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You answered my question and your answer was posted by DiscoverAfricaGroup. This is a very low value way to go.

Best

Hello Ahmed

When you look at things like this, I think the first question has to be what is 'stuffing' (how many keywords vs. overall text)? Next, you have to ask is the only thing that is going on KW stuffing. The entire "competitors are doing this or that as a way to rank," is usually a poor way to look at your site or your competitors. But to answer your question, I have seen tons of sites/pages with text that I could not even understand due to KW overuse. If a lot in that vertical are doing the same thing, you may see many ranking. I have not seen Google utilize a manual penalty for KW stuffing alone. I would expect the effect to be the result of the algorithm. If it is a vertical where there are a lot of affiliates trying to simply push traffic and where it is very very competitive, you could see sites/pages with all types of incorrect (according to TOS) SEO. The effect of them moving down or off in these situations is often algorithmic and if most are doing the same, the effect is less measurable.

Best

I wish I had seen this earlier, quite the interesting question... So company A is "buying links or content that might be in the gray area and outranks CoB for some keywords. Company B is the good guy. 
First, and I think foremost, if I am associated with company "B" (someone hand me a hankie at the nobility of being a true martyr), I am going to take two steps back and ask this question: "How do we know that company A is doing anything gray and how do we know what they are doing is the reason for their ranking better than we are?"

Why, because believing you are the more noble, smarter, best dressed, etc. is a common refrain of those who are not looking close enough at themselves. So, no, I am not advocating black hat SEO with the hanky comment  (because IMO, it is not the brightest SEO - yes those doing it are free to throw the darts now cause frankly I don't care). I made the hanky comment to get your attention as I would my staff when we start to say how good we are. Forget it as it is irrelevant when it comes to the battle.

Our clients are not paying us to be Pollyanna. Yes, there are those who do anything for a ranking and that does not matter. What do I want? I want to out think them. I want to out create them. I want to out motivate my team. I want to argue for quality content, good UI/UX, metrics that make sense over metrics that appear to make sense. I want to stomp my client's competition into an unmitigated hole and own them. Yes, I will do it fair and square as I don't have time to deal with dumb penalties. But, I am not going to throw out a rotator cuff patting myself on the back over the color of a friggin hat. I am going to win because I am smarter, my team is the best, and if all else fails, I will simply outwork them and write the content myself because I know I am that good.

Sorry, if that turned into a rant, but the trap of whose hat was the whitest today is a big one for a pro seo.

Best to all, God I love this forum,

Robert

Lesley,

I understand fully what you are saying but have to disagree. Remember, if the chapel has only one address you cannot do this and should not do it. You totally endanger the money maker with a plan like this when you add "Local," etc.

Best

Robert

LB,

I will not write what first came to mind

The short answer to your question, "Is resource linking page a good way to build backlinks?", is no.

This is really a fairly old technique that is quite frowned upon on a lot of levels. The biggest being that is just a link manipulation scheme. If you have never read the Quality Guidelines on GWT, I will provide the link and an important excerpt: the link is Read and Heed Quality Guidelines to Survive

The excerpt is:

Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

The bold and underline are mine.

I hope this helps. The best way to get links is with great content and following the phenomenal suggestions provided on SEOmoz.

I wish you the best in your endeavors,

Robert

Alfredo,

I work with a lot of client sites. If a new client came in today (All Spray, Inc.) and they sold bug spray and stated I have four domains and they want to know which they should go with:

BugSpray.info, BugsGetSprayed.com, BugSpray.company, AllSprays.com

Assuming it currently had no site (There is no point in taking a developed site and changing it to an exact match domain name IMO if it is a reasonably good site.), I would say go with BugSpray.info. Why, it is the best choice IMO for EMD out of the two above.

There is a very old saying in Texas, don't get caught up in picking fly s__t out of pepper. EMD is not going to change your overall weight by 1%. Are you really wanting to worry over a 1% factor? Have you looked to see what else the other sites are doing that cause them to have the ranking they have? Look past the obvious and the easy. There is a reason we wear out this quote in SEO: Correlation doesn't equal causation. You are likely looking at several/many EMD's in your space that are ranked and then assuming what you need is an EMD. It is just not a good way to approach SEO.

Best, 
Robert

Dan,

First, Good job on the linking evaluation, it sounds pretty thorough.

Without a complete picture, it is hard to say, but based solely on what you have here it doesn't appear to be something nefarious. I would add, however, that if I had a site with KW's ranking in spots 2-3 and then was on page 3 to 4 and it lasted for more than a couple of days, I would not lay it off to a Google 'wobble.'

I would suggest looking deeper and seeing what else is going on. Look into analytics and WMT for any trends like falling CTR, etc. Look at changes in query or landing page patterns. Look at the content and then at cached content for same pages to ensure yourself nothing changed on the page and then I would look at competitors who have been consistent during this period for differences between them and your client.

We have all seen a page move up or down in Google for 'no reason' from time to time, but if it is for more than a week, I certainly would be digging up everything. To wait loses too much time if there is a problem.

