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Nice spot, Irving!

Disgusting behavior. It begs the bigger question of how the hell Google can let them rank in the first place whilst using methods like this.

Great answer, Ryan. I started writing out a similar answer before reading yours - glad I checked before hitting the "post reply" button.

It really annoys me that sites like this even rank.

@Raphael Locsin - IMO, steer clear! There are some great SEO's on here and elsewhere who use ethical methods which will only help your business in the long run.

It's OK. Panic over. I thought you were saying that you had copied somebody's content.

I would recommend starting at the bottom. I wrote an answer to a similar question not too long ago:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/first-links-for-a-new-site

One thing to remember is to think naturally. If you are looking at starting link building projects then always question whether the methods you are using look authentic and organic.

One last thing to remember, please don't ask people to write fake reviews of your sites and/or products. Don't take shortcuts in SEO or you will get stung like the millions of other sites using the same tactics as you. The chances of getting anybody on SEOMoz to partake in questionable methods is pretty low (or actually nearly impossible).

Erm. I'm a little confused here. Is this a joke? Are you saying that you have stolen your competitors content and added it to your own website?

The two words "unique" and "cloned" certainly do not go hand in hand. If you have copied somebody's unique content then it is no longer unique and certainly will not help you in the slightest!

Hopefully I read your question wrong but after re-reading, I can't see where I might have misunderstood.

EDIT:

Actually, having investigated a little further it appears that you have actually copied somebody's website design and added your own content. Can you confirm that this first link is yours and the second is your competitors?

http://hemorrhoidssuccess.com/

http://hemorrhoidtreatmentadvice.org/

I would question the need to clone a website, especially one which looks to be targeting English speakers with a look, feel and design which looks like it has been made by buying by a Fiverr.com gig from an oversees design company... Why not build your own? I have nothing against websites built oversees by the way - it just seems that there are so many poor ones out there!

I wouldn't say it is the only tactic left but it should be the most important - Assuming that all on-site optimization is complete at least.

Other things to think about which might help are image optimization (Alt tags, file names etc) and social work. Also make sure the content is as good as possible and update it regularly.

Make sure if you start a link building campaign that you don't go crazy on anchor text. For every 10 links built, I would make 6 branded (mydomain.com or something similar), 2 natural anchor text (click here etc), 1 long tail anchor with inclusion of the main keyword ("great prices on cash for gold" or something similar) and finally maybe 1 link with exact match anchor text (cash for gold). There is no way of knowing for sure the correct amounts of each so you will have to test as you go along but the above formula should help

Matt

EDIT: I knew I saw an article recently about building a natural link profile and I have just found it. Clicky me!

I might even write my own version of the above link at some point soon showing some of my findings after some extensive testing.

There are a few places I find useful. I often find the best bloggers by accident via MyBlogGuest but you can also try Elance and Freelancers.

I like to have a few good writers as they all have different writing styles and specialty subjects.

Matt

Some good tips here to get you going. The key is to try and keep your link profile as natural as possible while concentrating on quality. Its not easy...

I would be careful about doing too many directories to start with, maybe pick 3 or 4 at the most. When your link profile gets better you can then come back and maybe do a few more.

A nice press release saying you have a new website would work fine too. Get it distributed around the web and this should build a couple of links. Again, don't go OTT with press releases, keep them to a minimum but it will give you a decent start.

I have taken this from a similar question I answered not long ago...

"I will try and keep this as basic as possible so if you need me to elaborate, please ask.

The best way to start (and often a step that people forget completely) is to approach company's who you already have had dealings with. Try some of the following:

Accountants, Solicitors, Suppliers, Friends, Local Newspapers, Customers, Marketing Company's, Software Company's... Any business that you have dealt with. It could be a plumber who fitted the kitchen, the builder who built the building, a welder who made your gate... Anything!

Chances are, these websites wont be that relevant to your market (and maybe not even very good) but they are always an important place to start.

Be creativewhen approaching them though - chances are they won't just want to link to you for no reason. Maybe write them an article for their blog or news section on their website. Maybe write a testimonial saying how pleased you are with them or their service and link back to your site within the testimonial.

