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Try going to the soft 404 errors that webmaster tools is reporting, and see the HTTP status code you're getting. If the status code being returned is a 200, you'll know you're getting a soft 404. You can check the status code with the moz bar, in the page analysis section, under the page attributes tab, if you scroll down to the bottom, you'll see the status code of the page. You may also want to emend the file reference in your htaccess file to be relative and just do /404.htm, and not the full path - maybe that will help. Mark

http://yoast.com/wordpress/ or you can go to your wordpress and install pluggin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/ search for yeast seo pluggin

Hi Ian, The value of directory links has been debated here quite a lot recently, the value (or lack of) depends quite a bit on the directory and/or the niche your site is in. As for the pr value, it depends largely on the kind of site architecture the directory uses. Some directories have a kind of silo nav structure where as you say main and second level pages get most of the link juice and individual pages end up with almost nothing. Others have a flatter structure where internal pages manage to get a bit more. All things being equal from a technical point of view you would likely be getting better value if your link ends up on a page with some pagerank rather than a page with none. That being said, if the directory is not in a niche directly related to your site, or perhaps a large well known general directory the value of the link is debatable and I personally wouldn't bother to pay for one. The directory you specifically mention has the strap line 'seo friendly web directory'... any directory with the word seo in it for me is a bin and forget (thats just my opinion of course).

Thank you all that seemed to have worked. Cheers, Ian

Thanks for your help

Pinterest is ranking higher and higher in THE social media outlet on which to post links to our sites.  As JDP said, there's nothing stopping you from featuring photos from your website on your Pinterest page and get those same followers--the good news for you, if your content is good, you'll land the consumer.

ok thanks

There's a bit of a problem going on with Google WMT at the moment - might have something to do with the PageRank update.  Here's a link to the thread going on in the Google Products Forum. Looks as though Google is aware of the problem.  Give it a few days and things should calm down.

OK thanks for that, Some of these things are already in motion. I'm still hoping someone can throw some light on the missing keyword thing as I believe it may be significant.

OK thanks. Ian

OK thank you both

Thanks for that. Using what you suggest my site comes in 3rd for prom hairstyles (prom-hairstyles.org) is everyone else seeing the same? Also if I go to normal google the site drops to 450 or so, why such a huge difference? Ian

if you wouldn't like to use subdomains, I would go for non-www.

OK thanks for that. Ian

Yes thats how I tried to contact them. I haven't recieved a message from WMT but the drop first started in April and google only recently said they sent messages for 100% of MANUAL penalties by August or so and haven't ever said EVERYBODY with unnatural links got a message. I think it's clear that the linking structure LOOKS unnatural. question is, assuming I can't get them to remove the links, do I disavow?

Use the canonical tag and not index the www.short-hairstyles.com/~wwwshor page using

I don't have any experience with Cloudflare so I can't offer an opinion on their services.  And without a proper audit of your site and link profile, there is no honest way to know exactly what the core issues are on the site.  Short of a proper audit, it's all a guess.  That's the bigger concern. Maybe it's links. Maybe its duplicate content perception.  Maybe it's a dozen seemingly insignificant issues that accumulated to the breaking point with a trigger event like Penguin. Unfortunately that's the reality of SEO in 2012.

OK, thank you EGOL. I clearly have content duplication issues on many of my sites which I'll address by changing said content and hopefully that problem will go away or at least reduce. How long does that take? The linkback issue. Is it an issue? I originally assumed going by the date my problems were solely due to Penguin and therefore linkback related. Should I, in the light of this other content problem, assume that the linkback issue isn't a problem or should I still consider using the disavowel tool? Ian