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Thank you Miriam. Yes those posts did help and have set me straight on H1 tags.

Thanks MiriamEllis

I've had two quite different comments on this and I think the key bit is your point about bots not caring so much about H1 tag. How much don't they care? I thought H1 and TITLE still were of high importance. If my goal is to get best rank for a client and MOZ page optimiser gives me a better grade with an exact keyword H1, I'm feeling more inclined to go with it and as David-Kley says above...

"If people are looking for PLACE, in CITY, and the first thing they see when they hit the page is PLACE serving CITY, state...might be that they say "This is just what I was looking for""

Well this does make good sense. I search for something and the website instantly tells me I've found what I was looking for.

So I've actually decided to go with "Boston Physiotherapy" although I do think a more sales and customer focused H1 would look less manipulated. It's a difficult one.

What's is the best way to go about optimising a page for a regional search phrase. E.g. 'Physiotherapy CITY' and keep the text looking natural and not manipulated?

Previously I've added the search phrase 'Physiotherapy CITY' to TITLE and H1 but this can look clumsy when used in the H1 tag.

If I grade a page using MOZ on-page optimisation it will suggest I add the search phrase to the H1.

What the recommended way of doing regional on-page optimisation?

I've done 2 link cleaning exercises and disavow requests so far but haven't removed those. I can see they are bad links but they're actually from decent, relevant sites in most instances which is why I haven't touched them yet.

What do you think is most damaging, run-of-site links or keyword link text?

So if you can't have too many nofollow links to upset Google, does Google respect the nofollow 100%?

I've been trying to recover from a Google algorithm change since Sep 2012, so far without success. I'm now wondering if the nofollow on external links in my blog posts are actually doing me damage. http://www.smartdatinguk.com/blog/

Does anyone have any experience of this?

Thanks for your reply.

I don't have any message and I've twice submitted a reconsideration request and both times told I had no manual spam actions.

Maybe I've done all I can.

A site of mine (http://bit.ly/qJ35Pq) crashed out 29 Sept 2012. It's a useful site for users, has user generated reviews, regular topical blog posts of good quality and has ranked well for years.

To try and recover rankings I've done the following:

• clean out over optimisation
• improve content for user
• fix some internal link issues
• Backlink clean with a scalpel
• Disavow request
• Found I'd missed some bad backlinks
• Backlink clean again with a machete
• Disavow request

I think I'm still missing something that Google has issue with.

Can anyone see anything I've missed or any tools that might help be discover other issues to resolve.

Thanks for your help.

Paul

I don't know if removing bad links will work for me or not as I've only just completed the process. I now plan on using the disavow tool to remove the links I didn't get removed by my own efforts.

The removeem.com tool did help me identify potentially harmful links. It's a tedious task so using a tool like Removeem over Site Explorer and manual removal requests was the way I chose to go.

Hi

I'm in a similar position to you and have been trying to get my site back since about Sept 2012. Over the last 4 weeks, I've been through the process of requesting link removal of low quality links using the RemoveEm.com tool. I now have a report detailing sites I've contacted, how many times and whether the link has been removed. My site has lost rankings rather than being completely dropped from the SERPs so I may need to use the disavow tool rather than just do a re-index.

So my answer would be,

1. Try removing poor quality links yourself first and perhaps use a tool to help do this www.removeem.com. Then use the disavow tool
2. A natural policy going forward has not helped my site.
See http://moz.com/community/q/is-there-anyway-to-recover-my-site-s-rankings

Thanks, for your help. I'll give that a try

Well I'm not really sure how to clean up my back link profile. How do I know links are a problem? A lot of my links are perhaps questionable. I'd be wary of removing links that are of some use. How do you evaluate this?

In regards to content, the regular blog posts are user focused, well written and relevant but not link worthy particularly. Over optimised content has mostly been removed.

I've been watching my competition for 10 years so have a pretty good idea what they've been doing. I stopped running singles events in about 2008 and started promoted other event companies events on my site in returned for a link back. Often these links were run of site in their footer. Although I varied the link text I think these type of links were unnatural and perhaps the cause of my problems now.

My site has been top 3 for 'speed dating' on Google.co.uk since about 2003 and it went to below top 50 for a lot of it's main keywords shortly after 27 Oct 2012. I did a re-submission request and was told there was 'no manual spam action'. My conclusions is I was dropped by Google because of poor quality links I've gained over 10+ years.

I have a Domain Authority of 40, a regular blog http://bit.ly/oKyi88, a KLOUT of 42, user reviews and quality content.

Since Oct 2012 I've done some technical improvements and managed to get a few questionable links removed. I've continued blogging reguarly and got more active on Twitter. I've seen no improvement and my traffic is 80% down on last year.

It would be great to be able to produce content that others want to link to but I've not had much success from that in over 10 years of trying and I've not seen many others in my sector, with small budgets having much success.

Is there anything I can do to regain favour with Google?

Kris, decided not to buy the domain. Your info help me to conclude it was just too risky. Will see if I can negotiate a content link on the site instead. Thanks again for a great answer!