Best,

Robert

Leslieevarts

First, I like EMD's a lot (even though we all know they have been losing value over time). Also, I think EGOL makes a really important point: with a client you have to lead with, "While typically this will not be a problem, with any change to an existing site, you risk losing some or all of your value." What we add to this is: We keep a complete FTP file of your old site and can put it back up if something goes critically wrong. While that should ameliorate any major issue, not even that is a guarantee you can get back what was lost."

If they question why you say that and that Brand b did not, simply say this, "I would be wary of anyone who can promise nothing bad will happen. I do not know Brand b and they may be a great firm, but guaranteeing anything today on the Internet is really playing with fire."

That said, I would change to the new domain and redirect current urls to the new ones using accepted good practices for 301 redirects. You will need to do a change of address in WMT and resubmit (submit the new) sitemap.

I would not build a new site and also switch as you are adding a variable to the change and that is scary to me. Wait until the change takes effect and you have had time to test it out (2 to 3 months is reasonable). Then if you want to create a new site, you should be ok.

I hope we have not scared or confused you. I can tell you that we regularly redirect sites, and somewhat less regularly we change domains. The most recent was about a month ago and we started seeing the links from the old domain on the new about a month after the change (In GWMT). So don't think it will happen in a day or two. Your change of address should help you with the rankings, but even that is not a guarantee.

All the best,

Robert

EGOL

As a confirmed content junky, I have to say this is great content.

...my goal is to be aware of the above and produce things that have potential. We have all written things that we knew would be stunning to the world and later scratched our heads wondering where we missed the boat. At the same time, we have written something because it needed to be written and looked up a few days later as it was showing up everywhere and then re-read it to see what those who shared it liked about it.

IGOR,

Please understand the wisdom of this statement:

**This type of content is not written in a moment or acquired for a few bucks on a freelance site.  It is produced by someone who knows a subject very well and has creativity to come up with something awesome. **

One cannot overstate the importance of understanding the subject and of creativity. We are an agency and our copywriters are tasked with writing on a lot of subjects. Literally everything from rewriting product pages so that they are not the same dupe all others have to writing about the law, the weather, medicine, current events, and so forth. While they are great at what they do, without giving them enough time on a subject to know it, all the creativity in the world will not make a piece good. At the same time, subject matter experts who lack creativity usually write like...subject matter experts without creativity...(read the text book, ain't this fun?!). Lastly, asking them to write something great in an hour or two will not produce something great. (We are aware, that on some sites, we are writing to cover a given page topic in the best possible way based on time and money limitations of clients.)

Search the web for queries that provide basic information in your niche and identify content that ranks well and clearly deserves it.  Then create something that beats it soundly.       Well said in my opinion.

Great content alone will not win the war instantly.  You must have a powerful site to get instant rankings, or get it in front of influencers who will help you promote it or put word of it it out to places like slashdot, reddit, facebook where people can share it.

I could not agree more. All to often in SEO we see those who want to do one thing and capture position one in the SERPs. There is no easy path. Yes, there are tricks, etc. but in the final analysis the battle will be won by those who are meticulous in their approach. Someone getting 500 backlinks from a Chinese ginseng business directory, etc. may rank ahead today; I guarantee you they will not win out over time against skilled SEO's who possess determination, skill, and an understanding of reaity.

EGOL,

This was great content you provided to all. Thanks,

Jamie,

Years ago everyone put W3C compliant on every website they seemed to produce. I have never seen it have an impact in rankings and would be interested to see if anyone has any reasonable evidence it did. So, I have to agree with Alick300 and suggest you follow that moz guide as it is a really good basis for SEO and ranking.

Best

Robert

Hitesh,

I have looked at this and read your other comments like those to Marie. Unfortunately, a feeling remains that I am not seeing everything. From your reply to Marie you show a bit more of the Google message: "Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole."

Then you name some of the sources for the links and you also state that this page has some info regarding IP's in various countries and people are linking because of that, "which is totally natural." Also, "There are no unnatural links to this url but for the fact most of them are coming from forums and spammy sites."

I really get the feeling you are trying to define or redefine what "natural" is instead of realizing the problem you have and that it may shortly involve much or all of your site. You have been warned by Google and the easiest thing to do is to read what Jane Copeland wrote on the 30th and follow that direction:

I'd do a combination of trying to remove the links, disavowing what I couldn't remove, removing the page with a 410 and filing for reconsideration explaining what I did and how I've tried to fix it. I'd also explain that the page was obsolete to begin with and was always destined for the scrap heap.

Failing to take this action very soon could really negatively impact your site. Defining what is or is not natural will not help you.

Good luck,

Robert

Thanks Lesley, and again, with ecommerce it would matter much less.

Best

Matt,

I am going to make a suggestion that will likely save you some aggravation. First, I will tell you that with our firm, we are not on this list so it is not an attempt to do anything but show you a better way to find help and to keep you from being inundated by folks wanting to sell you their services - even though that is what you want.

SEOmoz has a list of recommended vendors in marketing (including link building) 

I would use this resource as opposed to posting your need on the Q&A forum. In this way you will be more sure of who is a likely good fit for you. On many forums, groups, etc. i have given up as the result of people shamelessly promoting themselves and jumping all over requests like the one you posted.

