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The magazine has already given us the ok, like I said they're much more offline focused so it's more about what Google thinks. I think I agree about playing it safe with the canonical tag though. Thanks!

Google will often display a different title tag in the SERPs than what you have selected. They do this even for Apple. In some cases it's so that it better matches the user's query, and in other cases it's because they think the title tag is spammy or not relevant. Are your ranks bouncing around in the SEOmoz ranking report tools as well? Those are generally good about keeping personalization out of the reports.

I don't have an answer to this question, but I'd approach it by looking at the major forum software providers and seeing what the default text is that they use for private forums to show to non-users, then search for that text. Some people will change the text, but that may be a starting point for you.

Thanks for the response. They do some fairly impressive business, but are by no means a major player in the industry, at least as far as brand recognition goes. The company name/domain are essentially their main keyword, so it is pretty well targeted in that respect, so it would hurt to lose that. The current domain is a few years old, and has 55 domain authority, so not too bad. Based on that, do you think it would be worth it?

I like this strategy. As you add new better content, you can add nice links from the old bad content. You can have a constant source of links from relevant sites. Sweet!

Wouldn't social media be so much more engaging if instead of getting a thumbs up, you got a cookie in the post. ha ha... you should start a site like that... I think that it would be kickass.

Thank you guys for your answers! I realize that other strategies are more effective and less 'gray', but I was just wondering if it could work in theory. I'm not planning on buying hunderds of broken typo domains, but I figured that a link from a direct competitor could be pretty valuable. But if 301's lose juice like Gareth said, one link might not be even worth it. @Takeshi; Thanks for suggesting Xenu, I'll check it out!

You shouldn't be getting that many, so shouldn't be hard to track.  Just go for a few with the most authority.  I have a list here.

You need to have a look at your rankings and find out which keywords were driving that traffic. Once you find the keyword(s) that have fallen then you can make the assumption that it could be Penguin. Although looking at your domain, it is an obvious keyword based domain which was cracked down on as well. Look into Analytics though before assuming Penguin.

Glad to help

Your problem started with 50-60 domains with duplicate content - why do this? If you are working in different geographical regions then honour those places by giving them some unique content to justify your presence in the local search results. I'd either nofollow or remove the link to your main websites as you have essentially 50-60 identical websites linking to your website - so, from Google's perspective, why should they improve your rankings? Do a search across the Q&A's as there are loads of threads on Penguin recovery but in short it's about doing positive things Un-spammify any of your pages - so any on-page/site issues must be resolved (In your case, this means changing your unique content problem) Do positive link building Ensure a natural anchor text profile Don't seek any quick fixes. Unfortunately for you that may mean changing 60 sites, but as that's where your problem started, that's where your clean-up starts.

I agree Geoff - home should be home not "keyword phrase", but you can use keywords on other footer nav links if it makes sense from a user perspective, and again, purely within the site.

Is it OK if I just add nofollow tags to my inbound links?

Hi Roel! I´ve spoken to people in many different countries about this and they all confirm that the Penguin update is spread everywhere. Google said this: _The change will go live for all languages at the same time. For context, the initial Panda change affected about 12% of queries to a significant degree; this algorithm affects about 3.1% of queries in English to a degree that a regular user might notice. The change affects roughly 3% of queries in languages such as German, Chinese, and Arabic, but the impact is higher in more heavily-spammed languages. For example, 5% of Polish queries change to a degree that a regular user might notice. _ More reading: http://insidesearch.blogspot.se/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html Hope this will help you!

thats very helpful, I forgot about the hidden whois thingy!

We're really talking about 2 separate definitions of "brand" 1. Within SEOmoz or Google Analytics, a branded keyword is simply one that relates to your company name or website, This makes it easier to segment who is searching specifically for you, and who is finding you through more broad, generic terms. SEOs see different value in branded and non-branded search. For example, the type of visitor on this site who searched for "SEOmoz" is likely very different than the type of visitor who arrived her after searching for "SEO tools" Also, you tend to rank very well for your own brand, so branded keyword volume can be an indication of your overall marketing efforts. 2. But to Google, brand means something slightly different. A "brand" in Google's eye means a thing. If enough people search for your website, or product, you become an entity. Bill Slawski explains it better than I ever could: http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/01/named-entity-detection-in-queries/ and if patent talk isn't your thing, Rand makes it a little more accessible in this Whiteboard Friday: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/search-engines-and-brand-entities-whiteboard-friday Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

One nice thing about the Penguin update is that we don't need to be quite so concerned with anchor text.  I would say focus more on getting links from high-authority, trusted websites and less on the anchor text.  Getting keyword-rich anchor text links from time to time won't hurt - and if you're using natural link building methods, you'll probably be fine having them - the important thing is that your ratio of keyword-rich anchor text links to regular anchor text likes (like "click here") is similar to that of other sites in your niche.  It's when it's ALL your links or a vast majority of your links that it starts to look suspicious.