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I just asked a similar question here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-do-you-deal-with-spammy-backlinks and it will give you a few more perspectives but mostly everyone says not to worry about it.

Yes, I've been building back links and it is good to know that it isn't too much to worry about.

Thanks Ross, that makes sense. Great to hear.

Thanks for your opinion. Actually, there was one porn page that linked over from the designer. It was one of the reasons the concern arose.

One of the web designers I work with asked me to do a preliminary site assessment on a small business website.

The owner of the business had a falling out with his previous web designer and moved over to the one I work with earlier this year.

The site has been redesigned but when analyzing the back links I discovered that the previous designer had created directories to create backlinks to the page. The PR 0 links from the site number about 150 and are from unrelated topic pages.

So, it made me wonder, how much damage can spammy backlinks do?

What is the best practice to deal with spammy backlinks if you find them?

Interesting, I am fairly new to the nuances of seo, although I have been doing seo writing for almost six years. I mostly work with small businesses and so look for seo competition and the current status of the optimization of those competing for the term and variations of it. My assessment is focused on lower numbers of traffic but targeted specific to the business and its offerings.

Long tail is what I work with almost exclusively. So, I look at the broad to phrase match results (percentages) and the existing competition first and toss quite a few terms in the process. Usually the exact numbers tend to be low but if you find the sweet spot, it helps a lot with organic.

I'd be interested in what some of the veteran seos have to share as I am currently pondering the same question for a new site that wants to go national.

Thanks Ryan, I can play with the widget code for the Facebook.

Yes, I am doing an entire site redesign but I wanted to run a few things over here at SEOMoz as well.

It is pretty comprehensive based on all the topics and content and so it is taking a while. My designer so rocks--and has some great ideas.

Thanks Ryan,

Appreciate your taking a look. We have already implemented a site wide htaccess change for the blog to remove date stamps but I wasn't aware we could change everything site wide. The last designer did a html template and that is a mess which is another reason I wanted to change the pages.

To answer your question, yes many of the pages I have not touched do have backlinks. Some have traffic and some of the links are 15 years old--which is why I have stayed hands off on messing with it.

Orginally the site was a magazine with six different categories. At the moment I am testing two keywords in the nav and one is out peforming the other. I have three business services which is why you see three keywords. So what would you suggest?

I switched to the Genesis theme last Nov and am not happy with it for a number of reasons. Not sure why the Facebook looks odd to you but will put that on the list. I am testing the response and it actually has grown my community offsite.

As far as sales, at the moment a call to action for sign ups for more information is one idea or a call to action leading to the specific sale of the service most relevant for the topic.

We've discussed doing landing indexes per topic--so your idea about an animal page in a different manner.

Again, my topics overlap different services/topics about animals and each has a different audience (think domestic versus captive wildlife) so I didn't think the animal category would be the best based on the current competition and since many of the topics would overlap between the two species.

For instance, training principles for dogs are common for say, an elephant--so the training principle topic focus makes more sense to me--but then I am too close to this which is why I am in the forum.

I'd be interested in any additional thoughts about that as well.

Since the search engines aren't very good with videos yet, that is the reason behind the practice. For clients, I also always try to include a brief summary below to help out a bit more. Never hurts to cover all the bases!

Make sure you have links back to your site from the social media too. Might already have it but never hurts to review.

I always optimize all page elements because you never know when things change. I tend to use H2/H3 in those I am looking to have rank using the kw phrase.

When you construct a post, the first link gets some weight and so using anchor text  with an emphasis can help. I use it in the first or second sentence generally. I also use the main site phrase in an anchor link call to action at the bottom.

This reminds me, since you are doing a lot of videos, you might create a short commentary below the video and make sure you have the alt optimized for the video topic.

Hope that is helpful.

Since I have a lot of small businesses that I market with new content, I would suggest you take a closer look at the long tails you are using and make sure you have all the on page elements in place to work for you.

I am sure some of the veteran folks here will give you some valuable input on other strategies but here are mine from a writing perspective:

If you are not linking to external sites, make sure you are using your long tail kw phrase to interlink on the site.

Titles, headers, and author bios should also be tight. Your first link anchor text will also be valuable. Consider archiving by author as well as by topic.

If you are using a CMS such as Word Press, consider implementing a related article plugin so you can further drive traffic to related articles.

Finally, if  you are not using social media--get a Facebook page (not profile) and Twitter account going so you can share the links of your new and previous articles.

YouTube is the number three search engine so you might post some teasers to attract traffic and make sure you optimize your channels in the social media landscape.