Next on the list is to ask your website designer for a link (if you have one). If he/she is proud of the work they carried out, they would happily add your website to their portfolio on their own website and link to your site.

If you had a logo designed and think it looks pretty sexy, show it off! There are lots of logo directories that will have your logo on their site with a link back to your site.

I would also try a couple of good quality directories (ensure they are manually edited directories and don't look like link farms). Remember though, don't do too many directories - especially not to start with!

From here I would recommend writing a press release and getting it published around the web. Obviously the first press release should be titled something along the lines of "New Website Open For Business".

After the press release, ask a couple of friends (or even better - customers) to write a review of your website on a review site. Once you get a couple they start looking legit but don't go over the top!

This should get you hopefully a few links. From here-on you should start picking up skills and learning more about how to get better links and optimise more efficiently.

I would recommend that  throughout this whole stage; every single one of your links uses branded anchor text (or naked anchor text). What I mean by this is use yourdomain.com or click here etc).

Hopefully this helps?"

There are many ways of building links. The only limit is your creativity. I wrote an answer a couple of weeks back to a similar question, it might help...

http://www.seomoz.org/q/first-links-for-a-new-site

Glad you are finding SEOMoz useful - there's a great community here and staying ontop of things is easy because there are so many people doing their own testing and sharing results.

By the way, don't do too many press releases. Try one every couple of months maximum.

Matt

As stated already by other comments a few times, this method is very dated and will more than likely see your sites flagged as a spam network built purely for the purpose of link building (which is exactly what you have built it for)...

I would recommend removing ALL links to and from each site. Every single one.

However, there is probably no need to take the sites down, that's a little hasty.

If they are hosted on the same server then run them all separately as individual websites, write content on each and allow some nice guest posts on them. You can throw a couple of adverts on them and earn a little bit of £ if that is your ultimate goal.

If they aren't on the same server then you can use them as link bait. Write articles (good quality is the key here, as always!)  for other websites and include a natural link back to your main website. If the website you want to host your article want something in return - for essentially giving you a link, offer them a guest posting opportunity on any of your other 5 websites. That way you both benefit from a backlink...

On a side note... SEO Smartlinks? Come onnnn.... you can do better than that! That is pretty much spam in its highest form! Maybe you should read up on Penguin and Panda and understand the clear goals of the algo updates of the past couple of years. Google's war on spam is a big deal!

Good luck

Risky but could do the trick. You should analyse each page separately and see if any actually have good links going to them - if not then its worth a try (as long as there arent lots and lots of pages, doing them one or two at a time might work nicely).

The advantage here is that if there are good links coming to the page, it will be MUCH easier to get a legitimate website to change the URL of the link than it would be to get the bad links removed.

If there are bad links going to specific pages it might also be worth trying to block the bots from accessing the specific pages. Obviously if your homepage has lots of bad links then this could be a bigger issue...

Hi Daniel,

I can put you in touch with one of the best fitness trainers (certainly in my area) who is actually very active on the web and his own blog. Would this help?

Matt

It would mean duplicated content if you kept the description the same, yep. However, there are many ways of saying the same thing... You would have to rewrite the descriptions for sure.

Whether or not it would give your website any benefit is hard to say without knowing which product it was you were thinking about splitting down and which keywords you were targeting for that product.

As an example. One of the sites I am working on sells plastic chains. We optimise the category page for the main plastic chain keywords, within the category we add the products and split them up based on colour. This allows us to target long-tail keywords such as "Green Plastic Chain". This benefits us because (even though they are fairly low) there are people searching for this term. If nobody is searching for your product in a specific colour then there is no real advantage other than having more content on your site.

On the other side of the coin, it does mean more clicks for visitors. As we know, more clicks often means losing visitors. The only real answer is to test test test. I always recommend using a combination of both methods after lots of testing and analysing.

Hope this helps?

Matt

It shouldn't be penalised provided you don't go over the top with it. Making certain words bold can be used for visitor purposes to make parts of the content easier to find. Don't go over the top and certainly don't do it for SEO purposes but as long as you go over the top you should be fine. On a side note, the benefit it adds (arguably) is very minimal anyway so it isn't something to spend much time doing, if at all.

