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If I remember correctly, GWT Highlighter outputs HTML with Schema once all of the highlighting is done.

Straight from 'The Cutts': You sure can throw press releases out, just don't use exact match anchors.

If you haven't used press releases extensively, just for the sake of links - you should be in the clear.

It's generally best to noindex/nofollow using the meta robots tag in the header. If it's not too much of a stretch for you, you can also password protect the test site. The over-so-lovely and charming Googles will still display results blocked by robots.txt - though it won't generally cache the content. If you would like, you can hookup the test site with Webmaster Tools and remove the URL(s) from the index.

More on all this here and here.

I second the manual audit. Even some pretty handy things like http://www.linkresearchtools.com/ can be inaccurate. But it employs machine learning and they crowd source data from other audits. It will likely get better with time.

Link Research Tools tends to throw a few false positives and a few false negatives. That is why knowing what is low quality, without a tool, is key. How do you know if your calculator is broken?

It gets a lot of laughs from a lot of folks when I tell them I am The Tool. XD

Moving Along

I can tell from a cursory run there isn't a ton of quality going on here. Even if there is a thorough disavow/link removal, there isn't a lot of quality links to back it up. There's a ton of exact match anchor text as well. All of this smacks of manipulative practice, or an angry competitor.

Either way, get link data from multiple sources and manually review the portfolio. Each domain is going to require it's own research. Sometimes the domains are known as bad actors and can be eliminated in the first pass, with little question. Other domains are lesser known, and require at least a glance.

There's Something About Marie

She chimes in on link penalty issues all the time. Every once in a while she writes something that makes me think about things differently. That's a good thing. So if you pick up what she's laying down, you'll probably be alright.

You'll probably be okay, it appears most of it is ebbing. Though I would definitely look at your folder level traffic. Penalties can happen on the folder and page level as well. It's not so bad as to merit a domain level penalty.

I would be more concerned if the anchor text targeted something you do want.

In regard to disavows, disavow early and as often as necessary.

Hi Evan,

I would probably disavow the domains. Though it's pretty hard to thoroughly answer without a reference to any domain.

To the question of normal, I would say it isn't terribly uncommon. I've seen scenarios like this enough over the years.

I'm unsure whether or not this is adversely affecting your site. I don't have a site to reference. Though if you would like to private message 'the deets', I can take a closer look. If you would like to post it publicly, so all the other kids can play, that's fine too.

To expand a bit on what Claudio has said, it's not really about a dead-set number of links. If you give them a metric, they will attempt to hit that metric. Even if hitting that target will result in a net negative for the client.

For instance, I can probably get you 10 .edu links right now. Between security vulnerabilities and un-moderated comment sections, it's entirely possible. But you definitely don't want those links, especially if you get them in that way.

You should probably reward them based upon how they reach out and what the results were. It may not necessarily be a link. The results could be more valuable than a link. Treating them like your low-pressure sales team/brand ambassador will probably better align their interests with those of your company and external stakeholders.

Though there's some big IFs here. That will only work IF you give them something to sell/represent that somehow adds significant value for everyone involved. IF that doesn't happen, they'll end up trying to push the same crud a million others peddle every day. Basically put, Garbage In - Garbage Out.

Instead of setting a hard and fast number, focus on how well they build relationships and how creatively they market your brands.

Ever consider that the domain name itself may be a problem? It's just as easy to get www.viagrasssss.com. And I think the largest issue is that the domain name was registered one month ago. You can't expect much in the first month.

Is it plugged in? Is it turned on? Have you rebooted? Is it blocked by Robots.txt?

Yes, it may likely also have something to do with the sitewide.

It also sounds like you aren't being told the whole story, by your account.

Gary brought up a pretty good point. "So I do wonder if there are more than just that issue. Are some of the other links bad but you don't believe they are?" - Gary

I dealt with one situation where many link farms and a particularly spammy domain were pointed at the site overnight. That tripped the Googles BS detector. When I dug into it, I found so much more had happened throughout the years. The initial disavow I proposed would have cut about 50K links if memory serves. The client looked at a few and stated they had paid 'good money' for some of those links and disavowing/removing them would be crazy.

Suffice to say, the process never went through and they kept on 'guest blogging'. (Writing on someone else's site every once in a while and the 'guest blogging' you hear about today are generally two different things.) They kept on 'not recovering'. I check from time to time.

A case of typical manipulation, in my experience, usually involves thousands of links at the least. Your mileage may vary. Without knowing the domain, I can't go into much detail.

I've been using regexpal for a while. I think I like regex101 better.

From what I've seen, Moz Local is pretty fast - especially for the price. I'm aggressive and I claim listings as fast as I can. But that's just me, making the green bar go higher.

The main thing is avoiding pain points. Acxiom is a big pain point. It requires a lot of cooperation you aren't likely to get from a client. I make them busy, they don't have much time for me.

From my tests, just add 30 days to your campaign. In many instances, especially if you claim the big three manually, that's not a whole lot of time.

I don't think that will work. Robots.txt doesn't handle regular expressions. You will have to explicitly list all of the folders, and files to be super sure, that nothing is indexed unless you want it to be found.

This is kind of an odd question. I haven't thought about something like this in a while. I usually want everything but a couple folders indexed. : ) I found something that may be a little more help. Try reading this.

If you're working with extensions, you can use **Disallow:/*.html$ **or php or what have you. That may get you closer to a solution.

Definitely test this with a crawler that obeys robots.txt.

When you look at everything you have to do to take care of one site, I think you will come to the conclusion that one site is all you can handle. It's also all you likely need. How the site is designed will make life easier or harder.

I would definitely try to make each meta description as unique as possible. Think about it this way, it's your elevator pitch. Not everyone reads them, but those who do will decide if your page is better for them than other results. Minimal effort generally results in minimal success.

For everything else, I would suggest starting here.

I know quite a few small business owners. If you're going to do this yourself, put as much thought into your online strategy as you do into your showroom. If it fails, at least you can't blame a lack of thought.

My best input here is; "Don't do that."

Instead, worry about real things. Drowning yourself or your client in data doesn't help. What does help is calls, emails and sales. Maybe you can think of a few more things that keep the lights on, and how your campaign contributed to that.

bukowski_1-Custom.jpg

Yes, they are still there. Message me via my profile with appropriate contact info and I will send a CSV with the results. Any discussion after the fact happens here, please and thanks.

Search engines can't index what they can't crawl. So definitely look into the 500 errors.

I would recommend a paid version of screaming frog.

The brand name you're trying to build is still highly competitive. Never mind the fact that a lot of low quality links have already been built with exact match anchor text. But what I see right now is that the site has a ton of server errors.

I would look into the server errors first, then delve deeper.

You do want some links that are followed, but getting no follow links is almost unavoidable. You get a no follow link when someone appends rel=nofollow to the a href link pointing at your site. It's not entirely bad, as you may get some citation value from the nofollow link.

In regard to citation value, if people are talking about your site - that's still a good thing. It can be even better if the link is non-nofollow.

People append nofollow to the link in the hopes that they won't be seen as a black hat reciprocal link, or something worse. It's basically the safest way to link out, as linking to things that are - or could be - bad is terribly unhealthy.

Hopefully that makes sense.