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Not so much anymore as others have said...plus, we track heavily our inbound traffic and honestly, it's been YEARS since I ever noticed a DMOZ referral for any of our clients...

Might have been a real prize...but not so much anymore, eh!

Most of us SEO practitioners have had clients come to us with that kinda "hack" on their site....poor security or using just plain bad SEO wanna-bes might be the cause...so yes as Matt said here, tighten up your site!!!

Could you provide URLs for that?

I also dont' quite follow you - say you're looking for "plumber in Taos" -- do you mean that your site comes up 2nd?
-- if so good!

Do you mean if you're searching for "Bills Plumbing Services" (your company name) and that comes up second?

• if so, then what comes up first?

course...maybe the real question is - why would you want to detune to free??

Exact same thing has happened to us in the past too....

One of our clients is a major Canuck city's Economic Development dept whose mandate is to get new businesses and investors to come to their city to invest and open new businesses. At first, we too were denied access to anything - we had to create long Word .docs with full directions and screenshots of what to do and where to do it. However, after 5 renewals over the past 5 years, we were given full access to their site via both their CMS and ftp too...

Proving I'd suspect that trust needs to be "earned" - not given freely is how I'd see it...

Oh in another case another SEO client - a major Canuck University has not been able to give that same earned trust access as their site includes credit card info - buried deep and encrypted - but PCI specs say that they should limit access....so again we do the full Word .doc blueprints for their site....

re: directories....um...when I now think of same I use "citations" instead....and here's a great link to whitesparks list of the best citation URLs in the US and other countries too....http://www.whitespark.ca/top-local-citation-sources-by-country as well as I've blogged about this again just today too here....www.canuckseo.com !

I'd check over on Alan Bleiweiss's site...IMHO he's the best audit guy out there and if memory serves, he's got a checklist of some type there too...including a detailed post on same....

One more thing...

That you may also find helpful the leaked Google Qualaity Rater Guidelines - it was leaked to us SEO practitioners last July or so...

Google for that term - but here's my own blog posting on it - http://www.canuckseo.com/index.php/2014/07/shhhh-google-quality-rater-guidelines-2014-leaked/ - and there's a link there too to download the 11 mb .pdf....

Agreed here on Monica's answer directly above....this is what should be done, eh!

As Donna pointed out, the 'delay' tween what you expect time-line wise and what Google can 'do' is often longer than anyone would wish........

GWT for new index, then ask for complete read...then u/l a new .xml sitemap...

Far as I know - no value at all for serps....but for searchers perhaps...depends on whether it might be a transactional query or a instructional one etc etc....

I've been followin the "Negative SEO" world for years - http://www.canuckseo.com/index.php?s=%22negative+seo%22 - will lead to our own blog posts on same...

Suffice it to say - please tho do read some other experts and how they say to fight off same - the best tool you have is the Google disavow one - oh, don't forget that BING has one too, eh!

Hang in. Stay on top by using a great very functional IBL tool too like majestic too...and keep on the disavow trail...is the best thing I can offer today....

Here's the iconic post on just that area - http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide - from Miram who's on staff here at Moz.com...

And she addresses that too....well worth the click/thru eh!

As Andy put it "...Remember, you are aiming to get the right traffic to your page - not just any traffic..."

and what he means is traffic that converts!!!!

If what you're asking about entails LOCAL search, then a quick look here at the moz Local Search Ranking Factors study will show more...though not spefically about what sites to gain Citations on...

For that I use Darren's Whitespark.ca for a complete clickable list one uses to build your own....

Is that what you're looking for?

Yeah...as noted the tech is ASP.NET but that has diddly to do with SEO, eh!

Course same value to the reader of that post if you just LIST the URLs, and do NOT make them real live links...

Value passed on still, eh!

Try the guys over at wordstream.com too...odd site with some understanding needed to parse the answers but yeah, it's a diff source that might help too....

Which is why we never use 'other sites' code snippets but write our own for clients....

Need more data to help, eh!

BI - business intelligence is an important tactical advantage if you can establish what a competitor is doing SEO strategy wise that is..

So if you wish to tell the world exactly what SEO keywords you're targeting then sure go ahead....

It's a "not-too-smart" idea in my SEO world tho...

Yeah....been there and done that too....for a client with again a series of various brands in the outdoor network...

And after all was said and done we left them all on a single IP server hosting too...made no diff to any search engine as they were all ranked individually with no penalties etc...

So I'd say pass on that....unless you need something to do....

Your brain comes to mind....plus the months of research and testing that any due diligence would entail....

There is no shortcut to success....'cept damn hard work, eh!

As Egol has said....it's all true...and as he never takes any consulting....he's unavailable

But DO look up Alan on google - and you'll find he's one of the best known, most revered, most reputable audit guys out there...in fact I couldn't even name a peer of his....he's def the one to contact.

