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I am seeing a trend in digital publishing on sites like HuffPo and others where they are increasing the length of article headlines to 3-4 rows of large type, often containing multiple sentences. Other publishers like CNN.com still have shorter headlines and character counts. Perhaps this is just a design aesthetic, but I am curious if there is any SEO value to having longer headlines assuming you are able to fit your targeted keywords/terms and message in something shorter?

Everything that I have seen and experienced is that domain names themselves hold only consumer value and no SEO value, meaning if you did employ that strategy, it wouldn't matter what domain the content lived on, only that there is content available.

That said, I would recommend not employing the use of a bunch of spam sites only to establish inbound links. Google will sniff that out quickly as 1) they all likely look and behave similarly, 2) they likely will live on the same IP block and 3) not one of them will have any domain or page strength to pass any value to you, only look spammy (which they are).

Regarding setting up multiple domains to only redirect to your primary site, the only value there is if someone would actually type in that domain name looking for a product or service like yours and you want to capture that traffic. To the best of my knowledge, there is no SEO value in it.

Hope this helps!

This does sound like a drastic move, likely unnecessary in the first place. I recently had to take a site through a reconsideration request following a manual action penalty and found this article very informative: http://moz.com/ugc/the-anatomy-of-a-successful-reconsideration-request

If you are already down the path with a new site, you may want to consider switching the IP (or host) as a safeguard. I would also be cautious of the content, site structure, 301s, etc. If all you did was port the site, redesign it and plug it into a new domain, you probably have the same challenges (and infractions) that caused deteriorated rankings in the first place.

If the old site and domain is still active, I would go back there and see if you can clean up and disavow bad links and run a reconsideration path. That could even aid in the success of the new site on the same IP.

It is not directly sorted by popularity, no. I have run several cases in recent history against their associated search volumes and they really vary. I believe a keyword does have to have at least a credible amount of monthly search volume to be listed there at all, but Google appears to be truly predictive, perhaps based on recent search history, Google+ data, trending topics, etc.

I'm considering working with a group like Narrative Science or Automated Insights to create content for 10k cities around the country. Each article they would create (3-5 per city) would be completely original, based on data we either own or license, written to our editorial tone, voice and direction, and consist of 300-500 words per page.

If you are familiar with these groups, you'll know that it is not spun content or spammy crap that we know Google kills off in droves. It will be well written, accurate, articulate original content on topics like health, demographics, population growth, schools and education and weather pertaining to a city or metro area.

My question - assuming the answer is actually known - is how well (or if) this content will perform in Google. It is a significant investment for my group (well into size figures) and we don't want to take this decision lightly. We are looking to challenge sites like city-data.org and bestplaces.net, who largely just regurgitate aggregated data.

Interesting. I hadn't seen these links before and have never purchased links. I'll download the list from open site explorer and review and disavow these and similar. Thanks for pointing these out!

Agreed. But given that I had those removed in quick order and it has been several weeks since they have considerably dropped, any reason why they wouldn't have removed the manual action. I am essentially back to a pre-PRWeb profile.

I don't know if that makes me feel better or not, but you basically confirmed my thoughts. I may do what you indicate and disavow everything, but I am going try one more time and cut a lot more deeply in actual link removal first.

Meanwhile, of course, I am top 5 for all my major terms in Bing and Yahoo. Joy!

Thanks

I disavowed in the same day I submitted a reconsideration request, but I did also include it in my documentation. I also included multiple emails to publishers and contact form submissions, as recommended to me.

Sure. http://www.urgentcarelocations.com

I just added the footer links to each state profile this week and see how those could be considered "spammy." They weren't supposed to be implemented with "urgent care" after every one of them. I doubt that is an issue here, however, given that they keep referring to unnatural links.

Yes. The publisher (streetinsider.com, amongst others) are technically violating PRWeb's copyright terms as they are altering the content prior to publishing. PRWeb isn't very happy, but has been unsuccessful at getting the articles removed (which isn't helping my reconsideration request).

My site has had a manual action performed on it by Google indicating that I have inbound links that fall outside of their quality guidelines. I did my own research, found what I thought was the issue, had the links removed and requested reconsideration. Google's response surprised me in that they highlighted two specific pages with links that were the direct result of valid press releases and a publisher picking up our release off a wire service. Has anyone else seen this occur? Anyone had a case successfully reconsidered? I realize that I don't need to do anything at all as the manual action is in effect and will stay that way, discounting those links, but I would rather a) not have any manual action against my site and b) know for the future so this doesn't happen again. Also, is this applicable for guest blog posts, which effectively create the same type of backlinks? Thanks

It is not directly sorted by popularity, no. I have run several cases in recent history against their associated search volumes and they really vary. I believe a keyword does have to have at least a credible amount of monthly search volume to be listed there at all, but Google appears to be truly predictive, perhaps based on recent search history, Google+ data, trending topics, etc.

Thanks Kurt. You are correct that it wasn't a single press release but 3-4 that all had the same circumstances. In fact, it was the same 2-3 publishers that removed the nofollow tags. The real crummy thing is that those publishers refuse to remove the links so I am having to resort to disavowing them.

While I have been working through a couple of reconsideration requests, I have built some pretty strong links, but Google seems to have capped me at page 5.

I actually got a negative response back from Google this morning following my latest reconsideration request. It provided no specifics as it did in the past only that my "Site violates Google's quality guidelines" and references the manual action of "Unnatural links to your site." I'm on round three now. I only have about 300 total inbound links nearly all of which are purely natural or nofollow. What a mess...

I have disavowed the URLs now. The major offender was streetinsider.com. I was able to remove URLs on two other offending publisher sites. Even with the disavow, however, Google didn't remove the manual action. Going to try out removeem.com to see if their tools/service can assist.

Sure. http://www.urgentcarelocations.com

I just added the footer links to each state profile this week and see how those could be considered "spammy." They weren't supposed to be implemented with "urgent care" after every one of them. I doubt that is an issue here, however, given that they keep referring to unnatural links.

I disavowed in the same day I submitted a reconsideration request, but I did also include it in my documentation. I also included multiple emails to publishers and contact form submissions, as recommended to me.

I don't know if that makes me feel better or not, but you basically confirmed my thoughts. I may do what you indicate and disavow everything, but I am going try one more time and cut a lot more deeply in actual link removal first.

Meanwhile, of course, I am top 5 for all my major terms in Bing and Yahoo. Joy!

Thanks

I have had a Google manual action (Unnatural links to your site; affects: all) that was spurred on by a PRWeb press release where publishers took it upon themselves to remove the embedded "nofollow" tags on links. I have been spending the past few weeks cleaning things up and have submitted a second pass at a reconsideration request. In the meantime, I have been creating new content, boosting social activity, guest blogging and working with other publishers to generate more natural inbound links.

My question is this: knowing that this manual action affects "all," are the new links that I am building being negatively tainted as well? When the penalty is lifted, will they regain their strength? Is there any hope of my rankings improving while the penalty is in effect?

Agreed. But given that I had those removed in quick order and it has been several weeks since they have considerably dropped, any reason why they wouldn't have removed the manual action. I am essentially back to a pre-PRWeb profile.