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2 of my sites hit yesterday and they are not showing anywhere on google. They are still indexed but there is no manual action on webmaster. i think they are not coming back.

Hello! I know when you are first getting started you really want to set obtainable goals and benchmarks of acceptable link building volumes - don't focus on this. Instead, focus on realistic timelines to launch exceptional content. Launching this content will make the link building exponentially easier, but NOT automatic. I'm not talking about just another blog post, top-XX list, or infographic here. I am talking about something that is so cool people will want to talk about it. If you are in a boring niche, think parallel niches. If you are in a narrow niche, think broader. For example, I am in the East TN travel niche, but my team recently created a cool digital asset for the whole country that had good success. Once you build the content, you should also set realistic outreach goals. Don't reach out to TechCrunch, HuffPo, etc. unless it is the type of content they regularly post. Instead, look at who is linking to similar assets (use OSE, AHREFS, Majestic, etc.) and start there. Personalize pitches for each site and make the pitch as irresistible as possible. Depending on the asset type, it may be possible to involve some of the influential site owners/bloggers in creative process. At the end of the day numbers and quality don't matter as much as creating high-quality, exceptional content on a regular basis. You will have some strike-outs, but you will also have some home-runs. The process for content creation and the promotion of that content is what you need to focus on not the number OR quality of the links (initially).

In my opinion there are no quick or easy ways to build links after Google's Penguin update.  A better question would be: "How to build the highest quality links?". or - "How to earn links from high quality sources?" Also see: http://moz.com/blog/google-algorithm-cheat-sheet-panda-penguin-hummingbird http://www.hiswebmarketing.com/penguin-not-just-about-bad-links/  http://themoralconcept.net/pandalist.html (mainly about Panda, but also a few very interesting link related insights)

Just seen the update to this question. If you have a high value, high margin product, yes you might be able to afford a AU$20 cost per conversion, but if you are only making AU$15 on a sale, then this makes no sense at all. Hope this keeps the little grey cells working. Bruce.

Travis is right! It is generic and it can risk you for manual penalty. On the other hand ask for a link directly in to your email is not a good idea at all. If I would be at your place, I might have gone this way! -- Hello [Name], I was researching for some quality blogs relevant to [niche] and I found your blog very interesting. [Research a blog and talk a little more about it]. Actually we [name of your store] are planning to increase our audience’s reach and as I personally believe that you have the kind of audience we ideally want to interact with, I have a proposal for you! You can visit our website and choose any product under $100 and we will deliver 2 pieces to your door step for free. One will obviously for you and other we want you to giveaway to your blog’s audience via a blog post or anything you like. Please let me know if this is something you are willing to do! Looking forward to hear from you! Regards, [your name] -- I personally thing this email can also be optimized but atleast this sounds legit and do not really asking for link but you offer a situation in which he somehow have to link back to you the natural way! Hope this helps1

This is the best advice I have found. http://moz.com/blog/what-separates-a-good-outreach-email-from-a-great-one-whiteboard-friday Funny note, I used that advice to outreach to Rand one time and it worked.

Point well made.

Did you find what you needed Kiwi Man? I can't vouch for any specific plug-in, but these two might be worth looking into:WooCommerce Drop Ship Manager Pro: Costs $200 and specifically mentions inventory updates via spreadsheet. Spark Shipping offers "Dropship eCommerce Automation" services and they work with WooCommerce stores, among others: "Spark Shipping will process feeds from your suppliers and automatically update your inventory. Automated Inventory Management keeps your inventory in sync with all of your vendors." One thing you need to be sure of is that you aren't publishing the manufacturer/vendor supplied product descriptions on your site. You should be overwriting the ones that come in via the feed and using your own custom product descriptions instead.

Re: $5 backlinks from a personal blogger. The only worse than a whore is a cheap whore. If you lie down with dogs, you will get fleas. (Make up your own filthy variation. And keep it you yourself.) My work here is done.

I agree with Egol here, build content that your readers want to read. If they want to read it, they'll be more likely to share it (either by a link or via social). I've been looking at the demographics reports in analytics to find out what my website visitors appear to be interested in. I can then use this to create content tailored to my audience. However, I don't do this for all content, because it'll start to become self-propelling: the more my content matches my audience demographic, the smaller the demographic becomes... If that makes sense? But, I think this is a good start... Andy also has some great points here (which I see you've marked as 'good answer' so you're clearly taking on board his comments) - infographics can be a great way of sharing knowledge in an easy to digest kind of way. However, be careful about how you create them: make them awesome! Also, you must reference any websites/books etc you get the facts from. If any of these have social media accounts, make sure you share to them, because they are more likely to reshare it for you because it mentions them! Always be careful of copyright infringements though - don't copy word-for-word, even in an infographic or you'll annoy whoever originally wrote that content! (or worse, have a DMCA filed against you - not cool) Also, never just take images from Google image search - buy your images or make sure they are available on a free license (and check it is still free for commercial use though) - so many people fall foul of this. I know it's easy just to take an image from Google image search, but in most cases someone owns that image and the creator of it should get compensation for the use of the image - especially if it's being used for commercial use. With regard to making your products rank - this can be tricky as the main content is usually available in the form of a blog or articles section (as you have indicated is the case here), not on the product description page. Make sure you link through to relevant products from your blog pages - e.g. blog post talking about children's bedroom furniture could highlight particular products, with links straight to the product(s). If the product becomes unavailable, then the blog post can still work if you make sure you either update the link to a similar product or if you create redirects (my personal preference is the slightly harder way of updating the link rather than redirects but if you have a huge inventory of products that method could become unmanageable very fast). I found this white board Friday video really useful, you may too: http://moz.com/blog/my-customers-wont-amplify-my-content-whiteboard-friday Best of luck, Amelia

A short reminder that for the most part, using "link bait" is now considered old-school... What you need to do is to create content that is SO SO compelling in your channel that folks will link to you!

Something to avoid, is the mindset of buying links / sponsoring. Google values a genuine link that is editorially gained, rather than a side note / footer / site-wide links. These carry very little value and in some cases, can create a big headache for you in terms of penalties from Google. Good SEO is actually a mix of a great user experience, easy-to-use website, interesting information and closely following Google's webmaster guidelines. This all boils down to best practice. Keep your visitors happy, social media buzzing, content well written and Google will start to value your site more. -Andy

Do you have 1300 landing pages? If you don't why not go on the basis of landing pages as that is already the underlying site logic? You could then experiment with a subset of landing pages to see if subsetting them into different ad groups works better or not.

I wouldn't for the cart and checkout, I would actually no-index them. The reason being is depending on what measure you are using for cart abandonment, having people land on those pages will skew your results. Also at the same time there is no good reason for them to enter on those pages so it will increase the overall bounce rate if people are entering on them. Privacy policy, shipping, and return policy, I would not specifically no-index them, but I would not try to optimize them for anything other business name - page name. That being said, if you are like Costco and offer some amazing return policy that someone can return a product after 10 years for a full refund and it is a popular product; I might consider optimizing the return policy for that as well. Or if you are the only person that offers free international shipping on a large item like a baby grand piano or something. But if you fall in line with the rest of the industry I would just leave them as is and only optimize them for your business name - policy type. So then if people search for your business and return policy those pages will more than likely come up.