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Just because you buddy did not get caught speeding does not mean you won't.
Duplicate content doesn't help anyone.
Neither does forum signatures.
My question would be how many links did you gain in what about of time?
100+ in one week/month/year?
Did you add links slowly or just gain them all in one week?
If you just put up a site & all the sudden have hundreds of links to it... you might have been busted for unnatural linking...
Web blogs & directories are getting nailed these days.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/unnatural-link-warnings-blog-networks-advice
I feel that a GOOD SEO person will want you to focus on natural links & content as apposed to buying links that may very well be penalized in the next ... well whenever they are deindexed...
Yes, your competitors might be buying those links, but you will be happy when they do go down in flames and you rise to the SERPS because of it. If you are truly itching to buy links... then buy them from local merchant directories that are in your field, then at least you are advertising to people who live/work in your area...
SEO is a tricky beast.
If you shift one keyword up others shift down, as well as if ANOTHER person does shifting all sites jumble around as well.
I have seen my own pages shift down then back up again right after making changes.
Although looking at your page I might recommend having that great block of text towards the top & your copyright notices at the bottom. Make the page agreeable to humans as well as robots...
Maybe Google crawled your site just while you were fiddling with it?
With my sites I have seen test pages get indexed & wonky pages show up for a short while until the next indexing.
If you want local links then search local opportunities...
It makes a bit of sense with your city to be looking for networking in your city.
Local neighborhood associations
Local Art Associations
http://www.proartsgallery.org/
Local small business affiliats
Local Chaimber of Commerce
http://www.oaklandchamber.com/
Local news outlets
Look in your area for these type of organisations to join up, they get you links, service, community enrichment & maybe even a few clients. Not all of these will fit every solution but they do range in value as well as price from 25.00/year to 200+/year.
Well if you make the link be the entrance fee...
Only the links count.
Treat the mentions like extras ....
Nothing wrong at all with a mention from someone who does not want to enter, it passes the word along.
I pass along calls for art all the time, I know that I might not be a good fit, but 3 of my 100+ art buddies might be...
From the CCsite:
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
It seems to me that the CC is designed to share NOT to try and sell, your blog is selling your business.
Many blogs have sales links right on them.
Several other factors are also in play:
1. Many people are savvy enough to spot "stock" images, is using images that are seem over and over again what you want your company to be known for?
2. If your company is based on any sort of creativity, clients will know that your just reusing old images as apposed to creating new fresh creative ones.
I'm a small business owner who managed to get lost down the SEO rabbit hole a few years ago on another forum.
Since then I have learned so much that I do spurts of intense study for a few months then leave it alone for a year. I then come back to learn all the new and exiting changes that are constantly going on.
What I do find odd is that in my experience 99.99% of the SEO "experts" who call my business and try to sell me a product or service fail so miserably that I just shake my head & then go back to my own learning instead of paying someone else to do the work for me.
I understand that lots of people who are new will ask the same new questions, I sure did.
If they are asking the wrong ones a two fold approach might help.
a. Answer the question.
b. Guide them to the proper questions with examples of why another method of thinking might be important.
It depends on what those 60 articles are about...
It looks like some of them can be expanded into larger guides:
"How to choose a woman's surfboard"
Make this page oodles bigger with pretty images & several links to
the best top 5 brands of women's surfboards.
Then with the more specific ones like longboard surfboards
again expand it to just ad more images more text and make that page bigger.
You can totally take two general blah articles and edit them so that each one is more specifc and less general by adding text images tags and adding to the the copy.
I don't know if it will hurt SEO but it will totally hurt conversions & sales.
This sounds like a case for reputation management.Where are the reviews?Yelp Google PlacesIf the bad reviews are on yelp then I would talk to your client about getting more good reviews.Have him talk to his clients and get those good Yelp reviews flowing.If they are on a site like rippoff report, then bumping that site down will help.If he has lots of places that have complaints then a hard look at WHY people are giving him bad reviews...I know of an online zine that was just a horrid spammer & guess what, those complaints stayed at the top as well as all the forum posts about his spammy ways & insulting emails ....Your client needs to know what sites covert traffic and clients.If he actually GETS clients & income from twitter then yes get that twitter acoutn to the top.If not, then having low ROI sites cluttering the top serps won't help much.
Patches?
We don't need no stinkin' Patches
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqomZQMZQCQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ7a9lMSwL8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=LXZq9cl9P4Y
http://www.hark.com/clips/xgszgzrszs-patches
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258470/quotes?qt=qt0298119
Here is some rather demented inspiration...
http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty
This tool can be used to compare up to 5 keywords
It will tell you what keyword phrase people use most & all sorts of good stuff.
If he spends hours fixing duplicate content, writing copy & changing all his titles and meta.
Then he learns in a week that his site structure is that of a drunk octopus and feels it is better to remove several pages to clean up rankings and a better user experience.
That is a lot of wasted time.
I would spend a few days just reading and absorbing info.
Then take time off and have a few cups of tea.
Then study some more.
More tea....
Then find ONE long tail keyword that you want to work on.
Use the reports to make changes to ONE web page.
(use a little page that is buried & not your home page)
By now your used to drinking tea and waiting, so make some changes and wait for the next crawl (about a week or so) see what those changes did to your SERPS. Use that knowledge to learn how to start slowly changing other pages. As you read more and learn more all those changes will start to add up.
For very few things in SEP there is no one clear cut simple answer, but there are many theories that seem to evolve every few months to years. No one thing will be the simple answer, each little thing adds up to create a puzzle.
Yes it is a spam site.
Google the email address and it pops up on several spam trackers.
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Diekema%40gmail.com
| 
Date | 
IP Address | 
Username | 
Email | 
| 
|
| 9-Mar-12 07:33 | 173.234.161.143 | Hai Tanzi | Diekema@gmail.com | 
| |
| 14-Jan-12 03:32 | 200.222.13.135 | top 10 dubstep songs | Diekema@gmail.com | | |
| 10-Jan-12 06:06 | 108.62.46.70 | decorator | Diekema@Gmail.com | | |
| 30-Nov-11 04:28 | 173.234.248.159 | how to attract men | Diekema@gmail.com | | |
<fieldset><legend>Legend</legend></fieldset>
| 
| Toxic IP address or "bad" email domain |
| Highlighted | Hot IP or disposable email address |
I just delete all comments that even smells of spam.
How long does it take to cancle the 301?
I had a 301, I just canceled it & uploaded my new content.
I just took out the last line of code that that has the visible addthis link with that ugly box overlay.
It was easy, & now all I have left is the little squares that do not expand out into the addthis link.
As well as the idea that if ass this takes away one link by linking to their site, how many more links to they give a webpage owner by making sure that more people are adding an sharing thus linking to original content. It seems like a one step back gets you ten steps forward situation.
Very good point, I can't find a certain link either, I guess the internet is so huge that no one tracking method has all the records all in one place...
What about a once a year fee?
Local neighborhood associations
Local Art Associations
http://www.proartsgallery.org/
Local small business affiliats
Local Chaimber of Commerce
http://www.oaklandchamber.com/
Local new outlets (these guys have a monthly, but I'm sure you can get a yearly rate)
Look in your area for these type of organisations to join up, they get you links, service, community enrichment & maybe even a few clients. Not all of these will fit every solution but they do range in value as well as price from 25.00/year to 200+/year.