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Here's what I think most people don't understand about using things like calculators for linkbait:  They have to be something

• people really need
• people really want to use
• people can't find easily elsewhere
• people want to share with their friends

So, a download link for free advice may not really count as linkbait.

Here's how I would challenge you to come up with a linkbait idea...Think of something that once people discover it they would want to share it on facebook.  Now, I'm not in the tax niche but here's what I just did.  I just went to Yahoo Answers, and typed in "taxes":  Yahoo Answers search on taxes.  This shows me what kinds of questions people are looking for the answers to online.

So, then, I would scan the questions and see where I could build a tool or calculator or even create a great content page that people would want to share.  I see that someone asked, "How high do income taxes have to get before Americans just stop working"...Well that got me thinking....I'd like to know how much money I would have to make to push me into the next tax bracket.  It would be cool to have a calculator that lets you put in your current salary and it would tell you roughly how much you would be paying in income taxes.  Now, that's really simple, but you could go places with it.  You could have examples, like a chart that says, "The average fireman makes $x per year and pays $y in taxes", "The average major league baseball player makes $x per year and pays $y in taxes".  It could be a calculator or it could be simply a content page.  If you make it controversial (i.e. talk about how much taxes certain celebrities might be paying) then this would make it more shareable.

Man, there are some great questions I see scrolling through Yahoo Answers....you could have a field day with content creation after reading these!

I would disavow the blogspot subdomains individually.  So you'd have 1000 lines that say:

domain:subdomain-name.blogspot.com

The documentation for the disavow tool (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.html) says the following:

Q: Can I disavow something.example.com to ignore only links from that subdomain?
A: For the most part, yes. For most well-known freehosts (e.g. wordpress.com, blogspot.com, tumblr.com, and many others), disavowing "domain:something.example.com" will disavow links only from that subdomain. If a freehost is very new or rare, we may interpret this as a request to disavow all links from the entire domain. But if you list a subdomain, most of the time we will be able to ignore links only from that subdomain.

What we don't know, however, is if we can do a disavow:blogspot.com to get everything from blogspot.  I wouldn't trust it to do this and I would definitely disavow each individual subdomain.

If you don't have a manual penalty then there is no way to upload anything other than your disavow file to Google.  Your disavow file is not read by a human.  It is machine processed.  You simply need to trust that you have done a thorough job and then, when Penguin refreshes, if you've got a good base of good links you should see an improvement.

Tough question....I think that any solution that doesn't involve someone writing fresh content is not going to work well.  If you're using someone else's articles then it's not unique content and I would guess that it wouldn't be terribly helpful for your site.

One option would be to hire someone to write articles.  You can find copywriters in just about any niche.  Or, what may be less expensive and possibly better would be for the customer to have an employee write articles for the site.  If you wanted to be involved, one idea would be for you to scan google news occasionally - set up alerts for dental issues and then see what news stories come in.  For example, here's one in today's news:

http://music.aol.co.uk/2011/06/07/john-lydon-speech-problems-surgery/

You could have the dentist or an employee write an article that describes what could have happened there.  But, if you just provide an excerpt or a link it's not likely to help you much from an SEO perspective.

That probably doesn't help much though if you are looking for a solution that doesn't involve someone writing the material themselves!

You may want to watch this Google hangout: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NNf_AhA1gw&feature=share&t=42m25s (42:25).  The question is exactly what you are asking.  John Mueller says that if you are showing Googlebot your full content but users can only see it by logging in then that is cloaking and is against the Google guidelines.  If you show a snippet of your page to users and Google sees the same snippet then that's ok.  He said another possibility is to use "first link free" where you allow the user to see a limited amount of content and then put the rest behind a paywall or other type of a read gate.

I'm also in agreement with Egol in the fact that putting content behind a read gate could really turn away users.  I hate it when I search for something and find what looks to be the perfect answer to my question only to find that it's behind a gate.  The result of this is that I immediately click away.  And, for sites that I know regularly have gated content, I won't click on them at all in the search results.  If this type of user behavior happens often then there's a good chance that it will be seen as a sign of low quality and the Panda algorithm will affect your site which could result in drastic drops in rankings across the board.

