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That was exactly the answer I was looking for and makes perfect sense. I had a feeling I might be working too hard in that regard.

Thanks again!

a 403 is a Forbidden code usually pertaining to Security and Permissions.

Are you running your server in an Apache or IIS environment? Robots.txt shouldn't affect a site's visibility to the public it only talks to site crawlers.

hmmm...

do they point to the same IP address?

Hello,

My question today is regarding sitemaps. I'm often confused by this and because I am a bit obsessive I believe I may be giving myself more work than needed..

Basically my question is, do I need to update and/or re-generate my sitemap every time I make a change to the site? I mean, I must have to if I add a page, correct? And so in Google's Webmaster Tools, do I just delete the current sitemap and re-upload a new one for Google to crawl?

Is it possible to overdo this?

Any sitemap suggestions would be fantastic. I feel like there's been a few weeks where I've updated the sitemap daily and re-submitted it and I worry that might be hurting my site.

Thanks!

I don't have any experience with manual penalties, only algorithmic. That said in my research I don't remember seeing anything this dire about recovering. If you have resubmitted to Google and used the disavow tool and they have removed the manual penalties then you should be able to salvage that domain. Obviously the other recommendation that so many SEO experts will tell you is to dump the domain, but we all know that simply isn't an option for many marketers out there.

Good luck! Come back and let us know what you find when you find it. I'd be curious to know.

hate to say it as i am new here and loving OSE, but ahrefs.com is great for what you're asking. it shows daily additions and subtractions and provides an incredibly extensive backlink profile.

the free version allows something like 5-10 requests if you register. i suggest trying it out. i have yet to pay for ahrefs and am able to get the info i need from it still. great tool to use in conjunction with OSE.

Hi Keri. Thanks! Sounds good.

Tell Joanna Lord "hi" for me. She's a dear friend

I love this guy. EGOL FTW!

Wow these are great suggestions. Now I wish I wouldn't have used a random product..

How about for software hosting?!

Ha!

You know the cuzie model is a great one. Unfortunately my company takes itself a tad too serious for that... Still there are ways this model can be applied I'm sure and I appreciate the helpful responses here.

Only been a member of this community for 24 hours and I'm already finding great value here. Looking forward to staying involved and learning/growing here.

Wow! Lots of great resources here for me to parse through.

Thanks fellas, much obliged.

I came across a few blogs which got me started here on an SEOmoz Pro account and now I am working on building a competitive link analysis spreadsheet in Excel in order to identify how are competitors are beating us in Google rankings for specific keywords.

One article I came across seemed to do exactly what I wanted, but the images are all broken and the downloads require a membership to some service I am not interested in: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/how-are-they-beating-you-quick-seo-analysis-tools-part-1/

Anybody have any resources like this they can share?

Thank you.

Does anybody have or know of any examples of a site that maybe a bit boring to the masses but has figured out a way to develop interesting content in order to boost their inbound traffic from said masses?

I guess what I'm saying is that it is easy to recommend "build interesting content" but if, for example, I am marketing a store that sells pillows and blankets how am I going to get people to share that URL on Facebook?

DISCLAIMER: I do not work for a pillow manufacturer.