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If the negative press is towards a person rather than a website you could try and build backlinks to some more positive stuff that is already present on the web about them.

For example lets say your client is Bob Smith of Atlanta Georgia, do you find this stuff when you Google Bob Smith Atlanta Georgia?  What I would do is build backlinks to the good pages online about Mr Smith, it doesn't matter whose website it is find 10 good websites that are online about Mr Smith, and add links to the pages about Mr Smith.

Also while you're building up some of the other established sites webpages create a few new ones of your own as well, and tag them with negative tags, but have positive comments, use something like is Bob Smith A #@# in the title, and description however, in the text tell a different story.

I see companies doing this all the time when I do background checks on shady sites for clients, and it works. Usually if the site knows what it's doing I will have to search 3, or 4 pages back to find the bad stuff.

I would use no more than seven remember Google stopped valuing the keyword tags because people were stuffing them.

30 keywords is stuffing, and could possibly send spam signals.

With local SEO it could be a little different we built our sons Karate school's website two years ago, the majority of his links come from Karate tournament videos on Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, Manta, and a couple other local sites.

We had first place after 2 months, and have never added another backlink. He is still number one, but this is because the competition is so small.

He may have 20 real competitors for his top 4 keywords, but most of their sites have little to no SEO at all.

I think it depends on your competitors if they are adding good links you should be adding good links.

For larger national keywords someone is always going to be adding backlinks so to stay relevant you will need to as well.

It looks like you are almost spamming the same phrase by viewing your source I see this phrase 5 times on the home page. I would reduce it to once, or twice at most. I would also add some more text to the site as well.

<title>Airport Shuttles OR Tambo and Lanseria Airport

<meta name="description" content="Airport Shuttles to and from OR Tambo and Lanseria Airports.

|

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Airport Shuttles OR Tambo and Lanseria Airport » Feed"

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Airport Shuttles OR Tambo and Lanseria Airport » Feed"

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Airport Shuttles OR Tambo and Lanseria Airport » Home Comments Feed"

| |

I don't think it will hurt your rankings look at pr news sites most of them have tens of thousands of pr links however, I would try to diversify my back linking profile if I could. Possibly add some directory listings, social listings, and site links as well.

I would only use plain urls like "http://www.example.com"

I have had mixed results one of our competitors had hidden text on his site, and we reported him, and the next day they were gone. Another time we had a competitor buying links, they even sent us an email asking to buy a link and we reported them, and nothing happened they are still there.

I believe it depends on who reads the report.

To top it off they just sent me this "

Hi,

In order to handle your request, could you please send us the precise url of the video on Dailymotion ?

Regards,

Dailymotion Team.

My reply "

Hi I contacted you guys this morning, I own and produced the video in question.

What I explained this morning is that somehow this website
http://www.grosezinga.com/624073b/769f1f194bf0598deb7465ea0.html

was taking my videos from your website and posting it on there website. I

own the videos in question. I made them, I did not want the video removed from your site just the
feed stopped from the offending site however, you guys got my email confused, and thought I was reporting my own videos as being not mine.

Then I receive an email from you guys stating that my account was terminated due to a complaint. I have not broken any rules I produced the content in question, and I filed the complaint, but not against myself.

You suspended the wrong account I am the one who filed the complaint, and contacted you in the first place.So I can't send you a link to my videos because my account is now suspended. Please unsuspend my account.

Thank you

It's not just the Open site explorer the Q&A forum is not working right either I have been logged out 20 times this morning, and my posts are not being posted.

I think I will stick to Youtube and Vimeo from now on.

So I get a reply from Daily Motion the site I added the videos to it states:

Some or all of the elements composing your video, "Add this social buttons for zencart," have been flagged as infringing upon the intellectual property rights of a third party (e.g. author, producer, artist, etc.). It has been removed at the request of one or more of the rights holders.

I WAS THE ONE THAT CONTACTED THEM LOL!

I guess they thought I was reporting my own videos??

I sent this back to them : Ok I believe there is some confusion here I contacted you this morning, I own and produced the video in question.

What I explained this morning is that somehow this website   http://www.grosezinga.com/624073b/769f1f194bf0598deb7465ea0.html  was taking my videos from your website and posting it on their website.I own the videos I did not want the video removed from your site just the feed stopped from the offending site. I just received another email stating my account was terminated for violating the rules!This is hilarious!

I watched a video published by Matt Cutts a few months ago where he clearly suggested doing something news worthy as a way of getting links.

What About Links in Press Releases?

Someone noted that while paid links violated the search engine guidelines, you can pay a press release service to distribute your release to places such as Google News, so don’t those links count?

"Matt clarified that the links in the press releases themselves don’t count for PageRank value, but if a journalist reads the release and then writes about the site, any links in that news article will then count."

http://searchengineland.com/lessons-learned-at-smx-west-googles-farmerpanda-update-white-hat-cloaking-and-link-building-67838

If Google devalues these links they should not count for, or against the site. I have a competitor that is sitting on top of a very high keyword with nothing but press release back links.

I believe content is the most important factor, and then on-site optimization which would include URL selection, Identifying keywords, and structure. Once that is out of the way I move on to link building.

Hi you have a very nice website I would recommend adding a paragraph or two of text at the bottom of the site about your company, and your products as well if Shopify allows you to. That is one of the biggest drawbacks with Shopify not having full control of the site.

