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Great answer Tom! Thanks for adding something of value!

Hi Ian, The value of directory links has been debated here quite a lot recently, the value (or lack of) depends quite a bit on the directory and/or the niche your site is in. As for the pr value, it depends largely on the kind of site architecture the directory uses. Some directories have a kind of silo nav structure where as you say main and second level pages get most of the link juice and individual pages end up with almost nothing. Others have a flatter structure where internal pages manage to get a bit more. All things being equal from a technical point of view you would likely be getting better value if your link ends up on a page with some pagerank rather than a page with none. That being said, if the directory is not in a niche directly related to your site, or perhaps a large well known general directory the value of the link is debatable and I personally wouldn't bother to pay for one. The directory you specifically mention has the strap line 'seo friendly web directory'... any directory with the word seo in it for me is a bin and forget (thats just my opinion of course).

I agree, he has some amazing content on his site already. Will give it a try then Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Thanks Kane I had been doing more offsite for my clients as their DA and PA is lower than the competitors but I am guessing as these improve the weight of onsite and offsite should balance out to be a bit more even.  And as always it is something that needs to be monitored and worked on continuously.

Hey Nakul, Thanks I am relatively new to SEO, but quickly learning :).  I have a plan to create good content on my site blog, but also to outreach for links by guest blogging.  Non of my competitors have blogs etc, but I guess even if I have great content i need people to see it and in turn create back links?  I have been advised to steer clear of submitting articles and listing my domain on directories, which seems to be the original link building process the companies who did my SEO previously. Should I completely count out directory listings and submitting articles? Also do you recommend any ways to get my content from my blog out there, other than twitter and Facebook etc? Many Thanks Michelle

Craig That's a great example and I agree with you, you are on the right track. Think about your competition. They would also have the similar kinds of links. So you have those low quality, but natural links should be totally okay. With the nature of the web, nobody can control who links to them. Think what kinds of links Google, Yahoo or Amazon or Microsoft might be getting all day long. I would only concentrate on the actual links that are problem, should out manipulation, clearly blog posts, guest posts, reviews which were done from crappier sites, spam blogs. I hope this helps.

Thank you very much Paul! His site http://dianibeach.com and our poor is http://villasdiani.com Thank you so much for all this!

i just pm'ed you let me know if i can help. The key to pinterest is group boards

This is also a very good point, thank you!

We cannot market our product outside of residential use. I asked about that once before and I can't remember the details, I just remember that it's not an option. So we're restricted to individual consumers. The other groups that I'm currently aware of would be groups interested in: then environment, child safety, redwood specifically, and child health. Not sure what else we could aim for. This has been gone over for the past three years now. One of our competitors has links on their state government site having something to do with recycling. I've attempted to find something similar on our own state site but haven't had any luck yet. But again, the root, I believe, of our problem is a lack of valuable text content on our pages. We're ranking #1 for a bunch of keyword phrases that are nice, but not widely searched. However, the pages that rank well are all pages that we have recently spent some time adding content to and are using those keywords well. I can't help thinking that if we would fix the content issues with the site that we would be more "linkable" and would take care of this concern in the long run. Unfortunately they're looking for an instant fix which just doesn't exist. Anyway, thanks for all the feedback and info!

I just finished going through this process with a client and i assure you 100% of your effort should be in disavowing and removing links BEFORE adding new backlinks to your site. When Google reviews you for reconsideration they do not look at how many new links you gained but instead if you removed the bad ones that got you there in the first place. I would suggest talking to Marie Haynes on the topic - she is a great asset! Cheers - Kyle

Sunny greetings from Diani beach Dan! Thank you very much! I wish you very nice day

I've checked out the link, and it seems like a good resource, but form 2010. Things changed since then. From the Comments I read, I found this interesting: "I prefer to combine do and no follow links... it looks natural for google, and a link pointing to my site is never worthless."

Hey Jesse, Thanks its good to know. I was just a little un nerved by what my research showed, but I guess your right if i get things right now It should be future proof! Thanks for putting my mind at ease

May i post the same content to different blogs? NO and article directories NO Is this cleaver/correct idea? NO Don't go near article directories. Here's why.

What makes you think it's an over optimization penalty ? Have you received any webmaster console messages. Were you ranking 2 weeks ago and now all of your rankings have dropped or is it that some of your rankings have dropped. Please explain the exact situation a little bit more before there can be a solid conclusion.

Real Press Releases get picked up by traditional media and get redistributed/reworded all over the web, which is lesser duplicate content. That's how the traditional news world works and helps in all aspects of SEO/Brand Building. But to your point, if it's the same release over and over again, it would get combined and in most cases you'd only see 1 (if any). Most of those PR sites don't even make it into Google News.

Like you said, how you do it has the most impact for how reciprocal links are treated. As far as penalties are concerned, if you're going for sitewide blogroll type links, if you use exact match anchor text, you could be slapped with Penguin. Best to stick to your brand name for links like that. If Google feels like the links are there just to manipulate search rankings, then those links will stop passing value, as in zero link juice. But again, it's all in how you do it. It's completely natural for sites in the same niche to link to each other. As long as it doesn't look spammy or like you're linking to each other just for the sake of search engines, you should be fine.

Listen to these guys. Read that guide! Read read read read and read some more. That's the only way to do this. We can't give you cut and dry answers to your questions. There are so many facets to it, this is why it is a full-time job and a growing, evolving profession. Dig in and get to readin'

I am commenting to get links, but my comments are relevant to the articles and the blogs are relevant to the money site's niche so it is doubtful that a lot of them will get removed