It looks like this site has a lot of backlinks for "custom t shirts" and I see them at #8 on Google.com for this term.  You'd think they would have been affected by Penguin.

Here's my theory.  According to ahrefs they really started a linkbuilding campaign in September of this year. Now, Penguin refreshed on October 5th.  It's possible that at that time they didn't have enough exact match anchor links to trigger the filter.  (We're assuming that this is the major component to Penguin).

My guess is that they'll decline with the next Penguin refresh.

Now, Penguin doesn't necessarily pick up paid links, just unnatural linking patterns like gross overuse of anchor text. In many cases, to be busted for paid links a manual spam review would have to be filed.  Personally I would not file a spam report though.  I think what goes around comes around.  I'd spend the time working on my own site and see what happens with the next Penguin refresh.

You're very welcome.  

I have to say that I don't really know for sure the answer to your question on keyword cannibalization.  What you may want to do is start a new topic to ask specifically about that and then people with more knowledge on the subject than me can chime in.  I'm interested in seeing if anything changes once you make your changes though!

I do believe that this is a terrifying prospect for anyone who makes a living at SEO.  I don't believe that SEO is dead, but I do believe that the role of an SEO is definitely shifting from "link building".  I think that the vast majority of SEOs out there today have a model that won't work in this new age of Google.

I think that the only SEOs who are going to succeed are going to be ones who can do a fantastic job of on-page optimization and then find ways to make the site not only attract links but also attract and keep users.  Ultimately, Google wants sites to rank well because users find it helpful.

I'll leave it up to others to make recommendations on tools to use but I wanted to add that whatever tool you use, use it as a guide and not a steadfast rule.  There is no tool out there that is going to be 100% accurate.  I see so many people who are missing bad links and disavowing good links by relying too much on tools.

But then I'm biased because we do manual audits.  If you're looking for a manual link audit then you can contact me via my profile and I can put you in touch with a good auditor.

Are you dealing with a manual penalty?  Or do you feel that you've been affected by the Penguin algorithm?  If it's the latter, then it's debatable whether it's necessary to actually do removal work.  If you have links that you can easily remove then it's definitely best to remove them.  But, often if you are doing a thorough link removal campaign you may only get 10-15% of the links removed and you can end up spending a lot of money for those few removals.  I usually recommend for Penguin that you remove what you can easily remove and then disavow the rest.  Of course, it's a different story if you have a manual penalty.

Google does not give you any indication that your links are actually being disavowed.  However, as of this month, if you have errors in your disavow file that would prevent it from working, you would be notified of that when you uploaded the file.

For your disavowed links you will still see them in your backlink profile, even on WMT.  Google adds an invisible nofollow as they crawl each link but they don't show any outward evidence of this.

"Is it wise to keep building links at this time which are quality and generally branded? I feel we are stuck currently."

In my opinion Google is getting much better at determining which links are self made and not passing PageRank through those links.  If by "building" you mean creating links of your own then IMO it doesn't matter what anchor text you use...you're going to see limited effectiveness by doing this.  Google's not perfect and there are some ways right now that you can actually build your own links and succeed.  But the whole goal of the engineers working on the search quality team is to make it so that the only links that really pass PageRank are those that are earned.

Hi David,

I've reviewed a lot of legal sites lately.  So many of them have been affected by Google's Penguin algorithm because of unnatural link building.  If you've had links built in the past then you may need to do a thorough link audit in order to clean things up before you can move on. For some sites there can be Panda issues as well that need to be cleared up in order for the site to see improvement.

What is difficult though is the "moving on" portion.  When Google ranks law firms for a particular city, how do they determine whether you rank at the top or not?  You can only go so far by cleaning up links.  You can go a little farther by improving your site from an on page perspective so that it performs well for both crawlers and for users.  But then what do you do?

