You might also consider using spcial characters within your meta description like: ★ 

Use only only one at a time otherwise google ignores it. But in general it is a great way to improve organic CTR's if used appropriately.

I think that such a practice can be quite good if you do it well and if you have a good product or site to be reviewed. You don't even need such platforms to do that. We call it Blogger outreach campaign:

1. Simply shortlist a few hundreds (or even less) of good blogs in the industry and market you want to focus on.

2. Think of a what offer you can give to them. Money most probably won't work. You can incentivise them with an affiliate offer or something really touchy and personal. Put that in your email to them or on their contact us forms or call them.

You will see that most of  the guys will reply and will be happy to cooperate. This works much better than any platform if you are going for the quality links not for the quantity.

Hi Georg,

Looks like a penalty. We have experienced similar things yesterday on a number of websites which we've been adopting overly-aggressive link building tactics and it is a result of a recent google update:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

It is not a result of your onsite SEO. There might be different reasons for it but I do consider it as a result of article spinning which might have been taking part of your link building activities. Especially if the keywords that you lost rankings for have been targeted by such links - spinned content on private or public blog networks.

Have you had some kind of drop in rankings about a month ago for those particular keywords?

Kind regards,

Ivo

It works and they let you use up to 2 do-follow links. However don't expect traffic from it. I would even say don't expect traffic from all the regular article directories. You can also consider ezinearticles.com. They really need unique and quality content. Everything is being published after manual approval. Just use them for links. Not sure how good it is for brand exposure as they have traffic from all over the world which in most of the cases will be irrelevant to the type of business that you want to promote.

Thank you guys!

Thanks Simon, will try those. Do you think that google applies different ranking factors when it comes to Wikipedia in general?

Hi Guys,

One of our clients has a good web site with lots of content that is ranked already on #2 for the top keyword (singular and plural) on Google UK. The keyword itself is a competitive one. The top spot is occupied by a wikipedia article that doesn't have much content in general.  Can anyone come up with an advice what strategy we have to apply to outplace that article? Thanks!

Hi Georg,

Looks like a penalty. We have experienced similar things yesterday on a number of websites which we've been adopting overly-aggressive link building tactics and it is a result of a recent google update:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

It is not a result of your onsite SEO. There might be different reasons for it but I do consider it as a result of article spinning which might have been taking part of your link building activities. Especially if the keywords that you lost rankings for have been targeted by such links - spinned content on private or public blog networks.

Have you had some kind of drop in rankings about a month ago for those particular keywords?

Kind regards,

Ivo

I think that such a practice can be quite good if you do it well and if you have a good product or site to be reviewed. You don't even need such platforms to do that. We call it Blogger outreach campaign:

1. Simply shortlist a few hundreds (or even less) of good blogs in the industry and market you want to focus on.

2. Think of a what offer you can give to them. Money most probably won't work. You can incentivise them with an affiliate offer or something really touchy and personal. Put that in your email to them or on their contact us forms or call them.

You will see that most of  the guys will reply and will be happy to cooperate. This works much better than any platform if you are going for the quality links not for the quantity.