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Hi Yesenia

The answer is quite simple. I had a detailed look at the first 5 sites and compared some metrics....as you said, the metrics you mentioned indicate that jenzabar.com should not rank number one. However, if you look at their website in detail you will see they are all about higher education services (and the other sites all have this as a sub product, it isn't their main product), so jenzabar (in terms of content) is by far the most relevant than any of these websites, and users looking for higher education software probably spend alot more time on their website than the other websites (so here user statistics metrics might be influencing the rankings). Google has clearly flagged this as the most relevant reliable source, and thinks its giving its users the best experience by ranking jenzibar no 1. Remember, Googles number 1 goal is to give the customer a good experience, and not show the website with the best ranking metrics....makes sense?

Hi Sunu

The current trends in the search industry are signalling a decrease in valuation for those kind of links, and that valuation will further decrease (definitely not increase) in the future (with new valuations being introduced, like social media signals). However there is still valuation in those links, just not as much as used to be. However if you want to prepare yourself for a long-tern ROI in your SEO efforts, then the only way to do link building is, identify communities that are relevant to your product, look what kind of content they would think valuable, create that content, and get into touch with them regarding linking to that content. The user is king (Google wants to serve the king best he can), and the user wants quality content, and no quick fix link building. Hope that helps. Regards

Sounds like you need to be looking at implementing some canonical tags, here is a blog post from Rand Fishkin when this advancement was made, probably a good starting point to launch your understanding into canonical tags http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

Hi Yoavm

I know I am not answering your question directly, but here is what I think you should, especially considering current tends in the search industry. If it is quality content, that you have produced, rather put it on your own website and try finding communities online that might be intrested in the content and maybe link to it. It terms of helping your websites in the SERP, that will be much more beneficial

Reason: Unless your article in the article website is so good and attracts links there (and if that is the case, rather put it onto your own website), you will get basically no value from the link....

If still need references, best I can give you of the top of my head is:

http://hubpages.com/

http://ezinearticles.com/

I agree with Ryan, if you look at the directory, it also doesn't rank well for its targeted keywords and the deeper pages have little Page authority and will probably pass minimal juice.

Hi Dan

I do not believe you will be penalised for using the same anchor text and linking to the page twice from the home page. I would suggest you use a slightly different anchor text (still with your primary keyword (the brand), but using different adjectives around that word) to increase the relevance, of the brand page you are linking too, for a combination of searches for that brand.

Also @Ryan and techbattery. Techbatteries question regarding panda has also not been answered clearly. Could submitting a site to these directories have a detrimental effect due to the panda update from Google?

Hi Ryan

I agree with you 100%, but that is a bit easier said than done, even once you have written this great article to find people to link to it is the next challenge (A big one). And what happens if after your article what got a couple of links, you still dont rank...what then? I agree with your perception of directories 100%, but if google still values them (which in many cases it looks like it might), should we just neglect them all in all? We obviously do not want to prioritize directories over quality content, but the questions is does google still value those links? I would love to know this from someone who has run an experiment, as I do believe directories can sometimes be helpful to increase number of links and get good anchor texts. If someone could give me proof (besides the user argument) that directories don't help at all, I would appreciate it.

Hi Joe

Thanks for your advice, however, if you look at the websites, gansbaai.com it is really bad, only has 1 page, I really only bought it for the domian age and couple of links it has (and because I want to launch my new sit under this domain)....so there are not enough pages to 301 all danger-point, and I want to loose as little link juice as possible....Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

I have tow domains (destination/town - travel websites), www.gansbaai.com, and www.danger-point-peninsula.co.za. The one, gansbaai.com is an old domain I bought under which I will be launching a new website in a couple of months. danger-point-peninsula.co.za, is another domain I acquired also about gansbaai, the area. I will we using the domain gansbaai.cm, but want to get the best link juice out of danger-point-peninsula. How do I merge the domains?