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Are you talking about press release websites or article websites? If it's the former then there is minimal SEO benefit but if you find some industry-specific websites and post it to them. If it is article websites then stay clear of them, they were all devalued in the last update and I'd also get rid of any articles you have on these types of websites.

The best thing would be to clean up the bad links, file a reconsideration request and then 301 the old domain to the new one...that is if you have some good links to the old domain. If you only have spammy links then starting afresh would probably be easier.

As a side note...why not get the client to contact the forum and make an official statement so they can clear up any misconceptions that a potential customer may have?

When you are checking your rankings in the SERPS in your SEOmoz campaign, it tells you if you have an image result as well and tells you where it appears in the rankings.

Vary the anchor text that you use, this includes the 3 names you mentioned and the URL of the website as well. Just keep in mind that Google wants your backlink profile to be "natural" so if the company is called NLCPA then use that as an anchor text as well.

Make sure that when you are migrating the URL's across that you get all the current URL's and redirect them to the equivalent on the new domain. Don't just 301 everything to the homepage as I've seen people do before!

In terms of the www. and non www, I always say to use www. because it looks better and more professional in my opinion, just 301 redirect the non. www to the www version.

404's won't harm rankings, as long as it is a properly formatted 404. Did you change SEO companies as well? the reason I ask is that it might be more than just the redesign, it may be the links they are building.

I missed out something...in webmaster tools you can then make sure that each section of the website is targeted for that specific country as well.

Hi Margaret,

I would advise to have them as sub domains on the same website so www.url.com/US and www.url.com/CA. You can then add canonical tags to one set of pages which will avoid any duplication. Also your link building efforts won't need to be duplicated because you will be pushing one website instead of 2.

I know, it's frustrating and probably happened to all ethical SEO'ers at some point. Keep at it, you'll be rewarded! Good luck for the future

Thanks Tom, I figured that was the case but wanted to pose the question to the community! It's just a bit of a pain when you see those errors!! Panic station!

I agree with the previous comments and be aware that if your competitors are building dodgy links, there is a good chance that they will get a penalty in the near future! Keep the faith with natural links and you will reap the benefits in the long term. Remember, SEO is a long term strategy so compare your stats each month and make sure you are seeing an improvement...if you are seeing an increase then keep it going, don't worry too much about those above you because there isn't much you can do about them.

When the crawl report is finished, it is saying that there are duplicate content/page titles issues. However there is a canonical tag that is formatted correctly so just wondered if this was a bug or if anyone else was having the same issues?

For example, I'm getting a error warning for this page

http://www.thegreatgiftcompany.com/categories/categories_travel?sort=name_asc&searchterm=&page=1&layout=table

Use Open Site Explorer on your research tools, find the competitors that are ranking at the top and see the types of links they have. Remember to use branded terms as well as the odd anchor text though!

it may be how the nofollow tag is formated? It should be;

and yours is rel='nofollow'

It is possible yes, your home page is where the majority of your website authority sits so if that gets penalised then other pages can be affected. Simon is right that without more details, it is hard to give you a proper answer.

If you have been doing a lot of articles recently then this may be a reason because article websites have taken a huge hit since the update in January.

Whilst it is likely that the links had a negative effect, it seems unlikely that they would have had such a quick effect. Links via forums aren't the most "natural" of links so I wouldn't advise sticking to that. When you are building links, ask yourself "do the links look natural?" Make sure they fit in with the content of the website and make sure that the website you are linking from has some authority (look when the page was last cached) because if it takes Google months to visit the website then it will be months until your link is cached.

Takeshi is right that newer websites can fluctuate at the beginning. You need to make sure that you are using the right type of link building techniques. Go for quality over quantity, find relevant websites that match your industry (so technology in your case) and strike up a relationship with them.

Go for branded links, keep an eye out for the percentage of brand links against anchor text links, too many anchor text links and Google will penalise you.

Tom's right, there is nothing wrong with having 301's on the website and you should use data to determine whether a 301 is necessary. However, if there is any chance that someone has linked to it then a 301 should be used.

Maybe get creative with your 404 page whilst there is a chance it may appear, customers like a good 404 and shows you are user friendly as well. Point them to the new URL and to other products they may like.

Good luck!