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Are you linking out to these sites you have to get rid of?

In fact are they even sites or just other pages on your main site? I have maybe misunderstood

EDIT - I'll go ahead and assume I've just got the wrong end of the stick and it's pages on your site that you need to get rid of.

In that case if you can't redirect them can you change the links to point to different pages or even just remove them?

Almost exclusively client work these days. I do have my own sites, but I've nothing really to sell and affiliate work is getting harder

Just to add though that I think having your phone number in the SERPS would result in less click throughs, so if CTR is or becomes an important factor (I don't think it is or Google wouldn't be trying to show more and more in the SERPS) but you're still going to get less visitors.

So if you rely on showing traffic to prove SEO is working go with David's idea of a trackable number.

Redirecting them won't help the main domain rank for these brand terms, but it will capture the type in traffic and pass most of the link juice coming into these other sites.

Ultimately it shouldn't take your web development company long (unless you have hundreds) and indeed you could maybe even do it at the registrar easily (if not efficiently), so don't pay through the nose for it.

On the other hand, unless you rely on links from those other sites it won't harm your main site in any way by letting them die.

Until MichaelC shows up

Sounds reasonable, I would also put a canonical tag on it saying the / is the official page.

What might also be an option is to put a parameter on like ?hm (if possible) and in Webmaster Tools - Site Configuration > Settings > Parameter Handling you can tell them to ignore the ?hm. However I'm not sure how well that works and I would have the canonical in there as well.

Well, it has been claimed that the spam team has been asleep at the wheel a little bit recently (but then again I hear SEO is dead these days as well) but I'm sure I saw something where Matt Cutts said they're going to be putting more man hours back into fighting spam and if they should have learned anything then I would guess part of their time should be looking for new ways their SERPS are being abused.

A a user yes, I'll often use a phone number from the SERPS rather than click a page and David's idea to make it a trackable number is brilliant for justifing SEO efforts.

Also check out this post from Patrick Altoft on numbers showing up in rich snippets - http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/google-testing-phone-numbers-h1-tags-in-rich-snippets/

I've not seen it out in the wild yet but I'd say it's definitely worth doing.

1. Never admit to thinking about selling links

2. Working in gambling, I've seen a lot of paid for links to gambling sites burn the pages they're on if it's from unrelated content (sigh, I shouldn't be honest, just going to make my job harder). Usually this'll just burn the PR of the page it's on, but sometimes can do damage to your whole site.

3. In the interests of disclosure (and as mentioned above) I would technically be a competitor working in the same sector, but if I approach you for links you should probably turn me down too

4. If you page is about casinos or slots or games or probabilities or something related then you might consider giving them a link, but again, don't admit to selling them, especially in a public forum. Linking out to relevant content isn't as bad (paid is still bad). If it's a body building site though (just going by your user name) I wouldn't.

5. If it was an advertising link you would have to nofollow it to adhere to Google guidelines, however I doubt the person wanting to buy it would agree.

6. And yes adding any extra links slightly reduces the value of the links you already have.

Latest SEOmoz correlation data showed that h1 use is not a significant ranking factor (or at least not as a significant ranking factor) as once thought. I'll try and dig that up for you.

UPDATE - Here's the links I was thinking of - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements - and - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-biggest-seo-mistakes-seomoz-has-ever-made - BONUS - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/bing-vs-google-prominence-of-ranking-elements

Matt Cutts has done a video on this as well - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIn5qJKU8VM

Basically use the where it makes sense, I try to avoid it in the logo of the page and have just one h1 text header, but there have been times when a couple more may have made sense.

A lot of affiliate sites sell the same stuff but the sites themselves aren't really the same.

Each product has a unique description (as far as I've looked) and realistically that's the only way affiliate sites differentiate themselves.

I agree it's possible that these sites may be run by the same person or company but a quick look through the sites tells me they are both pretty much legit.

Shopping sites like this seem to do quite well even when using the manufacturer description. If the rest of their SEO is good then I'm guessing Google understands the type of sites they are and doesn't penalise them harshly. Remember duplicate content isn't as big a problem as it was once made out to be.

Well a bigger piece of the puzzle is probably that a LOT of the anchor text into these kind of sites is going to be that exact match phrase, so I think it's not specifically a problem being able to identify a brand will fix for every site.

I agree though that Google is definitely making moves to better identify brands.

You 100% sure on that? ,':|

I'm not saying you're wrong but it's not something I've tested, just wondering if you had some info on it?

If nothing else having those seals on your site have been shown to improve customer conversion, so depending on the type of site it might still be worth having.

Have you added webmaster tools to your site? - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

That would tell you if Google had detected malware on your sites.

Did you mean to use "site:" as "link:" is (frankly) rubbish for giving you what links you have and secondly wouldn't show what pages your site has.

But again, if I use that it shows your pages. So you're not banned.

Are you saying all the sites linking to you have been closed down and that's why you no longer rank?

Here's some ideas from yesterday -http://www.seomoz.org/q/site-structure - maybe worth checking some of them out.

Yeah, good shout. I was thinking about that as well, and maybe something to do with switching or upgrading of data centers, but probably not the latter to this extent.

Yeah, I'm a subfolders kind of guy too, but here's SEOmoz weighing in on the subject of microsites and talking about the same sort of question you are - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

You have to go to the 'Report Card' section of On Page and assign a URL to the keyword.

If I understand you correctly

Can you clarify what you mean by banned, all your sites show up in search results for me.

And you're probably going to hear it again, sorry.

I'm unfamiliar with linkmarket but it sounds like the sort of thing that could actually get you penalised instead of just not doing you favours. I'd be very careful of continuing to use it, but as I say, I don't know enough about it.

The best way to get links if you don't want to actively engage people to get them is to write viral and linkbait content, which is again easier said than done.

The other alternative is to pay someone else to do it for you, but that can get pricey even if you're not using the budget to buy paid links.

I'm afraid building links does involve a lot of leg work.