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%links w/ exact anchor text = 56% v 14%

I've heard that 20%, depending on the vertical, is about the maximum threshold for exact match links.  Perhaps you are over-optimized?

I like that approach!

There are blogs out there on how to use code on Google Docs to pretty much automate most of this process.

How's your U.S. link profile compare to theirs?

I use SEO Majestic as well as Open Site Explorer.  Go try out the free program, and see what you think.

I check my rankings three different ways.

1. Dedicated browser that I only use to search.  I reset all the data every time I use it, and I never click on anything.  If things seem out of sort I will reinstall it.
2. SEOmoz.  I use their ranking checker in the Pro tools
3. SEOBooks Rank Checker.

By using three different options I'm able to see exactly where I'm linking.  In the off chance that I still think its off I will ask a couple of friends to search it.

That being said, location does have an affect on rankings.  Google wants to find the most relevant item for you, and location can be a determining point if everything else is equal.

Much better answer to the actual question!

What's your percentage of exact match links in your overall link landscape?  Is it over 20% (I would assume lower, but this is the number I've been hearing)?  If so, you are probably over-optimized for your phrase.  The best action would be to change the links to either your brand, or more preferably, to a similar phrase.

However, if you have less than 10% exact matching links, I wouldn't change those at all.  Exact match is still beneficial for ranking (but I doubt it will be forever), and you would actually have some room to grow with them.

With that in mind, remember to:

• Not focus on just one keyword at a time.  Gaining 50 Exact links in a row makes it obvious they aren't natural
• Use variations of your keyword, as well as exact.
• If it's your homepage, get a bunch of Brand links.
• Keep a couple poorly optimized links in there (unless they are from high quality sites!)

Article submission used to be the bees-knees (is that how the phrase is spelled?  Anyway...).  However, what you will really generate is a whole bucket load of duplicate content on the web.  To make matters worse, it's unlikely your articles will get picked up.

A better use of time is:

1. writing fantastic copy, citing sources with followed links (welcome back to high school!).
2. Emailing people in, or remotely in your industry (Real Estate Agent - property lawyer, house insurance, home inspector, etc.) and suggesting how useful this article might be to their clients.
3. Placing article on Digg, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook hoping some news companies see it, and pick it up.
4. Looking on Haro (http://www.helpareporter.com/) to see if anyone is writing about your topic, and needs a source.
5. Searching for your exact topic in Google, and finding incomplete resources.  Ask them for links
6. Make friends in some news departments, try get them to link to you (give them a couple stories every once in a while, and they will help you out).

This really depends on the difficulty of your keywords.  If the market is very competitive, then don't expect to rank in the top three very quickly with a brand  new domain (it can be done, but it would take a lot of planning with link bait, and amazing execution of social media).  However, if you are in a relatively easy vertical, you could end up ranking twice in the same search (bonus!).

I would suggest:

Using the old domain

301'ing, or reusing any highly linked pages

submitting a new sitemap

Gaining a bunch of links to urge re-crawling

Having a sit down with the client before to explain possible short term ranking drops (Which sucks! They don't want to understand why)

Not checking the rankings every 30 minutes if drops occur.

I was under the impression that it was always best to use the / at the end of the domain when linking, etc. Is this not the case?

Either way is fine.  However, I choose to use the no "/" pages rather than the "/" pages.  I do this because I get more links pointing at my site without the "/," and I want to retain as much link juice as possible.

Also, when you do a redirect I was under the impression that the link juice from the redirected page would be passed on to the page it is redirected to. Is this not the case?

A portion of it does pass.  I've heard as high as 90% passes on.

I deleted some of those redirects but left the /down-syndrome-1 there...I have no idea how a url was generated with the -1 at the end, but it did.  So i left it there (I may need to do something with that.)

Is it an exact duplicate of another page?  If so, redirect.

Are you utilizing a "canonical" tag on the pages you want to be the "true" source?  As it, using the "canonical" to say, "hey, this is the original!"

I didn't even check how competitive it was, but good point!

The best practice is to not let your internal search get indexed.  Use no-index,follow so that Google can follow any links on the page, but doesn't place your search pages in the index.