Haven't seen any 7-Packs in months now...I too am up in Canada using g.ca and they're all gone for all of our own searches....

Will not hurt at all...other than let the reader know the date you published same...first date that is, not a subsequent update date....fyi...

Bottom of this page click on the Recommended Companies....that's the best advice here!

Yup, semrush is for you!

Yup...the content is not hidden from the googlebot...so it's still read, indexed and used....

But as Sheena noted, that's "old school" design thinking, eh!

Or...give this link a click to see what the continent's top LOCAL search experts have ranked as factors to consider when building new LOCAL search serps!

Disclaimer: yup, I'm one of same for the last few years but the knowledge in that survey is terrific, eh!

What Keri said...works!

Yeah...what I see above could ONLY be looked at as link manipulations...

Don't know how else to phrase what I mean - but it appears that you're trying to gain traffic by using all the WRONG tactics....when I see clients that use content markers as " > 2000 chars"  & "fiverr" & "boilerplate"  -- they're all telltales of trying to get real live stable rankings using 2004 tactics....sigh....

YMMV...but in my world those items you've listed show a basic fault in your whole SEO strategy, eh!

There is really nothing to say about the mistakes made by SMB owners who believe that they've contracted with a great SEO firm - and find out later that is not so true...

Which gets me to the real value of a referral. Look for - always look for an SEO firm that has the 'added value' of offering up a set of referral clients for you to check on yourownself. That is so important in that a real live SEO firm will always be able to supply that list- long or short - but that you can call on the phone or email to the CEO and ask "...hey, the XYZ SEO firm said you're a client...tell me about your experiences with using them...." type of contact.

Without that - on what core values are you really buying an SEO contractor?

Oh - the "recommended" list of companies can also be a great starting place too - use that list to drill down on, visit each of your final candidates from and THEN call/email their list of referral clients....

Anything else I'm afraid is just "burning" your money....sad to say...

Veebs..you should really start a brand new thread so others can join in on this topic...

But as you've explained things - it boils down to you need a brand new SEO who can delive serps that are solid and reliable without using tactics like you've outlined.

Small point but when we get a new client, and we do the same checking you appear to have done, what we find is that with these kind of tell-tale bloody awful SEO we learn that the client readily admits that yes they went to the cheapest SEO package they could find -- reinforcing the old adage that you do "get what you pay for!"

Do a google for "googel disavow" and you'll see they years ago now set up a way for any SMB site owner or SEO to lit the links you want Google to toss in the bin!

you're off on a tangent here....let's not do that...my comments referred to the 'why' not the cause....

go to the 'recommended' list and pick a few to vet....then get a deal and they will undoubtedly do that complete web audit first to see where you are and why...

all else is rhetoric here....time to get the tasks started, eh!

Me? I'd do a full web audit...find all those IBLs....then disavow 'em all....incl the ones you've yet to find when you do!

Best to start with a completely new slate IMHO....

I have no idea what kind of site this is - the OP message was that they needed a fix and improvement of serps which I assumed meant they'd slid....which he confirmed...hence my comment on Pigeon...

and g.ca means "google.ca" - the Canadian google farm...just my lazy way of writing same!

Years ago, we used Fontographer to create custom chars to add to a font which when published would make all kinds of chars avaiable in Google et al...

Don't know if it's still in play....but seems like it from what is above...

clicked on that competitor URL and it's plain jane junk...

if you create a real site with great content you should go by this EMD site in time...

and DO NOT copy this p**spoor example of serp manipulations either!!!

I haven't investigated at all on your issue - but I did see the post just above mine here where ameliavargo made the point that if a site is hacked - then that might be the case...

And this is something I know can happen via our own experience with one of the major crab boat partners on "Deadliest Catch" TV show being hacked and gaining BIG link juice via those hacks (solved of course now!)...

Look for hackng is I guess what I'm saying too!

You do know that the Pigeon updates back last summer were just rolled out in other google farms too, right?

So if you're looking say at rankings via g.ca - that might be the culprit....

#justSaying

Appears that moz is not supporting IE either...tho they are supposed to be "working" on it...but till they actually do get the analytics to work in IE - use Chrome....

Not fun to try to explain that to a client tho...

Well....there are so so many things that can contribute to a fall in rankings...that I can't mention them all here...

But a drop - if I read you right - from #6 to #10 is not a drop really at all...just normal fluctuations...i.e. this is how the rankings flutter...

Have you checked tho to see if you're looking at the rankings using Personalized Search? Incognito? WebHistory on/off?

Do some googling for those topics....read...and learn!

Not trying to be dismissive here - just that there really is no 'answer' that you'd be satisfied with....honestly!

Whitespark....Darren's got Nyag there and he can build with the best of them!!!

Yup....Marie knows her Penguin stuff for sure...would highly recommend this Canuck!

without a price, how can I determine if you are making the best offer...this IMHO is so important for commodity products...