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Thanks, Federico. I understand your logic. And I'm not arguing it - I just tend to try to "read between the lines" whenever Google makes a statement. I certainly can see the logic of nofollow on a link while a PR sits on PRWeb or another PR site. But if the NYT or Wash. Post decided to run that story (yeah, I know... pretty unlikely ) I have difficulty understanding how Google would hold it against a site if the paper left off the nofollow.

Thanks for the response!

Federico, I'm familiar with the fairly recent statement from Google that links in press releases should be nofollow. In searching for it, I can't locate where it was, but I found this on the support blog: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
This only refers to anchor text rich links, however. Do you have a link that will clarify this?

I ask because my impression is that they only need to be nofollow on the PR distribution site. If a journalist picks up the release and runs it, my impression was that it needn't be nofollow then, (unless, of course, we see it's on a low quality site).

Thanks!

Hi, Travis-

I wouldn't be concerned with "diluting" any pagerank that you already have, if that's your question. You may be setting up new pages in competition with existing pages, if they're going after the same terms, though. The longer the existing pages have been out there, unmodified, the easier a new page may outrank it, all other things being equal.

Unfortunately, without seeing the site, it's impossible to even render a guestimate. For instance, how's your crawl budget? if it's limited, QDF could possibly allow newer pages to push older pages into the shadows. You might check out this post: http://www.algohunters.com/building-solid-index-presence-optimizing-crawl-budget/

I think I disagree with a couple of assumptions:

Saying that 5,000 out of 7,000 links isn't a huge number seems unrealistic to me. Over 70% of a link profile being any single link type is too heavy, IMO. 80% of them from one site is definitely concerning. I'd suggest some immediate diversification/pruning efforts to achieve a better balance.

I agree that nofollow is certainly a good measure, though. In fact, I'd put that at the top of my ASAP list.

The hierarchy of headers would require an H2 to be a subheading within the more general topic area of the H1. I can't imagine there would be any requirement for content between the H1 and the first H2, although, from the users' standpoint, it might help them to better understand what the page is about and how the H2's content applies.

David, I've done a couple of proactive pruning jobs and it beats waiting 'til you've been slapped. The comments on that video are mostly uninformed, in my opinion. Disavow has worked for my clients.

You might want to watch this short hangout sponsored by Arnie Kuenn, on the topic. We discussed proactive link pruning as well. http://intrinsicvalueseo.com/googles-disavow-process-and-penguin-recovery/ Feel free to give me a shout if you like.

Just as an afterthought, a slightly related issue... linking between your related blog and your ecomm sites shouldn't be any concern, unless you're dealing with several sites ("several", as in a LOT) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0-jw_PfwtY

1. I agree with Simon, and Matt C. did one of his videos in May of 2011, where he stated that excerpts, linking to the entire post is perfectly acceptable. He also said he does it on his own blog (and he still does).

2. I can't see that it would make any difference at all.

I'd agree that sitewides should be avoided whenever possible. It sounds as though you may be flirting with disaster. If it were me, I'd nofollow them, at the least.

Good catch, Anders!

Hi, Kevin-

Without knowing a little more about the niche and the services, it's difficult to give a definitive answer. But I think that in most instances, I would be inclined to simply concentrate on fleshing out the pages that deal with each individual service, all contained within one site. In that fashion, I think you'll gain more authority to the site, while still focusing on each service as needed.

Generally speaking, I would agree that validation is often too strict.

Google seems to handle this well, however. In fact, I seem to recall Matt C. once saying that the VAST majority of websites don't validate. I think he may have been talking strictly about HTML, though.

Validation isn't a ranking factor, of course, and most prevalent browsers will compensate for minor errors and render a page, regardless. So I really wouldn't be too concerned about validation just for validation's sake. As long as your pages render in most common browsers and neither page functionality nor user experience is adversely affected, I'd consider it a non-issue. As to whether a bot could be fooled into thinking the head had ended and the body had begun, I suppose it's possible, but I've never seen it happen, even with some absolutely horrible coding.

Hi, Stephanie-

Googlebots read as raw code. But in the example you give, it would see those links, as well. What remains as a question is whether it recognizes the nature of those links and therefore pays them limited attention. Personally, I doubt Google ignores them, as it's a valuable source of data for them for both the link graph and the Knowledge Graph.

I'm going to give two responses to each, one being what I suspect might be Google's take on it, the other which is my take.

Which of these strategies, if any, cross the line from relationship building to link buying?  Assume all links are do-follow.

• You're a local business.  You give the local Boys & Girls club a few hundreds buck a year.  In return, you get a very nice link on their Sponsorship page for 12 months. Google: paid; Me: paid

• You send a sample of your product to influential bloggers, for the purpose of a review and hopefully a link back to your website. Google: relationship; Me: relationship

• One of your clients is a college bar.  You invite 50 college kids over for a slow evening and stuff them full of chicken wings.  Then, you ask them to please review and link to the bar on their college wiki. Google: relationship; Me: relationship

• You give a client a free service, in exchange for that client linking to your business on its blog roll. Google: paid; Me: paid

• You take a blogger out to lunch, and pick up the tab.  Later that day, the blogger writes up an amusing little story for the blog, and links back to your desired website. Google: relationship; Me: relationship

• In your email newsletter, you put out a request to your customer base, "Please link to my website, and I'll provide you a special 20% off coupon." Google: paid; Me: paid

Scary! Turns out I agree with Google on those... purely coincidence

Great, Gina! There's nothing like that feeling of satisfaction when you recover a site's positions. I wasn't around when you had your issue, but I do know what you mean about the value of the community. There's a lot of talent here, and many of them dedicate a lot of time to helping people learn how to do things the right way. You can't put a price on that. Congratulations on your success... now pay it forward.

I have to agree with Francisco... mentioning Android in your copy or even a title, is generally accepted practice (although technically, it must be followed by the symbol the first time it appears on the page). You can see more on this here: http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/promote/brand.html

I'd certainly agree with that, Dunamis. I don't ask for links, and I don't respond well when asked for one, unless I have a relationship with the person.

I have even been asked for one by someone I knew, and tried to explain nicely that an OBL from an SEO site to a real estate site didn't really make much sense for either of us.

My advice, Rhys, would be to focus first on establishing a relationship. If the resulting relationship is solid, and both sites are relevant, a simple mention of your need to acquire more natural links may well spawn an offer.

Takeshi is right, James- you gain nothing by adding nofollow to internal links. In addition, if you attract attention with a lot of it, you could even incur a penalty. Matt Cutts has stated more than once that nofollowing internal links isn't advisable, except perhaps in limited special circumstances, such as to a contact form or privacy policy. If you get carried away with internal nofollow, it could look like you're trying to sculpt pagerank, and that could cause you problems you don't want to have.

If you want to keep trackbacks enabled, but don't want to deal with the spammers, another option is Simple Trackback Validation with Topsy Blocker ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-trackback-validation-with-topsy-blocker/ ).  That plugin will stop 95-99% of spam trackbacks by comparing the IP addresses. As Alan says, it's nice to know right away when you get a new link.

David, I've done a couple of proactive pruning jobs and it beats waiting 'til you've been slapped. The comments on that video are mostly uninformed, in my opinion. Disavow has worked for my clients.

You might want to watch this short hangout sponsored by Arnie Kuenn, on the topic. We discussed proactive link pruning as well. http://intrinsicvalueseo.com/googles-disavow-process-and-penguin-recovery/ Feel free to give me a shout if you like.