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Avoiding using those types of software man.  There's no doubt that they still work if used wisely, but it's clear that they won't for much longer.

If you still persist on using them, just keep that in mind.  At any time, you may loose everything.

Believe it or not, your goal with press releases, isn't to get backlinks from press release sites or insert keyword rich urls to your page.  It's to raise awareness and get reporters, bloggers, publishers to notice your content or "news".  Once they know about it, they may take action - link to you, contact you for more information, republish your release, or write their own story based on your release.

Don't expect PR sites to count for much, REGARDLESS of their domain authority.  ezinearticles.com has a sweet DA of 95.  Guess how much Google values a link from them ?  PR sites were impacted by Panda just the same as sites like EZ were.

So needless to say I think you're looking at it all wrong.  In choosing a Press release distributor pick one that can offer you the widest distribution for your newsworthy content.  Unfortunately, you're not gonna achieve that with the free options.   Why would you put your awesome content on sites that humans don't read anyway ?

In summary, stick with PRweb/Prnewswire and avoid putting targeted anchor text in your release.

-Just my opinion.

Why isn't a 301 possible?  If the host doesn't have ISAPI_Rewrite, then a custom 404 that contains a 301 will work.

There would be a big impact on rankings otherwise.

Google doesn't usually take individual action on those spam reports.  They prefer to let their algo take care of it.

So you need to stop worrying about them, and concentrate on you.

A 301 redirect is available as an upgrade.   $12 per year.

http://en.support.wordpress.com/site-redirect/

You'll need it if you want to ensure your site continues ranking after you switch to a new self hosted domain.

Before you do the 301, you need to do a Tools > Export on the old site and then Tools > Import on the new site and be sure to tick download attachments.

Good luck.

From following all the talk, I'm pretty sure they are working on points 2, 3 & 4.

While all that is good, I personally feel they should concentrate on updating more often first, then move towards giving those extra features.  The two month stretch between updates has been a real pain in the ass.  But I'm sure they know that.

First look at the Analytics, and try to determine when exactly the drop in traffic happened.  If it coincides with a known panda or penguin update, then you probably found your problem.

If no luck there, I'd do the reconsideration request but don't mention anything about bad links.  You'll get a reply of either "no manual spam actions" or "please remove more bad links and try again"

Try using 'broken' link building.

There's several guides and posts here on Seomoz.  Just search.

Basically, you scan through the list of links, and you'll probably find a few broken or 404 pages.  Point those out and also recommend the addition of new resources, including your own.  It works extremely well, and you don't come across as the typical emailer that the webmaster probably encounters everyday.

Round off that strategy with a regular guest posts, link bait and other content marketing ...and you're solid.

For WMT, they seem to update "Links to your site" data every 4-5 days.  And when they do, the data is about 10 - 14 days old.

Don't take these times as an indicator for when Google considers a link or not.  It's not kept closely up to date with their index.

Ahrefs/Majestic are pretty fast in my experience.  Sometimes in as little as 1-2 days for links on popular domains.

For OSE, it's once a month.  The last update post says they'll be cutting that time down to weeks -- and eventually more often as they move from amazon to their own hardware.

You don't have to worry about the emanuel update just yet.  It's just one notice.

If you filled the counter form, then no, you don't have to do anything else.  There's no need to file a reconsideration request.

I'm afraid, there's no "good" software to "build" links.  Yes, some of them if used smartly may work and work quite well.  But all you're doing is bidding time until Google decides one day that they are going further devalue links that are low quality, non-editorial, and obviously manipulative.

So you have a choice. Either you adopt a strategy of EARNING LINKS rather than "BUILDING" them.  Or you use software and other tactics to artificially inflate your rankings for what will be likely short term gains.

I suggest looking at the graphic at the end of this post:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-seo-it-fing-works-12421

And spend a few weeks going through these posts:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4

You won't regret it.

Pagerank just measures your link popularity.  Rankings are determined by it and hundreds of other factors.  That's why Google and good SEOs will tell you not to focus on PageRank.

You can be PR7 and not rank for anything worthwhile.

I lost "megasitelinks" as well recently.  I think it may be due to changes or tweaks they are making.

Terms I had sitelinks for before were:

domain.com;
domain

Now I only have sitelinks for:

www.domain.com;
http://www.domain.com

Your site shows similar behavior.  I expect the megasitelinks will reappear soon as they make further changes.

Try this guide. Some templates here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/broken-link-building-guide-from-noob-to-novice

Customize and tailor each email as much as possible.  Really look at the target site, follow them on twitter, learn about them, etc

For example, I recently started following a target.  I was going to do a broken link email, but soon enough, they were ranting in a blog post about their brand usernames being taken by squatters and inactive accounts on twitter/facebook.  I used that to reach out to them and suggest what to do to claim their usernames since I actually had the same problem.  I didn't even mention or request links, but they are now linking to our homepage and referencing other pages on my site.  All I did was sign my emails with my domain name, so they know who i am, where i'm from.

Essentially I made a friend by offering value, and asking for nothing in exchange.  That target would have been tough to get a link from otherwise.

In case that hadn't worked out, I WOULD have eventually asked directly for the link after having made a great first impression.

Prweb.com.

1. only do it if you have something really newsworthy to publish.  Otherwise, you're wasting your money.

2. don't even try to include a bunch of targeted anchor text everywhere possible.    Less links the better.  The point of the press release isn't to get links from press release sites.

I would "noindex,follow" them.  Don't block them with robots.txt.
With that many pages, you're certainly running the risk of being hit by Panda.

Those tag pages shouldn't be ranking, instead the individual posts should be in those positions.  If I were you, I would take the chance and do the noindex, with the expectation that Google will appropriately rank the posts in their place.

I'd say those are better odds as against losing 50 - 80% of traffic in a panda update.

Ok.

1.  It's a little bit of both gut feeling and more evidence.  Sometimes you can look at a site and just know that it's not a place you want to be.  Just like you can look at a dark alley and know that's not where you should be at 1am in the night.

You gather the "evidence" by answering those questions I provided.

2.  I am sure (almost positive) that a single link from yahoo dir will be better than dozens from the types of directories you're describing.   There's a reason it costs $299.  If you truly do have a quality site, then you shouldn't be quite worried about inclusion.  They are strict, but not that strict.

If search results are ranking ....why don't you identify those terms and create a category or index page for each of them.  Write a few sentences about the term in general and then list pages that otherwise would have been returned as search results.

You get Improved navigation + more link juice flow + less issues with Panda.

5 years old, but still true.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-wisdom-folly-of-directory-link-building

1.  Yes.  In the FAQ released with the tool, Google does advise that you can use the tool as a preventative measure.

2.  Submitting for "disavowal" would be enough.  But if you have the opportunity and/or time to dedicate to getting the actual links removed, then I would do it.

3.  When disavowing entire domains, it should look like this:

#Please disregard these directories linking to my website
domain:webdirectory11.com domain:dosub.com domain:rankco.info
........

If it's specific pages or URLs on a domain and NOT the whole domain, then you input the exact URL [including the http://] WITHOUT the "domain:" prefix.