The next component that Google uses in order to determine whether you should rank better than your competitors is links.  In the past, you could create your own links in a myriad of directories, article sites, bookmarking sites, etc.  But that's the type of thing that gets sites penalized.  Google only wants to count links that are truly valid votes for a site.  But I would imagine that there are not a lot of people who want to write glowing reviews of their attorney and link to them.  Still, there are some valid ways to get links to legal sites:

-There are some directories that are acceptable and probably could send you clients as well.

-You can get links from valid industry partners.

-You can sometimes get good links by finding unlinked mentions of your firm and getting them to link to you.

-The BEST way to get links is to produce content that people would find useful and then promote that content so that people will link to it.  But, this is hard to do.  There are companies that can do this, but you have to be picky when choosing one.  And, if you find one that can do this well, it will be expensive.

When it comes to identifying whether you have a Penguin or Panda problem or another type of algorithmic issue that is holding you back, and fixing those issues, I can help you with this (although I do have a bit of a waiting list.)  In regards to promoting your site once the algo issues are fixed up, probably the best option is to go through the list of recommended companies here (http://moz.com/community/recommended) and asking them the following questions:

-Tell me how you would get links to my site? - I would want to hear specific answers and not marketing speak like, "We'll leverage our blah blah blah and promote blah blah blah with our proprietary method."

-Do you have references?  - Don't let them hide behind NDA's.  If they have successfully helped clients in the past with their rankings then they will have plenty of businesses who are happy to give them a reference.

Hope that helps!

Marie

What I mean by "improve my branding" is that I am making people more aware of my brand.  So, in my case, my brand is either me (Marie Haynes) or my company (HIS Web Marketing).  When I post an article on Moz, lots of people read it and my hope is that they say, "Oh, that's Marie Haynes.  She's really good at Google Penalty Stuff".  I have branded myself in this way.

If I was managing SEO for a company that makes greenhouses and I managed to get an article published on the Better Homes and Gardens website, the main purpose would not be so that bhg.com links to me for SEO value, but rather that people who regularly visit that website see my company's brand and recognize them as a leader when it comes to greenhouse design.  I would also hope that people will click on my link and come and buy some greenhouses.  If you're guest posting in places where no one is likely to click on your link then there's a good chance that you're placing unnatural links.

"a blogger writing a piece on the wider industry contacts me for a quote and writes in his piece, "...Jeepster of Jeepster.com (followed link) said: "Blah, blah...""

I would say that that is a good link.  But it could be easy for you to build that into a linkbuilding tactic and have it slip into an unnatural tactic.  If a few sites contact you and quote you and link to you in that way, then that's fantastic.  But, if you start offering to pay people to link to you that way or if you offer product in exchange for a quote and a link then that's not good.  But, if people think you are authoritative enough to quote you in an article then this is great.

There are companies that can get rankings that quickly in competitive verticals.  But to do so they'll need to use techniques that are not within Google's guidelines such as using private blog networks or injecting links via hacking other people's sites.

If this is a site that you can walk away from should it get penalized, then hiring them might make sense.  I'd want to ask how they are getting links and to make sure that they are not doing anything illegal or anything that involves hacking other websites.  Getting links from a private blog network (if that's what they are doing) is not illegal or immoral, but if Google catches on and the site gets penalized then you may never be able to recover it.

If this is a site that you plan to keep for the long run, then it makes more sense to hire an agency that will improve your search presence gradually.  Good SEO usually takes a lot of time.

I have been building back-links manually over the last 3-4 months.

Be careful. I'm seeing links that Google will likely see as unnatural such as:

http://www.linkaddurl.com/Arts___Humanities/Performing_Arts/Business/Real_Estate/?p=6

http://cqycxzfwzx.com/sell-my-house-fast-for-cash-your-request-fulfilled/

You're in a competitive space.  I am betting that those sites above you with spammy links will drop out of site the next time Penguin hits.  If they don't then it's because they're using private blog networks that Google hasn't been able to detect algorithmically and they're prime targets for a manual penalty.

