Thanks both.  I'm starting to think that I either dreamt this or it was someone reposting something old.  Definitely can't find it.

The closest I've found is this slidedeck from Justin Briggs in April: http://www.slideshare.net/justinrbriggs/link-building-reporting-12257082  .  Found via inbound.org - thanks Kane.  Hadn't every considered inbound to be useful before.

My memory is failing me tonight.  Someone very recently put out a blog post on measuring and reporting on link building post penguin. I didn't save it to diigo at the time (my usual backup memory) and I can't find it now.

I had thought it was on the blog here or at distilled. Turns out it was neither.  Anyone have a clue what I am on about?

Well, the only alternatives you have to that are:

• Don't change it
• Open the whole partner site in a frame
• Rebuild the whole partner site

It's worth mentioning that I personally  don't believe that bounce rate is a metric that any sane engine would use as a ranking factor.  I'm not that sure about time on site either (you could argue cases for both being negative factors as well).

I don't think that a frame is going to fool anyone.  So if you really want to send that signal and believe you need to do the whole thing then I think you are stuck with having the only option being rebuild your partner area.

Unless your partner area is very basic indeed, I can't see that being worthwhile myself.

doesn't seem to, no

You could totally replace common occurrences:

• 1/2 = half
• 1/4 = quarter
• 1/3 - third
• etc

Then just remove the less common ones entirely.

Hi Derek,

This question is trickier than it first appears, as a lot of the answer depends on how your back-end is set up.

My suggestion would be to move the login form to the main site, and leave the partner site where it is.  You can probably have that form target the existing login routine quite easily.  That would mean that you could direct people to the main site (lots of direct visitors) where they fill in the form and are then transferred to the existing partner site.

You wouldn't get any benefit from the dwell times, as these would be on the other domain, but the work involved is probably significantly less - even if your partner site is quite simple.

So - keep that possible solution in mind and I'll answer your questions from that viewpoint.

1. Very hard to say. It's a good signal though, so as long as it makes sense to the customer then it could be worth a shot - even just as "insurance" against the next update.  However I wouldn't expect massive improvements just from this... definitely not enough to warrant a major change to a partner set-up!

2. Either replace one of them, or find a way to move elegantly between the two.  You really are not going to get both systems working on the same domain in any practical way (unless you use subdomains) very easily.

3. You could iframe the login form.  No huge harm in doing so, but just having the form target the other domain is probably simpler and tidier.

I hope that is some help