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The key words used here are quality and relevant. For us (we have copywriters on board) as we see our need for more and more blogs, pages, etc. we will likely outsource some of that content. If someone were writing for one of our client sites, say medical equipment sales, and they could write relevant posts of at least 200 words we would likely pay $25 to $50 depending on the sites they were published to and the quality of the article/post. Obviously, the anchor text and links would have to be there as well. 
We do occasionally pay more when we know the writer and have seen quality from them before.

Hope this helps.

Edit (By more, I mean up to $100 per).

Ian,

First with the change to .com read what Ryan wrote and follow the change of address steps.

How long ago did you make the change?

Take a look at these common problems on HTTPS switch by Cyrus Shepard a year or so ago and see if you have more work to do. (Mistakes are roughly a third of the way down.)

I will follow the question and am checking our Apache expert re the perfect rewrite rule for this. If he is not on a 100 mile bike ride I should hear from him shortly. Otherwise, maybe tomorrow. I will PM you worst case.

Best

Great Fence,

I am going to remain calm here and simply say, No.

I have looked at them and I just cannot wrap my head around the massive outpouring or the content issues. Too many of both PRWeb and PRNewswire releases are amateurish and that cannot be ameliorated by the fact they can run it out on AP or have a list of 6,000,000,000 places they send it to.

Think about this: look at the releases of others and you will see what bad is. If you are going to do this, make sure you write something that is more than your company name and a retweet of someone's retweet of retweet about some event.

We have our own copywriters, train them weekly, keep them abreast, watch as their quality content is stolen by also rans...think news services, people that Huff, etc. The issue today is not simply creating content with your company name attached to it to get links, it is about creating quality content that no one else created and that someone wants.

These companies make a lot of money on people who are looking for an easy way out. There isn't one. Sorry,

Hope it helps,

Also, I would suggest you go to AP and see what you can do with them. As an AP member, you can use their content and they can use yours and the prices are less. You won't necessarily have the outlet but there are ways.

It would help if you gave us a bit more data, but here goes:

Use the 301 from the main site to the subfolder. Understand you do not want to have the subfolder then redirect back to the main site. If you do you are going to create a loop. So the assumption is that everyone is served the initial home page from the host country and in milliseconds, the IP is read and they are redirected. So, you are hosted in Denver, I am coming to you from Fr, and it auto redirects me to the Fr subfolder. (Question, this is occurring whether homepage or subpage correct? You are not just redirecting from homepage, correct?)

I am assuming you have utilized hreflang notations correctly. Make sure to read the common mistakes at bottom of page.

Hope this helps,

Robert

You answered my question and your answer was posted by DiscoverAfricaGroup. This is a very low value way to go.

Best

I would be shocked if it were an issue based on what you have here. I think you are fine.

Robert

LB,

I will not write what first came to mind

The short answer to your question, "Is resource linking page a good way to build backlinks?", is no.

This is really a fairly old technique that is quite frowned upon on a lot of levels. The biggest being that is just a link manipulation scheme. If you have never read the Quality Guidelines on GWT, I will provide the link and an important excerpt: the link is Read and Heed Quality Guidelines to Survive

The excerpt is:

Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

The bold and underline are mine.

I hope this helps. The best way to get links is with great content and following the phenomenal suggestions provided on SEOmoz.

I wish you the best in your endeavors,

Robert

Maureen,

I wanted to be sure, so did a bit of research and there are a very limited set of markups using the highlighter. Here is the list that is similar to what you see in the dropdown on the highlighter.

Given how long the highlighter has been available, my guess would be we won't see anything else that this works with. I am not sure why, but it has stayed like this for a long time.

Best

EGOL

As a confirmed content junky, I have to say this is great content.

...my goal is to be aware of the above and produce things that have potential. We have all written things that we knew would be stunning to the world and later scratched our heads wondering where we missed the boat. At the same time, we have written something because it needed to be written and looked up a few days later as it was showing up everywhere and then re-read it to see what those who shared it liked about it.

