@Teginder, you asked "But I think, it is really tough to understand what type of a link is organic ? Sometime I feel a links seems pretty natural is also gets caught under Google violation radar. WHY?"

The likely answer is your thoughts about whether a link is organic or manipulative are not calibrated to how Google views links. It takes a lot of time and experience to consistently reach the proper diagnosis for each link.

@Monali, you asked about links from "your sister websites". In my experience, people who ask this type of question have many "sister websites" and the links are likely deemed to be manipulative. Why offer the link from "500 pages"? Is the link relevant for users on all those pages?

You need to be VERY careful when you create a link from one of your owned websites to another, especially if you have been already caught violating Google's Quality Guidelines. The safest approach is to either remove, nofollow or 302 the links from your own websites which point at each other.

If you operate two websites where website A sells sneakers and website B sells socks, then it may make sense to provide links from the sneaker site to the sock site on most pages. With that said, it would likely be best to simply combine the websites into a single site.

The summary here: it is possible for a site owner to provide links between two sites which are not manipulative, but the links need to be presented in a high quality manner. The overwhelming majority of site owners who ask me this type of question operate many websites, have a manipulative link issue, and the interlinking between their own websites is a contributing factor to that issue.

Hi Monali,

You asked "do we need to contact websites which have domain authority more than 75 or 85 ? Or the point is, even if the website is 99 domain authority , do we need to contact them to remove it?"

Once you compile a list of site backlinks, the next step is to review links from each domain to determine if the links are organic (i.e. comply with Google's Quality Guidelines) or manipulative in nature. To that end, DA is irrelevant.

I am sure no one at Google considers the DA or PR of a page when making a determination of a link's authenticity. For example, all links from any subdomain on wordpress.com, blogspot.com, plus.google.com and so forth have very high DA, but they can still be manipulative. There are new sites created daily with a DA of 1, yet their links are organic.

You also asked "There are few forums and websites, where our links are showing from forum signatures, etc. "

In most cases, forum signature links would likely be considered manipulative. If you provided a forum signature which sincerely added value to each and every post, those links could be considered organic, but if you are asking the question, that is likely not the case.

@Teginder, you commented "...you just need to remove links only if those domains have no relevancy to your niche"

Relevancy to a site's niche is not a metric in determining whether a link is organic or manipulative. The link's compliance to Google's Quality Guidelines should be the focus.

I could have a site which sells shirts and gain links from a graphic design or UX site that talks how good or bad my web site design looks. That link would not be relevant to selling shirts but would still be perfectly organic. On the other hand, many links are built from relevant sites that are manipulative.

You each are focusing on what value a link offers to the site. The link's value is not relevant to determining if it is organic vs manipulative.

There are tens of millions of active websites will ???trillions / quadrillions or some other number which is beyond the boundaries of human concept of web pages. Each company, including Google, sets their servers to crawl the web each month. Even large companies cannot provide enough web servers to crawl every page every month, not to mention every day.

Accordingly, each offers a piece of the puzzle. Google's WMT report shows approximately 50% of the backlinks for your site. The other reports each fill in part of the remaining data.

If you earn a link from high quality sites like the New York Times, it is likely all the tools will show the link. When you are dealing with web spam, a lot of it comes from low quality sites which are not frequently crawled. OSE is a fantastic tool but you cannot depend on it to show all the links to your site.

There are numerous tools which provide backlink data. You will find each tool provides different data, which can be frustrating. The best solution is to use a combination of tools. In my experience, the combination which always works to resolves Google penalties is: Google WMT + Bing WMT + OSE + AHREFS + Majestic.

OSE, for example, provides a maximum of 25 links per domain. The important thing is to obtain a representative sample of links from each domain to determine if the domain is providing organic or manipulative links. In most cases, if you have more than 25 links from a domain, you likely have a site wide link or a common link, such as in the sidebar.

I am working on a moz blog post which will include an e-mail template. I'll get back to you on this request.

You are welcome to use nofollow links in any manner you see fit. If these links actually drive quality traffic to your site, go ahead and leave them.

As a note, not all vB forums provide nofollow links. It is up to each forum operator.

Monali,

As a general rule, I strongly discourage your submission to either link directories, article directories or blog directories. I would also discourage your linking to your site from various other websites you create be they from tumblr, blogger.com, wordpress.com, etc. These methods as you are describing them at worst would be deemed manipulative links, at best would add little-to-no value to your site.

