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You've no doubt removed alot of links that might have been helping you rank as well as did before. That may very well be why you haven't regained much of that traffic.
Another reason might be, the site is still under an algo filter like Penguin. The links you removed may have been enough for the manual reviewer, but not enough for Penguin. Or maybe it's enough for Penguin, but since it hasn't been refreshed since October ..you can't recover yet.
Example:
The page has a rel=canonical pointing to itself. That is what the tool recommeds.
The page still has a canonical tag pointing to the preferred URL.
I don't think Rand has ever said that going greyhat or blackhat doesn't work, or isn't alive. The real question is ..for how long ? Those doing Greyhat/Blackhat usually understand the risks and are content to reap the short-term rewards for as long as they can. When they lose, they are start over OR they switch to the next thing that works. There will always be that "next thing" that works for now.
What I think Rand endorses ..is a strategy where you're not chasing the algo or trying to artificially create popularity. It takes longer, is harder ..but almost always is better way to go.
I don't think you should do it by screen size.
If you're using Wordpress, then install W3 Total Cache.
Among MANY other essential things, it will allow you redirect visitors based on user-agent to EITHER:
1. another theme that's better suited to particular sets of users (for example, one wordpress theme for mobile, and one for tablets, one specially for iOS devices, etc).
2. or set it to "pass through" so you can handle mobile management with another plugin like "Mobile Smart", which i use.
3. or set it redirect to m.domain.com which is what you want.
Advantage? It reduces unnecessary overhead and it's one of many little tweaks you can make to ensure your site is the fastest it can be.
If you have wordpress setup on www.domain.com, then all your static files (images, css, js) are served along with cookies set on the domain.
So the basic solution is the create a subdomain of your main domain (or register a whole new domain just for it) and server your static files from that domain.
I use W3 Total Cache configured to serve all static files from a subdomain which is on Amazon Cloudfront. W3 automatically rewrites all your theme and images path to the new subdomain. It's really easy to setup.
Check these out:
http://www.allthingsdemocrat.com/w3-total-cache-cookieless-subdomain-godaddy-shared-hosting/
http://www.riyaz.net/blogging/setup-own-cdn/890/
In addition to that, I had make tweaks to my Google analytics script to ensure it doesn't set cookies on my cookieless sub-domain.
Changing that isn't likely to result in much improvement. It might actually have a negative effect if proper 301 redirects aren't in place. And even if you do the 301's correctly, there's no guarantee the search engines will see it the same.
You'll get better mileage if you change the page's titles and the content to better satisfy those keywords.
Also rather than listening to what other people say, you should probably check the actual search volume of these keywords and compare.
They actually do have a few high value links, but also some junk that any 12 year old site will pick up over the course of time.
But things aren't as rosy for them as it may seem. Based on the few pages I looked at and their semrush page, I'd guess they've got some partial Panda issues.
Either way, it would be hard for anyone to tell you exactly why they do still rank well for some terms. It's not just any one or two or even five factors.
If i had to guess though, it would be because of those few high value links, and the fact that they've been around for so long.
Check Google's Webmaster Tools for the website.
Go to Health > Crawl Errors ..then click on the "Not found" box to display the list of URLs that are returning 404s or 410s. Now click on any of the 404 URLs and a pop-up box will appear with three tabs.
Under the "Linked to" tab, they usually indicate how they found that URL (whether from internal or external pages).
It sometimes lags with the updating though.
If your idea is to slap on your signature with anchor text heavy links on every forum possible, then no they are not a very good thing to be doing post-2012.
There's a place for them though. If you're participating on a forum that's relevant to your website then I don't see why you can't place a link or two to your website in the signature. But I would avoid trying to put manipulative anchor text in there. Just use the plain URL or a branded term like your business or domain name.
Also, google recently updated their webmaster guidelines with a forum signature example of what you should not be doing:
Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature, for example:
_Thanks, that’s great info!
Believe it or not, your goal with press releases, isn't to get backlinks from press release sites or insert keyword rich urls to your page. It's to raise awareness and get reporters, bloggers, publishers to notice your content or "news". Once they know about it, they may take action - link to you, contact you for more information, republish your release, or write their own story based on your release.
Don't expect PR sites to count for much, REGARDLESS of their domain authority. ezinearticles.com has a sweet DA of 95. Guess how much Google values a link from them ? PR sites were impacted by Panda just the same as sites like EZ were.
So needless to say I think you're looking at it all wrong. In choosing a Press release distributor pick one that can offer you the widest distribution for your newsworthy content. Unfortunately, you're not gonna achieve that with the free options. Why would you put your awesome content on sites that humans don't read anyway ?
In summary, stick with PRweb/Prnewswire and avoid putting targeted anchor text in your release.
-Just my opinion.
Why isn't a 301 possible? If the host doesn't have ISAPI_Rewrite, then a custom 404 that contains a 301 will work.
There would be a big impact on rankings otherwise.
Google doesn't usually take individual action on those spam reports. They prefer to let their algo take care of it.
So you need to stop worrying about them, and concentrate on you.
A 301 redirect is available as an upgrade. $12 per year.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/site-redirect/
You'll need it if you want to ensure your site continues ranking after you switch to a new self hosted domain.
Before you do the 301, you need to do a Tools > Export on the old site and then Tools > Import on the new site and be sure to tick download attachments.
Good luck.
From following all the talk, I'm pretty sure they are working on points 2, 3 & 4.
While all that is good, I personally feel they should concentrate on updating more often first, then move towards giving those extra features. The two month stretch between updates has been a real pain in the ass. But I'm sure they know that.
1. only do it if you have something really newsworthy to publish. Otherwise, you're wasting your money.
2. don't even try to include a bunch of targeted anchor text everywhere possible. Less links the better. The point of the press release isn't to get links from press release sites.
Try using 'broken' link building.
There's several guides and posts here on Seomoz. Just search.
Basically, you scan through the list of links, and you'll probably find a few broken or 404 pages. Point those out and also recommend the addition of new resources, including your own. It works extremely well, and you don't come across as the typical emailer that the webmaster probably encounters everyday.
Round off that strategy with a regular guest posts, link bait and other content marketing ...and you're solid.
For WMT, they seem to update "Links to your site" data every 4-5 days. And when they do, the data is about 10 - 14 days old.
Don't take these times as an indicator for when Google considers a link or not. It's not kept closely up to date with their index.
Ahrefs/Majestic are pretty fast in my experience. Sometimes in as little as 1-2 days for links on popular domains.
For OSE, it's once a month. The last update post says they'll be cutting that time down to weeks -- and eventually more often as they move from amazon to their own hardware.
No reason not to. It's still a legitimate way of getting links to your site. I'd only be careful of the anchor text you suggest in your embed. You don't want to make it too obvious or spammy.
Ok.
1. It's a little bit of both gut feeling and more evidence. Sometimes you can look at a site and just know that it's not a place you want to be. Just like you can look at a dark alley and know that's not where you should be at 1am in the night.
You gather the "evidence" by answering those questions I provided.
2. I am sure (almost positive) that a single link from yahoo dir will be better than dozens from the types of directories you're describing. There's a reason it costs $299. If you truly do have a quality site, then you shouldn't be quite worried about inclusion. They are strict, but not that strict.