IGOR,

Please understand the wisdom of this statement:

**This type of content is not written in a moment or acquired for a few bucks on a freelance site.  It is produced by someone who knows a subject very well and has creativity to come up with something awesome. **

One cannot overstate the importance of understanding the subject and of creativity. We are an agency and our copywriters are tasked with writing on a lot of subjects. Literally everything from rewriting product pages so that they are not the same dupe all others have to writing about the law, the weather, medicine, current events, and so forth. While they are great at what they do, without giving them enough time on a subject to know it, all the creativity in the world will not make a piece good. At the same time, subject matter experts who lack creativity usually write like...subject matter experts without creativity...(read the text book, ain't this fun?!). Lastly, asking them to write something great in an hour or two will not produce something great. (We are aware, that on some sites, we are writing to cover a given page topic in the best possible way based on time and money limitations of clients.)

Search the web for queries that provide basic information in your niche and identify content that ranks well and clearly deserves it.  Then create something that beats it soundly.       Well said in my opinion.

Great content alone will not win the war instantly.  You must have a powerful site to get instant rankings, or get it in front of influencers who will help you promote it or put word of it it out to places like slashdot, reddit, facebook where people can share it.

I could not agree more. All to often in SEO we see those who want to do one thing and capture position one in the SERPs. There is no easy path. Yes, there are tricks, etc. but in the final analysis the battle will be won by those who are meticulous in their approach. Someone getting 500 backlinks from a Chinese ginseng business directory, etc. may rank ahead today; I guarantee you they will not win out over time against skilled SEO's who possess determination, skill, and an understanding of reaity.

EGOL,

This was great content you provided to all. Thanks,

Matt,

I am going to make a suggestion that will likely save you some aggravation. First, I will tell you that with our firm, we are not on this list so it is not an attempt to do anything but show you a better way to find help and to keep you from being inundated by folks wanting to sell you their services - even though that is what you want.

SEOmoz has a list of recommended vendors in marketing (including link building) 

I would use this resource as opposed to posting your need on the Q&A forum. In this way you will be more sure of who is a likely good fit for you. On many forums, groups, etc. i have given up as the result of people shamelessly promoting themselves and jumping all over requests like the one you posted.

Try the link here out and see if you are helped. If not, try a private question to the moz staff as they will have more they can point you toward. If, you try these and it does not work, PM me and I will give you a suggestion (not our firm as we are handling our clients currently and a bit stretched making sure they are served.)

All the best,

Robert

I would suggest that it would be vertical specific. But, if you are open to spending the money we suggest Yahoo Directory ($299) and Best of the Web (typically 99. to $150.)specifically. As to the dmoz mention, two things: while you can submit to DMOZ, you are not guaranteed to get into it and it often takes time, the second is I am still surprised by the people who utilize noodp, noydir. When you use those meta robots you block anything from those links. The reason for blocking is past based on my experience. I see sites with DMOZ links and they have noodp. (no open directory project - DMOZ).

For local, restaurants must be in Yelp, CitySearch, etc. (and some others - I am making a point about given verticals).

Always go for the BBB, Chamber of Commerce, etc. if you are a local business as these are high value links. Understand there are rules for each (BBB most cities you must have a site/business up a year, etc.). I think over time we will see more directories like these counting and less of the others.

As to the SEOmoz list, it is not bad in my opinion. I think these things are changing as fast as updates from the zoo. (Pandas, Penguins, etc). My hope is that Yellow Pages, Avvo, SuperPages, etc. go straight to, uhhh purgatory. They got in early and they are worthless in my opinion. The bigger issue is when they duplicate the clients content with cut and paste and the client doesn't do business with them. But, they got the early links all over the web and on Places, etc. because people were simply unaware.

As long as there are humans who are curating the directories there is the chance they will have value.

EDIT: Tate Larson has a list of 7 good ones here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/the-ultimate-top-10-directory-list

Hope this helps.

Ian,

Quick answer, no. Better answer, is your site verified in GWMT? If not do that now and come back and read the rest.

