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Hi,

I am sure you have heard of Google Penguin Algorithm that rocked many of the webmasters that use paid links to try and connect their websites/blogs to certain keyword terms.

• The big issue was the amount of paid links set in their SEO Footprint. Google busted a truckload of websites that showed heavy footprint for paid links.

Don't be afraid to pay for links to high-end directories like Yahoo.Com, Business.Com or any of the directories SEOMOZ list. Also try to do only a few every 90 days.

If you want great traction to your website, you need to start a content algorithm. Meaning you need to do some research and determine what pain-points your potential target audience has and start figuring out a conversation you need to have with them. That means both implicit and explicit thoughts.

Build out a frame-work of content first and then come up with a plan for syndicating the content.

Find communities or follow experts in your niche and reach-out to them to host or sample your content to start generating natural links.

Overall to answer your question. You can do paid links. However, do paid links of quality. Directories, Press Releases. Vary your anchor terms and do not a ton of paid links every 90 days.

I would suggest using Majestic SEO to look at your website's overall trust for links coming into the website.

They have a great graph that shows the "trust flow" and "citation flow" of your link profile. The closer to the orgin point the better those links are and chances are Google will trust those links voting for your site.

There is also on-page seo too. Make sure you audit each website ranking over you in link profile and on page seo. Things like too many characters in title, meta description, meta keyword matter! On-page-content and or keyword density matter too; you don't want keyword density higher than 3% (if you're using static type of content), this too will be a make or break difference in where you sit in Google's SERP!

Also the delivery of actual content has a lot to do with were you'll sit for certain keyword phrases. The more organic and useful the page to the user; naturally your social signals will increase, organic links will increase and thus stronger more stable ranks for certain phrases keywords.

*In SEO today the best thing you can do is study what your competitors offer in content on the page and beat'em. Syndicating your content to places where people can share you're great content or product (whatever) is really the best way to direct your overall efforts!

Add this to the top of your pages that you feel have the same content somewhere else on the website.

As far as the backlinks, I am not sure how that will pan-out. In theory they should still flow. I'll have to double check and make sure. However, duplicate content is a big issue. I deal with it on a national level and it is a total nightmare, especially when the site is very large-dynamically produce by a cms that is not seo friendly.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonical-link-tag/

I believe user reviews to work for local audience targeting. You can certainly add user reviews and ratings with Yelp and various others. I know a few engineers who use SENUKE to help manage creating the accounts and submitting reviews.

However, I would not recommend this as a stratagem to rely on for strong link signals. Remember last year's algorithms was targeting too much of the same link schemes to rank. I would include this in your SEO but balance it with a full content algorithm to help your brand target your customer's pain points. Sharing and syndicating this content will help create the social signals, which will in return have Google trust your full link-foot-print!

Also if you do this, try and get on a 0 to 90 schedule and only do it once or twice!

Hi,

As long as the content is not the same, you should be okay. Google will see them both as sister websites.

Avoid going after exact anchor match keywords that you might be thinking of targeting. Google came out with EMD (exact match domain algorithm) that is targeted to downgrade websites using this tactic to rank high in the search verticle. Also try to avoid .info, .org, .biz unless you plan on branding a community like SEOMoZ; hopefully this make sense!

I found this page within SEO MOZ that answers the link juice question:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

"Will this pass 100% of the link juice from a given page to another? More or less than a 301 redirect does now? Note that Google's official representative from the web spam team, Matt Cutts, said today that it passes link juice akin to a 301 redirect but also noted (when SEOmoz's ownGillian Muessig asked specifically) that "it loses no more juice than a 301," which suggests that there is some fractional loss when either of these are applied."

**1.) You want to check first for duplicate content issues. **

*SEO MOZ has a great tool suite here that ran a full analysis of the website from multiple angles.

**2.) You want to study their link profile and anchor text. **

If they were hit hard (not due to duplicate content), then their website probably got smashed to bits by Google Penguin algorithm. This is an over-optimize-algorithm that Google used to destroy websites that had thousands of links using exact anchor matches.

*You want to use brand anchor text and mix up your anchors when link building

*Research link prospecting and anchor text diversity

*Use majestic seo or ahrefs to study your link profile and determine if the site engaged in this damaging link building tactics.

*You certainly can try to disavow links through Google Webmaster Tools, but I don't think it is a good use of time.

