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I agree.... love the dashes only. Also a little bit of usability, dashes are easier to type (not that a lot of people are typing long urls with dashes or underscores, but dash is one key press and then underscore is 2 keys)

Hi! I don't know why my fellow associate here is saying you have to put your spanish version of the site in a separate domain. The ideal should be for us to have a look to your site in order to judge and really try helping you. In general, a multilingual site - if everything (paginations, faceted navigations, thin content, duplicated and substantially duplicated content) is fine - should not have problem just because it is multilingual. The only reasons why we can see duplicated content across all languages is when, for instance, not everything has been translated in spanish. A classic can be the news or blog posts, which maybe the site produce just in english but present in every language mirror and the site has such a bad arquitecture to present URLs like these: www.domain.com/blog/post.html www.domain.com/es/blog/post.html www.domain.com/fr/blog/post.html where post.html is actually the same post but URL duplicated 3 times. But, apart those cases (quite extreme, even though - I assure you - existing), a multilingual site per se is not a reason for a Panda penalization. Penguin, than, is all about links, so - again - I don't see a causation or correlation between multilingual site and Penguin. I mean... if a multilingual site has been hit by Penguin is not because its multilingual, but because it has an anchor text overoptimized link profile. Then... a subcarpet or an external domain? It depends from your marketing needs. If you are thinking to expand strongly in a foreign market, somehow to make it a distinct entity respect the original one, then to create a new site in a new domain name (generic if you target a language, cTld if you target a country) is maybe the best choice. But in your case the choice to have it inside your main domain seems ok to me. Finally, to make things clear. If multilingual site was a problem, surely Google would have started deprecating its use (and it is not doing that, all the contrary) and Brands like Apple would not create their site using that style (try to go to www.apple.es and see what happen...)

Hi 858-SEO, First, for the disclosure: RMOOV is developed by our company. Now, the significant difference between the two products is that Remove'em offers automated advice on which links you should remove based on anchor text, metrics comparison etc. When developing RMOOV we made the deliberate decision not to try to tell people which links they should remove because we believe that accurate analysis is paramount and should be carefully managed by a human. Once the analyis has been completed and users have a list of URLs they wish to remove, that list can be uploaded into RMOOV, which then manages the entire process of finding contact information, creating and sending customized email, recording and tracking responses and reporting on campaign activity. The tool allows users to make Notes on domain status, update domain information via csv upload, mark contact methods unavailable etc. Hope that helps, Sha

Hi there! First of all, you should definitely be aiming for branded anchor text links, as well as generic links such as 'click here', etc. so well done for putting yourself on the right track. To try and answer your questions: 1. I think it's generally on a domain level, but if you have a specific page that has a particularly high volume of direct match keyword anchor text links, then you may struggle to rank that page, so you should aim for deep-linking and well as home page linking during your link acquisition campaign. 2. I would aim for content-based link building, as this is (in my experience) the best way of building lots of links that are natural, rather than using manipulative methods or adding more crap to the online space. Try using infographics, I push them quite heavily in general as it's my agencies speciality but we have had some phenomenal results in terms of link-building using high quality infographics. Here's two of my SEOMoz posts that might help you in this regard: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-the-maximum-number-of-links-from-your-infographic 3. I always aim for at least 50% of a backlink profile being branded, URL and/or generic links, and I would usually want somewhere closer to 60-65%. That's what we aim for with our clients. All my own opinion and personal experience of course, but hopefully it helps you : )

Unfortunately, a lot of those links you may have a very hard time removing. They were probably part of a network that was used to sell links, and the webmaster does little or no upkeep. I also know that some webmasters or companies will ask you for money to remove the links. Another problem is, you have to do A LOT of research to determine which links are hurting you to the best of your ability, Otherwise, if you go about it with carpet bombing approach, you might remove some links that are actually helping you. This will cause more harm. Given your difficult situation, this is what I would do: Article directories : remove all duplicate copies of articles and leave ONE copy on the best site, i.e Ezinearticles. You may even want to remove them all and put them on your own site if it is a real quality article. Try to remove as many forum comments, spammy profile links. Other links (i.e blog posts, etc) - for each keywords/page affected, find the the backlinks to that page. Use OSE AND Webmaster tools. WEBMASTER TOOLS IS YOUR FRIEND HERE. Google is telling you which links are being pointed to your site. If you know if  a spammy link, and Google is not showing in the links to your site, you better focus your energy elsewhere. Make a list of these sites, and examine the site: spammy jibberish content;  excessive links pointing out; their backlinks (they may 100s of backlinks with spammy keywords like "viagra" or "payday loans," this is a red flag that the site is likely hurting you); links to pills, gambling, and porn. Approach the sites via contact, email, and whois contact. Document ALL correspondence and attempts to clean up. Once you feel you have done all you can, send Google another reconsideration request with all the documenting as you can (be thorough). Specifically, tell them which links you have made good faith attempts to remove and have been unsuccessful. Hopefully, they will lift the penalty or let it expire.

A recent article on Youmoz blog that has some great general ideas on this topic --> http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012 I know it doesn't go into many specific ways of rectifying the situation but it does have a lot of valuable information.