Instead, create the maximum amount of value you can for users on your site. Create content that others will WANT to share, tweet, like, +1, and link to. You did not share your site URL so I'll use the Joomla extension concept you mentioned. Let's talk about that for a moment. Take your extensive knowledge of Joomla and think about how site owners wish to extend the core functionality in ways the software does not support. This gap creates the market for extensions.

When we look for extensions to add to client websites, we have a few considerations:

1. Who is behind the extension? Some extensions are produced by a single individual, others by development companies, and still others are produced by larger companies. For example, Janrain is a major provider of social integration software and they produced an extension for WordPress. The support they provide for their extension is world class. They have a ticketing system where experienced techs promptly respond. On the other hand, some extensions are produced by individuals or companies who are completely non-responsive to support requests.

2. How much experience does the producer have with the extension's purpose and the platform. Ideally, you want to work with an author who is experienced in both Joomla and the particular area (let's say an SEO extension produced by a SEO company for example). Is this extension the first one produced by the individual or company?

3. Joomla has extension standards. Were these standards met and is the extension listed on Joomla Extension Directory (JED)?

4. Does the extension fill a gap which adds value? Let's say you make a 404 log extension. That adds value by offering site owners a way to understand more about broken links. The basic extension can be greatly improved by adding more features such as:

• having the 404 log accessible via the admin panel rather than a regular log file which is otherwise difficult to read

• having the 404 log update live

• capturing the referring URL so the site owner can see where the link came from

• capturing the search term used (practically an outdated concept now, but still...)

• possibly automatically redirecting users to the most closely related URL

Such an extension could add real value to users. If you review posts on Joomla.org or various SEO and forum sites, you may step into a conversation where users are discussing problems and add value to the conversation by mentioning the extension as a solution. The site can also categorize extensions by their ratings and other factors.

Understand Joomla already provides an extension directory so what added value does your site offer?

My recommendation is spend 100% of your "link building" time and effort addressing the above areas. If you do a fantastic job, you will EARN better links then you could have ever built yourself, and none of the earned links will be viewed as manipulative.

TLDR - build VALUE, not links

The first part of the battle is knowing your links. Each source of backlink information, including Google, has advantages and disadvantages. I have been resolving manipulative link issues for clients since 2011 (i.e. before Penguin) and what has worked in 100% of cases is a backlink report comprised of data from the following 5 sources: Google, Bing, AHREFs, Majestic and OSE. This combination of backlink data has always worked. That is not to say there are not other sources of backlinks which can be used.

Once you have a comprehensive list of all linking domains, the next step is to visit each site and determine if the links are manipulative or organic. Covering that topic fully would be a very lengthy article but in brief:

1. Closely examine Google's Quality Guidelines.

2. Remove any links you, or anyone else acting on the site's behalf (i.e. "SEO", link builder, developer, etc) built.

3. Remove links you created to the site from other sites you own

4. For each link ask "How did this link get here?" If the answer is the site owner independently created the link for their own reasons, that is great. This type of link is a naturally EARNED organic link. If there was any undue influence from the site owner which caused the link to be created, it is likely a manipulative link.

5. Take a look at the other links from that site. If the site offers links to other spammy sites, that is a very bad sign. Would you be ashamed for your customers to see this link?

6. Where is the link? Is it in content (which is strongly preferred) or is it in a sidebar or footer where spammy links are more likely to be found.

There is no hard and fast rules. There are guidelines. Ultimately you look at links and determine if they possess the qualities of an organic or manipulative link.

With respect to automated link identification services, there are two problems. First, they will typically identify some organic links as manipulative. Secondly, they will identify some manipulative links as organic. Both issues are highly problematic. You get what you pay for.

Good Luck.

You are welcome to work with the URLs in search results. I am unsure what numbers you are attempting to match.

You can check the redirects by uploading the LIST of URLs to Screaming Frog, which will then crawl the list and inform you of any header responses (301, 302, etc)

I am unclear on your second question. You previously stated the site involved is not a client and you do not have access to Webmaster Tools. What exactly are you asking or suggesting?

Your original question expressed a desire to locate "all" redirects for a given URL. It is highly unlikely to locate all such links without access to the link data in Google WMT and Bing WMT, along with the referrer data in GA.

The best you can do to find external URLs is to build a comprehensive backlink report using data from multiple providers (OSE, AHREFs, Majestic, etc). You should know from the start you will not cover all the links unless you are working with pages which have a low number of links.

I have gained a lot of experience cleaning up spammy links over the past 6 months. This task is the most time consuming and unrewarding task in SEO. It is also necessary if your site has been manually penalized for "inorganic" links.