OK, now go into Google WMT and look at the dashboard. Click on Health, then Index Status: What do you see? are you not being indexed or are you being indexed? 
If you look at the graph, you can even see how many pages are indexed over time. 
If you are concerned some are not being indexed use Fetch as Google to check that.

This is the best way to handle IMO

Hope it helps,

Robert

Hey Brandon,

Come sell for me! Just kidding. I do like your straight forward approach though. But, with link building I would suggest first changing your point of view just a bit. 
First, there are many ways you can assist a webmaster and acquire a link. What you did is called a reciprocal link. "I will give you one Brandon, but I want one in return." So, reciprocity. Those links are frowned upon by Google and are said to be of little value. (Yes, I am saying that is what "they" say.) But, if you put a link in your author info or in your content and someone picks it up, and later down the road for whatever reason you happen to link to that same site from yours as it answers some point you are making, it IMO is still a natural link both ways. (Larry nor Sergey will tell me though.)

Then you say this: **What I discovered was that they displayed random links from the "Useful Links" directory in the sidebar and in the footer. So all of a sudden we have a ton of links from one website. This site has hundreds maybe even thousands of pages. **
So, the value of the sidebar and footer links is less by far than in the content portion and that is likely helping you. But, personally, without looking at a business reason for not doing it, I would disavow all those links as preventive medicine. (Those who want to watch the world burn slow down a second and I shall 'splain my point.) My reasoning is twofold, first when I think of a site having natural links and I ignore whatever definition of natural that is in vogue, I look at a site/page that for whatever reason gains some measure of "popular" traffic. If, people are there for some reason (traffic) and they are being driven for any honest reason (not sent because they thought they won $ from an email), some percentage of them will "share" that find or that info, etc. (I sent the video of the guy pushing his girlfriend off the cliff to several people when I first saw it on CNN.) In SEO, a lot of what we do is centered around mathematics and probability, other is around behavior, other is creative, etc. But the probability portion provides that at some level, as something becomes more and more popular, more and more people will want to show it to others (link), NATURALLY. 
At the same time, lets take a site that has nothing really drawing traffic to it. It is there and gets X visits a day and occasionally more, but not a lot. If you look at its link growth, it should mirror the traffic to some degree. But, if all of a sudden it appears to start gathering link steam, without gathering traffic, I have to believe that in itself could provide a strong signal as to "natural" or not.

I said that to provide a predicate for this: If you build quality content that people want to read, you will gain links. As more people come to the site, find it as a resource, etc. more link to it. Over time more links bring more traffic and more traffic brings more links. What could be more natural.

I can tell you from experience it works and that we still have certain link building initiatives for sites. Occasionally, I will allow someone like you a link just because I want to. I do not ask for a reciprocal link. I can tell you that if you want to write something that fits for one of our sites and the content is good, I will give you the link without blinking. Just make sure it is not you are writing an article for a veterinarian site and linking back to a gambling as that affects my traffic.

I hope this helps and, hell, if they read this I will thumb them up.

Best Brandon, Good luck,

Robert

Marie,

Have you used ahrefs.com before?

If not I think it will be very useful to you given that I know what you do. I took a small site we handle and looked at what I have in WMT and then ran it on ahrefs. On WMT we are showing 68 distinct external links. On ahrefs we are showing 62. Worst case about a ten percent difference. (For finding those 6, download both csv files and sort and should be quick. Obviously with thousands you have more work.) 
With ahrefs, you can simply sort them by nofollow, mark your GWMT data, then boom. You are real close to magic.

If you want to see it, etc. I have a conference call with a bunch of Cannucks at 0930 CDT for about 45 min. After we can talk if you call me. Oh, sorry, forgot you were up North...

Hope it helps,

Robert

Ron,

To me the most terrifying word in SEO is directory. OK, slightly kidding. I would be very careful of any directories on a lot of levels. First, when you say niche, I have to ask what niche? Then, is it yet one more that lists 1000's of sites with no purpose other than listing thousands of sites? Can you give a couple of examples?