*Focus on high quality directories (tons of curated list online just search), free directories, press releases using the website brand name anchor text

3.) General Marketing Persona Map - Learn Who Your Target Consumers Are

Also user site bounce rates can really become a sign of website that has worthless content. I would asses the goals of the website, product, and services and start with a general marketing persona map for surfers/customers. This is huge because it will lead to a better conversation algorithm to help you build out a marketing plan to reach your target audience at each stage of their though process and decision making.

**4.) Plan your content map and **strategy

You need to setup a schedule for custom content creation, on page call to actions, and a syndication schedule to help generate social signals of engagement to your website.

Also your blog need to establish Authorship and put a face behind the content you produce.

After doing this you need to create ideas for link bait opportunities like guest posting and info-graphics if possible.

*To do all of this, I suggest getting organized and setup a team of people within your organization to help you with each stage of the project.

This will keep you busy for a while! Hope this helps. Don't be afraid to Google the concepts I mentioned if you don't understand. This is how I learned back in 2004!

Flat site architecture shows that any directory one step from the root shows extreme importance; so essentially you can link to any inner page in any other directories.

For example:                                               USA

Jacksonville     Atlanta       Mississippi       New York      Los Angeles     Ohio       Las Vegas

As you can see in this model, this is natural. But it shows the flat site architecture I was referring to. Any of the cities show great value to the home page. You want to include any unique data in these directories. Essentially any file can be made important, so you don't have to worry about specific keywords you want to rank for not have an equal opportunity. You don't have to worry about one folder on your server having more importance over another.

You can Google "flat architecture"

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/a-flat-architecture-in-practice

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-flat-site-architecture

You can certainly should focus on your content algorithm and start planning your linking building profile.

Yea you can certainly do that. The only case where I see websites being on the same server are unique things like directories and other Internet utility websites to keep cost low.

Using C-class ips can get very expensive if you have a big network or plan for dynamic content on separate domains.

The only time I would use different domains is if the content is so different or you're content strategy is targeting something completely different to engage users in implicit or explicit conversation. You can use this angle to start a massive content algorithm system to funnel people into your main website. This is good tatic for white-hate-content development and conversion building. Hopefully this makes sense!

I took a look at your screenshot; but a few things first.

Proper silo-site is an ongoing process. The most important thing is to ensure that you have natural inner pages and link them to each top-level-directory (one directory away from the root). You can certainly tie your pages in each inner directory by linking from the main inner directory.

As you syndicate your unique pages in unique directories (again one directory from the root) you can pass great link juice throughout your website's skeleton, leading to better home page rank.

Whitehat SEO includes a very deep inter-linking structure. To get a feel for this checkout Wikipedia. They are the best at placing links to relevant or similar content above the fold and naturally linked to other directories within their framework.

To answers your question direct:

Inner link as much as you can to other files and from top-level-directories to files within it's directory. Only when it is natural include an anchor to other files for further reading.

The deeper a page can link to a higher level directory the better.

*For off-site SEO, getting links to the deep pages is going to be key to help pass up the link juice. Try sampling your content on different websites and getting a link back to page in the process. You can create pdf, info-graphics, or technical content with these deep pages and it will do wonders for your website.

You Heading Tags also know as your h1 and h3 tags are important for on page seo.

Especially the H1 tag. You should probably define a css class for styling because this tag can be big, bulky, and ugly; however, Google uses this as a large signal for what a web-page is about. The title tag is also the other most vital signal and it should match the h1 (I mean the keyword phrase you are targeting).

I emphasize everyday to internal departments where I work about the importance of on-page-seo. In competitive search ninches, these on page scores and organicness (if that is a word) will matter in stable rankings.

Also where you have your h1 should be above the fold (nerd jargon), right under the top nav. The h1 followed by a simple paragraph that has useful content and one or two links to direct users to targeted pages or directories.

Hope this helps.

Day in and out, I have to do on page analysis and off page analysis; so screaming frog is one great desktop software that I use to see lengths on title tags, meta desc, meta keywords, on page content, keyword density and other internal linking b/w pages.

The offsite I use and cannot live without Majestic SEO backlink profile lookup and SEM Rush to see overall trends when studying competition. These two are web-based and offer a free version; however, the pro version is worth the money!

I use Authority Labs to track keywords that reports tracking for all three search engine platforms. They offer reports to you and show you up and down movement on all your keywords and even the long-tail-keywords!

Hope these tools help with your post!

It certainly can look like this in the eyes of Google. However, if there is no mission or intent to try and scam Google of page rank, then place this tag in your header

and you should be fine.

Also any link juice associated with the page should also follow to your website.

For more info checkout this SEOMOZ post:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps