Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks so much. I'm more focused and knowledgeable about on page SEO and haven't had to deal with clean up of bad practices before so dealing with directories ,paid links and other black hat stuff is very new to me. Page Rank is a great simple tip Takeshi.

http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank_calculator.php

I asked a similar question a few months back so some of the responses on this Moz thread will be of interest to you. Cheers.

Guest blogging is a viable way to build links and authorship and it will always be. You only need to watch out where you post your posts, are those blogs related to the article? Are your posts worth reading and sharing or are you writing them just to get a backlink (if that's the case, that's a complete NO NO). An advertorial has nothing to do with guest blogging. Advertorials are posts (articles or whatever) designed to specifically promote a product/service that is paying for that promotion. It isn't just plain advertising as someone, usually with authority, is promoting your products in exchange of a money compensation. There was a lot of chatter a few days ago when Cutts posted a VIDEO about advertorials, you should watch it and read the comments below (we also published an article about the controversy on Google identifying advertorials that can't really be identify). Hope that helps!

So if i have no being afected by penguin, but i detect a link to my site that as some cuality and related content but, that one link in site erach results generates unwanted 3000 links just from the same site. And if my site has 3500 links in total. Should i disavow that domain that is giving me 3000 links

Why not just open up their link data (on the Moz toolbar) and take a look at where they're getting these links from?

That's a very good point.

Thanks for the responses. I think I will stay away from the Indian SEO companies. It really was for link building and not onsite stuff but it still does not seem like the best way forward. Regards John

How badly 'damaged' do you believe your domain to be? I mean, changing a domain name can be an issue depending on how much branding and money you've put into it. But, on the same breath, you could say it's easier to cut your losses and if you have a strategic plan of action, then it could be a better option to start again a new. What's your domain name, out of interest? Feel free to PM Me. Tom

Thanks Takeshi. I recently filed a Google reconsideration request, came back saying there was nothing wrong, e.g, no manual penalty - but if Panda has penalised us for thin/dupe content, we wouldnt know by the manual route... In this scenario, is it worth just starting from scratch? Or do we wait till the next Panda update which could be who knows when? Cheers

Hi Jonathan I'm going to be blunt here - I'd fire that SEO immediately. Not only are these links not strong in terms of SEO, but they come from completely irrelevant websites (do you really want links from a porn wikipedia?), they are embedded in completely irrelevant content (http://www.globalrugbynetwork.com/blog/view/31837/blinds talks about back pains and then has exact match links to your site), the kind of links built are solely for search engines, and the content itself looks absolutely crap and doesn't read well at all. There are a number of black flags here that say to Google - this site is building links to try and game the algorithm and make its organic visibility better.  That's the intent anyway, the reality is that you have a spammy link profile that actually won't be providing this benefit at all. I would actually be proactive and try and get the SEO to remove those links ASAP.  Failing that, I would make a note of them to add to a disavow file, although if these are the only bad links I wouldn't submit/upload the file just yet, as it likely won't make that much of a difference.  Should the SEO in question continue on this path, however, you'd have a massive problem. Apologies for the pessimistic prognosis, but better to be up front and honest with these things so you can start taking action.

Thanks, Matt. Yes, this issue with advertorial content is two-fold a) With links and flow of PageRank --- which I suppose is more straightforward and a no-no. However, what's the likely impact on services such as PRWEb, PRLeap etc.? b) Content that may have been generated and published as a result of commercial arrangement between two parties, but without any links and flow of PageRank. Need to consider this in the context of a supposedly a better understanding and reliance on entities-associations for ranking purposes.

Hello, sure i kind of understand whats happening etc, but to be fair i found Enter website fairly small over on the left of the screen, may be I am looking too deep into it. http://www.hullfc.com/smallsplash.aspx?a=1763 cheers D

this was the diagnostic from google which was updated 4 hours ago What is the current listing status for wetherbyracing.co.uk? Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer. Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 8 time(s) over the past 90 days. What happened when Google visited this site? Of the 197 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 20 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2013-06-06, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2013-06-05. Malicious software includes 23 trojan(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 4 new process(es) on the target machine. Malicious software is hosted on 4 domain(s), including racinguk.com/, locvis.ro/, kimcil.biz/. 2 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including locvis.ro/, racinguk.com/. This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS15395 (Rackspace). Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware? Over the past 90 days, wetherbyracing.co.uk did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites. Has this site hosted malware? No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days. How did this happen? In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message. Next steps: Return to the previous page. If you are the owner of this web site, you can request a review of your site using Google Webmaster Tools. More information about the review process is available in Google's Webmaster Help Center.

Hi Virginia, Maybe this whiteboard Friday can help you out. http://moz.com/blog/how-unique-does-content-need-to-be-to-perform-well-in-search-engines-whiteboard-friday

In my opinion, I don’t think there is a problem and you should let them link to you but always make sure that they mostly target your brand name instead of a keyword because if they started to target any keyword across different website it will give Google a negative signal about the reputation of your website but having a link with a logo or brand name anchor text is fine and you can allow your manufacturers to link to you!

When Ever I create URLs I only care about few things that are as follows! -          The URL should not contain any special characters so anything that contain “?” “&” or similar stuff should not be your choice! -          I prefer to add the keywords in it but having a complete key phrases in not necessary! -          What I really prefer is that the keyword length should be short In your case ideally you should choose a URL that is contain no special string, should have keyword in it (it’s not necessary to have a exact match key phrase) and URL length should ne as short as possible.

The link title element is not known to be a significant ranking factor. In fact, stuffing this attribute with keywords might even have the opposite effect. This is one of those cases where you ask "what's best for the user?"

The case of exact match domains is a quirky one. As Allen stated above _"Google will penalize your site if it has site links from sites that are not indexed by Google, and Google wont index a site with no content." _ I would launch those domains with good quality, relevant content that links back to your main site. Also exact match domains are frowned upon by Google anyway as many exact match domains have been penalized the past year. In the end take these domains and have them add value o your niche and you won't lose.

I uploaded the disavow tools file for the domain, but i still see more and more links from that domain on my webmaster tools, and when i analize then with opensiteexplorer i dont see no-follow