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I expect they've probably got a tonne of backlinks too if they're doing so well, it certainly won't be the footer links that are doing it. Is there much competition for them in those areas? I found out a long time ago that whilst we're based in Ringwood and service clients from Southampton and Bournemouth a lot, the keywords SEO Southampton and SEO Bournemouth were pretty much useless. Instead, searchers were more likely to use SEO Company Southampton, or SEO Services Bournemouth, and other modifiers/qualifiers. Then we knocked that on the head too, and just went for SEO Company, with no location suffix. That's getting us far more leads. Being online, why restrict yourself to your area or even your country

Anyway, my point is, I'm guessing that the competition for those keywords they're ranking for is lower than you think as most SEO's wouldn't bother with just SEO <location>as it's hardly worth it. That might explain their rankings... along with the fact they've probably got some good domain authority, etc... from a lot of backlinks.</location>

I wouldn't even bother with using PR to judge the value of anything. For a link I'd check it's moz bar stats, age of domain, number of root domains linking in, and where on the site, and on the page you get to have a link... plus how many other links are on that page.

I also hope you're not paying too much for a directory link... couple of quid at most

Just personal preference for me but I like the ones that come out of the side, like the feedback tab on here

See sidereel.com to see what I mean.

It definitely wouldn't be the fact that it's a .uk.com that's causing the problem. No-one would ever use any other TLD's if it was only a few that got indexed.

I wouldn't go with completely worthless. Mostly worthless yeah, but it's worth it for extra IP diversity I think

You've not got that much in terms of link diversity, or from much that's relevant. Directories, blogs and forums, links pages, etc... that don't pass a lot of value. 11 Linking Root Domains, including directories, some are nofollow. Not a lot in terms of quality links. And then your anchor text needs a little more diversity too: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/www.nintendowiifitconsole.co.uk%252F/a!anchors

Google will often let a new site rank well for a bit before knocking it back down again.

Also, my personal belief is that Google's not all that keen on affiliate sites anyway... I lost rankings on mine from Panda.

I reckon all in all, if you get some more, higher quality links... and as it appears now some social signals too, then you'll start ranking much better

And make sure you've submitted an up-to-date sitemap

I wouldn't do it anyway... think of all that link juice, social signals, usage data, etc... that will end up getting split between domains instead of all going into one!

I used some of Bruce Clays a while ago, wasn't as many tools as you get here... he might have more now. I found that I preferred the SEOmoz tools anyway. I still think you get some great and valuable info from Bruce Clay Inc but over-all I'd say here was best for tools and data. Just my opinion.

Dunamis is right, Askimet is the best way, and also if you're blog's links are nofollow it will help to deter at least some of it. Not all, as some of the automated stuff posts anyway, but some of it will only comment on dofollows, and it will stop some manual spam comments

It depends... are these links the only direct links to those particular pages? I mean, would you have to go an indirect route through the main menu or something (i.e. via a category)? If they're the only direct ones, keep them. You want the pages linked to from the homepage so they're as shallow as possible to get crawled.

Also, if they are not the only direct links, do the other ones have the appropriate anchor text?

It might be a good idea to keep them for the anchor text alone.

Are there any other links you could get rid of... how many links are there on this page?

Do you need to keep the existing info on it?

If not, you can archive the domain and re-enter a new one in its place.

If it turns out to be right, I'm going to get myself a deerstalker hat, start smoking a pipe, and walk around calling everybody Watson.

It could be that you're a little over-optimized. On this page for example: http://www.recoveryconnection.org/addiction/alcoholism.php

Near the bottom, you have three anchor text links all near each other, all pointing to the same page of http://www.recoveryconnection.org/detox/alcohol-treatment-detox-programs.php

Try just navigating to your campaign manually through the site menu and refreshing a couple of times.

Any hosting or ISP packages for SEO are not really SEO packages at all, they're just submissions. At some point in the future there will hopefully be more transparency on this stuff, and companies will have to make a proper distinction where they can't just loosely use the term SEO, when they only offer something that is under 1% of what SEO really is.

Thanks Alan, that makes good sense. I'm going to monitor it constantly and will update you guys the second something happens!

Ah, you might be on to something there... with wordpress being primarily a blogging platform, maybe there's something there. Maybe blogs, with their higher content churn have a little precedence at the expense of longevity in the serps.

Awesome thinking Dunamis!

Thanks EGOL. Yes I must admit I thought a definitive answer would be pretty much impossible... even in here.

I agree about waiting for the sites to drop too, it only just happened but that's the first thing that went through my head when it did.

This may sound odd, as of course it's good for the client that both sites are up high, but, part of me is hoping for the drop. Otherwise it will feel like everything I know to be true has become obsolete. Like all I understand about SEO has been turned on its head.

I reckon you're right that there's got to be a bunch of optimal stuff with Wordpress which could make a difference. But yeah, it could never make this much of a difference of course.

I think I'll have to accept that there simply are anomalies from time to time.

Anyway thank you, knowing there's a similar situation out there somewhere has put my mind at ease a little

Something has happened which is, well inexplicable to me... I'm stumped!

We have a client that has two sites which compete for the same keywords. One is a .com, the other is a .co.uk. They have different content so there's no dupe worries.

We have, for the past few months been carrying out SEO for the .com site. It's doing great. We don't do anything with the .co.uk site, which, incidentally dropped from 2nd (under the .com) to 9th after Panda for its main keyword.

The owner of the site has switched the .co.uk to Wordpress and now that site, with the same content, same links, same social signals, etc... (nothing was done to it except the platform being changed) has suddenly shot up above the .com for not only its main keyword but most of the others too.

What gives?? It doesn't even have a link from the .com site!

So, the .com which has undergone SEO is now being beaten by the .co.uk which hasn't. The .com is still directly underneath it. It feels like all of the things we know about SEO, all of the ranking factors and everything are being totally undermined here, just due to a change to Wordpress. Surely that can't be it?? The .com is an older domain, has more content, has always done well, has more links and from better places, and all the social stuff surrounding the business is targeted at it.

This isn't a penalization issue or anything like that, this is simply a matter of the .co.uk suddenly blasting above everything for no apparent reason.

Any ideas?? I know that there "might" be a tiny, tiny, tiny advantage of the country TLD but that's not enough to do this, and the .co.uk always did worse before.