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I agree with David. The last thing you want is for your visitors to have to search for how to get in touch. Best rule of thumb- hand that to them on a platter. Make it easy. I also agree that it should be text, not a graphic.

Hi Everett,

Thanks for your response. This situation has continued to develop since I posted my question.

Our positions for critical keywords has continued to improve dramatically with yet more improved rankings reported early this week and again yesterday. We're now #1 for 3 keywords, 2 for a couple and 4 for a few more. Increases for additional keywords also.

Positions in Bing and Yahoo have gone up and down by relatively small amounts, mostly down this week but still holding on page 1 for those I care about other than "Gina Fiedel" which dropped 5 for Bing and Yahoo this week down to #14 and up to #6 on Google.

Immediately after I first posted this question, we did change one of the more worrisome site-wide citation links to the name of our company only (removing the keywords from anchor text), but left it in the footer for the time being.  -we didn't do more due to internal issues that aren't worth mentioning here or I'll start venting- although, as time has gone by and we're doing so well, I'm afraid to rock the boat even though I know the advice from Russ and Mash was otherwise and I'm kinda embarrassed we haven't gone after it thoroughly yet. I guess I also felt that spacing the removals might make sense. The positions did drop a tiny bit when we did that but bounced back and as I mentioned, are continuing to improve.
Now to answer your question directly, Everett: We never received any messages in GWT and had no proof of penalty-manual or otherwise, so we did not file a reinclusion request. Our company name continued to rank #1 throughout the whole thing. It was only a couple of keywords that were effected. I now feel it may have been a manual penalty for those keywords (see below).

More info:
Just prior to the bounce back I found and got removed some inbound links that were really spammy with duplicated content in an article supposedly authored by an employee that never existed, a completely fictitiously named and imaginary person. (thank you http://www.linkdetox.com).

I also believe I overused those keywords on our Home page and had obviously re-wrote that right away but further tweaked it just prior to the bounce back.

Probably most importantly is that I started a blog and have been adding thoughtful, quality content and engaging much more on social sites and promoting the blog posts on social sites.

I am happy you chose to respond to my question at this belated time because it's a whopping good reminder of Russ and Mash's (and now yours as well) advice......

Oh! And one more thing! We will not continue putting site-wide footer links on client sites when we launch them. We will NOT be perpetuating that mistake.

Thanks!

Hi Lynn,

Thanks for your time on this.

I just found it. Couldn't use your key command (on a Mac), but went through it more methodically and found one 'true' in column 'D'.

Sorry my eyes weren't sharp enough first time through.

Thanks again.

I'm on a Mac, so can't use Xenu's... :o(

Broken Link Checker finds the link but doesn't give me a clue as to where it's coming from..

Thanks, Lynn.

I exported the csv from the report page that shows the error and also from the drilled down report page and cannot even find the offending link or URL in the csv. It's not showing any 4XX's. They are all "false".

Any thoughts, please?

Thanks, Mystery Man!

My reports are showing a 404 error for a link to a page in our WP site for which we changed the URL months ago. I can't find where the link is coming from. I used Screaming Frog, but can't find where it might tell me the origin of the link, only that it exists. I am pretty sure it's internal.

Can someone please tell me how to find the originating page so I can remove the link without having to comb through every page of the site to look for it?

Thanks!

Everything Jesse said and...

Ultimately, we are building relationships and also building our authorship. Eventually, that will add to the big picture of earning links.

In my humble opinion, adding thoughtful, relevant  comments on blogs benefits the blog owner, their authority and your relationship with them and in turn will eventually do the same for you.

I also notice that it is a good practice arena for continually developing better communication skills which will add to your ability to create great content. Which will, in turn....It's a win win in my opinion.

My cat's cuter than your cat. (or he used to be before he died)

Thank you everyone. So glad my un-embarrassed part convinced my embarrassed part to just dive in and ask the question. This was all a lot of help. And because I'm in a bit of that cycle you describe, Philip, I have some second-line questions now.

Tom, I just love that the part in my question that was most poignant to you was the concern I have towards the hosting blogger. Seems to me if the generosity is extended by an invitation or acceptance, it's important to consider whatever consequences there could potentially be created by our actions. That stuck out in your response.

Also Tom, you bring up something else that I've been "confused" about: syndicated content. Here I go again with the potentially embarrassing questions:

• What is the difference between duplicated content vs syndicated content?
• Why is syndicated not considered duplicated?
• And then there's....for instance, the old, now dangerous practice of article submissions which creates duplicated content if that same content or article is on your website. How is that not considered syndicated? Does it simply rely on the basic intent of the site you are submitting the article to?

