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This is definitely grey hat territory. I haven't tried this specific tactic myself, but it could potentially work. The only way to know for sure is to test it. At worst you'll be down $5-$10 from fiverr gigs. At best, you could be making some nice sales over Amazon.
It can potentially affect your rankings for some keywords, especially long tail keywords. User comments generally the highest quality content, but they are content nonetheless and indexed by Google.
One solution might be to switch to a comment system such as Disqus. Disqus will still allow users to login with Facebook (as well as Twitter & Google+) and can be configured so that the comments are indexable.
According to their whois record, the contact should be domains@industrialinterface.com. Might want to try giving that a shot. If you google "* @ industrialinterface.com" you can find more contacts as well.
The actual site seems like it has fairly high domain authority. Unless you're being slapped with Penguin or getting link warnings in GWT, it's probably not worth worrying about.
Despite Google's best efforts, there are still a lot of spammy tactics that work and spammy sites that rank. However, in general, black hat tactics do not work for long, as Google's algorithm catches up with them.
If you were hit by Panda, your best bet is to clean up your thin content and work on getting high authority links. Solid links from high authority sites will outrank spam links in the long run.
You should check out Point Blank SEO, they have the most complete listing of link building strategies out there:
I usually start link building by reaching out to people I know that own websites/blogs, and asking for a link. I will also do some submissions to niche/local directories. Then it's time to buckle down and come up with a contact list/link building strategy for your particular niche.
Here is a great list of link building ideas:
Linking to external sites from a footer is not harmful, unless the sites you are linking to are low quality sites.
What can be harmful is receiving a lot of sitewide footer links with exact keyword anchor text. This can be seen as spammy by Google. Footer links & sitewide links in general also don't carry as much weight as in-context links.
Hey Samuel,
Multiple links from one site can help with rankings:
So getting multiple guest posts on the same blog can still be beneficial. Also getting multiple posts on the same blog may be more beneficial than getting posts from different blogs if there is a disparity in domain authority. Getting multiple links from the New York Times is better than having links from 10 random blogs.
It's possible that your Pinterest page just hasn't been crawled by OSE yet, if your PA is only 1. Does your Pinterest page have any incoming links? That will help your Pinterest page get indexed by Google & OSE.
Anchor text is not dead.
Updates such as Penguin may have penalized sites with excessive, unnatural amounts of spammy exact anchor text links, but as long as you don't overdo it, anchor text still matters a lot.
To optimize your site for specific keywords, make sure all your onsite optimization is taken care of: have you keywords in your title, URL, copy, etc. Then make sure your site is relevant to the keywords you are targeting, that will get people to naturally link to you with those keywords.
Buying links can get you penalized. Don't do that.
Here is a great list of link building strategies if you don't know where to start:
Microsites can be a good strategy in many instances.
The main case if you want to create a small site around a single use like downforeveryoneorjustme.com. People will often link to small microsites like this because of the novelty, and social sites like reddit are more likely to promote the site if it's a standalone rather than a part of your commercial site.
Another use case for microsites is if you want to create a site that is off-brand from your main site. For example, you might be a law firm that wants to create a meme tumblr or a prestigious bank that wants to target an off-brand term like "cheap loans". A microsite in this instance can allow you to target off-brand terms or use off-brand tactics without impacting your main brand.
If you have the resources, building out a bunch of microsites can be a way of targeting microniches or taking up multiple listings in the SERPs.
Note however that building out microsites doubles the work you have to do in terms of web design, content creation, and link building, but the results can be worth it if you have the resources.
Sounds like a decent backlink to me. There are directories like this in many niches (like findlaw.com) and they can provide a high authority, subject relevant link.
PR4 isn't terribly high, but depending on the cost of membership (and the other benefits of membership) it could be worth it.
Linking from posts within your own site should be fine, as long as you don't overdo it. Use your common sense when linking out from your posts, but 2-3 links per post from an average blog post should be fine.
Link building is still the way to go, here is a good site with a lot of ideas:
Don't be tempted to follow your competitor's lead and acquire lots of low quality links, because Matt Cutts recently announced that they will be releasing a major Penguin update later this year. Don't throw away longterm growth with short term tactics, unless you're willing to lose it all.
Here is a great list of link building strategies if you're short on ideas:
Trading links with other quality sites in your niche is a great way to get links. Just make sure the sites you're linking to are high quality (not spammy, have pagerank, aren't using shady link tactics). A quick backlink check of the sites using OSE or Majestic is probably a good idea.
I usually like to put together a "Partners" or "Resources" page where I add all the links from people I trade with:
http://www.salsabythebay.com/resources/
Hopefully you can use the initial link exchange to begin a relationship with some of the other players in your niche, so you can collaborate on other projects too, like guest posting, interviews, etc.
As long as you are not linking to spammy sites, I don't see why Google would penalize your site for linking out. You should only nofollow the links if they are low quality sites (in which case, why are you linking to them?) or they are competitors and you don't want to pass them any link value.
I usually put it in the navigation on the site I build. It's accepted convention to link the site logo to the homepage, but it's also helpful to have a link in the navigation clearly marked "Home" for less tech-savvy users.