I've had good luck with using these tactics for clients. Looking forward to seeing what others have to say.

If you'd like to take a look, the site under quesiton is http://ArkAnimals.Com. At the moment I am considering doing landing pages by topics and not by the type of animals. I will be blending both wild and domestic animals but how to best do this is confusing since so much has changed over the years.

My competitors are focusing on animal types mainly and competition is fierce. Also the site attracts by three main topics not specific animals--so I want to be a bit unique which is why I am considering a topic driven focus.

What would you recommend?

Background

This site has been online since 1994 and on its own domain for a long while. However, over time it has suffered from a lot of things--different designers, expansion, movement of content to niche sites and bad seo. LOL

Once everything was on one site with sub directories. Then, it expanded and my online advisors recommended moving topics off into their own niche sites. So, I did that. Ugh.

Now, much of that content is being integrated back as I am undergoing an intense revamp (the last one was a disaster).

There are a few presenting problems that I could use your perspective and expertise--since I am too close to it.

Problems for Needing Your Input

1. The site is over 2600 pages with many in html and others in php.What is the best practice? Moving the remaining html pages over into php? Some of the pages that were not active have a redirect to the blog. I plan on doing page to page 301 redirects once I dig in--unless you have a better idea. There are a lot of well established links to some of the pages.

2. How many topics are too many? I have a wide variety of content. First, the magazine format covered about six topics. Later, I began covering more pet related items and did a lot of different news summaries to keep it fresh. I want to dump the short outdated pages as many of them have obsolete links or are too short to add any value. Or should I update if they help with the seo rather than continue to let them dilute the site?

3. Landing page or blog? Which is better, an index landing page or blog? At the moment the blog appears on the main index for freshness and the site attracts traffic for specific topics not animal breeds or species.

I want to move the site from an educational site to serving as a main funnel for potential clients driving them to get on a list or to a niche site for sales related to the particular topic/training of interest.

What your take on this if you were to tackle it?

Any input would be greatly appreciated. My audience includes those who are pet owners, novice trainers, and animal lovers with no critter sense.

@Ryan "hearding cats" is a good way to describe it!

@NinjaMarketer Thanks for sharing your clauses and I like the idea about the partial module.

@MagicCrob Thanks, the problem is that when I subcontract to the web design specialists, not all seem to clear the changes with the seo but instead want to make the client happy but often tothe determent to their investment and online success.

@Todd I am not one to "oblige the request" but I have one particular client that I do a lot of work for who does and it goes back to the suggestion about communcation. I believe the designer does not really understand seo. As for the partial SEO,I was referring to on page optimization and site structure.

Thanks to all of you for responding, each of your answers actually hit on different issues that I've encountered and I appreciate the insights and suggestions!

Since I subcontract out to web design people or work doing SEO for small businesses, I am wondering how others (and if others) deal with non-compliance with good SEO practices.

For instance, I had a web designer change a few of the terms for a website because the client wanted another term they thought was better instead of sticking to the SEO they contracted for and she diluted the site architecture in the process.

A former small business client called for some changes and I discovered she had made some changes she "thought were good terms."

Do you encounter such issues, and if so, how do you deal with them--or do you just oblige the request?

Also, I've been getting requests to do "partial" seo instead of entire sites. Is that ever a good idea and if so, how would you handle it? If not, how do you successfully dissuade a client from doing so? (Both small biz and web design peeps)

@Mark Hodson bought to mind something we do as a B2B service. We structured a questionaire that asks for industry terms and customer terms along with geotargeting information for local search. In many cases, the terms that the company or staff think are appropriate actually are very far from it. In addition certifications and awards often come in handy as well as professional memberships because they help us identify terms and other opportunities for SEO.

Hmm, secrets? First, I do seo writing so I tend to look at things from that angle but have gotten into more seo itself as I work with more businesses and web designers. I agree that working and then taking a break is a great idea because sometimes the research can blind you. LOL

But I think making sure you get the best info from the client or on the project prior to starting is essential and can help cut down the time spent in further research or is critical in targeting terms within a highly competitive category.

I also use research tools to help condense the process while I ponder competition and their optimization prior to starting.

There are a lot of different types of writing services that are available for hire at a variety of different sites just like programmers, designers and other tech people.  Most can be found through freelancing sites.

I think by "like that" you mean SEO writing. It is a specialty type of service and so use that term. There are some people who are able to take on the "voice" that you want to convey if you have one you want to mimic across the site and the best thing to to is to find someone and ask to see their portfoilio or look at their rankings from previous contracts.