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Hi All I'm looking for a bit of a steer on which direction to go in here. I have a new client and the client has a 'branch' in London.  The brand is about to be franchised across the UK.  They currently have a google places page in London (old style Google places, not a plus page) and nothing else on Google +. I don't really want to touch the Google place (local page) because it ranks well for their business and far higher than their organic search result. In terms of adding to their social presence, I think a Google Plus 'Brand' page would work as a generic brand, with several additional local pages being created as franchisees come on board.  They have a safe and strong brand and have plans to reinforce through social. I'm about to set up the brand page and wondered if anyone has any thoughts, words of warning or points to consider? I don't know why but I feel somewhat tetchy and fearful of Google places that have yet to be merged. Thanks

Good morning. Just done my WMT ritual morning check and one of my sites has been blacklisted for malware. It's a wordpress site - I've run various scans, e.g. http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/ and also installed wordfence and scanned with that and wordfence produced some offending files which I have now deleted. I've also installed website defender in the hope that it wont happen again.  I'm pretty good with staying on top of updates and rarely let a few days pass without upgrading new version of wordpress or plugins etc.  I've also checked my users to make sure no new admins or anything and also changes passwords. I've asked for a review from Google and just wondered how long these reviews take? Also, has anybody got any advice, is there anything else I should be doing? Thanks

I've got a new client who made the mistake of spending $5 on a sack load of dodgy links some time ago. I'm redoing his site, not set up analtics or WMT or anything yet, just starting on it but I had a look at his backlink profile and it's pretty shocking.  Riddled with porn and money scams etc, but I'm concerned by the nature of one of the links....to the url is disturbing and I'm tempted to report them to the police. :(. If I use the disavow tool will it remove the links from my backlink profile altogether or just block the dodgy site?  I want to disaccociate the site altogether.

Are they worth anything, if they are from relevant sites?  I'm I better off avoiding linking back wherever possible?

A national networking company charges its members, say, a few of hundred pounds to become part of their network, which involves offline networking events and online in forums and a directory. All the links of the directory and forum sigs etc are all do-follow. While it's not just a directory, how beneficial a link is this likely to be?  The site itself has a DA of 60 and a PR rank of 4. 1k likes on their cnnected FB page and 21 likes on the G+. At the networking meetings they tell new recruits that being a member gives them a very valuable backlink and everytime they participate in the forums they get another do follow backlink.  Ive checked and they are dofollow. Is this likely to be a great value link?

I need to migrate a wordpress site from domainname.com to domainname.co.uk. If I just put a 301 on every page on the .com will that cover it? Would it make sense to go and change all the backlinks/profile links to the new .co.uk site or doesn't it matter if you have a 301 redirect on it? Thanks

What do you think of this site?  This is the top, number ranking site in Halifax, UK. No authority, no backlinks and high keyword density considering the low amount of content. http://www.maknetic.co.uk/ Search term is SEO Halifax. How is it number 1?  There's nothing in it and no user value at all!

What are your thoughts on SEOs and web designers putting their own links in the footers of client sites. For the sake of argument, lets assume that the client is happy for the link to be there. I'm referring to the SEO merits of the link being there from an 'irrelevant' website. My belief is that this goes against what Google is looking for and that these are irrelevant links and likely to be picked up and penalised.  That's what I believe! However, I see lots of sites offering SEO services that have dofollow links from their client sites, using exact match anchor text and they are all ranking highly. Is it just a matter of time before Google sniffs them out and penalises them for it?  Or should I be going through my client sites and adding myself a dofollow link in the footer? (with their permission of course). The highest ranking sites in any UK city do this.  If you search SEO Manchester, SEO Leeds etc and find the top ranking sites and check them out on opensite explorer, they are all using a disproportionate amount of dofollow backlinks form client sites.

Just wondered whether you think the footer text here on tis page constitues 'keyword stuffing'. I think it does but wondering why they haven't been penalised for it. http://www . lippyliciouscakes . co.uk/ Thoughts? Many thanks.

How do you deal with Rel author on blogs for your clients? Suppose I'm a contributor (or rather, the only copywriter) to a clients blog - which happens to be about DIY.  The blog articles are written from the business perspective and published from 'the business'.  not from Me. Should I be adding myself as a contributor and using my own personal Google profile on these blogs?  If so, then it's my face that appears next to the blog post and I'm not sure that's what I want for a blog about fixing shelves etc! Am I misunderstanding how I should be using rel author?  Is it for SEOs to work into client strategy, or is it just for our own personal blogs?

Are SEOMoz looking to integrate Facebook Graph Search (the web search section) into the product?  At the moment we can measure and track rankings for Google, Bing/Yahoo, but not Facebook graph search. What are the general thoughts among the community?  Do you think it will be adopted as a real search engine? I'm not overly concerned - I reckon it will take a lot to change people behaviour and have them moving away from the other search engines. It's throwing up some interesting results though in searches!

Hi All.  Just wondering what your experience is with using Facebook graph search? I have a site that ranks highly for a good number of keywords on google, yahoo etc, but when you use the facebook graph search, it either doesnt show up at all or is buried away in page 5 or something. I'm talking about the 'Web Search' bit where it returns web results rather than searching for pages likes by my friends etc. Any thoughts?  Why is my site way behind the competition in Facebook?  I'm a white hat kind of girl and can't think what I might have done to offend! Have you come across any good resources advising how to optimise for facebook graph search for web? Thanks Jo