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yes, yes, yes I've added author to non article/blog post pages and had it appear in SERPs. Having the image in the listing usually improves CTR.

I have nothing to add here as Ryan has pretty much nailed it but "algorithmically disadvantaged" made me chuckle!

I think this is borderline and the kind of thing Panda hit in some cases. While the pages aren't true duplicates, they do appear a bit thin - they're basically the same content with a few brand-related keywords swapped out. It really comes down to scope, though - if you spun out 100s or 1000s of these, you could really dilute your index and even creep into potential Panda penalty territory. With about 600 pages in the index, though, and these accounting for only 19 of them, it seems like your risk is pretty low. It would be great to build out the content and make it more unique, but I don't think you're in any immediate danger. You don't want to NOINDEX or block these pages somehow, because I assume you're trying to get some mileage out of the long-tail keywords. My best advice is to try to beef them up and don't spin out too many variants (100+ of these pages with a 600 page site would be dangerous).

Ryan's given you a super generous answer! I wanted to add a couple of things: You mentioned that you will attach a list of links that you couldn't get removed.  It may help to go even further.  What I usually do is attach a document that contains a copy of each email that I have sent for sites that I was unsuccessful with.  And, if I got a negative response back I would include that email as well. I also include screenshots of every contact form that I have submitted.  It may be overkill but from Google's perspective if you just say, "I tried to contact them" that's not enough. You're probably already doing this, but be super humble in your request and make sure that you tell Google you are committed to following the quality guidelines from this point on.  I think part of the reason why Google makes webmasters go through this is because they want to be sure that they understand the gravity of trying to game the system with SEO tactics. And like Ryan said...be really tough on yourself when it comes to links.  I have seen a number of webmasters that say, "NO!  That's not an unnatural link!  It came from an article that I wrote", or something like that.  But in reality almost every link that you have had a hand in creating is one that is considered unnatural to Google. Good luck!  If you are successful, it would be great for you to post about your success here in the Q&A to encourage others. Marie

Scott, just because a link is not indexed by Google does not mean they don't know that your link exists. I would definitely remove these directory links from your link profile and if you are unsuccessful contacting the webmasters make sure you keep the emails and notes in your spreadsheet. I have found its good to have this data in a Google Docs Sheet as it makes it easier to share with the Google Spam team once you do submit your reconsideration request Cheers Chris

Are you going to be converting the whole website to sit on a wordpress platform? Nothing to really worry about just be careful whenever making large changes to already ranking pages. Be extra careful and double check before setting it live.

Hi Scott, Let me be very specific about what we're talking about. To be clear, no you can't get penalized for too much internal exact match anchor text, but you can hurt your rankings. It's very common to have site-wide internal anchor text on your website, all with the same anchor text, all pointing to the same page - especially if it's in the navigation. For example, SEOmoz has literally 100,000 links pointing to it's tools page with the anchor text "research tools" That said, it's best to vary your anchor text the best you can, and be careful where you place it. Sitewide anchor text in your footer is probably the least valuable spot (and potentially the most harmful) followed by the sidebar and header. The best anchor text is often editorial links within the main text body, using natural, non-repeating phrases. Hmmm... now that I read your question again, it probably does look unnatural if every blog post has the same anchor text in it, pointing to your homepage. Best to clean that up. And check out this latest Whiteboard Friday on internal linking. Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

Sry guys - must have posted while others were writing. Even if you didn't get the original email - if Google is saying you have unnatural links, then you need to deal with that problem. Submitting recon makes no difference if you dont get rid of the bad links You will almost certainly need to take action by linkmining your website, identifying 'unnatural' links or links from blatantly bad neighborhoods, submit requests for removal from the webmasters, and so on. Document all of your work and then add that information in with your reconsideration request. If you do not put the work in you will not get a positive response.

Just a quick comment about the social buttons... I doubt that just adding social buttons to the site will help in itself, however the fact that the sites has the social buttons on their site 'may' indicate it is more likely that they have social activity based around their domain (although this isn't always the case!). My own opinion is that the buttons just being there won't help, but if the webmaster is also interacting on a social level, getting tweets/likes and opening their social discussion somewhat, then I would say that this can certainly help, and maybe those social buttons are making it just that much easier for folks to share the content on the webmasters site, and so helping their social metrics? People are pretty lazy online, so you need to make it as easy as possible for your website visitors, whether that is making it easier to buy something, fill out a form, or indeed, Tweet/Like your content! That's my take anyway! [EDIT] - I note you say you pulled the social buttons because nobody was using them... in which case rather than pulling the buttons off the website, I would look into WHY nobody was using them If you can figure that out, you will likely increase the usability of your website, make it more 'people friendly' and interesting, and decrease your bounce rates - all of which 'could' help your rankings (and revenue!). Things to look out for: Overly heavy text (text is good, boring people to death isn't! Break the text up with images, YouTube embeds, etc) Too many above the fold ads? Folks won't want to share a site full of ads (not saying your site is like this!) Social buttons not obvious? - Are they placed where the reader needs them? Some form of CTA at the start, and at the end of content is a good idea 'usually'. Any signs of life? - Do you get decent comments, have you got a Twitter feed or Facebook box on the site? - People like to get involved in active sites, try to show signs of a community based in/around your website. If you haven't got one, try to leverage one! Phew! That was a big edit, sorry!

