Welcome to the Q&A Forum

No worries at all - we're all here to help!

Haven't seen the other questions, but the list of recommended companies on the SEOMoz site is a good place to start : )

It depends on your industry / niche - for example if you're in the web design industry, a site like sixrevisions or designfloat would be ideal.

To help you with your linkbuilding, here's a phenomenal post by Jon Cooper:

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

That should give you more than enough tactics to start getting some decent, trusted links.

Hope that helps you Cesar

Thanks Nicola, glad I could help : )

It is scary to avoid using anchor text links - but bear in mind you can always include your keyphrase around a brand name link, I think there's some merit to this as Google will use surrounding text in the absence of anchor text.

Hi again Harry,

personally I wouldn't bother with Ezine articles or any similar article marketing networks - instead, spend that time producing high quality content, either for your own website or for guest blogging. I replied to your other question with a link to Jon Cooper's post (here it is again):

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

There's some great link-building methods in there that are a far better use of your time. Whilst it's tempting to take the easier options such as Ezine Articles, they won't serve you well in the long-run (just look at the de-indexing of Build My Rank as a pertinent example).

Hope that helps Harry

Hi Harry,

Not really a quick and simple answer, but there are numerous methods available for high value and white-hat links. For me, content is the best way to go - producing an infographic is an excellent method for gaining links, or writing an in-depth article as a guest blog on a high profile, relevant website with a link back to you. In terms of convincing someone to link to your site, let the content you produce do the talking - if they like it, they'll have no problem linking to you.

Here's an excellent article from Jon Cooper with an awesome list of link-building techniques:

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

And here's an article I wrote on the SEOMoz blog that covers producing high quality content:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

Hope that helps you Harry! A lot of reading there but well worth it hopefully : )

Hey Nicola,

For me it's about keeping the backlink profile looking natural - if your backlink profile is made up of more than 50% direct match anchor text (as in your target keyphrase) and it matches your title and H1, I would imagine you'd see an over-optimisation penalty. I think Google is getting much smarter at figuring out what links are there to manipulate rankings, and direct match anchor text links are a pretty strong signal of that. Sure they help you rank in the short term, but over do it and you'll almost certainly be punished for it. I don't think people ever (or very rarely) use your target keyphrase anchor text naturally, they're far more likely to use your brand name. So by using your brand name for links, you're still increasing your overall domain authority and gaining the benefit of strong links, whilst at the same time keeping your backlink profile looking natural and strengthening your site against future updates.

Not only this, but it's been fairly well established that Google prefers to rank brands, and brand name links are a strong brand signal, along with high quality content and robust about us and contact pages.

We only use brand name links for our client along with high quality on-site content and well optimised sites, and we've got them ranking for some exceptionally competitive keyphrases. Whereas I know lots of other SEO's who use lots of direct match anchor text links and while they were ranking very well, the majority of them suffered quite badly after the over-optimisation penalties and the Penguin update, as well as receiving GWT warnings.

Perhaps suggesting to ONLY use brand name anchor text links is a little much, but I would certainly use them more than I ever would direct match keyphrase anchor text. I also use random linking phrases such as 'read more', 'click here' or the overall subject of the content I'm linking to, again to keep the backlink profiles looking natural.

Hope that explains what I was saying a little bit : )

CTR on links wouldn't make any different to the power or quality of the link - that will be down to domain authority, page authority, relevance, anchor text and indexation mostly.

I think CTR does make a minor difference in the SERP's though - coupled with bounce rate and numerous other factors. For example I would imagine a number one result with a very low CTR and a very high bounce rate wouldn't stay there for too long.

I'm not sure what you mean here, backlinking isn't a no-no, you just need to be more careful about where you're getting your links from and the anchor text you use. Personally I'd stay away from paid links, but there are a huge number of trusted sites out there.

