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I wouldn't get to concerned about having an a file extension in your URL. If you can remove/hide it, by all means go for it because it couldn't hurt + it looks a little nicer. With that said though, I wouldn't go out of my way to hire a developer to do that, it's not going to make a major impact on your ranking ability.
I wouldn't go out of my way to build a bunch of profile backlinks, but I would definitely get profiles made up on sites that make sense to use for your industry.
On a side note though, services like KnowEm can be useful for reputation management. Even if those profiles don't rank or pass any value along to your actual site, you can (and should) prevent someone from using your brand name.
I would probably go with the PDF, possibly with a thumbnail JPG image of it instead of a text link to the PDF. That's just me personally.
Most RSS feeds exist because a site has some type of content generating script/software tied to it (IE a blog.) If your site doesn't have something like that already, you can create an RSS feed using a site like this: http://page2rss.com/
If you are unsure if your site has a feed, in Chrome, you can use this extension to find out - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pnjaodmkngahhkoihejjehlcdlnohgmp
Any link that points to another page could be considered a "backlink" - these doesn't mean every link will show up in "back link reports" from various places. Every data set is different.
For example: In Google Webmaster Tools, it shows me a handful of links for my site. Bing Webmaster Tools happens to show the same links, plus some that Google didn't. The same can be said about all link tools (Open Site Explorer, Majestic, Ahref's, etc)
You can acquire links through an uncountable number of ways. The type you are currently chasing though may not be the best route for long term strategy or success. I'd suggest checking out link building related posts here on SEOMoz and then elsewhere.
If you just want to jump into action without really getting a better idea, this site has an awesome list of link building ideas. However, keep in mind there is a certain skill level involved with how you go about building links, something you can't fake easily.
This is personalization. Nothing completely new, it's just getting more sophisticated. Your SERPs will vary based on if you are logged into a Google account, your browser history, your IP address's location, etc.
Enter private browsing mode (Firefox) or Incognito mode (Chrome) for a better chance of getting less personalized results. You can also "verify" your rankings by using multiple rank checkers.
Chances are you won't get the exact same answer across them, but you'll get a much better idea than manually checking it with all the "personalization variables"
As John Pring put it, OSE doesn't update instantly or "often" - you might want to try out Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Bing's inbound link tool is remarkable. It's showing links to my site that I've never seen before (and I've tried OSE, Google's, and a few other "back link reporting" tools)
I'm most familiar with myblogguest.com but I wouldn't discredit any of those sites. Take some time to look around all the sites to see if you can find people looking for content that is somehow related to your niche.
I typically take a look at whatever site I have plans to guest blog onto, and see what their topics are like. Then I'll look for any "information gaps" on their site that would fill a need (for them), as well as be a relevant topic to the site you're going to be linking to.
This way you're getting a nice relevant link, but more importantly, you're producing something that the blog actually needs and will** benefit** from. That might get the guest post more exposure as well as strengthen your relationship with the owner of the blog.
If you are on an Apache server and have FTP access, you can setup 301 redirects using .htaccess
The proper format for this is as followed:
redirect 301 /oldurl.html http://domain.com/the-full-url
As Ben Fox stated, you can use the report to find the linking errors.
I'd also run a scan of your site using Xenu Link Sleuth (it's 100% free) if you're a PC user. Some people prefer Screaming Frog (both work well, Screaming Frog has a free and paid version to my knowledge)
I use Xenu personally, been using it for years with much success. You'd be surprised what kind of stuff it digs up.
Here's the format you may need to follow, I'm not 100% positive this will work for you but I know this is how 301s are setup:
redirect 301 vacancy.php?id=802 **yourdomain.com/path-to-location/**vacancy/?id=802
SharedCount is a great site for this (also 100% free) - http://sharedcount.com/
Using the multi-view dashboard, you can add multiple URLs and bookmark it so you can easily revisit the same URLs without having to add them in every single time.
