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Why would anyone want to link to your domain?

Do you have engaging content, useful information, an active forum, a great blog or some other attribute that would inspire other webmasters to link to the site?

If you do not have these types of resources then your linkbuilding success will be very small.  However, if you have linkworthy resources on the site then you have the opportunity of great success.

Create great content before you try to build links will use your linkbuilding time for greatest success.

Her new site might have a problem with the content on this guy's domain.  I would want him to put up a permanent redirect.  But I bet he will not do it.

Most of them will be nofollowed.

But those that are not will count towards your domain authority.

The real value is determined by how powerful your site is at present.  If you have a new site then these links would be a fantastic boost.  But if your site is mature and established with 100,000 links then the 5 good ones that you get from this exercise will not add notice to your rankings.

Honestly... I would rather have a provocative piece of content that would attract those same five links, hundreds more, gets tweeted and liked,  and competes in the SERPs for a kickass KW.

You are welcome!

OK.... not a design proof.  thanks

Alan, I should post your comment on my blog to discourage the link spammers.  lol

Thumbs up!

Comments are turned off on my blog because of this.

Also, since I link out to lots of sites from my blog (within the posts) I have a heavy rain of email from people who are trying to weasel a "mention".

I see it as mainly a webmaster's problem.... once the programmers start sending robots to spam your blog then you will be hit with a lot of comments to clean up.

For the person who uses blog comments as a linkbuilding strategy, I think that google can recognize blog comment links and probably counts them as very very low value links.  If the link profile of your site consists almost entirely of blog and forum comments then that might put an unpleasant odor on your site.  (I have no proof for this, just sayin' how I would treat the links if I was google and my confidence that they can recognize them if they want to.)

why not take the no follow off?

That will put you on every spammer's "dofollow blog" list.  And the bigger problem is when your site gets on the blogspamming program database.

Good point, Steve.  It could be a design proof.

...""people are concerned about allowing blog post comments"....

We have not discussed this part of your question yet...  but it is the potential issue.

If you allow comments then there will be a lot of people trying to use your site as a source of links and that could have you linking out to a lot of bad neighborhoods.  You might then find your blog listed on a low-quality SEO's list of "DoFollow Blogs".. and then you will be hit with a landslide of SPAM comments.

(side comment.... this very issue explains why I recently started to post on the SEOMoz Pro Q&A.  the forum where I have posted for years allows signature links and that has brought such a large number of trash postings that I burned out over there.  That will probably not happen here because signature links are not allowed and the ability to post here must either be paid for or earned.    /rant)

We make between four and ten blog posts per day and 90% of those posts include a followed link to another website.  Our goal is to feature news, developments and good ideas in our topic area.   We have no philosophical or SEO problem with linking out.  We think that it makes our site a good information source and that attracts links, subscribers and repeat visitors.

The only downside is that we get lots of weasels trying to get a link to their crappy site.  However, our goal is to link out to sites that are BETTER than ours.

We also link out on article pages... much like Wikipedia does.  Again, we are linking to sites that have great information that is superior to ours in some way.  Don't link down, link up.

To answer your original question.... "Do you link out to good content?"

The answer is "NO" .  We link out to GREAT content.

At this time I dont have many inbound links from others

I don't think that you are doing anything wrong.  However, the speed and depth of indexing depends on the strength and number of inbound links.

Hang in there... you will be indexed in time... get a few more links if you can.

Probably has nothing to do with your indexing problem but there is an awful lot of empty table code on your homepage.

Sounds like a link weasel to me.

If it is really good content, relevant to your site, of interest to your visitors, that will stand without the link then I would include it but omit the link.

Keep in mind that link weasels often drop links pointed to bad bad neighborhoods.... also this comment might have been dropped by a linkbuilder who has about 100 other architect clients and you will get hit with a landslide of crap next week if you approve this one.

** What does this means in terms of how google sees her site and in terms of SEO. **

I'd say she doesn't have a site.  The service provider has usurped her site by intent or ignorance.

"spamming keywords"

I think that "spamming" occurs when you have keywords in the title that are not descriptive of the article.....

or....  when you just make a big list of keywords without composing them into a coherent question or statement...

I think that "Why is my back sore? I have spinal pain and need relief and help." is not in the "spam" category.  (although I might shorten it down to about 60 characters)

"Why is my back sore? I have spinal pain and need relief and help."

I like the above for the reasons below.

--  I believe that questions elicit clicks better than statements.

--  You have lots of potential keywords in the title tag.  Will work great for pulling in long tail traffic

I believe that the succinct title is good when you have a very powerful site and are gunning for a very basic and difficult keyword.  However, if you use that succinct title on lots of pages then you will run into duplication.   The longer title will diversify your optimization and pull a greater diversity of traffic.

I am betting ALL of my money on a folder.

To get into google news you have to convince them that you are in the news business, that you are an "organization", that you are publishing original, news-worthy content and that you are not a guy or two trying to toss pages into their news SERPs.

If you have a simple press release getting it into google news will involve going straight to a website that already appears in google news and getting them to feature your story.   A very small number of press release sites can get their releases into google news.  Check with them before you submit to be sure that they can make it happen.

Poor conversion can be cause by many things...

- unprofessional copy

- high prices

- high shipping

- bad checkout procedure

- out-of-date merchandise

- difficult to navigate site

- great offers by your competitors

- low quality traffic

Consider the above and compare your site, your offer, your prices and your conversion funnel to what your competitors are doing.

There is a lot more to making a sale than getting good ranks.