Reason why: duplicate content

How different is a search for "kitten" going to be from the search "kittens" on your website?  Probably pretty exact.  However, they will possess two different url's.  Ta-da!  Duplicate content!  Not to mention:

Kittie, Kitty, Kitties, cute kittens, funny kittens, black kittens, grey kittens, cat, cats, etc.

For proof, go check out your google analytics, how many different ways are people finding you right now?

Incorporate some of the same words, but you will want to focus on a more direct point as you go through the subs.

Widgets/red-widgets/cool-red-widgets/

This will aid in both SEO and user experience.

Matt Cutts claimed that they do not count some links just last month (Pubcon).  So, they can decide not to if the other site (not yours) is of too low of quality.

Unless the page is over-optimized for the term.

@Dylan

What's your percentage of exact keyword match?  How long has the keyword been down?  When was the last time your site was indexed?  Have you searched for duplicate content on the web?  When is the last time you updated the page?

Are you a business that people are going to want to interact with?  Oddly enough, people aren't too keen on liking a Car Dealership (my business), but I have seen other companies get followers.

My favorite example of engagement is a company that does it's troubleshooting through Facebook.  If someone has a problem they post it on Facebook, and get it answered right away.  Every other company I see has to run some sort of competition, but this company (Schedulicity - I think that's how it's spelled), just had to be a great resource.

Do they have anything link worthy?  Are there forums established just for this game?  I was active on tons of Diablo 2 forums back in the day, but not all games interact the same way.

Write the be all end all resource for each of those topics, citing your sources (as long as they have a high authority level).  Don't try sell yourself within the article, just write it about the topic.  Then, ask other people in your field to review your resource, and see if they would suggest making any changes.  After you have made a couple alterations, ask them if they would link to your resource from their website.

Then, do some "inurl:".edu" life coaching" searches to see if there are any universities talking about the subject.  Send an email to a professor in that department asking them to link to your resource.

Don't focus too much on exact keyword match, just get them to link to it.

These deep links will help with your overall domain authority, which puts you at an edge to rank overall.

I like doing "intitle:"city" directory" searches.  such as: intitle:"Boise" local directory

Another search I would use is: intitle:"links" life coaching.  You can find some resource pages from people, and try get a link on them.

Thirdly!

Write all your local information in Schema (schema-creator.org).  I've only done this with four sites, but I've had good results with it.

Is it pointing at the exact same page you are on?  If so, you are fine.

It's in your Webmaster Tools.  You can suggest which ones you want to appear down there, if you get the option for a particular search.  However, just because suggest it doesn't mean it will happen.

Ryan Kent always has an awesome explanation for this type of scenario, so hopefully he drops in.

Anyway,

As long as you have it organized properly you should be able to make an attempt at ranking any phrase you want (I say attempt since you still have to optimize after creating the site).

I've ready a couple of Ryan's posts about the reasons for using /folders or subdomains, but I can't seem to find them right now.

Domain.com/Movies/Best-Movies-of-all-time

Domain.com/training/Doggy-Pushups

Are you currently using Canonicals?

This is in your own website's search, right?

I've always heard that you should do on page robots that make it:

no-index, follow

So that all of the links on the page can be followed, but Google will not index it.

If you have a very fast website, and a decent amount of content within each tab, you could have each tab be it's own page.  Everything will look the same to the user, but you can optimize for that specific tab.  However, this will not work if you have a slow website.

Otherwise I would suggest making each tab it's own individual page.

Contact all the webmasters that linked to your blogspot blog, and ask them to change the link over to your website since the resources will no longer be there?

I personally also like using schema to designate a local business:

schema-creator.org

Click Organization and select local business in the drop down.

I believe the correct approach is using "no-index, follow" with robots in the search pages.  Not sure how to do that, though...

I've gotten a website to the top in less than 30 days before.  I had hundreds of domains already pointing at it, no competition and only had to throw in a keyword for the title tag.  Quite impressive, right?

But really, there are ways to achieve immediate top rankings for low-medium competition words, but many will get you knocked down as fast as you came up.  The only difference would be getting a high quality relevant link from places like the New York Times.

