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(link above is broken: http://moz.com/academy )

I have one word for you: REDDIT

Daily perusing of reddit will keep you up on all of this. Also, sharing content on Reddit will let you know quickly what's worthwhile and what's not.

There isn't a fancy tool that will do it for you in my example. I just think reading the reddit pages for 15 minutes a day will do you so much good in this regard.

That's all my input.

Yeah I absolutely hate it and that is a perfect analogy. Of course these aren't the only links they've built but I'd say it's a good 60% of what's listed under the Just-Discovered tab on OSE...

And just to clarify, the rest are spammy articles on random "weight-loss" websites or hip hop forums. (this keyword is not related to overweight rappers whatsoever, btw)

That's what I've been thinking but it's been months.

Us:
DA: 46
PA: 53

Them:
DA: 35
PA: 39

This probably has at least something to do with it. What does your anchor text profile look like?

I'm being outranked by a site that builds a ton of keyword-stuffed tumblr pages with 15+ links per page pointed back at their site with heavy keyword anchor text.

What gives with tumblr SEO and their followed links? Anybody have any experience with this? Can there truly be this much value embedded in the tumblr domain?

Is it weird that I like this way better? It's making me work harder, but I think it's much more "fair."

So I just 404'd an old page and changed it's URL and re-launched it last Tuesday. Today it has been indexed and is on page 3 for a fairly competitive keyword. That was much quicker than I expected.

Granted, I built a few links for this one last week and didn't let it just go without but I still find this relevant.

Also, I still feel like a few months back this would have happened by Thursday/Friday of last week.

Anyway that's my latest findings.

Interesting. Well thanks for the insight, appreciated as always!

And you don't choose to nofollow?

Good chance either some or all of these things happened:

a.) your competitors had built links through black-hat seo firms

b.) you are a victim/beneficiary of the Google Honeymoon (keep building links/content and don't be sad if you disappear in a few days back down the SERPs. You can gain it back quickly!)

c.) your content was stronger and your keyword/on-site SEO work was done proper

Oh I must ask for you to expand on this. What's your reasoning behind such a thing?

Or did my sarcasm detector malfunction..?

Yeah i'd give it a week. It will tell you on your campaign exactly when the next full-crawl is scheduled for. Wait for this date if you haven't already.

Otherwise contact their support team. The Moz team is quick to respond and a helpful bunch. Just don't call them SEOMoz or Rand will track you down and give you a frowny-face.

ABSOLUTELY!

I'm so glad I'm not the only one. Lately I've re-launched a few penguined pages with new URLs so the 404 would rid the black-hat action. The keywords have slowly regenerated whereas in the past you'd see them have a big jump quickly and then start to fade back down (if your SEM campaign didn't keep up of course.)

Anyway I definitely have been seeing this lately. Good topic. Makes me feel better.

Nice answer, Rob +1

Okay this sheds some light.. Interesting situation.

I don't know what to tell you. There really isn't a way to "outrank them using the same content." Your best bet is to just build more links or see if they can provide a shortened version of the write-ups with a "read more" link pointing to your page. The best thing would be for them to no-crawl those specific pages..

Gosh I don't know this one has me stumped.

Use different content?

I'm not sure I understand. Can you provide examples? I can't think of a reason why you couldn't build different/better content.

Yes this has happened to me but not recently.

Not sure about the rest... sorry I am unable to elaborate.

Google does not communicate well on these issues so it would not surprise me in the least. But I had a domain that was Penguined and is back without any notice... Who knows..

The anchor text you use internally doesn't really hold much weight. If you want to rank for that keyword then just use it as your URL and don't worry about the internal anchor text.

As for the meta description, yes you can keep the keyword in there but keep in mind that has no relevance to Google's positioning of your page. Your META description is simply used to entice the reader. Don't attempt to stuff keywords in there. If they fit in naturally (or by 'accident') then fine. If not forget about it. Just make that description read as awesomely as you can. This is what will convince the potential reader to click on your page so it is vital. (Same thing with Titles which are arguably even more important)

In other words, just market it and get people interested in it first. Forget about the search engines. They'll get interested in it if people get interested in it.

Hope this helps.

You're absolutely right I see a bunch of backlinks in the just-discovered tool from high DA sites.

Google isn't disregarding them. If anything it just hasn't noticed them yet.

Fix those crawl errors, get rid of your duplicate content problems, and give it a little time.

Supplement with a strong PPC campaign if you have to in the meantime.. Otherwise just keep doing what you're doing. Keep building content and finding relevant sources to gain links from.

I'm sorry I'm not sure what else to tell you at this time.