Welcome to the Q&A Forum

+1 for what Keri said. Don't fear linking out. It's upsetting that so many webmasters are suffering from outbound link paranoia. In fact, many are just wholesale nofollowing their entire sites. So sad.

Albeit not working with franchises, we have seen a similar trend for several clients. In fact, we have seen decreases in organic traffic with increases in call volume.

Crawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.

So:

• Build links
• Make sure all pages are reachable from a link.
• Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header.
• Update your content often and regularly.
• Take steps to increase site speed.
• Eliminate duplicate content.
• Limit 400 errors.
• Add a sitemap.

You could also adjust the crawl rate in Google Webmaster Tools, but you shouldn't have to.

Just don't do it.

First how important is domain rank in a back-link audit? Should I remove myself from indexes with low domain rank, and leave ones with high? Should I remove myself from as many indexes as possible? What about obvious paid blog posts that have high domain rank? Do you leave those? What is considered a low Domain Rank for back-links, under 35 - 40?

This is a pretty open-ended question. Instead of judging your back links by domain authority, ask yourself about the nature of the link and the quality of the site. You should consider removing links from "obvious paid blog posts" regardless of domain authority.

Domain authority should not be viewed/used in a vacuum. In fact, if you're going to limit yourself to one metric, I might suggest mozTrust (although I wouldn't recommend relying solely on that either).

_Second, what is a good success rate for a back link audit. How can you measure improvement, other than waiting for your PR or SERP to go up? _

I suppose success should be measured in your ability to achieve your desired result. If you're truly facing a penalty situation, you should spend some time doing research before you begin to arbitrarily remove links. You might start here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-on-googles-penguin-update

In many instances, a perceived penguin penalty wasn't actually a penguin penalty. If you truly are facing this type of penalty, you may need to clean up your profile and submit a reconsideration request. Again, before you start removing links and submitting reconsideration requests, read up on this subject.

_Third, in some situations it looks like back-links are legitimate, but they all point to my home page. Is it worth pursuing for example asking these people to link to the specific product they are referring to for example children picnic tables instead of just our home page? _

Yes.

And, lastly what legal rights do I have to get back-links removed?

This is not intended, and should not be construed as legal advice. That being said, in most cases, it's not an issue of rights as much as it is an issue of practicality. Depending on how you're links were acquired, and from where they were acquired, it might be difficult enough to get a hold of the site owner, let alone try to take some sort of legal action to have links removed.

Is it possible to prevent Google from counting these back-links through an .htaccess file?

Not that I'm aware.

Best of luck!

1. Paid Local Packs

2. (Hopefully) Improved local pack data (i.e. Google My Business, local phone tracking).

3. More SERP to lead capture (i.e. schedule appointment, message, etc).

4. (Hopefully) Less spam.

5. More local packs appearing lower in SERPs (i.e. organic outranking packs).

6. Links will still matter.

7. More local pack filtering options.

From your site, I immediately got the sense that the primary advantage is the environmental-friendliness of your proudct/services. I'd focus on content around that theme.

Just brainstorming here:

• Why trenchless technology is preferable to other solutions in terms of environmental impact.
• News stories about "non-trenchless" pipe installation gone wrong.
• pipe installation cost estimator tool (including environmental costs).
• Disasters caused by trenching, etc.

100 ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS [APPROVED ARTICLES] -> 1 article submitted to 100 article directories

What is the "quality" and "relevance" of the directory to your article's subject. Are the articles unique versions or the same article submitted to 100 directories?

If unique article versions added to topically relevant higher quality directories, with optimized back link, then good.

• 50 PRESS RELEASE SUBMISSIONS [APPROVED & SCREENSHOTS]-> 1 PR writing & submissions to top 50 PR distribution sites each

Eh, depends on price and quality of press release. Is it newsworthy? There are plenty of services in which you can do it yourself. I would say it primarily depends on whether your press release is news worthy or just an ad.

• 150 PRIVATE BLOGS SUBMISSION [APPROVED ARTICLES] -> 1 article submitted to 150 private blogs submission

This is likely to be garbage. Same rules as article directories above.

• 100 WEBSITE DIRECTORY SUBMISSION -> 1 url (home page) submitted to 100 top free web directories

Likely worthless. But depends on directories. Are they truly the "top"? Perhaps more impt. if they allow full business citations. Are they geographically relevant? Topically relevant?

• 50 SOCIAL BOOKMARKING [CONFIRMED LINKS] -> 1 url of site submitted to top 50 social bookmarking websites

Most likely garbage, imho.

• 40 PROFILE BACK-LINKS [CONFIRMED LINKS] -> 1-3 url's of site submitted and create 40 profile websites

What sites?

• 50 SEARCH ENGINES -> submission to all the major search engines

Garbage.

• 20 NEWS WEBSITES -> Ping all links from reports to news websites

Really depends. Likely garbage.

Hoped this helped.

The death of SEO has been greatly exaggerated at least as far back as 1997: https://plus.google.com/117235644077949816393/posts/ccq57PqfYXm

h/t: Wil Reynolds

I think EGOL's comment ends the debate.

Mark,

You can post URLs, however, you might consider using a URL shortener service. If you're willing to share the searches and sites, I'd be happy to offer my .02.

.02 on quick glance:

It probably has more to do with the fact that they're specifically targeting "sportsbet" on that page and have built corresponding links. Unfortunately, doesn't look like Penguin has got to this one...yet...

Again, this is my opinion after a very brief look.