At the end of the day, I look at them this way: Is it, for example, a website for an organization that lists its members? To that I say fine, use it. Is it a website that is a directory of businesses with no cogent organization to it or without any type of central theme - I say run. Most of the time, I say run.

We have a client who someone signed up for a directory back in March of 2013, they became our client on 4/1 and we discovered the first set of new links on 4/17 when they went from 4800 links to about 6,000. By mid May, that directory was responsible for having added over 20,000 links to the site. It was a "networking" directory.

Hope this helps a little,

Robert

Very Good Examples Ron10

The first one I absolutely hate with a passion. (there is no rhyme or reason other than listing something)

The second one I love and think you should. It is more than a directory and that is the point. There is a reason for it to exist.

A friend of mine, Rom Ryan, has a band called Moodafaruka that does quite well on the indie scene. The music is a mix, but likely pigeon holed as alternative. If you do a search on the band (or on the band and add one of their songs like Man Without Hat), then look at all the results, you will have an excellent list of places to use instead of directories and they are exactly where your band should be. (Check out the music as it is really good.) They have done quite well selling their music online and at their venues.

So, what's the genre you prefer? What's your instrument?

Hope this helps,

Robert

Most excellent Chris.

Thank you.

Peter,

Your question is not answerable. You say how are they beating you, but you don't give your domain for a comparison. I will tell you that IMO, the worst thing we can do is to look at a site that is beating us, focus on what they are doing wrong in our eyes, and wonder about it. I suggest you ask, what are they doing better than you? It will give you a lot more mileage in addressing what may be keeping you behind.

Also, take a look at their link profile as opposed to just some of the domains. I am impressed they have gained the authority, etc. they have in right at a year. If you use a tool like Majestic, or ahrefs, you may see their links a bit differently. (I agree they do have some that are not best, but they have some good ones as well.)

I hope this helps, but I know it is probably not what you wanted to hear.

Robert

John,

This type of "sidebar" link creates a sitewide link typically and that is the problem with it. If it is recent, and you know the blog owner, contact them. But, remember, this link in and of itself is not "bad": it is more about the overall link profile of your site. Are there a lot of these and a lot that are on blog comments, etc.? that is not good. 
Look at your link profile before you worry too much over this.

Robert

Probably the easiest way to assist you is to first say: this type of linking is not a good part of a healthy link profile. Yes, they must go.

It appears someone has spent a lot of time using comment spam as a linking tool. That is going to blog posts, placing a comment that has a link in it and doing that several thousand times:        The anchor text on the top three of these is piano sheet music and chords lessons, your domain name in two iterations_, and piano lessons. _That exact anchor text occurs in about one half of over 6000 links.

It is just obvious that these links did not occur by someone finding your site, saying this is cool I will put it in a post, writing about it and then linking back to your site for attribution.

You need to clean this up immediately. Sorry, wish there was better news.

Robert

Tim

I like your question because it is presented so honestly. Yes, many web design firms and SEO firms link to themselves from client sites. My parents would say, "If Johnny jumps off a bridge are you going to jump off the same bridge?" Of course I would say, Yes! But, the thing with footer links is they were so abused they no longer carry any weight for you. To some, that would mean, oh, put them somewhere else. To me, and this is my opinion, it is not a practice I want to engage in. I have links to some of our clients from our site(s), but I do not link back to our firm from client sites.

You are a good SEO firm and are trying to do things correctly. Keep it up and don't worry about how many links you have to your site. (I realize some will call that sacrilege) If you stay at it the links will come. Post good info re SEO, web dev, etc. and links will come. I have never ceased to be amazed by the links we get to some of the oddest things we have posted. We actually posted a pic with several screen types showing responsive design sometime a year or two ago that has gotten tons of links. Go figure as there are lot of pics like that on the web.

That is one man's opinion, I'm sure there will be others.

Best to you,

Robert

Rich,

If this was the only link coming to your business it might have some plus or minus effect, but a single link from a single site is probably not good or bad for you. With links it is the overall picture that matters more. I would do it if it makes business sense; if it is being done just to exchange links I would not.

