Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thank you both for your help and feedback. Have a great weekend! Gary

The authors who I use will be different from the authors that you use.  My authors write about the industry of my websites. If your websites are about wine then go look for great bloggers who post about wine.  Not just any blogger, the great ones.  Find bloggers who have expertise that match the content of your website.

If a directory has good page rank, there may be some value there, but that needs to be tested and proven. If there is a good directory of directories, this is it: http://info.vilesilencer.com/top

This question is one that probably can't be answered without a thorough investigation.  But, what I have seen is that sites definitely can recover form algorithmic issues or manual penalties.  However, the most important factor in whether a site will recover is if the site has a good base of good natural links when the unnatural ones are taken away. You may be looking at multiple issues.  If the duplicated content is truly an issue then there may be issues with the Panda algorithm.  If the bad links are truly an issue then Penguin could be the culprit.  For either of these, recovery involves completely fixing the issues and then waiting till the next refresh of each algorithm.  Penguin refreshes sporadically.  It could be 1 month or 6 before the next refresh.  Panda tends to refresh monthly although Google no longer announces the refreshes. IMO the first place to start is to determine which algorithms likely affected the site and work on that first.  If there is a drop in organic traffic coincidental with a known Penguin refresh date then the links need to be cleaned up.  You'll need to do a very thorough audit and disavow everything self made.

Thanks Keri As of yesterday we used Copyscape premium. We also ran a few tests on this for obvious duplicates - pleased to say everything seemed to run smoothly and like you said, it's very quick to process. Your feedback is much appreciated. Regards Gary

Hi Nick Thanks for your response. Yes, creating fresh new content is the stronghold for any digital marketing strategy. However after reading the article you sent me has only increased my desire never to touch a directory. It seems to me directories, however much impact they play right now, may become a thing of the past tomorrow... We'll stick to developing relevant content for our clients and publishing digitally using authoritative sites, blogs, social media's extra. Thanks again Nick and a Happy New Year to you. Gary Victory - Elite Group Marketing, London

Happy to help.