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Woudl I be able to see this from the Dashboard as in by clicking the tags section or would they be hidden?

I am working with a client and have noticed lots of 500 server errors that look very strange in their webmaster tools account.

I am seeing URLs like this blog/?tag=wholesale-cheap-nfl-jerseys-free-0702.html and blog/?tag=nike-jersey-shorts-4297.html

there are 155 similar pages yet the client does not sell anything like this and hasn't created these URLs.  I have updated WP and all plugins and cannot find these links or pages on the site anywhere but I am guessing they are slowing the site down as GWT keeps highlighting them as errors.

Has anybody had any experiences with these types of hacks and can point me in the right direction of how to clean it up properly?

Ta

The problem with sitewide links and sidebar links is that they have been abused by the spamming world so stick out as if a paid link despite in a lot of cases actually being genuine.

You have got to remember that at the end of the day it is a computer analysing these links and they are not quite there yet.  Although they are legitimate there are hundreds of thousands that are not and this im guessing is what Google is basing it on.

I would go with the brand name of the website as well.  Just ensure you have great navigation to filter any strength through to the more targeted pages and start producing content on these that is linkable also.

I don't think sitewide links are a good idea any more.  Im sure they have been legitimately placed but in the eyes of a computer could look like paid links  which as we all know is a bad thing.

My advice would be contact each website in turn and ask for an editorial link rather than a sidebar/sitewide link.  This way you keep a genuine link.

If they refuse then I would ask for it to be removed as in my opinion these links are more than likely the cause of your penalty despite them being relevant as if they link to your fan site they are probably linking to lots of fan sites so could also look like a link ring of some sort.

Good point Mark that seems a much safer approach.

Hi Mark

Thats kind of what I am thinking.  I am going through 13500 links at the moment and it is killing me.  Seeing directory after directory is very painful.

Upto now im looking at killing around 90% of the links for this particluar client as they are made up from these types of directories.

Althoughs ome of them still show very high DA and PA aswell as high TBPR in my heart I can't see how they could possibly add value to a users experience as I can't see why anybody would use them to find anything.  Everybody knows that these types of directories exist for the sole purpose of obtaining links so surely it would make sense to kill the link even if it is helping at the minute?

Site has been hit witha  link warning.

Removing manually first off anyway.  Disavow last resort from our end.

Nothing in the pipline but have noticed a lot of directories have been hit recently so I am guessing it will happen at some stage.

I am also expecting a few different views on this but would be nice to hear them.  Whats your stance Andy would you kill or leave?

I am cleaning up a clients link profile and am coming across a lot of directories (no surprise)

My question is, if an obvious free for all generic directory doesn't look to have been hit by any updates is it a wise move recommending it for removal on the basis that it is a free for all directory and could be hit in teh future?

Lets say I have a commercial website that nobody will link to so I create a non commercial website with some awesome content that is highly linkable.

I then get 30 - 40  quality links pointing to this site which I then either rel ="canonical" back to my main site to the page with the replica content or  do I simply add a text link from the new site to the old sites homepage.

Which would benefit my commercial site most?

We are seeing the strategy of building a non commercial site for links becoming more and more popular.  The second question is is it worth the effort for in effect one backlink?