Aim for high quality links from sites that are in your industry or niche, use Domain Authority to gauge the power and trust of a site and make sure you're varying your anchor text (in fact, just use your brand name as the anchor text). Use content to get your links too wherever possible - get an infographic designed, produce a useful tool, or write an in-depth, well researched article to try and gain links. You can either use your content to guest blog on high quality, relevant sites, or publish it on your own site and promote via social media and other avenues to encourage natural linking to your site.

Here's a post I wrote on creating content that might help:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

and this is an excellent article on link-building for those new to it:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building

Hope that helps!

No problem, glad I could help : )

I seriously doubt links opening in a new tab would affect your rankings or cause any kind of Google penalty. Not something I think you need to worry about : )

I would aim for variety in your linking domains, which usually means 1 link on 1 site. But bear in mind a large part of link-building is building relationships, so you shouldn't necessarily 'never talk to them again'. I would aim to build a link on a site via quality content, which you then go out of your way to promote via social media, etc. as well as ensuring you reply to any comments and stay involved in the conversation. Not only does this make your link more valuable, but helps you build stronger relationships.

I'd also stay away from using direct match anchor text on your keyword targets - use your brand name to link back and you'll increase your overall domain authority, which will help you rank (assuming your on-site elements are solid).

But back to the question, generally speaking I'd always aim for 1 link on 5 sites vs. 5 links on 1 site, just make sure those sites are relevant, high quality and not involved in any potentially worrying activities (such as selling links, aggressive advert blocks, etc. etc)

You have to bear in mind that rankings fluctuate quite a lot, particularly in certain verticals. I think the GWT rankings are 'averaged' and the SEOMoz ranking is likely to be a snapshot of whenever the tool last checked the rankings.

You've also got to consider location, data centers and personalised search - try doing a manual search on Google, making sure you're signed out of any Google account and social media accounts, and adding the parameter &pws=0 to the end of the search URL. You can also try an external tool like seoserp.com.

Hope that helps!

I wouldn't necessarily count a press release site as 'unnatural' - you should be more focused on sitewide, direct match anchor text links, article marketing sites, blog networks, etc.

Just be sure you're only removing links that you know are there to manipulate rankings, and that usually means direct match anchor text. I wouldn't be concerned about brand-name links.

You may well be better served focusing your time on creating some high quality content and gaining some high quality, relevant backlinks.

Spot on - Google XML sitemap is the one I was about to recommend before I saw Keith beat me to it : )

There's a few others but the above is certainly the easiest to use. I'd also recommend the Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin if you're looking at optimising your WP site.

I personally wouldn't bother with Scrapebox - apart from the fact that it's synonymous with black-hat practices, you're far better served using tools like OSE and Majestic SEO. If you haven't tried Majestic I'd definitely recommend it, works really well in conjunction with OSE and GWT.

Hope that helps!

Really depends if you're looking for an in-house SEO or an external consultant - if it's the latter have a look at the SEOMoz recommended companies, if it's the former you could consider hiring a specialist recruitment company, we've had some success with that in the UK.

The SEOMoz LinkedIn group suggested by Project#Labs is definitely a good place to start, although I'm not too sure you'll find the quality you're looking for on Craiglist.

Just had a quick look at your site too - looks like a fun place to work so hopefully you won't have too much trouble! : )

Hi there,

This might help you:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

Hope that helps!

Completely agree - just go for the one site so you can maximise your efforts creating one powerful domain. This also means you don't have to worry about duplicating content or creating high quality content for two different sites.

Is it possible that the links have been removed? OSE takes around 4 weeks to update as far as I'm aware, so it could be that the links aren't there anymore.

Do the links show up in GWT? It's possible that the links were being paid for on a monthly basis, which has now stopped so they have been removed.

Hi David,

No, I don't think AdSense links would be counted towards rankings and I seriously doubt that AdSense links would hurt your rankings.

It sounds far more likely that they're paid text links (nothing to do with Google), most likely purchased by the former SEO agency. These certainly could damage your rankings, particularly if they're sitewide.

Hope that helps!