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This is a little confusing as even SEOmoz produces a list of "good" directories to submit your site to, many of which require a payment for editorial review. Are you saying that Google is now looking down on directories like Business.com. BOTW, etc?

Let's say that you only focus on quality directories that editorially review submission (with a cost). Would multiple links on the same page to internal pages of yours be counted?

Since data suggests that only the first link on a page to a singular URL is counted, are the deep links purchased from directories worth the money/provide any value?

I have seen SEOmoz (Rand) say these descriptions/acclaims are considered duplicate because they are found on potentially thousands of  pages online. I am really asking whether or not you can use them in a way that is not considered duplicate like linking to the source of the content?

Rewriting them is always an option too, I guess.

I have noticed a lot of wine sites use "Critical Acclaims" on their product pages. These short descriptions made by industry experts are found on thousands of other sites. One example can be found on a Wine.com product page. Wine.com also provides USG through customer reviews on the page for original content.

Are the "Critical Acclaim" descriptions considered duplicate content? Is there a way to use this content and it not be considered duplicate (i.e. link to the source)?

How do I handle building links to an eCommerce site where the product pages change regularly because product is only available for a certain time frame? Should I focus on building links to the category pages instead?

Hey Geoff-

Not sure if you received my response but I would appreciate your thoughts on this.

1. The decline started about a week ago.

2. There had not been any changes in our digital marketing strategy. We have been building links in the same way since February 2012. The strategy had been to acquire PR3+ one way links with varying anchor text from a variety of link types (i.e. permanent one way links, contextual links & directory links). Anchor text varies from renters insurance, rental insurance, renters insurance quotes, renters insurance quote, renter insurance, buy renters insurance online, affordable rental insurance, etc. 'Renters insurance' links didn't exceed 40% of the backlink profile while rental insurance was the next closest in terms of volume at 20%.

3. The only paid links we have acquired were from directories but those paid links make up a very small amount of our links. Almost all of the links you see in Open Site Explorer were acquired from content relationships although OSE shows a very limited number of our links.

4. We determine a quality site as relevant in topic, PR3+ and does not link to questionable neighborhoods.

I would appreciate any insight you  can provide as we thought we were staying within G's quality guidelines and now we have been (at least is appears) penalized.

I have seen a sudden and aggressive drop in rankings for my site. The site was ranking #4 for rental insurance and now sits at #9. It was ranking #16 for renters insurance and now dropped to #171. We vary anchor text in our link building campaign and focus on getting links from PR3+ sites as well as produce content for quality sites in exchange for being a featured author + link. The site has not been over optimized (i.e. keyword stuffing, etc.).

I would appreciate any insight into what could be causing this significant drop in rankings and what my course of action is to reinstate my rankings - Penguin?

I have a site that was created using Flash. The reasoning behind this was, at the time, that I didn't care if the site ranked or not (portfolio site). Now I would like to drive traffic to the site from SE's. Given the Penguin update, should I rewrite my Flash site in HTML/CSS or present an alternative site for bots and browsers that don't support Flash?

My concern is that by presenting an alternative site to bots and non Flash supporting browsers that the SE's will see potentially see this as cloaking. Thoughts and advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks Ally. This is the route I have been taking but may have been over aggressive in the use and anchor text on directories. It seems there are a lot of people that just got hit by Google.

This definitely help. We have been varying the anchor text on our links to show a more natural backlink profile but definitely focused a lot of the links on our target keyword (which is also the name of the site/domain). Have you seen/heard anyone be able to quickly get their rankings back if they are able to build a more natural link profile?

The domain has never had a site on it. I agree that in a competitive space there will be movement but this is drastic. The site went from the first page to close to 200. That signals to me there is something wrong. Any ideas? Could it be some of the links that were built (i.e. web directories)? The site does show up for the www and non www version and I just signified to Google the preferred domain in WMT,

I recently launched a website and used local directories, web directories and guest blogging as a means of getting links to the site. Within 60 days the site was ranking on the first page for a highly competitive keyword. It was hovering on the first page for about two weeks before it plummeted in ranking to near 200. I am not finding any crawl errors or duplicate content issues on the site. Could my links have caused this massive decrease in rankings?

I have not used market samurai before. If you are looking for keyword tools besides External, try SEOBook.com's keyword tool.

Google Keyword External allows you to export a CSV of the keywords your are targeting, keyword difficulty & monthly search volume (local & global). You will need to be logged in to your adwords account to get keyword difficulty/competition and to query more than 100 keywords at once though. I allows like to provide a spreadsheet broken into 3 tabs with high, medium and low for client's to easily digest. I would also suggest including approximate CPC so your client can understand what it would cost to buy that traffic.

I recently got a link from a relevant site but it ended up being a run of site link. The site has over 3,000 pages that now link to my site. Will my site get penalized for this?