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"4 letter words are appropriate at certain times, in certain situations..... Much like directories....."

LOL. Love it!

You're right: it is weird.

But even if there was a problem with your code -- as long as the code of the linking sites were OK -- then OSE will pick them up.

Internal links are obviously another story. I recommend checking some of your pages in GWT (use "Fetch as Googlebot")? It if comes back OK then your site is OK with big G (which is more important than anyone else).

There are a few besides DMOZ. But maybe (literally) 3-5.

Sure thing. Good luck.

It depends on the directory. 99% aren't worth even submitting for free.

But there are a few that can send some trust and authority onto your site, such as:

Yahoo
Business.com
FamilyFriendlySites (one of my favorites)
BOTW
JoeAnt
CannyLink

...and some niche-specific directories.

Hey Tom,

SEOMoz only updates the OSE index once or twice a month. So new links won't show up until they do a refresh.

As long as Google sees them you're good.

As long as you're not getting any messages in Google Webmaster Tools, your code is probably in tip top shape.

I'm all about performance.

That being said, I don't own or work for Google.

Anyone that claims to make guarantees is usually an SEO you want to avoid...especially when it comes to promising a rank for a specific keyword.

Like some other people said, they may be the cat's meow. But if you don't see what links they're building for you, your site may get nailed the next time Google busts out another update (which may be very soon).

It can take time for Google to find your Google+ page and add it to the index, Don.

(yes, even though it's on their domain).

I'd wait a few days and check back. If it's not sorted out, then I'd start worrying.

My pleasure, Sylvana.

When you say wedding related links, do you mean wedding sites you can get links from?

If so, there are a lot of search strings to help you find them.

For example, if you wanted to do some guest posting, you'd use something like:

"weddings" + "write for us"

Or if you wanted to find resource pages that might add a link to your site (one of my personal favorite link building strategies), you might use:

"weddings" + inurl:links.

Hope that helps.

It usually is spammy. But it certainly doesn't have to be.

A blog is a must for an eccomerce site today, Lindsay.

That's not just from an SEO perspective. It also helps bring in new users, raises brand awareness and is pretty much the bomb.

Yes, you can easily add a blog as a subdomain (blog.site.com) or as a subdirectory (site.com/blog). You can go either way but subdomains are going out of style a bit in the SEO world. In my opinion it doesn't matter a whole lot.

Keep in mind that you can post content on your site AND other people's sites. That's actually a great recipe for success. : )

Matt hit the nail on the head: link building software isn't worth the trouble.

However, you CAN do white hat tiered link building.

For example, let's say that you published a guest post here at SEOMoz.

Now, the next time you publish a guest post somewhere else they probably won't hook you up with a contextual link. Your link is usually confined to the dreaded author bio area.

However, they'll usually allow you to link to helpful resources. Instead of linking to a random article, link to your guest post.

Another example:

Let's say that you were doing some broken link building. You found a page with lots of dead links pointing to SEO related content.

While you could suggest that they link to you, they'd be much more likely to link out to an authority site like SEOMoz.

When you email the site owner about their broken links, suggest that they link to your guest post.

The list goes on and on.

Tiered link building can definitely make your links more powerful. But like most black hat techniques, you can do it white hat style and get better results.

I'm with John. If you're running a small site you probably don't need it. That feature is typically used for much larger sites with a lot of users.

When you say headlines, you mean URL?

Officially, dashes and underscores are treated the same.

I used to just make my URLs the same as my title (super-awesome-title-example.html).

But now I make them super-short (title-example.html) and to the point.

Andy is 100% right: don't sweat the snippets and noindex your category pages (they can be a dupe content issue so it's better to be proactive rather than end up as Panda food).

Interesting question Eric.

One of the first things I'd do is write up a professional press release to announce the partnership and post it on your partner's site.

This way, you get a nice contextual link from the newspaper.

And if your partnership ever goes sour, you'll always have that link.

Onto your question: I'd say go simple, like the Simply Hired example.

Remember: after the first link, links from the same domain aren't as powerful.

So you're goal should be to maximize the partner links for traffic and funneling PR...which a simple image link can do.

Two things:

1. While it's a a good idea to reverse engineer your competition, you don't always want to duplicate them. Has the site been ranking highly for a while? If not, you may not want to copy their links.

2. In my opinion there are literally 10-20 directories worth the time and effort. Remember: it's all about looking natural. And nothing looks LESS natural than getting 100s of directory links.