(not provided) is probably not going away unfortunately. With secured search being the default now, and with Firefox switching it's search to SSL, the percentage of (not provided) will certainly be increasing.
@Randy Beck - there's no way around this for organic search. Any organic Google searches that come to your website from a user who is logged into their Google account will display (not provided) - you can still see logged in users keyword referral data from any AdWords campaign though.
My guess is either developer preference or lack of knowledge. Joomla is the same way. You can have domain.com/about or domain.com/about.html - both accomplish the same thing, one takes an extra step to do (adding the .HTML suffix.)
I guess if you are coming off of an old static HTML site and moving to a CMS, including the .html would allow you to keep the same URL structures much easier than setting up 100s of redirects.
Nope, either should be fine. The biggest thing to remember is if you change any URL structure, setup 301 redirects to go from the page's old URL to the new URL.
I definitely find commenting on blogs to be a great way to get involved and gain attention. The link you may get from it should be seen as a bonus to the actual engagement and brand-awareness you are gaining. I developed a tool to help speed up how quickly you can find related blogs to your niche, as well as finding ones which allow custom anchor text (and sometimes are followed.)
You don't want to over do it, but being involved in your industry (on the web), is sometimes equally as important as being involved in the real World.
I would consider other routes than using article directories for a long term strategy. I'd suggest placing one quality article on each site (totally unique, not spun.) Then try to build relationships with bloggers in your niche and try out guest blogging. You'll get the benefit of the link, the anchor text, and also a dedicated audience base somehow related to your niche. In short, the benefits are much greater.
If you must go the article route, definitely get links from a variety of sites. Make sure they aren't all ran by the same people. There's a lot of article "networks" which are typically easy to spot. It's beneficial to check the WHOIS data for the domains and the IP address/name servers being used by the domains to make sure you aren't willingly placing your articles on a "link network."
This is exactly how I handle similar things. Any badges or widgets should either be branded with just your domain URL, or brand name. Looks natural, also looks better for the end-user (the people visiting the website that the badge/widget is in)
Without seeing more details, as Steven Macdonald stated, I don't think anyone can really help you out. When you look at your page vs the pages ranking above you, how do they vary in terms of keyword usage, page content, rich media, title tags, URL structure, etc? One item in the Moz "Page Grader" that can hurt your rankings is the page structure. If you adjusted that, search engines would have to re-rank your page.
If your page was domain.com/keyword and you change it to domain.com/keywords then you are technically ranking a new URL and should setup a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.
Without knowing what you really did, it would be hard to tell. I would suggest going to the page that dropped and checking Google's cache of the page.
If Google's cache still shows your old content (pre-Moz suggested changes), then something else is the problem.
I would also be sure to check Webmaster Tools to ensure that you haven't been sent any type of messages / warning notifications. That's a pretty big overnight drop to be purely content-related in general.
Move over all the content, and setup 301s from the old URLs to the new URLs for every single page on the site. Only exception would be if you were able to keep the exact same URL structure when migrating back to Wordpress.
I've been a member for awhile, a PRO member for almost a year. I haven't experienced any problems like that, and I have come across issues in the past. I typically email or tweet at them and get a solid response within 24 hours tops.
What specifically are you having problems with?
I'm not sure how many of your /tag/ pages are ranking but if you can figure that part out, you can try doing htaccess 301 redirects for specific URLs, example:
redirect 301 //tag/Milwaukee-SEO.html http://savvypanda.com/services/milwaukee-seo.html
If you need further help with .htaccess and Joomla, I'm pretty well rounded with my skills. We use Joomla for a majority of our clients (followed by Wordpress.)
Matt Williamson has some really good points in his comment. I'm going to focus more on those potentially spammy link tactics.
I would only suggest using blog comments and profiles on forums that meet the following criteria:
The biggest thing to remember is, wherever you spend time building links, you better be building value too. Any link that was created 'for the link" and not because you are genuinely adding meaningful content/conversation will be looked upon as low quality, even spammy in some cases.
You don't want to create a negative image of your brand to the eyes of users, likewise for search engines.