SEOMoz updates its ranks once a week usually - rankings change daily, sometimes hourly. This could be a factor.

Also, ensure you have the search engine selected as your localised Google within SEOMoz.

As a side note, ensure that you block cookies, use incognito and aren't logged into any Google service. If you are, it will give you personalised results.

Can you provide your website URL please so I can take a look at your link profile.

Free directories (and lots of them) certainly wont help your link profile. If anything, I would spend my time on removing the already existing directory links instead of building more...

Matt

It can be a pretty big job if you change the URL structures - depending on how large the website is.

Modesto Siotos wrote a blog on it here.

If you change the structure then ideally, you should forward every page to the closest replacement page on the new design using a 301.

Give the blog a good read, it should hopefully help.

Matt

"Thank you so much for your help"

Anytime! I hate to see genuine people needing help but not knowing where to turn. I hate it almost as much as I hate none-genuine people offering to help in return for something.

"There are a lot of book stores and review sites that already have pages for her book I'm sure I can contact the owners and have them link to her home page."

That's great news! Try to be persuasive. If it looks like its failing, offer them a link back within an article on your blog section when its ready. Recipricol links aren't what they used to be but they are certainly better than no links.

I will explain more on Skype. I should be available for the next few hours at least.

Look forwards to seeing you there!

Give me a shout. Id happily guide you through helping and give you some pointers.

The reason it has dropped is either because they are classing it as a low value domain for precisely the reason you explained; " I have never done SEO for it either except a bit of on page I guess."... Due to the site having no links, they think it is trying to rank for the keyword "Margaret Terry" by just having the keyword in the domain name. OR it hasn't been hit by updates - it has simply lost its freshness. It is normal for new websites to rank well temporarily while Google determines the quality of the site. Almost like they are given the benefit of the doubt for a while.

Due to the book coming out, now would certainly be the time to show Google that the site does have quality to it. This wont happen instantly but you would also hope that links will start building naturally once the book is released.

I wrote a few pointers on link building for new websites (or for sites without links) earlier in an answer to another question - you may find that useful. Clicky here.

Another fantastic way of building links for a writer's website would be to get readers to review and give their opinions on the book with a link back to their site. Review sites are great for this but also look for reading clubs and blogs.

I see that there is not a great deal of content on the site - it would help if you got some nice articles on there. I spotted a blog section - this would be the ideal place.

Let me know if you need more help, feel free to add me to Skype or Twitter should you wish. The details are in my SEOMoz profile - just click my name above.

I will try and keep this as basic as possible so if you need me to elaborate, please ask.

The best way to start (and often a step that people forget completely) is to approach company's who you already have had dealings with. Try some of the following:

Accountants, Solicitors, Suppliers, Friends, Local Newspapers, Customers, Marketing Company's, Software Company's... Any business that you have dealt with. It could be a plumber who fitted the kitchen, the builder who built the building, a welder who made your gate... Anything!

Chances are, these websites wont be that relevant to your market (and maybe not even very good) but they are always an important place to start.

Be creativewhen approaching them though - chances are they won't just want to link to you for no reason. Maybe write them an article for their blog or news section on their website. Maybe write a testimonial saying how pleased you are with them or their service and link back to your site within the testimonial.

Next on the list is to ask your website designer for a link (if you have one). If he/she is proud of the work they carried out, they would happily add your website to their portfolio on their own website and link to your site.

If you had a logo designed and think it looks pretty sexy, show it off! There are lots of logo directories that will have your logo on their site with a link back to your site.

I would also try a couple of good quality directories (ensure they are manually edited directories and don't look like link farms). Remember though, don't do too many directories - especially not to start with!

From here I would recommend writing a press release and getting it published around the web. Obviously the first press release should be titled something along the lines of "New Website Open For Business".

After the press release, ask a couple of friends (or even better - customers) to write a review of your website on a review site. Once you get a couple they start looking legit but don't go over the top!

This should get you hopefully a few links. From here-on you should start picking up skills and learning more about how to get better links and optimise more efficiently.

I would recommend that  throughout this whole stage; every single one of your links uses branded anchor text (or naked anchor text). What I mean by this is use yourdomain.com or click here etc).

Hopefully this helps?
Matt