Hi there

Well, in theory, most if not all of the "strength" or your links will pass on to the new site if you use a 301 redirect. We've had a recent Matt Cutts video talking about this.

In order to streamline the process, I would replicate an identical site structure on your new .com site.  Same /sub-folders/, same primary article names, as similar as you can make it to you .net domain, the better.

This will allow you to 301 redirect the old domain to the new one, pointing the equivalent pages and sub folders to each other - so domain.net/sub-folder/ to domain.com/sub-folder/ and domain.net/article1.html to domain.com/article1.html.  This way not only are you ensuring that the user is following the same path as before, but all of the "strength" and previous links are being pointed to their new, equivalent pages.

It's such a big help if you can keep the site structure the same.  Now, there may be a case for not wanting to redirect everything - thousands and thousands of 301s can slow down the .htaccess file, not to mention the time it may take. Some pages may not be worth transferring anyway if they have no link juice or are never visited by users.  In this case, it's perfectly acceptable to let these return a 404 error.

If you're looking to get the URLs you want to redirect on bulk, look in your XML sitemap. Download that and extract the URLs from there and place them into Excel.  Most of the time the listed pages will be the ones you want to redirect.  Copy the list into another column, so you now have 2 identical lists.  Then simply use the Find & Replace tool on one of the columns, changing .net to .com.  You've now got all the URLs you'll want to put into your .htaccess file for redirecting.

Finally, it wouldn't hurt to contact some of the webmasters on the sites where you have your best links.  If you tell them you've moved to a .com domain and only that needs changing, they can do the leg-work for you and can ensure that your new domain keeps its strength.

Hope this helps - good luck with the move!

Sorry, I assumed you meant you were hotlinking images, rather than just embedding them.  If you're just using tags with no <href> defined (so just embedding, not hotlinking), then you're right - this won't cause a problem.</href>

Hi James

A lot of this will depend on the site you're linking to.

It's long been a part of the ranking algorithm that if you link to sites that are seen negatively by Google, due to spam/malware/etc, then your site may be viewed negatively itself.  Without knowing where your blogger has been linking from, it's hard to say - but it's worth running a check just in case.

Not at all, I think it's quite obvious to both the user and Google that you're not doing anything manipulative, but merely linking to your (well-earned, no doubt) citation in a major publication.

Furthermore, you're never going to be seen to be linking to a suspicious site if it's the NYT!

Not really. By definition of the PageRank algorithm, having an external link on your page means the PageRank the page has passes off the website, but the amount lost (if any) put against the amount gained by having the link is negligible.

The main concern is that if your website is deemed to be linking to poor quality, spammy or hacked websites, then Google may look upon yours dis-favourably  But I can't see that being a problem here.

Reciprocal links get a pretty bad rap, for pretty solid reasons.  Link exchanges with masses of sites, whatever the relevance, does look pretty unnatural and may flag up as a link network. We definitely don't want that.

However, if done sparingly and kept to really relevant and related sites, then it's a nice traffic sharer, link builder and authority builder.  SEOMoz and Distilled pretty much have reciprocal links on the go, but that's because they're highly related and offer great content and work for one another.  In turn, as a user you may be more inclined to visit either one from the other's website, while the endorsement can serve as an authority check.

I'm quite a fan of legitimate testimonials where link reciprocation occurs. That can look natural and, again, is a nice trust builder.  I'd never go too crazy with reciprocal links and I'd only ever keep it to websites who are related to, have preferably worked or collaborated with you on a project and that you, yourself, would be proud to endorse professionally.

Follow that, and I think some reciprocal links can be OK. But there's no doubt that the tactic has been abused by some. Don't give Google any reason to think you've fallen into that bracket.

Hi Steve

If Google is saying there are still a few more links, then it might be an idea to manually review a few others that you haven't disavowed. I find the LinkDetox tool very useful for this.  It's free with a tweet and will tell you if a link from a site is toxic (the site is deindexed) or if it's suspicious (and why it's suspicious).  You still need to use your own judgement on these, but it might help you to find the extra links you're talking about.