Does anyone have any suggestions on getting these removed?

I worked with Google on this topic for a client. My client's site was manually penalized specifically for "inorganic links". The client is an industry leader in their niche doing about $20 million in sales per year. They had millions of manipulative links pointed to their site from over 1000 linking root domains.

Step one: Google was absolutely firm in their expectation the links be removed prior to the penalty being lifted. This client had over 100 websites which were various forms of their main site (i.e. duplicate content). All the duplicate content sites were removed except the legitimate, human translated language variations of the site. We reported to Google these efforts which resulted in about 97% of the links being removed. Google responded that it was not enough and they required the links from the other external sites to be removed.

Step two of the process: we created an Excel spreadsheet to contact the sites giving priority to the sites with the most links. We tracked the following information: date of contact, initials of employee who performed contact, URL of domain, method of contact (e-mail / phone / contact us page), we provided a link to a copy of each e-mail we sent (see notes below), the date a response was received (if any), and a confirmation of whether the link was still visible.

Regarding the e-mails which were sent, they were very polite customized letters for each site. The letter format was as follows: introduction, description of the problem (i.e. our website has been penalized by Google...), the request to remove links, the location (URL) of all known links within their domain, and we thanked them for their efforts.

The results were we contacted hundreds of domains. The response rate was 14%. In this case, the company had these links built by another "SEO company" mostly between 2007 - 2009.

We reported our results to Google, shared the documentation and their response was:

"Thank you for your request and all of the follow up analysis. We've reviewed your case again, and unfortunately there are still many inorganic links pointing to the site. For example:..."

That led to step three: we went back to the original list of linking sites. For each and every site we covered four methods of contact: e-mail (if their address could be located), phone call (if a phone number could be located), contact us page (if the site offered one) and we looked up their WHOIS information and used that method of contact if the information was different then what was previously available.

Additionally, we went ahead and completed the list of contacting EVERY site who showed a link in Google WMT, even the hundreds of sites with only a single link. We knew our efforts would fail (14% rate of success) prior to starting so our focus was providing solid documentation. If you named a link we could present a copy of an e-mail request sent to remove the link, the date/time of when it was sent along with who sent it. That was the goal.

After submitting this final information to Google, they "partially" removed the manual penalty. The site seemed to rank normally but not as well as before. Google's response:

"Hello Ryan,

Thank you for your follow up email and all of the information provided. The documentation you provided was very helpful in processing and understanding this case.

After re-evaluating your site’s backlinks we are able to partially revoke a manual action. There are still inorganic links pointing to your site that we have taken action on. Once you’ve been able to make further progress in getting these links removed, feel free to reply to this email with the details of your clean-up effort"

Another client was also penalized but they had a single SEO company build most of their inorganic links. In this instance, the SEO company was able to remove almost all the links directly. They had control over many of the linking sites, they had retained their usernames / passwords to forums, etc. The success rate of link removal clearly depends on how long ago the links were built, how spammy the sites are (i.e. if you build links on disposable sites which are not monitored, you clearly wont find help having them removed) and how the links were built.

Good Luck,

-Ryan

This has been said before, and will probably be etched on the SEO tombstone should the concept ever die.....

Create compelling content that people will want to link to!

• Since you are in the industry, find a celebrity or person of interest who is getting married in Maui and write an article about it. Article title: Maui Wedding Bells Ring for Jennifer Anniston

• Do research and find an interesting statistic to talk about. Article title: Maui Weddings - The Secret to a Happy Marriage. Did you know that according to the latest statistics couple who wed in Hawaii have longer lasting marriages?....

Somehow you MUST generate unique, compelling content that people will WANT to link to and talk about. Otherwise you are simply a beggar asking for a handout. The world is full of them.

Hi Steve.

I would suggest taking a good look at your content pages. I understand having dupe pages, but you are suggesting a possible 140:1 ratio which is....wow.

As I am sure you are aware, there is not going to be any quick and easy fix. Here are some initial thoughts:

The first step I would take is to look for ANY commonalities between pages you can grab. For example, you mention 1000 travel guides. Are all the travel areas unique? For example, is there only one guide for Rome? If so, do all the duplicate Rome pages have "Rome" in the URL? If so, you can consider adding a regex expression to your htaccess file (presuming you are on an apache server) which could cover your 301s.

Is there any unique code on the pages which are common for a given guide? Using the above example, do all the "Rome" pages have "Rome" in the page title? If so, you could possibly update all the "Rome" pages by adding the correct canonical to the page's meta information. At this point it would truly depend on how your site is coded. Do you have a CMS? In what language are your pages written?

