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Hello Zach, Based on what you are saying, this is an algorithmic warning and is not based on manual action. Since we are still talking algorithms, all you have to do is clean up your link profile - disavow all low-quality links and perhaps build a few higher-level links and over time the ranks should return to their former state. I know this is pretty much the same answer you received to your question on the Webmaster Help Forum, but I think that gentleman has a point. I disagree that you should "ignore" the emails, but a lack of manual oversight probably means that it is a technical issue that can be addressed rather than one you willingly perpetrated. In regards to your link profile, it's possible that the form the links took - for example, blog comments, posts etc. - contributed to the decline in rankings, but would not affect your "rankability". I don't think a Reconsideration Request is necessary as long as you ensure that your profile is clean of all "waste material". Perhaps push a link-building program for better links and see where that puts you. Also, completely unrelated to link-building, but is there a chance that the content might be responsible? Are you sure there is no duplicate content on your URL's? It might be that the current loss in rankings is Panda-related and not Penguin at all - that warning may be over and done.

Thanks Lewis, I get nervous indexing pages with very little content, some of these pages. Some of these "Snippets" have maybe a paragraph of text and 5 corresponding lines of code. Oddly enough, some of these snippets have gotten me organic WordPress leads. Just want some peace of mind Thanks

I wouldn't worry unless you already have 5,000 existing forum posts and a brand-spankin-new link profile.

then that makes things easier then

you should be concerned, because your main keyword is also your domain name so you can get penalized for over optimization even if you are going for relevant links. If you are coffee.com get people to link to you with "www.coffee.com" "http://www.coffee.com" and "coffee.com" as well as other variations. Too many instances of "coffee" and you could get hit with an over optimization penalty since your domain name is coffee and that is one more major factor where they keyword is linking up perfectly.

_Ok, here I am assuming that you are sending mails to high quality sites with the hope of getting your website listed legitimately there and you hope that this initiative will drive some traffic and add credibility to your brand. I do not take it a worrying trend because you are not spamming the web with exact matched anchor text or trolling gov sites with comment spams. However, if the Gov sites are asking to return the favor in exchange of some kind of link back, in that case, it could be something to worry about. Now, if you are still worried, you can simply use rel nofollow tag against the link. _

I wouldn't set a fixed rule for number of words. Here's a short list of what I do when writing content for a service: Determine the target audience Describe the service being provided Create personals Disqualify likely objections Provide your unique value proposition Add image(s), or data (charts)  - if applicable Display testimonial(s) from the service Find the pages ranking for this service, see what they do well and find a way to do it better

Hi Zach, I want to be sure I am understanding your question. I'm not sure what you mean by having both a Google Places page and a Google+ Local page for your business. Google Places is currently still in existence as a dashboard for Google+ Local. See: http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2623007 Now, your query is kind of special, because of the nature of your business. Back in early 2010, Google stopped showing true local results for web design and seo firms and certain other types of marketing firms (see: http://www.searchengineguide.com/miriam-ellis/google-shoves-their-liaisons-off-maps.php) I believe that there may have been 2 factors involved in this decision: 1) heavy spamming in those verticals and 2) a belief that such businesses are more virtual than local. As you can see in this Mike Blumenthal article from just last month, Google continues to treat these categories of businesses differently, when it comes to Local: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/11/12/google-local-search-results-where-none-have-gone-before/ Because of this, any efforts you make with Google's Local products will be hampered by the fact that they do not choose to display website design companies in their true blended/local results, though I believe it's still possible to exist within maps.google.com. However, Local SEO Andrew Shotland had a highly-publicized experience with his SEO company and Google last February that is worth reading about, if you haven't already: http://www.localseoguide.com/hey-seos-if-google-maps-calls-dont-answer/ I hope these resources will prove helpful, and if you would like to return with further clarification about what you mean in regards to having both a Google+ Local page and a Places Page, I would be glad to read it. Please, link to objects whenever you can. Thanks!

It appears to be an editorially given link (good!), the alt text is not great, but it's good to have variety in your link profile.

Sounds like sloppy development to me... the -99999 and overflow:hidden looks concerning because throwing text off the screen is a common practice by spammers. While I'm not a developer, I don't think any of my sites' logo has ever been coded as a H1. The H1's are always within the body tag. The logo should just be an image. I would recommend comparing your source code to other websites, any website. It doesn't need to be the Genesis theme to be comparable. You just need to see how other sites are structuring their HTML. Does that help? Kevin Phelps http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwphelps

After doing some individual research, this is what I found out: When adding an using an "M." mobile site to Google WMT you need to add, and verify, this subdomain into Webmaster Tools the same way you would add and verify the "WWW" and "Non-WWW" version of a domain. Hope this helps you out too

Thanks, I'll give it a look

Okay, Thanks a lot! Zach

Hi Zach I believe you're all set - apologies that we were distributing an older version of the extension! All fixed now! Richard

Okay after some research the only thing that I have found that has changed since the 23rd is an increase in missing meta descriptions, around 700 of them. Could that impact SERPs

not sure about the monetization part but i would host them on your own site. if the content is good enough then that will get shared and linked too, thus sending people straight to the site to view it, where you could, if you wished place ads. You will also benefit from not sending people off-site to youtube or vimeo and increasing the chance of them not completing one of your calls to action, whatever they may well be.

Google states that speed win , In 2010 Marissa Mayer discuss about Site speed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQwAKsFmK_8 You can use webmaster and install site speed using firefox the link is under Labs. And in analytics go to site content then site speed to get the data. To increase your site speed. You need to make sure that your css is clean and the images are properly optimise, And most importantly your hosting provider Which tier network does your server resides, Tier 2 i would prefer as the have just one hop count from the backbone so  you get good speed. Would recomend Rackspace in US.

I know a decent amount about security and I know I do not trust just  Google webmaster tools to rid myself of malware. Regardless of rather you did everything perfectly you can still have times of malware on your computer that you are not yet aware of intentionally hiding from your system. use a free very accurate anti-malware system to check if it is infected. I should tell you I mean free to check not free to fix but at $80 a year and they will fix as many pages as it takes as many times as it takes in one year it is a true bargain. http://sucuri.net/ You might also want to consider using better hosting if you're using WordPress. I would strongly suggest WP engine, ZippyKid, websynthesis.com or Page.ly ( WP engine and Page.ly have pro discounts through SEOmoz) the other thing unique about them is each of them uses server-side http://sucuri.net/ if you want I will be happy to run your URL if not please run it through the URL here http://sucuri.net/ it looks like they told you to use this product however you're running WordPress.com which is not quite the same as regular WordPress however website is a website. I hope I was of assistance to you, Thomas

For those wondering, Matt Cutts answers the question in this video; It basically means that your site is is a grey zone. Not completely clean nor completely useless. Unfortunately for http://macpokeronline.com, it seems that the issues are not that easy to resolve.http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/research/domains/organic?url=MacPokerOnline.com&cc=US

If I were going to name a plugin that was NOT likely to be the cause then Akismet would probably be top of that list.  Nothing is guaranteed of course, but Akismet probably the mostly widely used wordpress plugin available. If there was an issue with that I think everyone would know.