Best

Issac,

The more important issue is PA vs. DA. So, while you have a site with high DA, if the page is a new page with low PA or PR, the link is less valuable. Also, if there are many other links on that page, it will dilute the value of the link to you.

Personally, I would not waste time with trying to encourage traffic through a specific link. Your time is better spent continuing to create compelling content that gets you the links, etc.

I hope that helps,

Robert

Hello Miriam,

It is the same. I understand from a local perspective a lot of people are giving this a thumb's up. I am not sure I would at this juncture and we have had a winner or two from it. With Real Estate, if you are a broker, it is a disaster in terms of terms like home(s) for sale, townhomes, real estate or these terms and a geo-locator like Houston. (Dr. Pete spoke to this around my comments on his post The Month Google Shook the SERPS.) 
You know I am not a "Google done me wrong" person; it's their web property and as EGOL said for a while they did not monetize it and people had a grand ole time. Today, they are going to monetize it just like we would.

The issue is more that, IMO, user experience will suffer and I think they will begin to lose market share, but over time. I talk to enough users who are not in our field and they complain about not being able to find someone local when they are looking. For me as a searcher, I find it odd that if I want to find a specific breed of dog or a specific area for a home, etc. I am forced to use a "national" directory of some sort. Doesn't this remove the need for the search engine??

Best

Doug,

Overall, I agree and good thinking. The other issue is impressions can be more influenced by seasonality, etc. I think she would be better served looking at site visits and the associated keywords along with time on site, and bounce rate, conversions,  etc.

If she has 3 terms around widgets: Blue widgets, Green turtle widgets, and moving purple lion widgets that were all fully active during a given period, she can compare apples to apples in each time span.

Best

Edit: And I would still like to see a screen shot.

Oh great, you gave it away! Funny as hell. I am guessing with the recession, wars, elections and baby boomers that pot is needing to be conserved more and more every day!

This cracked me up. I knew everyone was going to say, what have you been searching on?!?

So, how are you conserving...?

Interesting, but here is the other question: within the pantheon of SEO ranking factors, how important is this to you? In other words, you seem to believe from a reader perspective it will in some way provide an increase in something other than ranking on a search engine. If that is true, and this is the only change you are going to make, I cannot see this one item changing your ranking by even one position on Black Shoe Polish (as an example). If your site is a Shoe-Polish.com, and the pages are black, brown, cordovan, and white. Someone searching for black shoe polish is just as likely to still find it. The question becomes does it then provide anything new or better for you by way of the action the visitor to the site will take? Will they be more apt to stay on the page, will they stay longer, will they take a buying action?

For me, it would have no effect as a visitor. As to worrying about a single point within all of on site SEO, I wouldn't unless it is that your site is shoe polish and you are trying to sell turtles by adding a symbol for more attention. Hope this helped a little.

Stefano,

A question near and dear to my heart. What we do is to utilize a few well paid ($50 to $100 US per page depending on topic complexity and past performance) copy writers for web site builds. This is where we are able to recoup the costs for new or improved client content. These copywriters have been given basic SEO through CMS training to get good H1, H2, etc. but are not the last word in SEO.

For a blog, what I have done is a couple of things that are working well: First, go to the local universities and advertise for interns in marketing, web dev, etc. and require writing samples. In the US, we can get quality people who are happy to work for around $10 to $12 per hour.

Another avenue I am using is to assist sororities and alumnae associations with their websites for a very small fee in return for some blogging and the ability to post on their blogs with us managing the cms.

As with everything we all do, it just takes realizing there are those who are good and would love to do the work. Anyone taking a language major, journalism major, etc. are great resources as they need the practice. You just have to screen the work before, during, and after the hire. The beauty here is as an intern, I am not compelled to keep a position open, etc. But, if someone is a super star, I start looking for a spot for them after graduation.

Best of luck.