"I have a list of links from competitor sites via OSE, what do I do with them? "

Look at the best links your competitors have created, and see if you can get those links, or some that are comparable. For example if your competitors are listed in certain directories it would be a good idea for you to do the same.

"Can anyone share any real-world examples specifically relating to e-commerce businesses? "

**When it comes to Facebook and Twitter you can use it to hold contests, promotions, sales ect. **

For example you could give away a block of cheese to the follower that posted the cheesiest picture. You will be surprised at what people will do for free stuff. Get your fans involved, and you will go a long way.

"And i also  think the Better Business Bureau operates an older and more sophisticated version of the same "pay or be damned" scheme. I expressed my views here

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/the-best-link-your-clients-may-be-missing-12889

And I got very little support. Most people disagreed or had no idea what I was talking about."

I read that whole post, and the feedback in the comments area. Funny how most of the people rooting for the BBB were members with a total of 1, or 2 posts. The BBB contacted us when we first started they wanted over 1000.00 a yr for their service.

We kindly turned them down, and they gave us a C- rating. Fast forward 7 yrs with zero complaints, and still a C- rating while our competitor that paid the fee had an A+. Our competitor also had  "166 complaints closed with BBB in last 3 years | 56 closed in last 12 months".

I just checked it and it seems now we have been demoted to a no rating? It seems companies that don't pay are not even ranked now.

Here are some unusual rankings

Bestbuy.com 9571 cases closed with BBB in last 3 years | 3380 closed in last 12 months A+

http://www.bbb.org/minnesota/business-reviews/electronic-equipment-and-supplies-dealers/best-buy-stores-lp-us-headquarters-in-richfield-mn-7663

However, Verison is not accredited and has only 2 cases closed with BBB in last 3 years | 1 closed in last 12 months A-

http://www.bbb.org/eastern-michigan/business-reviews/product-sales-general/verison-in-jackson-mi-54001392

How does the company with 9568 more cases have a better score pretty simple they buy it! I wish I would have been around when that blog was posted I would have gladly been on your side.

The 20/20 video was spot on if you pay you get an A. If you don't pay your businesses reputation is held hostage. We contacted them after receiving our C- and asked if their was anything we could do to improve it, and was told "yes become a member."

I don't believe I would recommend this to a client, while they may see some initial improvement in rankings after using a service like this in the long run it may hurt them. This is basically a new spin on blog networks, and ultimately is used to manipulate the search engines. Google has been destroying blog networks for the last year, and they are getting smarter everyday.

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"Matt Cutts' example is pretty vague, as usual. "

I agree I was just trying to find some of his videos on the topic there was one I watched from a month or so ago where he suggested making news worthy content and getting it picked up by the media, but I can't find it.

Why not create a press release, distribute it, and leave it off your site altogether. That's what I have always done, and it works fine for me.

Personally I believe it is an outdated approach that will be changed over the next few years. I think Google, and Bing tried to establish a system early on that would allow positive, and negative reviews to rank higher in the serps, and as the majority of webmasters, and bad seos,  spammed the positive stuff it was demoted through the years. This eventually gave the negative sites the advantage, and sites like Rip off reports flourished.

One of the easiest ways to rank a site for a keyword is to buy the sucks version of the keyword. Take Pay Pal for example one of the largest payment processors in the world with millions of backlinks but when you Google Pay Pal you will also find the Pay Pal sucks site. https://www.google.com/search?q=PAY+PAL&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I don't think it will hurt your rankings look at pr news sites most of them have tens of thousands of pr links however, I would try to diversify my back linking profile if I could. Possibly add some directory listings, social listings, and site links as well.

I would only use plain urls like "http://www.example.com"

I think it will reappear in a few days anytime I have made changes like that Google will usually remove it for a few days and then re-list it. It is weird just that one page took a hit though.

Hi my name is Tina I am new here I hope you guys can help me out. I thought building my new site with Word Press was going to simplify things, however I have a ton of errors, and I am not sure what they are, or how to fix them.

I am hoping someone could share with me a solution for these errors.

I have 28 rel=canonical errors, I am not sure what this means, I understand it to mean my pages are similar, and this is to set a heirarchy between my pages. Please correct me if I am wrong.

If I am correct would this be necessary to add if my main keyword was "widgets" and my home page was optimized for "widgets" and my next page was "blue widgets" and so on.

While my pages are similar they are all optimized for different versions of my main keyword some using long tail keywords. Do you know of a plugin that can help solve this problem?

Also does anyone have a plugin they recommend for G+ my G+ authorship verification is causing an error as well?

I am using Head Space 2 I have used this seo plugin numerous times with great success it has been my favorite seo plugin. However, we have a portfolio that shows our clients websites, and on those pages Head Space will not let me enter a description tag.  What plug in do you guys recommend with more control over each page?

Another interesting issue is on one of our pages I optimized it for our Canadian clients, and now every page has been listed in Google.ca for the keywords it should have on Google.com.

We are listed on Google maps, verified  in Google places, and our address is on the site so they know we're from the USA however, the majority of our keywords are only listed in Google.ca. We're on page one for all of them, we are in the top three on most of them so that's not bad, but we want to be listed in Google.com as well. Any suggestions on this?