Welcome to the Q&A Forum

As Phil and Blu42Media said, Screaming Frog is such a terrific tool. Love it. Can't beat the ability of that tool. It's terrific.

Looks like you are a Pro member, in which case I also recommend using the Crawl Test tool at http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/crawl-test

Domain Authority is definitely going to matter here, but honestly not that much. Your strength is that you can work a lot more for your local area / niche and can have a lot more local links compared to the national sites. I would find out ways to get links from local businesses, non profits and other communities and organizations.

I would also suggest looking into doing some sorts of small events / meetups for potential clients to come and ask questions. You could also organize some activities / contests for kids.

I would also look at opportunities to work with specific real estate communities and sponsor some of their events with gifts. You could also setup a photo booth there for people to take pictures and then provide them a digital or paper copy of their picture towards the end of the day (Print them at a local Walgreens and have somebody pick them up or if it's cost effective to have a decent quality photo printer that can handle volume). The photo op could have your URL / Brand in the background in a creative way along with the year and name of the event.

Again, I think the intent is to think of this as a Brand Building Technique. Links, Mentions and Citations will come along with them.

Slowly and steadily build your links. Are you already on the top social networking sites ? If yes, then I would also suggest looking at something like Knowem.com to see if those fit your link profile. I would also look into vendors/clients/business partners and others who can link to you. Press Releases, mentions in local business directories, chamber of commerce and other local chapters.

I hope that ignites some ideas. Think of Domain Authority building as Brand Building and it would be a lot easier.

So simply put based on the amazing responses here, I would suggest to build your site (whatever your niche is) with long tail keywords, continue to build great content, and then over a certain period of time, once you have established a certain trust and domain authority, you could start ranking for a little bit better keywords and the cycle continues. It's simply a continuous process building a site and it's rankings. You would not want a brand new site with 5/10/50 articles ranking for Mortgage or Lamps or Cars or Loans.

I hope that helps and makes sense.

If you do not have any paid links / unnatural links, then there's nothing you need to do except file a reconsideration request to Google and explain.Let me go back one step and ask you, did you actually get a unnatural links profile message from Google ? If not, then are you saying you got hit by Panda/Penguin, based on dip in rankings ?

I also would not worry about Shareasale / Affiliate Links, they do not influence directly towards SEO.

I completely understand and agree. I think it's a constant cat and mouse game.

I don't know if you have read this post by Will or not, but if you haven't do read it: How Google Makes Liars Out of the Good Guys in SEO

I would suggest using combinations of option #2 and #3. Basically using keyword variations as well as secondary phrases. You should never be dependent on 1 phrase, because not everybody searches like that and every person searching using a variant keyword is still a potential client.

Also, surrounding text helps as well. So if your links (internal and external) are like:

"PPC Management Services by XYZ in London" where XYZ is the anchor/brand name.

Varying anchor texts, not just 10/20/50 links for your primary phrase. That's not natural links.

Makes sense ?

You should also look into getting listed in niche lawyer sites, does not matter if they are follow or nofollow links. Look for links, citations of URL, phone number and so on.

I just responded to this exact question. Here's my answer and a link to that question:

Honestly, my advice would be to grab a list of your backlinks using both Google Webmaster Console as well as the OpenSiteExplorer and merge them into a spreadsheet and get rid of all the duplicates.

Next step would be to identify which of those links are spammy and you'd be better of having them removed. This is in my opinion the hardest part depending upon the volume of sites/links.

Then hire somebody to find email addresses of the websites where you want links removed. Finding something on the page and if nothing else, using whois. I would then send an email to each one of those contacts and in a quick short email, tell me the URL where the link is located and your site URL. Tell them to remove the link right away since you have received a Google Warning. I would imagine this taking care of a good portion of those links. I would send another email in a week and then again for a total of 2-4 times to see if you get a response and get the link removed. When nothing else worked, offer then $10 for the link removal and that should gain their attention. If that does not work either, I would suggest you move on.

I hope this helps. You could get somebody on odesk.com or a similar site to get all the labor intensive work done.

It looks like your server is Linux possibly..Apache..running PHP.

If that's the case, you can build a page that you'd like to display for all pages that do not exist and upload it on the server as 404.php or whatever you might want to call it.

Then, add the following line in your .htaccess file.

ErrorDocument 404 /404.php

You are all set.

To me i looks like you are already set or doing this in some fashion. I checked to see if I visit http://www.visitdevonandcornwall.com/test and see what happens.

It gives me a friendly 404 and the HTTP Header is correct.

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found => Server => cloudflare-nginx Date => Fri, 11 May 2012 17:17:51 GMT Content-Type => text/html Connection => close X-Powered-By => PHP/5.3.6 Expires => Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control => no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma => no-cache Set-Cookie => __cfduid=d1b9e2169ed78a6697f752eef1c0a5ee01336756670; expires=Mon, 23-Dec-2019 23:50:00 GMT; path=/; domain=.www.visitdevonandcornwall.com

Donnie, I think I agree, however shouldn't then this be also the case for Thumbs Up. Why did you like it or what specifically you liked ? But I guess you are essentially taking about transparency as in Facebook Likes (who did Thumbs Up and Who did the Thumbs Down). I think it's an interesting thought, but I am not sure where this could/would go if that was to happen.