However, there is a chance you have gone and disavowed every bad link, but still got the rejection.  In this case, I'd keep trying but make your reconsideration request more detailed.  Create an excel sheet and list the bad URLs and/or domains and give a reason explaining why you think they're bad links.  Then provide information on how you found their contact details.  If there are no contact us pages, check the whois registrar's email.  After that, say when you contacted them (give a sample of your letter to them too), and if they replied, along with a follow up date if you got silence.  If there are no details in the whois, explicitly mention that there are no contact details and so you have proceeded straight to disavowing.

Then list the URLs you've disavowed (upload the .txt file with your reconsideration email).  You've now told Google that you've found bad links, why you think their bad (also include how you discovered them), that you've contacted the webmaster on numerous occasions and, if no removal was made, you've disavowed as a last resort.  This is a very thorough process and uses the disavow tool in the way that Google wants us to - as a last resort to an unresponsive or anonymous webmaster.

Please forgive me if you've already done all this and it seems like repetition.  I only mention it because I've found it's best to be as thorough as possible with Google in these situations. Remember, a reconsideration request is manual and if they see that you've gone through all this effort to be reinstated, you've got a better chance of being approved.

Keep trying, mate.  It can be disheartening, but if you think it's worth the time and effort, then keep going for it.  I would bear in mind the alternatives, however, such as starting fresh on a new domain.  If you find yourself going round the bend with endless reconsiderations, sometimes your time, effort and expertise can be better put elsewhere.

All the best!

Hi George

Sounds like you'll be using the 2.0s for the right reasons, which is great.

Here's a list of 25 2.0's sorted by PR:

wordpress.com - pr9
tumblr.com - pr8
typepad.com - pr8
weebly.com - pr8
blogger.com - pr8
tripod.com - pr8
posterous.com - pr7
jimdo.com - pr7
yola.com - pr7
squidoo.com - pr7
multiply.com - pr7
angelfire.com - pr7
officelive.com - pr7
rediff.com - pr7
wikidot.com - pr7
webs.com - pr7
webnode.com - pr7
salon.com - pr7
edublogs.org - pr6
webspawner.com - pr6
soup.io - pr6
ucoz.com - pr6
travelblog.org - pr6
gather.com - pr6
springnote.com - pr6

I really can't vouch for how easy they are to use or which have the best features etc. as I rarely ever use 2.0s.  But hopefully you should find some useful ones here.

So long as you create the content with the purpose of educating and/or entertaining a genuine audience, I think you'll do great - although don't rule out writing some of those posts for guest blogs or perhaps even your own blog.

Probably should have mentioned what Robert has here - it's not guaranteed to work.

What options does that leave you with?  Well, you could shoot to place your own ads on your own videos.  This goes beyond my expertise, but I know there are ways to target your PPC ads quite specifically so that you can appear on videos that you create, while reducing any potential "wastage" by appearing on other channels you don't want to (SERPs) and too many other videos on YT.

Have you monetized the videos/channel?  If so, Google will be able to place ads on your videos.

It looks like you could remove these.  Here's some info from this link:

1. Sign in to your AdSense account and visit the Allow & block ads tab.
2. In the sidebar, click Content Host.
3. To block specific advertiser URLs: click the Advertiser URLs tab in the horizontal bar across the top of the page. Enter URLs in the box provided, then click Block URLs.
4. To block ads by general or sensitive categories: click the appropriate tab in the horizontal bar across the top of the page. Use the controls on the page to allow or block categories.

If you haven't monetized and are getting the ads, it could be because:

If your video contains content to which you don’t own all necessary rights, the rights holder may have identified his/her content in your video and chosen to place ads on it. Ads may be displayed on your videos if they contain soundtracks from the AudioSwap library or if the content in your video has been identified by Content ID.

However, help is at hand:

If you believe ads are inappropriate for your videos, you can opt out of displaying ads:

1. Sign into your account and go to the Settings page.
2. Click the "Overview" tab.
3. Under the heading "Advertisements," select the "Do not allow advertisements" radio button and click "Save Changes."

That information came from this source.

Hope this helps.

I agree with you Neil.  Design the navigation for the user, not a search engine.  It makes more sense to have simply "pricing" then to try and chase the algorithm and include some keywords like "web design pricing".  Furthermore, the added benefit of using a navigation like that really would be negligible.

Internal links can help your site, but I think it would be better to use the text around the site as you say, rather than the navigation, in order to utilise these.  The navigation is more for the user than the Google crawler and thus should be designed for the user.

Just my 2p!