Wow! That's really sucks. Negative guy has no soul, heart or integrity. Ive often heard from other seo peeps in the industry that its not what they do to their site that makes them rank well, its what they find wrong with competition and report to google that gets them the best return. The negative guy in forum post took this to a whole other level. Id love to hear what google has to say about that.

Hi Malcolm, Thanks for the reply mate - i'll get looking for some new links today. Thanks, Scott

Scott, Digging out here and wondered if you would share a little more information. Did you ever receive one of Googles letters claiming you had unnatural links? Do you have any search terms on Google? Or is it across the board every search term 50+? How long did it take Google to reply to the reinclusion request? Comment about the WP, I wonder if there any recovery stories other than the WordPress one, curious that one jumped back up but of course it had national attention. Google could have flagged them in a positive way. Force7

Hi Scott, I am in the same boat. After a lot of research I have come to the conclusion that if you are just looking for back links it may not be the best option. If you have something that is newsworthy and want back links as bonus then use PRWEB. You can pull some good coupons from here: http://www.retailmenot.com/view/prweb.com Let us know how it goes...

Well, there's not quite enough detail in what you said for me to get a totally clear picture, but let me through some stuff out there and you can follow up to make sure you get a good answer. It sounds like you have 20 links that are exact match.  How big is your overall link profile.  If you only have about 40 links, yeah, that's a problem.  If you have thousands of links, it won't matter too much.  It sounds like you don't have a big link profile.  I'd spend most of my time right now not worrying too much about the bad links (though if you can write to webmaster of the site they are on and get them removed, it may not be a bad idea.  We've worked with people doing that before).  I'd spend most of my time building quality links.  Make sure you have the standard directory type stuff, blog links, etc.   That will help build up your profile and make sure the exact match aren't too high of a %.  Then try to build some high quality links with generic (i.e. - natural) anchor text. That's where I would start.

Hi, I would definately go for merging both of them together. Allthough WMT recently  significantly increased the number of backlinks shown, any extra information you can gather is great. I guess together they provide a pretty good overview of your backlink profile. Btw, it's ofcourse very interesting how many of the links reported in WMT and OSE overlap, and how many are unique for each one. So if you're going for option 3, please share some of the results with us! Greets, Sven Witteveen Expand Online

There is no real point in removing links. Links that have been devalued simply don't pass the benefit onto your site. The only real reason you would attempt to remove links is if you have been penalized by Google, but even then I would be dubious at removing links as Google can see that you are able to remove links - hence making it look unnatural.

I have deal with this situation but at that time Google was kind of nice to low quality links or I should say Google was not as harsh as it is right now! Well the ideal would be to build some quality links and remove low quality links side by side! Keep a balanced between the two activities and this might not hurt much but fluctuation is fairly possible! As far as the redirection is concern, if the DA of the domain is good and some good natural links are point to it than, IMO its great!

The question I would ask is "What does your Analytics say?: First Review Like the others said, make sure if you are ranking now for them as well if they are bringing converting traffic... Keep them, if they are not ranking figure out why and maybe look for answers vs. just blowing them out... GREAT Comments Guys... We all do not really understand where Google is headed but they are cleaning up the directory very aggressively within the last few months. Updates are always going to happen, but without looking at your own data things begin to be cloudy and people make the wrong descision based on thing said in all of these SEO articles around the web. TEST TEST TEST..

The recent crackdown on link networks has been pretty harsh in some cases. Unfortunately, there's not a ton you can do about bad links like that, especially if the sites have been de-indexed. Cutting your links from pages that aren't indexed probably won't have much impact (and often isn't even feasible). In that case, you're going to just have to focus on positive link-building tactics for a while and hope to turn it around. If you do suspect a link-based problem, then switching your paid links to nofollow might be a good bet. I would especially suggest this if you're going to file for reconsideration with Google (otherwise, they'll probably see those links and ignore the request). It's tough, though, since it's possible those links are also helping you right now. At the level of any one link, it's almost impossible to tell. I think this recent interview with Jim Boykin has some good advice. He's definitely dabbled on the black-hat side, so I think it's an honest appraisal of the situation: http://www.seobook.com/jim-boykin-interview

Thanks for the reply mate - yep that's what I think it is! The strange thing is our biggest competitor WD have got amazing links from high authority domains but still can't get top!