One rule I try to follow before paying online (paypal is best) is to do a whois on the domain to see where they are and if they are hidden. If you go to onthesamehost.com and do a whois reverse IP, you will see who is hosting. I went to http://whois.melbourneit.com.au/ and the Registrant is Duncan Edwards. The Host is DreamHost.com. On looking at 6 other domains one was registered in a way that gave more info:

Duncan Edwards, 61.398331067, organization is DMedia, in Malvern East, VIC 3145. any of this can be found unless the domain is privately registered. I found the main info by whois on the other domains. Name matched the melbournedirectory name.

Since the site is on DreamHost, I would contact them and be very persistent about what has happened. I have seen hosts kick people off because they did not want to deal with complaints.
Hope this helps.

While there are SEO's on Moz who can answer this question... it is to over broad. It would appear you have not done any type of project close to this in the past from how you have posted the question. If I am simply missing this due to the language difference you have my sincere apologies. 
A multi region or multi language website is a very complicated endeavor if you have not done it before and I would suggest getting assistance from an agency that handles these. The only other suggestion is to go into WMT and read on multi region/multi language sites and possibly post questions there as well.

Sorry, and I wish you the best,

Robert

Steve

We use IfByPhone dot Com and have used them for two years. I searched and found that they do handle Canadian businesses and one of there testimonials is a business in Winnipeg. What we have found that speaks to an agency and I believe would translate to any business is that they have multitude of features which allows us to customize a solution to fit any client or research need.

From a pricing standpoint I find them to be highly competitive and from a service/support POV I find them to be highly responsive. Considering that we often have initial setup on a site or project done be interns or new developers and they are able to grasp the dashboards, etc. and have easy access to quick assistance, I have to say I would not change.

Hope this helps,

Well put Bryan,

Certainly doesn't offend me either, but not much does... Just easier to live that way.....

It is funny given that the algo is serving it up you have to wonder, are folks really needing to work on conserving their stash? What about hydroponics? Etc. Heck, maybe I just came up with a new site for affiliates of hydroponics!!!!

Thanks

Ok, Now I am annoyed..... Journalist, web dev, writer, good grammar and spelling, and now this....Server Side Pro...... You are good.

This really does seem to make sense to a non server side type guy. I will follow up before we change to another farm. Just found out recently they do not have the servers they just sell the service. Thanks again Sha

eworld,

You state that you have "quite a bit of excellent content articles at my disposal," which does beg a question regarding duplicate content. Are these articles anywhere else on the web? If not, and you are asking from the point of view of is there a penalty for adding lots of content, I am not aware of any.

At the same time if it is content that can be added over time and will help with QDF (query deserves freshness), Cyrus Shepard has an excellent post on SEOmoz blog. To quote a portion of it,** Websites that add new pages at a higher rate may earn a higher freshness score** than sites that add content less frequently.

Cyrus further adds that one needs to be careful not to ignore content on older pages.

I do not think by this he means that putting up 1000 new pages in a week will rocket you to stardom on the Internet, but I do think if your content is fresh and not currently on the web, you could have a real opportunity with this portion of the algorithm.

Best

Good direction from IPIN and the rest of your question can be answered by http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain

Assuming you have 5 links from http://NewBoots.com, and they are all different (brown-boots.newboots.com, blue-boots.newboots.com, etc.) this would show up as 5 links from one linking root domain.

Page Rank is a measure to identify how strong a page is competitively based on links, etc. Here is the definition location http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/page-authority

Almost any definition question you have can be found using the moz search bar.

Best,

LELOinc

This is why I love Moz. We are all learning. Trust me with the recent whatever rollout about Local by Google I spent the last two days trying to wrap my hands around that impact and asking others in this community what they thought. Multiple brains is often better than mine.

When Miriam used the term Map out that brought me to something I find helpful when dealing with a complex project: draw it out. We have marker glass (4) in our conference room and two walls that are all glass. You can do some serious drawing and writing there. With something complex, I find it easier if I begin with a visual. Take the components and break them down, then look for relationships that may bring synergy or at least assistance or load leveling. See if that helps you get a good picture before you move forward. This is one of those issues where it will not hurt you to spend some time aiming before shooting.

