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Hi all, this is only my second question on SEOmoz since becoming a member over three months ago so sorry if it’s a little bit basic. As small part of one of our websites promotion we have been giving really good advice on good authority blogs/forums related to our product website. One of the sites we have offered advice on is from a US website and we added a link to our guide for the problem to our UK site. In hindsight the product solution is not branded the same in the US so our bounce rate is over 90%. So the question is when is a link from a related site not worth the high percentage bounce rate?

Hi I have just run a crawl test on screaming frog and it is showing quite a few 403 forbidden status codes. We are showing none of these in webmaster tools, is this an issue?

I am I really new when it comes to SEO and especially link building. I have been hooked into websites ever since I did my first just writing content on what I loved. Then came the number one ranking and enquiries! Since that time I have created many websites and have always relied on good on page optimisation and have got great results in low competition keywords. Now I am trying to make a living out of this business with multiple websites retailing products I am hitting more moderate competition on keywords and have found myself on a 30 trial with SEOmoz. This has been a huge eye opener for a beginner and I have not had much sleep since analysing all the data that the tools can give. (My wife thinks I have an online mistress). What has really got me stuck is the link analysis on competitors open site explorer! As I am becoming a real SEO research geek and creating spreadsheets on my competitors links I am finding many are paid directory links! (one off 30 dollars’) . From what I understand from Google is that paid links are against their guidelines? These links are from sites that are ranking above me? What I am asking is should I follow suit in a fine balanced mix or stay clear of paid links completely? Where I always write unique content  on experience for my content category pages the real chance of organic linking is slim. Is the only way forward to buy the odd cheeky link?