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All of my important sites are on keyword.com domains. They give you a very small ranking advantage.  And, in early 2011, I believe that google reduced the small advantage that they have.  Google could do that again at any time and this strategy turns to crap.  I use keyword.com domains because I think that they convert well. The ranking advantage is very small.  When you are in very easy SERPs that domain, a couple of links and some smart on-page optimization will get you a good ranking. However, when the competition gets tough you are in a battle of resources and smarts and that domain isn't going to be nearly as helpful. I use these domains and get my ass kicked frequently. If I was playing for easy SERPs where these domains alone could win position I would not use them.  If the SERPs are that easy I would just put a highly optimized page on my site and kick their asses.

It's usually a combination of both. Sometimes you see gradual movements in SERPS, but then what you may be seeing is something like a "Getting out of the Sandbox" effect. It's what used to happen very very widely and to some extent, still does. Brand new site tend not to rank for a considerable amount of time, often referred to as the Sandbox period and then once they get out of sandbox (after attaining some domain authority), you'd technically see a spike in traffic and rankings and your situation might be something similar to that.

If Google ever detects an issue will I be notified via webmaster before anything occurs? No, you will simply see a traffic / rankings drop. If you were in my situation how would you handle this? If this was my site and I didn't depend upon it for my income I would let it roll "as is" but get lots of unique content up ASAP. If this was my living or a client site and it was doing really well I would  get a larger budget or a loan and and get the content beefed up really fast with hired help. Or, if I was really conservative I would do some deindexing.

I wouldn't go jumping into paying people to do lots of the same search. Check out the link Broadbeach Media supplied below, it explains in more detail about search suggest but also check out the Q&A's, some good additional points there about the searches coming from the same IP address as well as location.

The quality of the site is more important than the TLD, I don't think it should be much of a consideration. You may see some benefit regarding localization in terms of getting high number of appropriate country specific TLDs. But, once again, quality still counts. However, I often notice that sites with poor backlink profiles tend to have a lot of .info domains from directories.

Should we follow the same with our Press Releases, lately we've been doing approx 400 words per release with roughly 1 link per 100 words. Would you recommend less? Thanks

Do "Branded" urls work the same way as exact match url's in google eyes? Is there any harm in doing this myself? What would be the easiest way to setup a single page, have somone host it, and have re-direct link to my homepage or inner pages? Thanks!!

Yes Follow No Follow, as well as all other link options, (broad links) (exact backlinks), blogs, PRs' Blog comments, directory submissions, PR1-PR8-9(ifpossible). Reason I ask is b/c I have a competitor how is doing everything wrong yet ranking SO WELL. Im pulling my hair out, analyzing their links they are 80% directory submissions, 70-80% exact match backlinks, and they pages are so stuffed with keywords its not even funny, yet google places them within the top 10-20. Thanks guys!

There's not really much more I can tell you without seeing and checking the actual site, LB. If you're not comfortable listing the site address here publicly, you can send it to me in a PM (personal message) if that's better. Otherwise it's just going to be too many back and forth messages for me to be certain I'm clear how your site & domains are configured. P. P.S. I appreciate you marking a couple of good answers!

Thanks Very much, I was not 100% sure as this new traffic spike is new to me, in the past i was relying on ppc and just very minor organic traffic. It seems as though the spike started after BOTW added my link? Im not sure if that is directly the cause? I have been optimizing now for quite some time, individual pages, blogs, PR's, Social. Its unbelievable actually just how much work goes into it!

Yes they can, Its just more expensive to host on different servers

I think I have found something that will help you. This claims to be able to control your inventory automatically that would alleviate need for you to pull pages and more hassle. I hope this helps. http://intuitPayments.com/pointofsale Sincerely, Thomas

Having a lower number of links in OSE is common to everyone if you go to Majestic SEO you might find the accurate number of links.

Thank You!

Can i have anchor link from my blog within my domain linking to internal pages or home page of my site? is that a good or bad practice.

Well, these links like any/all/most other links add to your domain authority and then based on how competitive your niche is, you may or may not see any real effect just from doing these 2 directory submissions.

Hi LittleBigman, Congratulations on getting some good organic traffic to your site. That's a great achievement for sure. There are so many different approaches to improving website conversion rate and so much depends on the site itself and the primary business goals. What is your website goal(s)? Could you share your website URL? Cheers, Linda

I've heard of a number of webmasters lately who saw a big jump in traffic after the last Panda update.  Some of them attributed it to their own site making a recovery, and many feel that they did better because their competitors got affected by Panda. I feel that Google is getting better at identifying long tails and that is good for sites with good content!

Yes you could do this (but dont expect from large companies). Reciprocal linking is not bad, just dont expect so much credit from Google compared to something where you have to work to get a link. Dont forget companies who break the rules dont necessarily get penalised straight away, but one day they might be bitten. If you do everything as white hat now then you will see the benefits for years to come, not just this year.

If the image links or any links are from the Display Network, Google can identify this and will not pass any link juice to the site. Essentially, if those links counted then it would be like buying links to rank higher on SERPs. I would also thoroughly search the page to make sure that your competitor's image link isn't also in the body of page.