My advice for hiring an SEO company would be to ask them exactly what they will do for your site.  Are they going to improve your on page SEO?  If so, how? Are they able to get you links? If so, how? If they tell you that the process is proprietary then it's probably not above board.  If they give you marketing speak like, "We'll leverage your blah blah blah and produce stellar content marketing blah blah blah" without actually giving you a concrete idea of what they'll do then that's not good.  I'd also ask for references.  If they hide behind an NDA that's not good.  Good SEO companies will have people lined up to give them a reference.

The answer to this depends on what kind of a link profile you have.

I have some clients for whom I do monthly disavows. These are sites that had a long history of unnatural link building and even though they're not currently building links, there are a lot of old links that keep surfacing.

For others I do a quarterly link audit and disavow. These are great for two reasons. One is that we keep the link profile clean but the other reason is that we get to see what new links are pointing to the site. I am often able to catch problem areas. For example, perhaps a new team member has started to venture on a link building tactic that's a little on the grey side. But in other cases, I can point out the really good links that they are getting and advise on doing more outreach to that content or perhaps building similar content.

If you are a regular site that has not been overly involved in low quality link building in the past and are not in a competitive space where you're really worried about negative SEO, then reviewing your links every 6-12 months is probably good.

Hey folks.  I'm here on a free trial and I'm really loving the Q&A forum.  I've learned a lot in the last couple of days.

I've been playing around with the SEOMoz tools and campaigns and I'm trying to decide if it will be worth it for me to pay the monthly fee to continue with these once my trial is up.

I direct two main websites.  One is an informational site and the other is a real estate site.  I've started a campaign for each and so far we're still waiting for a crawl.  (I'm assuming that will happen on Sunday).

I've played around with some of the tools.  They keyword difficulty tool is cool but I can't see me using it a whole lot.  The rest is just a little overwhelming...I'm not sure where to start.

So what should I be checking out next?  Have at 'er and convince me to stay!

Hi Niall,

Are you sure that you need to be auditing your links each month? It's never a bad idea to go through your links regularly, but in my opinion, most sites do NOT need to be disavowing any more.

For a couple of years, a huge portion of my income came from doing link audits. I saw some amazing Penguin recoveries.

But when Penguin 4.0 came out in September of 2016, everything changed. Google made it so that for the most part, they ignore unnatural links. This means that unnatural links should not be able to penalize a site. If you're disavowing a link, you're asking Google to ignore it. So, if you are spending lots of money and time disavowing, then you're essentially asking Google to ignore links that they are already ignoring. In most cases I think it is a waste of money to do this.

Any time I say that, there will be people who swear that they have been able to take a site down via negative SEO by building links, or there will be people who swear that they saw a nice improvement after disavowing. But I've seen very few cases where someone has given good evidence to support their claims.

I wrote a thorough article on Moz about whether or not we still need to be disavowing in the age of Penguin 4.0:

https://moz.com/blog/do-we-still-need-to-disavow-penguin

If you're dealing with a manual unnatural link penalty then yes, you should be disavowing links. But otherwise, in most cases I recommend not disavowing. I think it's possible to do more harm than good. Also, many of the links that are flagged as "toxic" on automated link auditing tools are just cruft that every site gets.

My point in saying all of this is that I am betting that you probably don't need to spend any money on link auditing tools.

With that said, it's never a bad idea to regularly review your links...not for finding links to disavow, but rather, to see what is working for you. I personally like Ahrefs for monitoring links. I have alerts set up to tell me when I get a new link and I check those regularly. My goal though is to find what kinds of good links I am getting. For example, if a particular type of content has gained a few natural links then I know that that is good content to do outreach on and try to get more links.

If you're a Moz member, open site explorer is good at surfacing good links as well.

It's just a theory, but I think that Panda was not really an algorithm update but rather a conspiracy.

Google went out of their way to announce that a new algorithm was being rolled out.  The word on the street was that content farms would be affected.  Low quality sites would be affected.  Scrapers would be affected.  So, everyone with decent sites sat back and said, "Ah...this will be good...my rankings will increase."

And then, the word started coming in that some really good sites took a massive hit.  We've got a lot of theories on what could be causing the hit, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious fix.

Many of the key factors that have been suggested causes of a site to look bad in Panda's eyes are present on one of my sites, but this site actually increased in rankings after Panda.

