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You've no doubt removed alot of links that might have been helping you rank as well as did before. That may very well be why you haven't regained much of that traffic.
Another reason might be, the site is still under an algo filter like Penguin. The links you removed may have been enough for the manual reviewer, but not enough for Penguin. Or maybe it's enough for Penguin, but since it hasn't been refreshed since October ..you can't recover yet.
Example:
The page has a rel=canonical pointing to itself. That is what the tool recommeds.
The page still has a canonical tag pointing to the preferred URL.
I sell pizza in New York, you sell pizza in New Jersey and we're friends. Naturally, I would link to you as "Montauto's Pizza". I wouldn't use "New Jersey Pizza".
I'd say no, but you want to prepare for the future. What happened to your competitor may not ever happen to you, because your link profiles will always be different.
So I would suggest that for now you proactively:
-remove only the most obviously paid ones
-remove the ones that are site-wide
-remove or edit the ones that blatantly use unnatural anchor text.
At the time as you're doing these targeted removals, you work on acquiring more links that are within Google's guidelines.
I don't think Rand has ever said that going greyhat or blackhat doesn't work, or isn't alive. The real question is ..for how long ? Those doing Greyhat/Blackhat usually understand the risks and are content to reap the short-term rewards for as long as they can. When they lose, they are start over OR they switch to the next thing that works. There will always be that "next thing" that works for now.
What I think Rand endorses ..is a strategy where you're not chasing the algo or trying to artificially create popularity. It takes longer, is harder ..but almost always is better way to go.
I don't think you should do it by screen size.
If you're using Wordpress, then install W3 Total Cache.
Among MANY other essential things, it will allow you redirect visitors based on user-agent to EITHER:
1. another theme that's better suited to particular sets of users (for example, one wordpress theme for mobile, and one for tablets, one specially for iOS devices, etc).
2. or set it to "pass through" so you can handle mobile management with another plugin like "Mobile Smart", which i use.
3. or set it redirect to m.domain.com which is what you want.
Advantage? It reduces unnecessary overhead and it's one of many little tweaks you can make to ensure your site is the fastest it can be.
If you have wordpress setup on www.domain.com, then all your static files (images, css, js) are served along with cookies set on the domain.
So the basic solution is the create a subdomain of your main domain (or register a whole new domain just for it) and server your static files from that domain.
I use W3 Total Cache configured to serve all static files from a subdomain which is on Amazon Cloudfront. W3 automatically rewrites all your theme and images path to the new subdomain. It's really easy to setup.
Check these out:
http://www.allthingsdemocrat.com/w3-total-cache-cookieless-subdomain-godaddy-shared-hosting/
http://www.riyaz.net/blogging/setup-own-cdn/890/
In addition to that, I had make tweaks to my Google analytics script to ensure it doesn't set cookies on my cookieless sub-domain.
Changing that isn't likely to result in much improvement. It might actually have a negative effect if proper 301 redirects aren't in place. And even if you do the 301's correctly, there's no guarantee the search engines will see it the same.
You'll get better mileage if you change the page's titles and the content to better satisfy those keywords.
Also rather than listening to what other people say, you should probably check the actual search volume of these keywords and compare.
For the seville site, the problem is https. OSE doesn't crawl it [yet]
https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/20770156-open-site-explorer-to-crawl-https
For the other one, it looks like it's simply a case of the site not being important enough for the mozscape bots. [sorry] I'm sure as the site grows OSE will crawl it more thoroughly and will display more information.
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.
They actually do have a few high value links, but also some junk that any 12 year old site will pick up over the course of time.
But things aren't as rosy for them as it may seem. Based on the few pages I looked at and their semrush page, I'd guess they've got some partial Panda issues.
Either way, it would be hard for anyone to tell you exactly why they do still rank well for some terms. It's not just any one or two or even five factors.
If i had to guess though, it would be because of those few high value links, and the fact that they've been around for so long.
I see alot of those rank and bank operations. From experience, the best advice I can give is to keep doing what you're doing and don't worry about the xrummer guy.
They almost always last for a few months, and then they disappear. They then, rinse and replace lost sites with new ones.
No.. natural / unnatural not the same. Very different - like night and day. And it's something Google is working very hard on to be able to tell the difference. They are still not there yet, but with each update they get better.
But I do agree with your point that it's about how you see it.
Check Google's Webmaster Tools for the website.
Go to Health > Crawl Errors ..then click on the "Not found" box to display the list of URLs that are returning 404s or 410s. Now click on any of the 404 URLs and a pop-up box will appear with three tabs.
Under the "Linked to" tab, they usually indicate how they found that URL (whether from internal or external pages).
It sometimes lags with the updating though.
If your idea is to slap on your signature with anchor text heavy links on every forum possible, then no they are not a very good thing to be doing post-2012.
There's a place for them though. If you're participating on a forum that's relevant to your website then I don't see why you can't place a link or two to your website in the signature. But I would avoid trying to put manipulative anchor text in there. Just use the plain URL or a branded term like your business or domain name.
Also, google recently updated their webmaster guidelines with a forum signature example of what you should not be doing:
Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature, for example:
_Thanks, that’s great info!
I sense I may have hurt your feelings or something.
How about seomoz.org ? #3 for SEO, among thousands of others I'm sure and they're not doing any of the junk above.
Here's a few more: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-seo-it-fing-works-12421. A fairly diverse set of "niches".
Blaming the "niche" because it's boring is a poor excuse.
Any link that is earned.
None of the above involves "earning". It's all "build" and plunder. I'm not saying it doesn't work, though. The question is for how long ?
I'd say, yes. nav links and their anchor text would be considered if it's first in the HTML of the document ...even if that nav link is a child or grandchild.
It's really just speculation about what Google counts and I would not worry about it. Their systems are now smart enough to weigh links that appear in nav and bodycontent appropriately. Their systems try to mimic what real users want, so just do what's best for users and you'll be rewarded.