One more: please tell me if I'm getting this correctly and which would be best. If one were to guest blog and believe the content would be especially relevant to their own followers it's OK to post the same post on their own blog but best to noindex OR rel=cononical it passing up potential juice for yourself, but still getting to offer up the content.

Using snippets makes sense. I've been doing those across the board for my own blog and have occasionally wondered if any of that could be considered duplicate content if I use a quote from the blog post or if I repeat the same snippet...does any of that matter?

Once again, Thank You. I love getting help and really appreciate it.

This feels like a question I should know the answer to and I'm a tad embarrassed to ask, but the part of my brain that gets tripped up by somewhat simple things sometimes, is begging to ask just to confirm my understanding. I want to make sure I have it right it prior to giving advice.

When one guest blogs I assume that it is critical to create content that is original and unique to that one instance of the guest blog. That means, do not also put that post on your own blog and do not submit it to any other blogs for inclusion. This is both for duplicate content issues and also to respect and not put in jeopardy for duplicated content, the blog owner you are guesting for. Is this correct?

Are there any scenarios in which there might be a deviation of this "rule"? Like some use of canonicals or anything else?

Egol, I was thinking the same thing while I was out on a hike just now and you beat me to it. It is so logical- so much talent here right under our noses and we get to learn so much about members here by their interactions and smarts. No place like home.

SEOMoz has a page dedicated to recommended companies. I am placing the link below:

http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended

Good luck! You are right to use caution when hiring for SEO, so I recommend using the SEOMoz  list!

hmmm. There is a choice for "Primary Author" and then it says you can override the setting on individual archive pages.  Other than that, I can't see anything that would go towards answering your question. I recommend going to http://www.authorsure.com to see if there is any documentation on that. The guy who created the plugin, Russell Jamieson, is a really nice guy and is very helpful. He has a page on Google+ where you can get support.

Good luck!

Hello again, Lee.

My memory was jogged: We installed the Authorsure plugin and I believe that's what got the G. Authorship deal working on our blog posts and author pages when we were challenged.

Hope that's helps.

I believe that if it's showing up in the tester and on your blog posts with your author bio, you are all set. Whether or not Google shows it in the SERPs seems to be haphazard and to take time. Mine shows up in lots of places but on only select Google listings.

We also use All in One SEO, btw. At the moment, I am usable to recall if there was something special I had to do to enable the snippet to appear. I just took a look and nothing stood out. If I come up with anything, I'll let you know.

Thanks so much, Mike. Good to know I can let this go and I've done my due diligence with checking it all out.

I wish our WP would always create the 301's automaticallybushmen needed, but it doesn't seem to. I just installed Redirection plugin today for a URL change I wanted to make.

I'm really sorry to be confusing! It's hard to find the precise language for stuff when you don't really understand it well enough. ;o) I really appreciate that you have stuck with this and are trying to understand my concerns.

Pasted here from my last comment: "I was saying that the metarobots/nofollows were for blog posts, but in looking again, I am realizing these are blog post Comments and Replies, so I understand why WP would automatically put the noindex/nofollow on those. I typo-ed and put "robots" instead of "index". Sorry!"

So, in other words, I found that the noindex/nofollows that SEOMoz is reporting are for the blog comments which means all is well on those. I don't want Google to index comments and my replies to comments.

I'm going to see if I can ask my other question more clearly:

What I am still trying to determine is how to cut down on the number of notices and warnings by fixing or changing the conditions that are causing them.

I do not know what to do programming-wise to either create meta descriptions since they are "missing" and fix title tags that are too long for the archive and author type pages that are generating those notices and warnings. I don't know whether to use noindex, nofollow or block robots so that they won't matter.

I also don't know how/where the 301s were generated as we did not implement those manually or knowingly.

I hope this is better said and more understandable. Crossed fingers as I push "Post Reply".

Sadly, though, I just discovered that I lost all my FB likes and Linkedin shares...Not sure if there's anything I can do about that.

I just installed the "Redirection" plugin and used it successfully.

Super easy:

1. Change the URL

2. Go to Tools/Redirection/Redirects

3. Add new redirection: input Source URL, input Target URL, hit "add redirection" and that's it!

Thanks Brad and Underscorelive for all your help!

Have a lovely Thursday.