So, this is my theory:  I think that Google made some random changes that made no sense.  They made changes that would cause some scraper sites to go down but they also knew that many decent sites would decline as well.

Why would they do this?  The result is fantastic in Google's eyes.  They have the whole world of web design doing all they can to create the BEST quality site possible.  People are removing duplicate content, reducing ad clutter and generally creating the best site possible.  And this, is the goal of Larry Page and Sergey Brin...to make it so that Google gives the user the BEST possible sites to match their query.

I think that a month or so from now there will be a sudden shift in the algo again and many of those decent sites will have their good rankings back again.  The site owners will think it's because they put hard work into creating good quality, so they will be happy.  And Google will be happy because the web is a better place.

What do you think?

Boo.....I can't tell you how many times my scissors are used!!!!

You're never going to get it perfect, especially the first time.  There are things that I created that were not helpful at all (or even harmful).  Then, there are other things that I created that I never thought would take off, but did.  I'm learning by trial and error.

For example, I wrote an article last year about a particular type of news story in my niche.  I never thought it would go anywhere.  But then, it suddenly caught on and went viral.  I took elements of that article and applied them to other articles.  In essence, everything I create is a learning experience.  I am discovering what my readership likes and creating more stuff that engages them.

I could tell you exactly what I did and could even teach you how to do it...BUT...it's not going to work that way for your audience.  You need to experiment and learn what works for you!

You know, this post really affected me today.  I really realized the truth that I ned to spend the majority of my time working on my sites rather than trying to duplicate other people's stuff.  You can read all day long, but if you're not out there trying (and failing) then you're never going to succeed!

I think almost all of us have considered this strategy.  I know when I first started out I had a main niche and then I bought up a bunch of keyword rich domains and created microsites.  The thing is that these are rarely helpful at all.

A link from a site is only going to add significant value if that site itself is a good one in Google's eyes.  So, a link from a brand new site with no backlinks itself is not going to be worth much.  And, if this microsite is likely to accumulate natural backlinks, you'd get much more value if those backlinks were actually pointing to your main site.

The way I look at it is this - if you create links yourself, then they usually aren't worth much.  One of the main points of Google's evolving algorithm is trying to determine which links are worthy and which are not.  So, you'll find that self-made links are rarely helpful.

I'd put that time and effort into putting content on your main site and then alerting other webmasters of your awesome content.

This has happened to me a number of times.  I find it tends to happen on sites that have a long history of creating unnatural links.  It's like Google wants you to go to superhuman lengths to get the penalty lifted.

Often I will be able to find some clues from what type of example links I'm given.  For example, in one case I got a couple of russian forum profiles as example links and they weren't on any backlink checker.  But, I was able to do some Google searches for inurl:forum/user + keyword and find several more.  In another example we got scraped versions of press releases so I did a Google search for the text of our press releases in quotes and found more.

One other source that we used was Google Analytics referral data.  Anything that referred only 1 visit was checked and occasionally you'll find one there.

Another thing that you can do is really press your client for previous SEO reports.  I had one client resurrect an old hard drive to find some SEO reports that contained links that were made on all sorts of spammy sites.

I have had a couple of cases where we went back to Google and basically said, "Look...there are no more links that we can find.  That's all we can do" and they lifted the penalty.  I think in some cases they want to know that you're not holding back.

Keep at it though.  You'll eventually get it lifted!

A lot of people are saying it's a test for a Penguin refresh, but none of the sites that I monitor for Penguin issues are showing any changes.  I spend a lot of time monitoring Twitter and SEO forums and here is what I am seeing:

-A lot of black hats are complaining that their sites are taking major hits.

-In the Google Webmaster Help forums there hasn't been an increase in people complaining that their sites are affected.

-A site that I monitor that gets affected both positively and negatively with many Panda updates is showing almost a 50% increase in organic traffic

So my conclusions?  I don't know.  

I feel like there may be a couple of things going on.  I think there is a Panda refresh as we haven't had one in a little while, but I also feel like Google is doing something new.