I personally would not bother indexing the /tag/ pages since all that content exists on their own "permalink" somewhere within your site from what I could tell with a quick look.
I see your /tag/ listing is showing up in the SERPs. I also noticed you have duplicate content issues on your website.
S****ee this for an example:
I'd consider fixing the duplicate content issue first, that is definitely a major problem and is probably affecting a lot of other landing pages. Fixing this might also fix your original problem that you posted about.
There is no real right answer for the specific situation. Whenever I'm linking to content, especially my own (or clients), I try to include the main focus keyword in the anchor text but also include other words that make sense.
For Example:
If you are targeting the keyword "landscapers upstate NY" it might look weird if you link to the article using that same anchor text, it doesn't really make sense. In this scenario, you'd be better off linking to that content with something like "Landscape companies located in upstate NY"
I know the example is pretty rough but I think it displays the idea pretty well. The end result might be less anchor text love, but it'll make more sense from a user perspective and search engines can look at that and still get a good feel for what that page is really about based on the anchor text you used along with the content found on the particular page.
I would focus more on Guest blog posts for multiple reasons.
1. You get a contextual, relevant link, if the blog is within your niche.
2. The referral traffic from the blog can be more powerful than the link equity you receive from the post
3. The relationship you build with the guest blogging approach is priceless and can only lead to bigger and better things.
Squidoo can be extremely effective in certain niches for driving real traffic. For my niche, it took me a 2-3 hours to prep a nice Squidoo lens which does shockingly well at driving traffic to my site. The Page Authority (Moz) also shot up to 62PA relatively quick, so that's an extra perk. The real value on Squidoo is creating content that delivers people to your site, not so much for getting a boost from the Domain's authority.
A common practice to get a link picked up faster is to "Ping it" but as others have already said, if you are getting a good link, it should get picked up on it's own quick enough.
Regardless to the links you get, quality or not, pinging them is a good way to try and get a search engine's attention. You can also visit a site that one of your links is on, and check Google's cache to see if Google has updated the cache since your link has been placed. This will help identify if the link has even been crawled. If you notice Google has been on the page after your link was placed, check Webmaster Tools to see if it's showed up in there at all.
You should ask yourself 3 questions about the content you plan on publishing.
Is it a "resource" to someone, if optimized to specific keywords, does the content match the intent of the search query?
Is the content to similar to other content on your current domain?
Is the content shallow - how many words, did you enhance it with "extras" like pictures/media, how in depth does the content dive into the subject?
If you are finding that you're publishing more than you feel comfortable doing on a single site, I don't see the harm in offering some of those articles to other blogs or websites. Just make sure you ask the 3 questions above before trying to place your content on other people's websites because you want to make sure any relationships you build through this method are solid.
I own a Kindle with 3G and I use it for viewing Gmail and Twitter quite successfully. I haven't tried SEOMoz.org specifically, but I have successfully been able to read other forums pretty easily.
To fix the Title element from being to long, you'll want to edit your <title>tag in the header of your website. If you use Wordpress, you can try getting a plugin to help you manage this. Most people suggest either <strong>Yoast's WordPress SEO</strong> or <strong>All-in-One SEO</strong>. If you use Joomla to manage your website, I suggest <strong>TagsMeta</strong> for all your meta needs (supports canonical URLS too.) If your website is hard-coded from scratch, then just head on over to your Title tag and make sure it's under 70 characters.</p> <p><br />Duplicate Content. Make sure certain pages don't contain to much of the same content from other pages on your site (or other sites in general.) You can check for duplicate content in many ways.</p> <ol> <li>Grab a snippet of text on your site and do a quick Google search for it to see if your content exists on another website.</li> <li>Grab that same snippet and do a site:yourdomain.com "the copied text here" to see if you are getting multiple pages indexed with the same content</li> <li>Make sure you have a 301 redirect on your domain so the site is only accessible from www.yourdomain.com <strong>or</strong> yourdomain.com. Otherwise you may be getting the same page indexed because it's accessible from both yourdomain.com and WWW version of the page.</li> </ol> <p>Duplicate Page Title - fix that while updating your title tags, make sure all your title tags are targeting keywords specific for the page they are on, and make sure you use unique title tags as often as possible.</p> <p> </p></title>
Squidoo pages gain authority pretty fast and allow for you to provide a very nice experience for the reader if you take the time to make a really nice lens (page). They tend rank well for low-medium competition keywords.
