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I tried a reverse lookup on that IP, but no luck http://mxtoolbox.com/ReverseLookup.aspx I also tried pinging the IP, no response Maybe its a mistake, or what ever it was it gone now

Thanks for that. I read the info and found it very helpful. Just need to start implementing it. Got a cloning device? I need 8 of me!

Report the results to Google, not that they will actually care, but if you open a thread in the Webmaster Help Forums, someone from Google may see the thread and tell you what's going on. Anyway, that's completely normal and I see that in every possible niche. Bad sites being ranked above good ones, they are just "awaiting" a drop, it will come, the question is when... Try to get in touch with someone at google, tweet Cutts, open a thread in WHF, write about it, get the word out. If you really deserve a better spot then all that may get Google's attention.

I'm not sure if I found the root cause of my problem... so let me ask you all if you have heard it before: After change my website to include the Moz improvement suggestions, I logged in Google Webmaster Tools and ran "Fetch as Google" option and then submitted to index. But, after 5 or 10 minutes, I discovered a small problem on my page and, after fix it, I ran the "Fetch as Google" again and submitted to index. Probably Google interpreted this two submissions as a "Black SEO" and punished my website? Btw, according to Moz Rank Tracker, I'm the 5th result for the keyword I want. Thank you all in advance. Best regards

There is a list of recommended businesses via a link at the foot of the page.  Most SEO guys are now very experienced in dealing with penalty issues as it has become so common.

Hey Federico, Actually Yes, the word "NLP" will be used twice per title on MANY many title tags of the site. I'm concerned. Some future titles are: NLP Practitioner Certification Training | NLP and Coaching Institute NLP Master Practitioner Training | NLP and Coaching Institute NLP Hypnosis Certification Training | NLP and Coaching Institute NLP Articles | NLP and Coaching Institute

I don't see why this would be any different than a normal redirect. Is there some problem you are experiencing that I am unaware of? Here are a few methods you can use to redirect URLs.

Hi Bob, It probably wouldn't be hard for Google to go after sites with over-optimized alt tags - although I'm not sure they would think it's worth their time. What I generally do with alt tags is try to describe the image and if possible, include keyword(s) naturally. If you're picking out relevant images for your site, this shouldn't be too hard, but I wouldn't try to stuff keywords into every little icon. For example, if you have a computer repair website and the main image on your homepage is a technician working on a computer, you could use "computer repair services" as the alt tag, or if you wanted to be really descriptive, "technician repairing computer" wouldn't be bad either. But you probably don't want to force a keyword into a phone icon next your contact information. The point of alt tags is to describe images that search engine bots can't see. So as long as you are being descriptive and not stuffing keywords for the sake of stuffing keywords, you should be fine. Hope this helps. Tim

Thanks for the info Marie.

Moz shows here: keyword 1 - keyword 2 | branding That's kind of what Andy did, but with more of a phrase or description over plain keywords. My only question left is, should I lean towards a sentence like that instead of listing keyword 1 - keyword 2 | branding like keyword 1 -  and keyword 2 in a phrase | branding (like Andy did) in light of future updates?

If you've removed these pages from your site then this will remove the links in Google's eyes.  (More info: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2296653/Removing-Unnatural-Links-by-Removing-Pages-on-Your-Website).  It can take some time for this to be reflected in the algorithm.  You may be able to speed that process up by using the URL removal tool to remove these pages from the Google index. It's also a good idea to run your site through sucuri.net to look for malware as often these hackings go hand in hand with malware.  If Google has detected malware on the site then they'll give you a warning message in WMT.  Google detecting malware can definitely affect rankings. If you're not sure if you can remove the pages that these bad links are pointing to then you can add the domains to a disavow file and file that.  But really, removing the pages should do the trick.

Be aware that what you see in the toolbar is Toolbar PageRank. It's an approximation of the PR a site has, and is updated infrequently, and isn't necessarily very current (even right after an update). Matt Cutts stated that programmers at Google were working on something else broken on the toolbar and decided to update the PR displayed. Google has their own PR they use internally, that is updated, and much more refined than anything any of us get to see. I'd be more worried about your traffic, sales, any messages in Google Webmaster Tools, etc. Those are what you should be paying more attention to.

Glad it helped. Feel free to mark the question as answered if you are satisfied with the response. Have a good one!

For your on-page strategy that you have described, ask yourself how each part of that benefits the reader. If it really doesn't benefit the reader and you are only doing it because you believe it might help SEO, then skip it.  Put keywords in the back of your mind, not the front when writing titles. Sometimes, that means not having the keywords at the front of the title as well. I looked at the example page you gave and the title looks a bit repetitive: "NLP Practitioner Training, NLP Practitioner Certification" To a searcher, that doesn't look very appealing in the SERPs. The repetition of "NLP Practitioner" could even keep the page from ranking as well as it could. Try something a bit more human, like "New NLP Practitioner Training Locations in California & Utah". That's more people-friendly, and if I gathered correctly from a quick skimming of the article, is a better description of what is on the page than simply two keywords stuck together. So think firstly about what a person will think when they read that title in the SERPs, THEN worry about where you can fit your keywords into it.  Really, this is how you should think about ALL of your content, too.  Write about the topic, and make it your priority to convey your message well to readers.  If you write about it effectively, you will probably use your keyword enough times. The idea is that instead of worrying so much about one or two keywords, you will be able to to get more visitors who were searching for a variety of things related to your topic, in addition to ranking better for that keyword. Not to mention you will run less of a risk of over-optimizing. If you haven't seen the Blueprint yet, do check it out: http://moz.com/blog/how-to-rank  The part about "Dream Your Theme" goes into more detail about the way optimizing for a theme or topic works.  I have also touched on this idea in a few different articles: http://kercommunications.com/tags/topical-optimization/

Thank you all for your input. I couldn't agree more with everyone. Like I said, i needed to have more points of views to bring to the table.

Hey there, Unless I'm missing some information none of the rules there would redirect either of those pages to the homepage. Is there more of the file? -Tom

Good point by Kevin, too, that it does depend on the rest of your link profile and how solid it is. If you have thousands of linking root domains, just one domain isn't going to make or break you. Your overall profile is the key.

Thank you guys for your help

Hi Rove and thanks for the additional info, Fact you got manual penalty changes the ball game and it depends how deep they will go to your profile. I have a bad experience with manual penalties where google even pointed it out branded anchor texts from PR4 web sites simply because they didnt want the link there. It took 4 reconsideration requests to eventually lift the ban. In that case I would remove those link, or submit without those links included and have the file ready for re-submission 10 days later or so. The fact that you went through the asking/removal root SHOULD be rewarded as they would like to see the effort. Make sure you document everything and state that in your reconsideration request document (mines are roughly 2 full pages) and that you list them properly to your google doc exccel sheet. I will be more than happy to quickly check your profile. Just bear in mind that majestic seo doesnt download all the links so I might miss something. The best tool to get your links downloaded is Webmaster tools which I will also be more than happy to review if you want. Send me a PM whenever you want with your domain.

I can't speak to the BV implementation aspect as I have no experience with it, however I will echo and agree with Takeshi on the other points as they are the best practice scenario