Are you utilizing an unused browser, and clearing out all the cookies/history/data before checking rankings?

You are partially correct.  Poor content is bad, too.  You would need to spend a lot of time on making a system that generated substantial unique content, but it could be time well spent.

Have you tried getting links from a gemological institute?

Make a real world comparison on the the three C's of diamonds, with videos of real women trying to tell the difference.  Ask bloggers, gemological institutes and other jewelry stores to link to it.

Costume designer?

If you design some of your own rings then you could work with a costume designer to make some simple jewelry.  Ask for a link for your efforts.  Maybe write a review of their recent play, and ask for a link from them on it.

Wedding Planner?

Not sure how this one would work, but you might!

Photographers?

Offer to use some of your really nice jewelry in some staged pictures.  Ask the photographer for credit on the jewelry in the photos.

Florists?

Every woman loves the gift of flowers and jewelry, why not find a way to work together?  You could also write an article about choosing the best flowers for the occasion, and ask for links from them.

You could also create a gift widget.  Submit the event, preferences, price range and the widget would produce gift ideas.  Embed a link to your website from it as the source, and try to get people to put it on their website.

For any of these people you could offer some SEO advice in trade for a link on their website.

As for your actual question, it's all about risk vs reward.  Some companies try to go after links in a very natural way, and some companies just try obtain links.  The first is going to be very beneficial, but quite expensive.  The latter will also be beneficial, but carry more risk.  It all depends on what you are looking for.

You have quite a bit of activity already on your Facebook page, so I would just link your website over to your profile.

Also, I would suggest creating a Facebook specific conversion page on your website, and iframing it into a Facebook tab.  That way you can still collect contact info/email addresses to continue to market to people.

I can't remember the exact size of the iframe, but its something like 520px wide, but the suggested size is 480px in order to fit a scroll bar in the window.

Other options:

Use reviews on your product pages (I'd suggest utilizing Schema markup - http://www.schema-creator.org)

Hiring out to college kids looking for a few bucks

Hiring freelancers

The best solution would be to work within your Content Management System to provide the best possible Title and H1 Tag for your customers, and then use an auto-generator to produce content.  I work with companies that have less than 1000 products, so I don't have a lot of experience with the auto-generators, but it will give you a slight benefit.

If I were dealing with that many DVD's I would make landing pages for each Genre, some for major actors/actresses and major directors, and go after those niches while I hammered out the issues with my content management system.

I'd use Open Site Explorer to check their backlink profile.  Check to see what kind of links they were able to generate for themselves, and then check on a few of those websites to see if they are indexed by Google.

I had a company try to sell me SEO+Link Building, but their whole link building network had been banned by Google.

Which one converts better for you?  For me it's my website, so I wouldn't dream of sending them away.  However, I have friends that convert much better on Facebook.

Conversions are all about testing to find what works, and keep building on that.

Yahoo uses Google in Japan (not that you, or anyone really cares).

Yes, Google will knock you for it.

Start with your most popular product, and work your way down.  Also, make sure you write the content for the consumer, and not for your company.

Another suggestion I would have is personalizing your website.  Brand yourself as an expert within the content, and mark the products that you suggest.  If you have a favorite hammer, make sure people can quickly identify it.

For references, check out Gun Dog Supply http://www.gundogsupply.com/

How's your internal linking structure?

Do a site: domain.com check to see how Google perceives your internal linking.  Are your relevant pages on the first page of your site search?  If not, you may have an internal linking problem.

To check this I used a web based program to find all the outbound internal links of each page on my website (only 200 pages).  I then transferred this data into Excel where I sorted it by page.  From here I was able to see that my most important pages had 20 less links than the unimportant pages in front of it. I then went through my website adding additional links to my important pages, using the same keywords I was trying to rank them for, until they had the most internal links pointing at them.

Internal linking is typically a problem with websites that didn't plan ahead for SEO.

Link Building is starting to be a transition back to College.  You have to write high quality content that identifies, and utilizes references.  In addition to just being structurally, grammatically and intellectually sound, you also have to have it fill a niche within your market.

