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I can definitely see where you are coming from there. I would just say this- once you reach out to build that bridge, if that webmaster isn't buying it, then that bridge is likely burned forever. There are only so many blogs and other websites worth connecting to. I would be very deliberate in my approach to connecting with them, because you probably won't get a second chance. If you want to connect with a blogger, start by commenting on their most recent posts. Follow the blog. Read each new update and comment. Find them on twitter. Retweet what they say occasionally. See if they have other websites. Check for a linkedin profile. Really understand not just the blog, but the blogger and what they are about. Then reach out to them with an actual proposal. Offering a link exchange is probably not enough. Have an actual plan formulated and an actual proposal for how you can work together for mutual benefit. In my opinion, you can't do this 10 times a day. If I find a site I think I can work with, then it can take weeks before a connection is ever made. But if each day I find a new site, I'm working on creating a lot of those relationships simultaneously. But when I reach out, I tend to be very successful because I feel like I already know the person and they know who I am. So everyone has their own approach, but I wouldn't try to be in such a rush to build up links that you give the blog a superficial review and then go for it. That's just not my style, but everyone is different. You've actually inspired my next youmoz post with this though, so thanks for that. Stay tuned in the coming weeks as they hopefully publish it and I will offer some more tips on this.

I totally agree here. Can you share with us what you decided to do, and any impact it had? I'm going through the older unanswered Q&A questions, and it's always interesting to find out how things ended up.

You are very welcome, Denis, and good luck!

The original post was made in response to a comment in the SEO Moz Webinar today.

Tom, Thank you for taking the time to look at the site and giving a detailed response. I’ve been doing some research myself and my findings mirror your assessment. Thank you for recommended action items too. Converse uses http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/ which is a good site experience but as you pointed out not so hot for SEO. --SEOsurfer

I don't have experience in the local arena, but I have heard good things about Get Listed (http://getlisted.org/), and in general it's a good thing to have some way to make sure that your NAP (name, address, phone) are in a consistent format across all of the different online listings.

For the amount of effort you spend on such a scheme, you could do a lot better by just trying to think outside the box, and thinking more creatively than the others in your niche. When you are forced to think of a solution that is purely white hat that can achieve or outperform a grey/black approach, you often come up with a solution that whilst maybe not so quick is going to be more sustainable and add value to your users. I encourage you to think about what would be really awesome content/tools/linkbait for your industry, and what hasn't been done or done well (or not been updated for sometime - this is a good one), etc etc. Then do that. You will not be disappointed you bothered.

Just wanted to leave a quick note saying that SEOmoz has upgraded the Link Directory! You can view a post Cyrus wrote with more information about the directory updates and link building via directories at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-link-directory-best-practices.

anytime Dana

Best practices for on-page SEO say that the alt text for an IMG tag should be equal to the keyphrase that the page is optimized for. So if you are optimizing a page for 'blue widgets' then having an IMG with alt text = 'blue widgets' would be good. You may also want to name the image file blue-widgets.jpg (or blue-widgets.png or .gif). It's one of several on-page signals you can send Google that this page is all about blue widgets.

Hi Joseph The info you sent me looked fine. Have you seen if other users on other browsers or operating systems are having this issue? Also have you cleared your cookies as advised in the warning message? If you upload a htaccess file with just one redirect do you still get the same issue? If so it would suggest that it may be a server issue. As such it may be worth talking to the relevant people within the organisation that deal with them or as may be the case if there is no one then it may be worth contacting the web host.

Thank you again. I very much appreciate your time and help! Alicia

I've recently written a blog about this very subject, you might find it interesting: http://www.finishjoomla.com/blog/34/google-rankings-dropped-after-switching-to-joomla/

Have you looked at which pages the falls in visitors are on or is it spread across the whole site? Can you see if certain keyphrases are particularly affected. You are obviously monitoring traffic but are you monitoring rankings? Did Google News previously send a lot of traffic? Are you still a Google News source? Without more information and access to the analytics it is difficult to give a definitive answer. If it happened at the time of the panda/farmer update then I would suggest that perhaps the sites you have links from have been devalued.

Thanks for asking. A few ideas: 1. Review of link-building services or networks. Rate each on cost, size of network, page rank of network, spammyness, etc. Any of them worth the trouble, or is the whole group to be avoided as grey/black hat spam? 2. How to get .edu or .gov links. 3. Find a small site that ranks higher than the wikipedia page for the generic keyword category the small site is about, and then offer an analysis of how/why the small site is able to rank higher than such an authoritarian site for that keyword/category. 4. List of top 10 article databases offering do-follow links and their requirements, if any (min word count, links per article, is the directory human reviewed, etc). 5. How to cost effectively have video testimonials made (by actors not working at your company), and then top 5 sites to post them on once you have them.

I am having a very difficult time with SEO by Yoast regarding duplicate title tags. I was also having duplicate page content because of all the cateories I have with my client's menu items and it wasn't apparent that SEO Yoast had an on off switch for robots meta tags for anything else than posts and pages, not categories.  (Am I missing something here?) So I went the a la carte method and used two plugins that I have had good luck with, "Page Meta" that takes care of posts, pages and categories title and meta descp and "Robots Meta"  to make the categories no-follow.   I do love SEO by Yoast for the Page Analysis tool that is really fast for on page seo.  Any thoughts as to this approach?  I wonder about slowing down my site's speed with this approach.