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Category pages are PR0. They are higher competition and therefore harder to rank. If the site is new it might take some time to build up juice and trust.

Thanks to all of you for the advice and feedback. I appreciate it!

I have to apologize to Google for my earlier response.  After submitting a disavow request I did see my largest site recover.  I do have to say I did submit another low quality website and got a quick response that it still was penalized.  I only disavowed links and did not have any removed by third party sites.  So it looks like you can get penalty removed with disavow and hard work.  But don't think disavow alone will be good enough for manual action.

The only thing I add to the comments already made is, give it some time.  It can take a couple years sometimes to get a good amount of blog traffic.  Just keep writing and over time visitors will come.  Don't give up!

i sent that info to the email address you provided. thanks

Hmm, I would tend to avoid this. Think about it you have three sites they sell the same products So, if they have unique content, you may have a chance of getting results from all three in the SERPs. If you interlink them, you may as well write a letter to Google HG saying: "Hey, these sites, they all sell the same stuff and guess what, they have the same owner so you may as well only show one of them. Matt talks about this here and whilst it is unlikely to generate you any kind of problems unless you do sitewides http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufGw65-1je8 So, if you were going to cross link them. Do it gently, from a resources page, or even an article talking about the other site rather than some horrid sitewide link with keyword anchor text or via some leaky sitewide nofollow which is just pouring your link juice down the drain. Ultimately, the best bet would be to combine these three sites into one site and concentrate on marketing that one site properly than trying to manipulate things through this little mini network. That's my take and it is certainly not something I would advise or do for one of my clients. Hope this helps! Marcus

Thanks!

Thanks Marcus, appreciate it...

Thanks for tips.. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get backlinks relevant to my industry?

once again, Thanks!

I don't include this information on product pages because it is too long.  The product pages are short and sweet for good conversions, although a link to this additional information is obviously posted for people who view the product pages. The articles are typically over 1000 words, several photos and a video. These articles also target keywords that the product pages do not and they pull in a lot more traffic from search than the product pages.  Lots of the traffic that enters these pages moves to the product pages through obvious links and some of them buy the product.

WOW, thanks a lot

no, both sites are still active... no redirect from one to the other...

Well plastic-bins.com does not have a page rank, but it is definitely relevant to your website. I really don't think it would hurt your rankings. I would choose a related long tail keyword that is not too difficult but still has some search volume (that you are not optimizing on the actual website) and optimize for it on the blog. Try to get visitors to the blog through that keyword and then send them to an internal landing page on your website via anchor text with a keyword you are optimizing for on that internal page. Maybe that could help generate some traffic and conversions...

But my site is not SEO related, and it is very hard to find sites that I can get links from in my industry.

Thanks to you both.  Great info...

Diane, the OP is talking about 301 redirects of entire domains, and I believe you've been 301 redirecting missing URLs from all one domain, correct?

It goes in the .htaccess file on the old site. Thanks David

Thanks for the insight... Simplastics.com currently runs on IIS, however, the new site will run on a Linux based server with PHP and SQL db. As for the 30240 trailer (LOL) unfortunately that is a misguided application of part numbers by a particular manufacturer (we don't like it either as it spiders like a zip code instead of a part number). The new site utilizes a Magento shopping cart so we're committed to Linux. Considering the migration to a new platform, what would be your recommendation?