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Report the link exchange system to Google and they may take action on it.I would not follow suit, you'll put your site at risk if you do black hat SEO. "The websites linking to the competitor are not related sites, or particularly well ranking sites, so shouldn't really give a boost, but it's obvious they are." Just because a site is not related or ranking well does not mean anything, they are still passing PR and they are probably using the correct anchor text.

Scan the URL with this link vetting tool http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm if it's got tons of bad associations (people they are linking to and people who are linking to them are linking with)I would suggest getting your link removed. Use this tool before reaching out to a site you want to get linked on too, this way you know what you're dealing with

Will you get any relevant traffic from the link? Does it look like a good place to get a link? Is the content worthwhile? What other sites do they link to? How many? Are they good quality? Will they place your link whatever it is if you 'donate' or will they only link to related websites? Is there an editorial decision to be made? Is the link nofollow or is there a chance they might make it nofollow in future? Do you have any guarantee that the site/link will remain there in the near/distant future? I don't think I would do it but they are a few things to take into consideration. Here's a WBF I just found but haven't watched yet: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-we-bought-links-and-it-worked and there will be useful stuff here: http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=paid+links I should probably have opened the post with this, but here is Google's stance on paid links: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736

For smaller markets especially, this can be infuriating. I would recommend looking at the recent changes and trajectories in markets like Italy, Spain and Portugal that have had these problems but where Google is gradually focussing effort. I think a lot depends on your timescales, but if you are building a business that you want to last, you should be using sustainable tactics IMO.

I'm following up on older, unanswered questions in Q&A. Can you tell us whatever happened in your situation, so anybody else that's in a similar situation might get some advice? Did you recover, or is this still an issue?

I think you may be seeing Roger/OSE still finding some downloadable files and considering them to be links and messing up your OSE reports. Check out what one of the OSE engineers had to say on this similar thread. http://www.seomoz.org/q/competitive-edu-research-via-open-site-explorer. I'd advise you not to panic, but instead email help@seomoz.org and ask if this what is happening in your case. They also need the feedback of which domains are still showing problems after this latest update.

Here's probably the best information you're going to find on this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-places-seo-lessons-learned-from-rank-correlation-data Was this article helpful?

In my experience with PPC campaigns, using competitors names as your headline in your PPC is a serious breach and can land you and them in deep, deep trouble, not only if google finds out (which they will in time), but also if your competitors find out, I can tell you for a fact, they will crucify you for this. My Advice: Act NOW and Act FAST. Good luck.

if you change site servers it will most likely not stop the traffic because the adware is sending you traffic based upon the domain name of the site, not the ip, if you change site servers the dns will simply resolve the domain name to the new ip. Your rankings will not change in serps if you change the webserver. It does not matter.

Each website page should ideally be optimized for one keyword or phrase. You can add additional phrases, but each additional dilutes your efforts. If you have a page which has a clear focus (i.e. "diabetes") then the page's URL, title, header should all include that term. When that term is used elsewhere on your site, it is perfectly acceptable and preferable imo to use anchor text linking to the main page which discusses this topic. You asked about studies and I don't have one, but I do have an example: wikipedia. Most every SEO and website owner looks to wikipedia with envy as they are the #7 ranked site in terms of traffic, and overall the highest ranked site for any random topic. They use a consistent text match for internal links. The wiki site does have a diabetes page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes_mellitus Notice any and every time the term "diabetes melitus" is used throughout the wiki site, the exact same phrase match is used. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin

Hmm, it's not a simple matter of just buying up domains and you have to consider a bunch of things: are the links to this site relevant to the new site (branded links etc) is the old site a safe bet? Has it got penalties etc if the site is valuable, why is it for sale? I remembered this article from ages ago but it pretty much hits the nail on the head:  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/buying-expired-domains-whats-the-best-strategy Also, are you going to pick apart the old site and do specific redirects to relevant content on the new site or are you just going to funnel everything into the homepage with a catch all redirect rule? Again, if the other site was relevant and you could distribute the juice out to relevant places it would likely herald better results. I guess the best tip here is to buy a site that is relevant and to not expect miracles! Also, make sure this is done as a complimentary strategy to other promotion and not as a sole approach. Hope it helps Marcus

Usually you only want one plugin trying to do the same thing at the same time, so two plugins for SEO can often cause problems and conflict with each other. I've heard good things about Yoast's plugin, but haven't used it myself. Similarly, you only want one caching plugin. My personal opinion is to try not to do too much all at once with this site. Get comfortable with creating a few pages before trying to add every fancy-looking plugin you can find. Have a regular contact page and ditch the inline contact widget and see if that reduces the number of errors. Remove the Quickbar. Remove the tag cloud that shows the stuffing of zip codes. Remove the RSS feeds of local news. Focus this site on computer repairs. Put up useful articles about how to do some basic maintenance on your computer, that type of thing.

There is also the possibility that the initial boost you get from your techniques will result in high visibility for your site which means you will get legitimate links from other domains that will build your rep so that if Google ever bothers to drop the value of your black hat links to nothing you still have plenty of authority from real links. There is also the possibility, even though Google would of course deny it, that if you are also spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on Adwords that they will overlook any bad stuff you do and you will never suffer. Just speaking from experience - watching another company.

True...I must admit I don't like seeing 404 links in my reports that are potentially beyond my control. I also wondered if it breaks some sort of privacy law - there's no privacy policy I can see on the website - perhaps there should be a warning to users of the tool. I must admit it's interesting (for at least a few seconds) to spy on who has seemingly used the tool. I'll send them an e-mail and update this post with any response.

I nofollowed all of these pages a few days ago. The intention wasn't to create a link farm but I realize after giving it thought that it could be perceived as one.

I attended an SMX Advanced session on using crowdsourced tools, and there was a rep from Mechanical Turk there. They are well aware of SEOs and are active in monitoring the tasks that are written up.