All the best, thanks for your kind words,

Robert

Hello Peter, 
First, what is happening is happening because you are using your brand name in the search and.....unlike your competitors, you have not optimized the brand name. They have Grouvee in the url,  page title and H1 and content. They do this by reviewing your review. 
So, you might want to rethink your title tags: Mass Effect 3 Playstation XBOX | Grouvee or Mass Effect 3 | Grouvee or Grouvee Gamer Reviews, etc. You also want to have an image with Mass Effect 3 and an alt tag that says Scene from Mass Effect three.

Personally, most gamers will know what console is usable for each game. So having XBox or Playstation would be driven by how many searches are done for Mass Effect 3 with or without console mention.

As to the 301's you did, what were the original and the resolving urls? So from Grouvee/monkey-mantra to Grouvee/monkey-mantra-news as the format. Did you do the 301 in the .htaccess file?

Lastly, the main competitor who is stealing your thunder has a load of DA, but the PA is 1. If you clean up the on page, you should be able to slap him down a bit. Yes you need more links, but your biggest issue today is that you are using a search term that you have not optimized.....your brand. Time to get cracking.

Best

This would more likely be due to Penguin from a linking point of view. If the drop is due to Panda timing it will likely be a content issue. 
IF you know you have links that are bad, use the disavow for the links and take them off. If you check your content and you have duped content or poor or thin content, it will need to be improved in order to gain ranking.

Remember these are algorithm changes/improvements and not penalties. It becomes more difficult with them and you must research to ascertain most likely cause.

Best

Good question Bonprix. My most recent experience was with a law firm that had a previous site several years ago and 301'd and then hired a developer recently to build a new site. Due to change in url structure and menus, etc. it was necessary to 301 from the one they had to the new. I have no answer on link juice other than thinking it through a bit. If the first redirect was set up several years ago and the new one is recent, I do not think you will see to much of a loss assuming it is done correctly. Here are my suggestions:

If using a CMS, do not use an extension and instead use .htaccess file. Here is tutorial suggested in Google webmaster tools: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/howto/htaccess.html

Make sure you do a 301 for each url and not domain to domain.

I would then go into webmaster tools and let Google know which domain you prefer from a canonical point of view. Here is the link for that: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=44231

If you do all of this you should be able to capture as much of the link juice as possible.  I also noted recently that a client's developer had done a 301 redirect for the canonical and chose to redirect the www to the non www. The non had a PA of 1 for the homepage and the www had a PA of 27 for the homepage. If he had simply redirected it the opposite way, he would not be waiting or worrying about link juice. So check that rel=canon is there and check each domain for PA so that you have best outcome.

Good Luck

EGOL,

As usual you make some good points; I think the divide is between handling one or two sites and handling 100. With clients, unfortunately, most have budgets based on their business size and economic ability. Due to that they cannot spend at a level that will provide for the highest quality content. (Written by subject matter experts). Along with that, most are so busy running their own businesses/practices that they do not have the time write their own.

So, we do it for a fee, and we have to meet a budget and we still have to do quality content. Our checkoff is the client. They are the ones who have to tell us that we have gotten their subject correct; we insure the SEO is spot on.

To tell even a large profitable law firm that content for a medical law site is going to be $500 to $1000 per page is a non starter. But when you get the rare one that understands content is King - and have egos to match - and that is when it is really fun.

Real Address is 123 HoHum Ln, Ste. 123, Farmer's Branch, 75244

Desired 123 HoHum Ln, Ste. 123, Dallas, 75244

If by safe you mean 100%, I would say no; but, probably 90 - 95% safe. The non Terms of Svc. issue will be ensuring you keep it as Dallas in every occurrence and citation sites will populate the name field by crawl OR by zip correlation - that means 75244 would be Farmers Branch and that could lead to a NAP that is different everywhere. So, if it were our client we would say we will do this and you must agree that any negative effect from this is not our responsibility.

Hope that helps,

Fo me, when you say, "GA for a website with multiple languages on multiple domains", then I inherently look at this as I am going to have one GA account for this website with three different properties. I do a lot by intuition, so that is just what comes naturally for me.