Here are some of my favorite directories:

Free:

R-TT Directory

DMOZ (good luck)

So Much

Ranking Directory

Directory World

Net Insert

All The Websites

MavicaNET

Paid:

Family Friendly Sites

BOTW

JoeAnt

Ask Bee

DirBull.com

Yahoo! Directory (expensive but worth it)

Hope that helps!

I know you meant good stuff, Andy : )

I think we have a tiny difference in approach...and I can definitely see your side.

I agree that putting all your eggs in one basket is a potentially HUGE waste of money.

However, I do think you should only have a few baskets. It's simply not possible to create hundreds of amazing articles without a 6-figure budget.

In my experience you get a better ROI from 10 mind-blowing pieces of content vs. 100s of very good articles.

And while Google has likely decreased link value coming from syndicated infographics...they still very much value links pointing TO infographics on your own site.

I agree with Andy that content should be your focus.

However, with a budget like that, the last thing you should be doing is creating "buckets of content".

Volume isn't going to get you a single link: you need to create outstanding, mind-blowing stuff.

Just look at this guide by QuickSprout...this is the type of stuff that naturally generates links:

http://www.quicksprout.com/

Did this take a lot of effort and money? Sure did.

But that ONE piece of incredible content is worth so much more than hundreds of "good" articles.

Think animated videos, stunning infographics and definitive guides. That's the type of stuff that will drive links and social signals.

Text on the page doesn't necessarily mean it'll get indexed...but it might.

You can always just 404 the page, wait a week or so, and see if the page shows up in Google's index (just copy and paste the URL into Google).

If it shows up you can simple block SE spiders from indexing it using your htaccess and/or GWT.

Sure thing Jeff.

They can help in a few ways:

1. They add content to your pages (without you having to pay anything)

2. As you suggested, they can also send you some long tail traffic

3.Google can display the star rating of whatever it is you're reviewing via rich snippets:

http://www.dannyvince.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/engraved-gift-ideas-rich-snippets.jpg

However, they're a double-edged sword. If you're careful about keyword density and other on-page metrics (like I am), letting a bunch of people write the content of your site isn't the best idea.

I'm actually KILLING a competitor's site right now in the SERPs who have mostly UGC/reviews. A lot of this is because my on-page is leagues and bounds above theirs.

Ahhh, I see what you're saying Adam.

I looked at the infographic page and the 2 links pointing to the homepage should send some PR to your homepage. So I doubt that's the issue.

One PR4 link isn't enough (even with the low OBLs of that page) is enough to bump a PR up from 2-3, at least in my experience.

It still may not be juuuuust not enough to show up on the toolbar. You could have literally gone from PR2.1 to PR2.9...almost there but not enough.

Just one thing about that you need to be careful about: having your 404 page indexed.

Some 404 pages have content (ie. "Sorry, but this page has moved...").

And if it's the only page on your site with that content, Google may still index the page.

MOST of your links should be internal pages...especially if you run a site with a lot of pages.

Take a blog with 150 posts. What are the odds that 90% of his links point to his (or her) homepage?

There's no hard and fast rule about what percentage of homepage vs. internal links you should have...but I try to have less than 50% of my links pointing to my homepage.

Simple answer to this: your homepage PR probably DID go up...but not enough to push it to PR3.

Remember that PR is semilogarithmic...each is not 10x the one before...it's often 1000+ times.

This means it takes a helluva lot more PR to go from 2 to 3 than it did to go from 1 to 2.

And keep in mind that there are hundreds of "partial PR" permutations not shown in the toolbar. So maybe when your homepage first showed PR2 it was PR2.2. And the PR4 link pushed it to PR2.8.

Not enough to show PR3 quite yet.

It depends on the way they're displayed, Jeff.

If the reviews are HTML, you bet your butt Googlebot can see them. If it's Java or Flash...that's another story.

Either way, that's not really the fresh content Google's looking for on page in my opinion.

When it comes to freshness, Google wants either a) significant amounts of content added to a site (ie. blog posts) or b) significant updates to existing content.

Either way, these reviews aren't likely to make much of a difference in terms of your rank.

Actually, domains that "no longer have a site up" don't have PR because they get deindexed.

If you're talking about buying expired domains, that's a viable strategy for getting a bit of a head start with a new site's SEO or building a blog network. But it takes a lot of work and a bit of cash.

One of the best places to find expired domains is at GoDaddy Auctions. Because the site's content recently dropped they usually hang onto their PR after you buy them.

You definitely want to be proactive...but not overreactive.

The disavow tool should only be used for a penalized site.

If you have a clean link profile you probably don't have to worry.

I once had a competitor hit me with 250,000 spammy blog comments...and nothing happened.

If you're really concerned you can always 404 the page and repost the content on another URL.