Hello Aidan, welcome to SEOMoz.

As with all link building, keep it natural. Avoid link pages.

Only link to relevant websites within your niche. When you do, it's best to mention them within a blog post or similar. I'd avoid sidebars and footers.

Google will only have an issue, if it appears that you're trying to be manipulative. I personally also link with brand name, rather than targeting keywords.

Hope that helps.

It's still linked, so Google will still read it. I just honestly don't know how Google will interpret it.

Is this something that's in place? What is webmaster tools showing?

Google treats sub domains, almost as different domains.

I would keep sitemaps relative to their own subdomain.

As the drop coincides perfectly with Penguin, then it's definitely a backlink issue.

That's nonsense. Talk to Google about what? The automatic penalty that was applied? That apparently they cannot do anything about.

It's nice that you presume those that have been hit, have done something wrong. It seems common among those who have managed to dodge Panda, to presume they safe and that the rest of the world has done something to deserve their fate.

In my niche, it's image heavy and low on textual content. This is by nature and not due to any wrong doing. My user metrics are amazing and yet my website was hit by Panda recently.

I don't want to come across as being harsh, but I do feel your response was a little presumptuous and insensitive.

That's true Ryan I guess it is coding related really.

Issues like this are a real pain in the ass. And most people don't even check WMT to realise the issues exist. TBH, I don't check as often as I should.

FWIW, I don't think it's a coding issue. If it were coding, it would either show a 200OK or it would show a 404. It wouldn't sometimes serve a 404.

If you're using Litespeed, I'd guarantee that is the issue and if you're using Joomla, it's another prime culprit.

Please keep in mind, that 404 error does not mean the page doesn't exist. It means your server, is sending a response code to indicate that it doesn't exist.

When I installed Litespeed on my server, this issue happened over and over again.

I believe Joomla for example, has some kind of security module that serves a 404 if a single IP requests a page too many times. I remember running SEOFrog on a friends Joomla site and tons of 404's were showing up.

That's nonsense. Talk to Google about what? The automatic penalty that was applied? That apparently they cannot do anything about.

It's nice that you presume those that have been hit, have done something wrong. It seems common among those who have managed to dodge Panda, to presume they safe and that the rest of the world has done something to deserve their fate.

In my niche, it's image heavy and low on textual content. This is by nature and not due to any wrong doing. My user metrics are amazing and yet my website was hit by Panda recently.

I don't want to come across as being harsh, but I do feel your response was a little presumptuous and insensitive.

Google treats sub domains, almost as different domains.

I would keep sitemaps relative to their own subdomain.

Hello Aidan, welcome to SEOMoz.

As with all link building, keep it natural. Avoid link pages.

Only link to relevant websites within your niche. When you do, it's best to mention them within a blog post or similar. I'd avoid sidebars and footers.

Google will only have an issue, if it appears that you're trying to be manipulative. I personally also link with brand name, rather than targeting keywords.

Hope that helps.

That's true Ryan I guess it is coding related really.

Issues like this are a real pain in the ass. And most people don't even check WMT to realise the issues exist. TBH, I don't check as often as I should.