You account is Example Account or Example Analytics, but it is about the Analytics for this specific content group for lack of a better descriptor: Yes, different languages on different domains, but same site - correct?

The biggest pro for me is unless I am running three browsers open at once, I do not have to log in and out of analytics for each account to see whatever I want. (Seems simplistic, but I find it a pain). So, I can now navigate between the three domains easily, copy a filter from one to another easily, etc.

You could have a different profile for each domain, but I really do not see a massive reason for this and by having them all under one, again it seems intuitive and to communicate they are together which could loosely help with any dupe content issue down the road. (Yes, I understand how duped content is looked at across multi languages. I just like being able to have a track back of some type that shows the sites together.)

Hope this gives a bit of insight for you Frederik,

Best.

Hope this helps. We occasionally run into an issue where someone who is unscrupulous creates a business listing in Places around a client business name. What we do is have several people put in a permanently closed notice with Google (since we have a couple of locations that are 500 miles apart it helps I think). Click on edit this place and mark Miami Fishing Charters as permanently closed. On comments put "this business has no physical location here any longer if it ever did" or words to that effect.

Utilizing this methodology we have had them removed. It does take a while at times though. I do think someone marked them closed, etc. in the last few minutes......

Good luck.

Good point, somewhat like academics where professors must publish.

If you look at sites like those whose titles end in "pages," it is common for them to no follow their links. The reasoning (this is my opinion) is that they do not want the advertiser to grow and leave them so they try to prevent any juice from going to them. To, in essence, endeavor to keep them captive.

When we take on a client who uses an advertising medium that uses no follows in their links to their clients, we generally also find they are the type who do "ppc" but have "no way to show you what they paid for a given keyword", etc.  We suggest the clients do not continue unless the advertising medium is bringing them a really good ROI that is demonstrable.

I doubt the site you advertise on will change its policy to assist you based on my experience with this type. It is not a question of their fear of losing juice, but a fear that they will be increasing their clients value and therefore more likely to lose the client. However, if you want to try the place to put the pressure is on your individual rep. Tell them you are unhappy and you think they owe you the link in an uncorrupted way. Reps want to keep their commissions and not lose clients.

Good Luck.

Brett

I did not mean tell client you will do anything for free.

What I meant was, assuming your client has an associate in city X where there is no presence by client otherwise, you get your client to agree that you will go to their associate with a proposal to do the local for the associate in city X for no charge. The client would pay you for doing the work, the associate will now have a quality local presence in city X, and your client will be the main portion of the Places, Bing Bus.Port, etc in the city.

So, your client is BigMoneySvc.com, in city X their address would be that of the associate in X. You can name the associate in the listing. If the assoc. has their own website, that would be a problem, unless you agree to have a landing page on client site that links to assoc. site. (Assoc. gets link juice). So BigMoneySvc.com/xcity-associate-site.

If you use subdomain, you will get no push from the main site. If you use sub directory you will: Mainblog.com/Charlotte. With this, links to Charlotte will help root domain over time and links from root domain will help Charlotte.

If you buy exact match domains with or without hyphens your only issue is starting at level zero. Soooo...... that you have to figure out. Start at zero with new domain or sub domain, crate a page on main site that could be helped by mainsite DA, etc.

Hope I was helpful for you.

If you are saying use those analytics to change outcomes, I say do it. Will it necessarily improve the page rank, I don't know that it will. But, if a site owner focuses solely on rank and ignores conversions, what is ranking worth?

Based on your question being what you prefer to rank for KW: "red hot widgets" I would say a variant of B would be best. Assumption 1: Redhot is a descriptor of multiple items - widgets, gidgets, and midgets.

Assumption 2: Redhot.com was not a single product or service offering.

The variant I would use is redhot.com/red-hot-widgets; the reason being that I would have the partial KW in the domain and you would have an exact-match KW in the URL.

In a highly competitive widget market, you could go with widgets.redhot.com and grow the subdomain but you will need links, good anchor text and time. You would be growing widgets as its own domain, links, etc.

With a smaller site and the above assumptions, I would go with redhot.com/red-hot-widgets.com.