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Manual is a no go for large sites. If someone knows a tool like this, it woul be cool to know which/ where to find. Or..... This would make a cool SEOmoz pro tool

There's no need to worry about the templates... But your content sounds 99% dupe across all of your 270+ sites. I'd start with rewriting the pages for your best converting sites and take it one by one from there. Not sure if this is in fact a manual penalty, are your URLs still apearing in the SERPS when you search for them?

BOTW.org is a no brainer. These links do help to rank a little better, at least they do for me. Another one I should go for is Yahoo Dir. Both aren't cheap, but will help. Nevertheless, you will also need other kinds of links to maintain your positions, especially when your niche becomes more competitive. I would advice you to stay clear from cheap directory submissions, as these won't make much of a difference, if at all.

I have a site that has been affected by Panda, and I think I have finally found the problem.

When I created this site in the year 2006, I bought content without checking it. Recently, when I went through the site I found out that this content had many duplicates around the web. Not 100% exact, but close to.

The first thing I did is ask my best writer to rewrite these topics, as they are a must on my site. This is a very experienced writer, and she will make the categories and subpages outstanding.

Second thing I did was putting a NOINDEX, FOLLOW robots meta in place for the pages I determined being bad. They haven't been de-indexed yet.

Another thing I recently did is separate other languages and move these over to other domains (with 301's redirecting the old locations to the new.) This means that the site now has a /en/ directory in the URL which is no longer used.

With this in mind I was thinking to relocate the NEW content, and 301 the old (to preserve the juice for a while.) For example:

http://www.mysite.com/en/this-is-a-pandalized-page/

301 to

http://www.mysite.com/this-is-the-rewritten-page/

The benefits of doing this are:

• decreasing the amounts of directories in the URL

• getting rid of pages that are possibly causing trouble

• getting fresh pages added to the site

Now, the advice I am looking for is basically this: Do you agree with the above? Or don't you agree? If you don't, please be so kind to include a reason with your answer. If you do, and have any additional information, or would like to discuss, please go ahead

Thanks,

Giorgio

PS: Is it proven that Panda is now a running update? Or is it still periodically executed?

I have a few sites that are outranked by competitors having hundreds of directory links and links from unrelated sites. Obviously I'am doing everything I can; on page optimization is superb, building good links as much as I can, but not huge amounts, taking care of fresh content whcih is of better quality than the competitors, ect. etc. But for one specific site I just can't get higher than #3 while my competitor ranks #1 and #2. I have been fairly succesful making sites rank well in somewhat competitive niches, but this is one of the things that keep bugging me. Sometimes I even feel like buying these type of links myself... But I keep telling myself that Google will catch up one day. Any advice is kore than welcome. Thanks