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Okay, granted, it's still early. But supposedly Panda/Penguin has "changed SEO" so spammy back links from web 2.0 sites (like Squidoo and Hub Pages) won't be worth anything, right? Why then, did I get a Google Alert yesterday (for one of the keywords I'm trying to rank for) for a Squidoo lens that has not only pushed a certain website up to top 10, but overtook my top 10 spot (pushing me back to page 2 or 3)? It's pretty frustrating (doubly so on an already poopy Monday!) to try to be all white-hat with link building, including writing good content (which I do), and yet get beat consistently by other folks who are clearly doing the grayish-hat stuff. Thoughts?

I just read this article over on Read Write Web: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_is_going_to_mess_up_the_internet.php The part that made me raise an eyebrow is in the section "Google+ Hates the Internet". I just tested the exact term the author used and his article does show up first, followed by two G+ listings. I don't have enough action going on in my G+ accounts to even test this, let alone see it, but was wondering if anyone else has seen it or tested it? Perhaps this in fact, is Google's way of using "social proof" to drive valuable content up? Seems like it, which is good. However, I can also see how it can be abused to further game and manipulate SERPs. Thoughts?

Hi! I've technically been a member for a few years, but just recently decided to go Pro (and I gotta say, I'm glad I did!). Anyway, as I've been researching and analyzing, one thing I noticed a competitor is doing is creating location-specific pages. For example, they've created a page that has a URL similar to this: www.theirdomain.com/seattle-keyword-phrase They have a few of these for specific cities. They rank well for the city-keyword combo in most cases. Each city-specific page looks the same and the content is close to being the same except that they drop in the "seattle keyword phrase" bit here and there. I noticed that they link to these pages from their site map page, which, if I were to guess, is how SEs are getting to those pages. I've seen this done before on other sites outside my industry too. So my question is, is this good practice or is it something that should be avoided?