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If you are paying a company to build links for you, and they refuse to show you the links they have built I would be very weary. Tell them you can't pay them if you cannot see that the work has been completed.

Hey Robert! There are a few tools you can use to get a good idea of when an external link was created. opensiteexplorer.org (a Moz tool) will give you a "date discovered" date. ahrefs.com will give you a "first seen" date. majesticseo.com will give you a "first indexed" date. Google Webmaster Tools will give you a "first discovered" date when you export "recent links." Between those 4, you should be able to find the link you want.  Webmaster Tools is free but will be limited.  The others show you some data for free, but require a monthly subscription for all the details.

Hi Robert, Just checking back in to see if you had had a look in Webmaster Tools for any indication of a penalty. This is the sort of drop we associate with penalties, be they manual or algorithmic. If they were using a link building service called My Blog Guest (or if they had used MBG at any point in the past), they could have been hit along with almost all other MBG customers. Google has gone on a rampage in the past few weeks, penalising a very large number of sites associated with that service: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2335246/Google-Penalizes-MyBlogGuest-a-Guest-Blog-Network The blog comment links could be a culprit as well.

Hi Peter, There are no messages in GWT. I can't imaging it would be blocked in any kind of way. I have a link to tge sitemap on the footer of every page and and I'm not using a robot.txt file yet. Is there something I'm missing? Is there any kind of contact for this issue?

There's a link building section of the Moz Blog that will give you a lot of ideas, as well as our section on links in the Beginner's Guide to SEO at http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links.

Thank you for your feedback Peter

Elementary, my dear Mosley.

Hi Robert, has your question been answered? Please give us an update, thanks! (Christy)

You've stumbled on a very big question is SEO. Unfortunately there's no right answers, just lots of nuances. In the traditional sense, most social links and mentions are not handled the same way by search engines as traditional links. We do know that Google takes social data into account, and there is a high correlation between content that is highly shared and content that ranks well, but we don't know exactly how search engines use this data. Think of it this way: when you post your video on Facebook and people share it, that means more people are talking about it and you have a change at more attention, links and mentions. These are all things search engines are looking for, and there's a good chance you'll rank higher. But it may be more of an indirect effect than a direct one. The one exception may be Google+, which is structured different than other social platforms. Post on Google+ pass both PageRank and anchor text, and post shared there actually "count" as a link, as far as I know. So the answer to your question is yes and maybe. Social links may be taken into consideration by the search engines, but typically not the same way as traditional links. Facebook doesn't share all their data with Google, for the most part discourages robots, and you won't typically find posts in Open Site Explorer. That doesn't mean the links don't count, but in the traditional sense they don't carry the same value.

setup an A/B test......measure results ...then pick a winning strategy for your product. I have clients that perform better pointing traffic to a relevant page on their website (usually products with longer buying cycles). And I have other clients that perform best pointing traffic to a landing page with no other click options...all clicks lead down the conversion path.  These are usually impulse buys, "free trial" signups, low cost products, etc. The real question is , what works best for your product/company.  Setup an A/B test..measure results ...then pick a winning strategy for you

Thank you Tom

Here's the setup I would do:: Enhanced Campaign: Target Virginia (assuming you service that Richmond) Adgroup: Richmond Removalists Keywords: "Richmond" specific keywords (you should use broad modified as well as Phrase & Exact, so:: +Richmond +Removalists, "Richmond Removalists" and [Richmond Removalists]) Ad Copy: Richmond Specific heandline Adgroup: New Suburb Name Keywords: New Suburb specific keywords Ad Copy: New Suburb specific headline Adgroup: Non Brand, non-suburb specific location Keywords: nonbrand, no location qualifier Ad Copy: "Removalists Local to You" or something similar However, I also see a benefit with city-level targeting at the campaign level. But for ease of time, this way may be best and less complicated to manage if it's not going to be your primary focus in life.

thank you Moosa

Thank you for replying Karen. As far as l am aware, nothing changed at that point. i visited the website you mentioned but l have no idea how to use it.

Glad to help. If you're happy with the response could you mark it as answered? Unless you have other questions?