The only way to find out is to shoot them an e-mail. Either way you will discover the answer

Google's crawler will always attempt to crawl any links it finds. If somewhere on the internet there is a link to an old URL and Google sees that link, it will never stop trying to explore that link. Each time it attempts to crawl the link, it will see the 301 and follow the redirect, but if you ever remove that redirect then the original URL will be seen.

You originally shared "Monday morning, I realized that my website, which had been showing up at the bottom of page 2 for a specific result, had now been demoted to the bottom of page 6 (roughly a 40 spot demotion). No other keyword searches were affected."

What is the URL of the specific web page which was affected? What is the keyword phrase which experienced the drop?

Hi Kevin,

I responded to this question here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/trailing-slashes-in-url-use-canonical-url-or-301-redirect#post-53208

In short, you have taken all the proper action. You have done everything possible to ensure users properly link to your site by using a consistent URL format. You have also properly redirected those users who do not use the proper format, which is much better then many sites which simply generate a 404 error.

If you set up your site properly from day 1, the result should be over 90% of the links to your site are valid, and a small percentage require a single redirect. It's the best result you can hope for. You cannot achieve 100% efficiency as links from other sites are outside your control.

Hey looking to find some cool games to teach link building when doing a presentation to people who are new to link building and to make it fun.

Monopoly comes to mind.

You built your first link? Go directly to Google jail.

You built your second link? Pay poor tax of 50% of your traffic

If you are going to teach people, teach them NOT to "build" links and instead to earn links. The difference is not subtle.

"I see (using  open site explorer) my competitors have 10's of thousands of external links, so even if I kept at this rate it would be many years before I caught up. That is based on my current understanding, so how do I get to those levels, even if it is over a year or two?"

Hi Simon,

Your situation is very common Simon. At a very high level, here are the steps:

1. Build the best quality site possible. There are literally hundreds of pieces to this puzzle but a few are:

• hire a great graphic design to provide your site a high quality look and feel

• engage a professional web developer to develop the best possible website

• provide a mobile website which appears correctly in smartphones, ipads, etc

• ensure your site works as intended i.e. no broken links, forms work correctly, etc

• ensure the site appears correctly in various browsers (IE, FF, Chrome, Safari, Opera)

• provide an intuitive layout along with solid navigation

2. **Provide the best content possible. **

• Create "best on the web" type of content

• Create content for users, not search engines

• Ensure your content is engaging and relevant

• Strive to provide content related to current events

• Ensure any images are sharp and clear

• The site's content should ideally encourage users to like / tweet / +1 / share / link

3. Promote the site.

• Once you have a solid website platform with fantastic content, tell the world about it!

• Use social media to connect with others who have an interest in your product / service

• Read industry blogs to find current information and influencers

• Ask your audience what content they want to read about

• Take every opportunity to tell everyone about the site