For example:

You notice that several university websites have an incomplete analysis of the water shed on a predominant mountain range in their area.  You could collect resources online about this topic, and write a complete analysis of how it effects the people around it.  You could then request links from these universities to link to your complete article.  After you go through the 15-20 relevant universities you could start contacting the cities, real estate agencies and some guiding services to link to your article.

As long as you write a high quality piece of content that people will find informative and enjoyable you should generate a few links.  Of course, I would suggest picking a more interesting topic, but this is just hypothetical.

That being said:

I would suggest The Interenet Marketing Ninjas (formerly We Build Pages) and Virante.  Both of these companies have reputations for being great link builders, but you pay for high quality safer links.

If you aren't overly concerned with the risks, and you have a smaller budget, you could also talk to a link broker company like Text Link Brokers, who will assist you in purchasing links (which is a no-no if found).  I don't mean to alarm you, Text Link Brokers is a great company that doesn't give out their client info, but it would be careless of me not to mention that there is a risk.

As long as its related to your field, then yeah.  I'd also take a look to see if a link from here will generate either reoccurring traffic or a sale.  It gets monotonous when you link build without any benefits in the near future.

For example:

I received immediate traffic and achieved goals from a low quality blog with a lot of followers.

First off, if the keywords are pretty related, having similar synonyms, then it can be pretty easy to rank for all three.

For Example, I used my home page to target: Car Dealerships City, City Car Dealerships, City Used Cars, City State Car Dealerships, etc.

Since all of these are so relevant to each other, it made things as easy as just talking about my business in my city-state.

However, my internal pages are very specific: City state auto repair, city state car rentals, etc.

Point is, if your top three keywords are about the same topic, then it can be easy to rank for all three on the home page.  However, if they are different, and highly competitive (Diets and Gyms), then you are going to need to split up the content into different pages to rank well.

As for which pages you should focus on, it depends on your current rankings, and traffic.  If you currently rank pretty well overall for your home page, then get it bumped up to the top to increase traffic.  After that, start working on all the other pages.

If you aren't ranked well yet, and you don't have much traffic, then go after a niche phrase with decent search with all your internal pages.  This will help your bottom line more - easier conversions - and still help your overall domain authority.  I'm having to turn around, and do this with all of my websites that I took over (In-House SEO).

Funny, I forgot about that aspect.  Great answer!

I don't know if this is the case, but occasionally there are ranking spasms.  For example:

I ranked #2 for the search "City Car Dealerships" even though I am located over 150 miles away.  To make things even more complicated, I had used that phrase one time in all of my pages of content, and did so as a comparison.  For all intensive purposes I shouldn't have ranked that well for it.  Anyway, I stayed at that position for about 2 weeks, and have since dropped down to page two - where I should probably rank.

My advice would be to keep checking things out, but don't stress too much unless it lasts more than a few days.

7. And ask which keywords the website is trying to rank for, and check to see if it is.

Mobile apps are a must if you are doing this, I agree.

Ask for an example of a website they've worked on, and do an SEO background check on it.

1. Open Site Explorer to check links
2. Who Is to make sure they don't own it
3. Basics of SEO (Title, H1, etc)
4. Site:domain.com to check for indexing problems
5. Check out the 404 page (domain.com/anylongstringofletters)
6. Ask for references

It's my personal opinion that the only way to really review a SEO company is by talking to them.  I always ask:

1. What's your typical ROI?
2. What's a typical traffic growth?
3. What's the most competitive phrase you've ranked for?
4. Do you do link building?
5. Do you outsource your link building?

After this first wave of questions, I always ask for an example of their work, which I do an SEO background check on.  Check to see if they are following the basics (Title, H1, etc.), check to see the quality of links they provide and check to see if they own a network of websites that they are going to use to link to you.

Everyone would prefer that they found ways to convince webmasters to just link to you because of the quality of your content, but there are some companies that will either buy websites to create a network, or just pay webmasters to house links.  Both of these have some risk involved if the Search Engines discover that you are just housing a network of websites for the use of link building, or that you are paying for links.