that would be Wordpress. Best,

Thank you. I do work hard at getting quality backlinks which helps. I just started a google plus page for my blog so hopefully that improves my rankings as well. I have read about google author but I just don't feel comfortable putting my real name and picture out there....yet. I just ran a report card for the category page that I want to boost and that gave me a few ideas.

I think the valuable from the release is 100% dependent on the quality of the news / material. If the release is shared and one high end media company picks it up, it's possible that their copy of the content trumps all other publications including the original release itself. When this happens, then the value can of course be significant link-wise. However, its best to focus on releases as a tool in the toolbox with a specific marketing purpose as opposed to link building.

I agree with Francisco that you should check whether it's a nofollow link or not. If it is then you should be fine. If not you might want to consider disavowing those links with Google's Link Disavowel tool.

Be an expert in your niche, and contribute to the community. And ask yourself What pain points do consumers in this industry experience? What content could be refreshed and / or curated in this industry? How can you contribute your expertise to add value? Asking yourself these questions will help you develop content ideas, which will, in turn, potentially yield inbound links if you can build great content and share it with industry influencers. Hope this helps Todd

You could post the originals on your main website first and then rewrite the articles and syndicate them on other sites for backlinks, Generally speaking I don't think its a good idea to post the same content to your own site and other sites, though if you really must do it make sure the article is indexed on your site first before you post it elsewhere. Also please be aware that you probably wont just get just 1 backlink if you post to Ezine as a lot of people syndicate the articles it would probably lead to the article being posted in a lot of places so be careful with exact match anchor text and generally don't post the same content on Ezine and your main money site. Hope that helps!

Thanks for all the feedback guys.  Our site actually climbed in rankings over the last month for the core keywords we are trying to optimize.  We'll continue to build great content. thanks for everything

The fact of the matter is that no one fully knows the 250+ signals in the google algorithm or how the 500+ changes a year to the algo affects things. If the press release links are passing any link equity and you decide to disavow them, you're only hurting yourself. Any amount of positive link equity is better than purposely choosing to get nothing from it. If your site, your traffic, your rankings, and other metrics haven't been hurt by the press releases then why disavow them?

Just to clarify - the page on your site no longer exists (404s/500s/etc.)? If the target of the link doesn't exist, the link should be more or less dead. I generally wouldn't bother disavowing. It's a bit situational, though - I'm not sure if you're working to disavow thousands of links and this is a large-scale problem or if there's just this one like or handful you're worried about. If you've got a handful of spammy links that all point to dead pages, I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

Thanks, I'll get the Pinterest meta tag posted to my website right away.

I'm going to take the easy way out and side-step the topic of PageRank, which Alan covers well, and raise the issue of relevance and weighting based on reasonable surfer assumptions. Generally speaking, the first link on a page passes the most relevance, and links from unique domains pass more equity than links from previously linking sites. Meaning each new link from the same domain doesn't pass as much equity as the first link from that domain. It's the law of diminishing returns. http://moz.com/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links From a practical point of view, I try to get the highest link on a page. After that, I don't worry too much about additional links to the same domain on that page. But there are a lot of factors that play into this, and your situation may differ.

Other than prweb and prnewswire, I also recommend marketwire. In the most recent SMX, Matt Cutts talked about how google doesn't count the press release links because they are essentially paid links. The most important thing you need to think about when choosing the press distribution sites is how wide of a net it casts, so that  your story actually gets picked up by journalists and they write about you, hopefully with a link. The actual link from the press release (ex. prweb.com/ xxxxx) has no SEO value, in my opinion.

I think the easiest answer to EGOL is that you would be missing out on a backlink. The whole question here, and thank you to Philip Crothers for asking it, is if this act would be positive or negative from Google's perspective. If Google is saying this is a reciprocal link and all reciprocal links are bad, then I understand. However, if it is truly unique and relevant, would Google be okay with it and could you actually benefit from the backlink? If Google is okay with it, and you will benefit from the backlink, then I think the easy answer is to include the link to your site. Let's look at the example EGOL provided: For attribution you can say... "Philip Crothers is an expert on wedding day hairstyles and is the owner of WeddingDayHair.com" I'm assuming you are saying just use the URL as text, not a link. I understand what you're saying and I think that's a great idea. However, I think there is some value to the user in the form of convenience if in fact they want to visit WeddingDayHair.com, it would be easier to just click the link rather then copy and paste it into your browser. So I do think there is value in the difference. However, what the most ideal solution is will depend on if Google sees this act as a positive or negative one. I would love to hear an accurate answer on this specific situation.