I've written a guest blog post for a site. In the link back to my site they've put a rel="follow" attribute. Is that valid HTML?

I've Googled it but the answers are inconclusive, to say the least.

FWIW, I had a similar problem, in that one of my internal pages had 1,500 total links -- of which approx 1,425 were internal and had exactly the same three-word exact-match anchor text.

The page was ranking top 5 pre-Penguin for the keyword. Post Penguin, it sunk like a stone. A very heavy stone. As in, not in top #100. I've changed the links but still haven't recovered 10 months on.

Bizarrely, the page still ranks ok for other keywords, which makes me suspect some kind of manual keyword-specific penalty.

I pose this question as an SEO newbie: I know I'm meant to handpick which directories I submit to and go for quality rather than quantity.

Problem: the site that's keeping me off top spot has got there by getting links from 500+ directories -- low-rent ones, at that.

Why does this tactic still work in 2011?

All y'all SEO clever men be saying that paid directories (and fo' sho unpaid ones) ain't worth diddly.So how come when I open a can of Open Site Explorer on the a** of my (breathin'-down-my-neck) rivals, their (meant to be worthless) directories be passin' them lots and lots of link love? Riddle me that, people.

I'm no expert but my tuppeny's worth:

Re: the meta "description" tag, it's because if it's ridiculously long it gets truncated on a Google Serps page with ellipsis (...) There is one school of thought that actually favours this on the grounds that it supposedly encourages "curiousity value" click through, eg "This website shows you how to make $1million just by...[ABRUPT STOP]

Re: Title tag, a similar argument applies, although (& I stand to be corrected) the rule of thumb is anything over about 80 chars begins to look spammy, as does repeating any one word in the title tag more than twice.