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Here is an interesting addition to this folks. I am reviewing some backlinks on a new clients site and found loads of old blogroll links from foreign language sites. It would seem that these links were paid links as it went but as I dug in I found that in fact, this was a domain that had expired and that these links pointed to the old site. Now, this domain was unregistered for a while, so it was not a case of dropping the domain and re registering under another name. In fact the site used to be for a Portuguese music band and now is something wildly different. So, some thoughts on this. 1. tons of these links showed up in webmaster tools so were clearly being acknowledged and still assigned to the domain despite it's being dead for a good while 2. These links all ended up being for the brand of the new business as it matched the old band name but from wildly off topic sites in another language It is my thought here, that in cases like this, where the domain was dead for a given period of time and the site is clearly not a rehash of the original site but a bricks and mortar business, in a totally different area, in another country that you should be able to use a domain like this even if it had a slightly dodgy past. But, how would you go about this? Well, my thoughts would be a reconsideration request stating that you are the new owner and giving all the details. I have nothing to back this up, but my thoughts would be that you should not be penalised here for the past history of a domain. Heck, if I moved into a house where someone was murdered, that does not make me a murderer. I tried to find some evidence of this and found various mentions, much like the domain reset thing but not much hard evidence but Matt Cutts does detail this here on the back of his domain conference that if you buy a bad domain, then just submit a reconsideration request. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/trip-report-domain-roundtable-conference/ With the manual review of the domain, it should be fairly easy to see if this is an attempt to shed some old weight or is just an honest acquisition by the 99% of the world that simply would not give the domains history a second thought. Obviously, there are some caveats here and if the domain was doing something really nasty (porn etc) then it may not be worth it but we do have to balance up good domain with dodgy background vs really crappy domain sometimes so there are a lot of moving parts. Anyhow, would be interesting to see if anyone has any experience here or thoughts on this. Also, here is a post detailing how Matt Cutts states domains are reset but... there is little in the way of detail: http://www.johnon.com/543/mattcutts-domainroundtable.html Cheers Marcus

I personally would just ignore any 404's being generated by junk sites; Google certainly isn't penalising you for these and if you mark them as fixed the error will just reappear when Google next follows the broken link. If you have any 404's being generated from 'good' sources then I'd 301 redirect the broken URL to the correct location on your site (not just to your homepage) and mark the problem as fixed.

Thanks for all the responses everyone!

What about using this Irving? Have you tried it before?

Thanks guys, seems we are all on the same wavelength

Thanks guys...post penguin, I was a little concerned too.

Was just about to ask the same question

Hey Gareth, It actually looks like we are having a universal issue with the expiration cookie on our site. We are currently looking into the issue and are working on fixing the problem as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience while we work on this problem.

sorry EGOL, missed your post somehow. Thanks for the reply

Thanks Ross..thats what i'm thinking too. As long as the site has a solid backlink profile themselves, they are still worth it.

As per Google SERP Result's, the maximum length of title tag should be 70 character and Description tag should 150 character, You can use one of best tool called seomofo.com for SERP optimization.

Thanks, this helped me

I'm doing some consulting for WP Engine now (helping with SEO and general marketing), and I can definitely say I recommend them. As to how fast they are, do a speed test here: http://speed.wpengine.com/ You can even mirror your site at WP Engine over their 14-day trial, and run the speed test on your .wpengine.com site vs. your current site to see if it really works well. Their support people are generally helpful in helping you tweak/optimize your site, as well. About the only negative I would say with WP Engine is that they really don't support anything outside of WordPress. But if you have a main site or even a blog that's all WordPress, and it gets a fair amount of traffic, they are definitely worth a look!

yes..we all make mistakes...I've made many. It's good to learn from them and other peoples. Thanks..Yes.. I will always test throughly.

oh that sounds like agood idea.. Did you find a scalable way to noindex them? Maybe a plugin?

I'd recommend Derek Ashauer and the team at AshWebStudio: http://www.ashwebstudio.com/.  I've been working with them for over a year now and am not only happy with the website work but also with the interaction and communication.  I plan on continuing to work with them on projects for the foreseeable future.  If you want to see examples of their work you can check out my site, www.autorepairkey.com or their site at the URL listed earlier.  They have a lot of WordPress project examples in the WP section of the Portfolio tab on the website.  FYI I have no ownership, interest, or affiliation with AshWebStudio, other than as a satisfied customer.

I think the best way is still to basically CLOAK the url with your own sub.domain forward. If you are using wordpress I know there are plugins that do it very well. If your just using regular website coding then use a service like tinyurl.com. OH and only link to related affiliate offers.

If you have access to your log files, you could check if the Googlebot useragent has visited recently.