More often than not, you're better off spending time networking with other sites in your niche in hopes to gain a guest blogging opportunity, rather than creating Squidoo pages.
As Tom-UK suggested, getting others involved in the creation process is an excellent way to create extra exposure. You may get links from those people, which can lead traffic. You may also get retweeted/shared by those people (especially if you mention contributor's name and include a link to their website or Twitter profile.)
In terms of new ideas that haven't been stated here, you might want to try to stagger your sharings, or share your content multiple times on Facebook, Twitter, or on Google+.
Learn when your audience is listening, and strike then!
I've been having issues accessing OSE in Google Chrome browser. It still seems to work fine for Firefox and IE for me. Are you in Chrome? Have you tried a second browser?
Pretty accurate response by Ressler. I use SEOmoz PRO Campaign Rank check, SEOBook's Rank Checker, and Market Samurai's rank checker. I then load the data into 3 sheets on a Spreadsheet and get the averages dynamically calculated onto a 4th spreadsheet so the client can see an estimated position ranking from 3 data sources.
I haven't dove deep into the contents, but I'd look at their link profile and the keyword competition for the specific terms you've used to pull those those specific pages
This reminds me of a lot of websites that got railed by Panda updates this year.
I seem to remember seeing a website which had several pages with similar content, it was like "How to make a fax from the Canada to Mexico", "How to make a fax from United States to Canada", "How to make a fax from Mexico to Canada" and so on (probably at least 50 of these pages.) Pre-Panda, they were dominating SERPs and rolling in the money, and now I believe they are no where to be found / may have restructured their content so it's less spammy, more of a resource, and overall a better user experience.
Having a lot of low quality pages like this on your website may hurt your overall rankings from what I've read, seen, and have tested.
Some people find blogs that allow commenting (most Wordpress blogs allow you to put your name, email address, and website URL along with your comment.) You can also look for community websites in your niche (forums work great, and most allow you to drop a URL in your profile and/or Sig - sometimes you can even get anchor text links this way.) Social Bookmarking may or may not work, I personally would avoid that route as I haven't had nearly as much success with it when compared to blogs and community sites.
Not that I can think of directly, there are lots of creative methods that I've seen used (but I can't vouch that they work.) I personally wouldn't worry about passing a little juice off to an affiliate site, unless you are talking about several (or dozens, or hundreds) outbound links on the same page.
Your friend is right. If there are 10 links on a page, and 9 are marked nofollow, that 1 followed link is getting less juice than a page that has only 1 link on it. The division happens regardless to whether it is nofollow or followed. I believe I remember reading this on SearchEngineLand, or it may have actually been a Matt Cutts video. If I can find a reference to cite, I'll edit my post/add another comment.
People don't mind "category" pages. You might find it better to have a button that says "Select Your Region" which leads to a page with the 36 links on it (and include a bit of text, so it's not just a page of links - good for users and search engines to develop relevance with). This will help with how your PR gets spread across your deeper pages.
I'd take an invite if people are throwing them around 
This is another great one. I've built plenty of professional relationships with previous clients (we refer business back and forth), as well as with a few graphic designers who work mostly in the SEM side of things (banner creation, tracking, tweaking to increase conversions).
Guest blogging. It's nothing new, it's nothing that requires a lot of talent, but my god! It does the trick for most clients I manage. Helps me acquires custom anchor text dofollow links from themed sites and the long term relationship with these blog owners are worth their "weight" in gold! You get a great link, you get some referral traffic, and you expand your network. Triple win!