Try the link here out and see if you are helped. If not, try a private question to the moz staff as they will have more they can point you toward. If, you try these and it does not work, PM me and I will give you a suggestion (not our firm as we are handling our clients currently and a bit stretched making sure they are served.)

All the best,

Robert

You are looking at this a bit incorrectly. With the rollout of Panda, you are dealing with a change in the algorithm. If your site drops as the result of this, that is not really a "penalty" in the sense you are speaking of. So, while you lost ranking, your site is still being crawled and indexed.

With a Manual Penalty, potentially, you could have an impact on the frequency the site is crawled and whether or not pages that are penalized are indexed.

I hope this helps you understand it a bit better.

Robert

WebService,

Hopefully, you realize this is going to be a question with opinions; IMO, it likely has minimal effect on the click through rate. What I have always believed (and we typically show the date on most of our own/client posts) is when someone lands on something thinking they are getting the query answered and they learn that the info is 3 months or 3 years old depending on the topic, they leave. Personally, it annoys me that people are not being "straight" with me when I go to something and discover it is dated information. Or, conversely, when I am trying to find the earliest iteration of some news, to not be able to due to people not showing dates.

This morning I saw a news story of interest on CCN online. I was trying to find its original pub date and it took 5 minutes to find a local news station that broke the story 29 days ago. Major news sites weren't showing ) or readily showing that date.

So, I would put it. 
Good luck,

Sorry I couldn't help.

From above DA is a factor and one that is very difficult for you to catch up to or surpass - BUT certainly not a massive % of the ranking algorithm.

Michael,
You are free to buy all you want, but understand that the algo is getting tighter day by day. By "natural" it is more about the profile. There are still a lot of ways to develop links that are not making a purchase of same.
Again, if the experts are talking about DA of 38 to DA of 54 not being able to "...push enough link juice..." I would have to say: Where did you find these experts?

Again, DA and PA are two different things. So, it is the weight of the page divided by the links from it that determine how much is passed to the site. If a single link from a relevant page with PA of 20 comes to a page on your site and that is the only link coming out of that page (internal or external), theoretically you are getting juice of slightly less than 20/1. If you get a link from a paid directory with PA of 90 linking to 100 sites from that page, you are getting juice of slightly less than 90/100.

Again, the beauty of that one PA 20 rank is it likely will not have you go from page one to undone in three seconds.

Good luck.

James,

We produce quite a bit and we do not believe now is the time to be concerned about AMP. I echo EGOL on this, especially it seems to be truly around very heavy content sites. If someone like EGOL is not worrying over it given he knows quite a bit about deep and heavy content, I would hold off for now. If you are in the news publishing world it is a bit more of an issue.

Best

Eric,

I understand how it feels to get that first great link. Don't reindex or resubmit sitemap. Here is a little trick...

Go into webmaster tools and the 3rd or 4th button on the left going down is CRAWL. Click that and the third item on the dropdown is Fetch as Google. (You are going to use it for getting the page crawled, but that is not the original intent for this tool.) 
Click Fetch as Google and put the URL of the page in. IF the page is your home page, leave blank and then hit fetch. That should get it crawled fairly quickly. 
Note. This does not mean it will show up in links to your site in the next few days or even weeks. I have seen it take two months to get a link to show in GWMT.

Hope this helps, good luck as you go forward.

Edit: Sorry click Fetch and Render then click Index. Forgot about this.

Robert

Spanish,

I think you really need to consider what you are doing and why you are doing it. First, a manual penalty means you are on Googles radar and you are outside their terms of service in some way. If your decision is to get a new domain then what you should do is put the old one in the trash and forget it ever happened. You are starting from square one if you are smart IMO. Why? because if it is a penalty around linking and you redirect to a new domain, you are going to carry that wait to the next site. That doesn't mean that the penalty will show up on your new domain at point just because of the old, but there is no real value in the links so why risk it? There are just too many reasons not to try and save the old and move it to the new with redirects. BUT, is there a reason you would not simply address the penalty? Maybe it is cost as cleanup is expensive; if so, you weigh cost of cleanup versus cost of rebuild to all new site with new domain.

Second, an "algorithmic penalty" is something we say from time to time, but if you are using that as a line of thinking - "the algorithm has in some way penalized us" - you are then setting yourself up for further pain down the road IMO. With a site failing to rank because you have bad links, poor content, ads everywhere, I suggest you not look at it as a penalty. Look at is as: "What must we do in order to grow our site in value to our customer and in ranking against our competitors?" If you believe you have a "penalty" of sorts you are really saying things are not as good as they could be. Why not change things? If it is linking, disavow bad domains and links and move on. If it is Panda in your thinking, what can you do to change the content, etc.?

Often, when this type of question arises there have been a series of missteps by a site owner trying to shortcut really building a web property. If there were true short cuts without risk, I can tell you I would have found them or learned of them from people on various forums like Moz. I simply do not know of any.

Clean things up and move on or start over and move on. I think that is the only choice you face. I wish it were easier for all of us. 
Best