Think about this - I have had some answers where I posted and got 1 thumbs up and 2 thumbs down. That tells me something is wrong. Maybe I am wrong. If you think about it, SEO is not an exact science....so everybody has inputs, they could both be right or they could both be wrong. So coming back to the "Thumbs Up" vs "Thumbs Down", do I want to know who did not like it ? Maybe...but it might be better if I don't. Coz if I do, then maybe it becomes personal. Knowing who liked it or not, might be good, but might bring negative energy into the community which is never productive in my opinion.

That's why there a Like button, but no "DisLike" button. Let me know what you think @Donnie.

Think of building site authority very similar to brand building. How did "Coke" or "Pepsi" become a brand ? Then think about Online Only companies, how did they become a brand ? Essentially take all sorts of things in the offline world to the online world and that's essentially Brand/Authority building online.

Anything and everything that spikes discussion around your domain name, brand and your website contributes towards Site Authority. Facebook Links, Pinterest Pins, Mentions/Cittations in online news, articles, websites. Think contests, infographics, link bait.

One way or the other they will lead to links and is in some form or the other... link building. But it's definitely not the link building you are talking about  (3 way, or non-reciprocal).

I hope this helps / clarifies and ignites some ideas/thoughts.

What platform is your website ? You could also send me the URL via PM or post here and I can check.

Hi Ben

I understand the panic in such a situation. I truly do. I checked your website and the fact that you do not have a robots.txt. You also do not have any kind of noindex or anything like that in your code and you look like a strong established website.

Do you have an XML sitemap in your webmaster console ? I would suggest you build one and submit it if you don't already have it.

Other then that, I would also suggest to have a robots.txt even if it's blank. Rather then a 404 redirecting to your homepage. Give me 24-48hrs and in my opinion, you should be back.

I hope this helps.

It would be best to make it a 404 or you could consider still having the property listed but mentioning it's no longer available and displaying similar / nearby / related properties on that page as long as it makes sense from both the usability / TOS and other business issues.

Think from a user's perspective. Let's say I took a URL of a property from your website and linked to it from my blog post where I am talking about my vacation or if I emailed it to friends/family. If that property is no longer available, what's a good user experience for people clicking on that link from my website or from my email. In my opinion, it might be a good idea to have a user friendly message saying that property is no longer available and displaying other related properties.

I hope that helps and makes sense.

Honestly, my advice would be to grab a list of your backlinks using both Google Webmaster Console as well as the OpenSiteExplorer and merge them into a spreadsheet and get rid of all the duplicates.

Next step would be to identify which of those links are spammy and you'd be better of having them removed. This is in my opinion the hardest part depending upon the volume of sites/links.

Then hire somebody to find email addresses of the websites where you want links removed. Finding something on the page and if nothing else, using whois. I would then send an email to each one of those contacts and in a quick short email, tell me the URL where the link is located and your site URL. Tell them to remove the link right away since you have received a Google Warning. I would imagine this taking care of a good portion of those links. I would send another email in a week and then again for a total of 2-4 times to see if you get a response and get the link removed. When nothing else worked, offer then $10 for the link removal and that should gain their attention. If that does not work either, I would suggest you move on.

I hope this helps. You could get somebody on odesk.com or a similar site to get all the labor intensive work done.

Just make sure any of these domains do not have any history in the Search engines. Check archive.org and check the SERPS, Open Site Explorer etc to make sure if they are/were unknown to the Search Engines. If that's the case, there's nothing to worry about.

Honestly, I think you gut is telling you the right thing. And thankfully you answered the question yourself.

The fact that those pages were created to manipulate rankings (as in doorway pages?)

If that's the case, and there are external links to those pages, I would do exactly what you are thinking. Delete those pages and let them be a 404.

Did your client also receive the unnatural links google penalty notice ? If that's the case, then it's a no brainer to do this right away. You could also try to find if there are link networks involved and if there are certain webmasters who control multiple website specially when you say 3800 links from 1500 domains. I would atleast try to get "some" of them removed or atleast have some effort. If there's a way to send a blanket email to all of the 1500 domains, it's well worth the effort of atleast trying.

I hope this helps.

1. Where are you ranking currently compared to your competition?
2. How many common keywords to you see ranking between your website and the competition?
3. How large is your website compared to the competition ?

Looking at the metrics, I think the fact that you are competing with internal pages and yours is a homepage, makes it easier. Are you sort of a niche site ?

It's more of quality and then relatedness of the links, then just pure quantity. I would continue to build brand links to homepage, inner pages and adding more content to strengthen my presence in the niche.

I hope that helps stay on track. You are definitely on the right track in terms of what to look at. Just don't get distracted in the number of root domain links / domain authority.

In my opinion, 100% visible is better. So yes, you are on the right track. The concern that you have in your head that lead you to this question is right. It does not carry the same weight. If I were you, I would display it all and/or highlight the important areas of the content using some creative design techniques. Think SEO, but also think about the user. Would they really read all the content. Highlight the important/keypoints for them to see.

I hope this helps.