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On 4/19/12 I began changing the link title tags in an effort to further optimize my website. I thought they were excessively long and it would be beneficial to make them more concise. On 4/26/12 my website traffic began to fall drastically and I'm not sure if it is from google's penguin update or from changing the link title tags. I started looking into the sudden drop of traffic and realized that when I run the site explorer tool on all of the pages I changed, the URL is redirecting. It appears that the backlinks are not passing through to the new URL. Before I Changed the Link Title Tag: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm **After I Changed the Link Title Tag: ** http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm So my questions are: The above example shows that the old title tag (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 43 backlinks and the new one (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professiona-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 0. Will the links eventually be attributed to the new URL. I understand that the user will still be directed to my website they click the any of the backlinks, but will the link juice pointing the old URL pass through the new one? Would it be better, in the long run, to continue optimizing the link title tags.

I recently began re-optimizing my title tags site wide. Could this cause 301 redirects and the loss of backlinks?

A while back we were schooled on "Link Silos" a reputable SEO source.... and one suggestion was to create links from our product pages (bottom of link silo), back up to it's higher category page. So for example... Home > Tools > Hair Dryers > "Product" On the subject product... we chose to link back to "Hair Dryers" and then "Andis" (that product's brand page. You can see this at the below product page. We added the links below "Related Categories" in the product description. http://www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Colorwaves-Tourmaline-Hair-Dryer-Blue-Green-p/an1dry0295.htm We are now thinking this may be just too much as there is already a "bread crumb" trail at the top of the product page. These are in essence links back up to higher categories. Any input on these types of links would be appreciated.. Thanks!