The bottom line, there is simply too much value in those pages to discard them. They each need to be properly 301'd as the preferred method. The 301s really need to be handled with general expressions which cover a large number of pages at once. You cannot use individual redirects even if you wanted to as it would cripple your web server.

I would not redirect all the pages to a single home page unless every other opportunity was completely explored.

Search engines do not have any preference as to the extension used for your site. A .com has no advantage over a .net or .info from a search engine ranking perspective.

Users have a strong preference towards .coms. A .com site is viewed as a sign of legitimacy. If you take the name of almost any major company in any such as McDonalds, Facebook, IBM, BankOfAmerica, etc. and you add .com to the end, you wind up on the company's website. Even if you rank well for your site, some users are prejudice and are less likely to click on uncommon TLDs.

If you purchase a non-.com extension there is a high likelihood at times you will lose traffic to the .com. You can explain to users your website is watches.biz but a percentage of them will go to watches.com when trying to get to your website. This issue can impact your business.

With respect to the .xxx domain, I would not recommend acquiring that TLD for business purposes except to protect your brand. Many filters will likely block all .xxx TLDs.

Chad and IPRO offered excellent responses. Thumbs up to those guys.  I will share a bit more detail.

Prior to hiring an SEO, you need to clearly understand SEO is a long-term approach to building your business. If you desire instant results, you can do Pay Per Click advertising. It will cost a lot more but if you desire instant results and maximum control, PPC is the way to go. I say that being an "SEO guy". Prior to hiring a SEO, it's important you have reasonable expectations otherwise you are going to be disappointed.

Also, I would recommend not hiring your SEO company for 60 days after your initial contact. Why? It gives you time to consider other companies, process the sales pitch given, and perhaps measure some results or commitments.

These are the questions I would ask if I were hiring an SEO company:

1. **Who exactly will be doing the SEO on my site? **You should receive a name, a phone number along with their social accounts and instant messaging (skype, etc). Why is this important?

a. As suggested by others, many SEO companies range from shady to pure scams. Some companies are simply fronts who accept business for many services and outsource everything. They do not even know or have any idea of who will be performing the SEO for your site.

b. A ton of SEO work is outsourced to India or other countries where the "SEO" assigned to your account is working for $2/hr. I am not suggesting there is anything wrong with this practice other then the lack of transparency. Buyers should know exactly what they are purchasing.

c. Over the 60 day period, you may wish to call the person a few times and ask general questions. Does the person answer their phone sometimes? Or do your calls always go to voice mail? Does the person respond to e-mails promptly? Ensure the SEO working on your site is someone you feel comfortable working with.

d. Research the SEO. You can check their standings in various communities, their credentials, etc.

e. Interview the SEO (not the company but the actual SEO). Ask questions related to your site.

All of the above direct research is very real and cannot easily be manipulated. Many of the references offered by SEO companies range from misleading to completely false. I worked for Verizon Wireless for 7 years. As I visit various websites I am surprised to see so many companies claim Verizon Wireless and other large companies are their client or use their tools. Upon investigation I learned either the claim is completely false, or it is misleading. Perhaps "Joe's Cellular" has a single store and is a Verizon Wireless authorized retailer. Joe approaches a company for SEO work and then the company claims Verizon Wireless is a client. It is very misleading.

With the above noted, it is also easy to fake references as well. Since IPROdigital mentioned the "TOP SEOs" site, I'll use that as an example. That site has been called out multiple times as being a sham. Any SEO can go to the site, pay money, and then be listed as a "top seo" in a given area.

2. What is the background of the actual company offering SEO services? Many websites give the appearance of representing a large company, but in actuality there is a single person running the site out of their home. There is nothing wrong with working directly with a lone consultant. I performed business in that manner for a period of time. But you, as the client, should know. Also, there are many companies in India and other countries who perform 100% of their SEO work in India, but they will open a virtual office in the US, thereby claiming to be a US company. Some suggestions:

a. Check for a business license. Anyone can open a website. More transparency is required to open a business. Most areas publish business registrations online. Ideally your company will be some form of corporation. In the US, you can check with the Department of State. Example: http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/. For a test you can choose the LLC option then type my company name, "Vitopian". The company should likely have a license for their local office registered with their county or city.

b. Check with the Better Business Bureau. A business needs to exist for 1 year before the BBB will accept registration. http://www.bbb.org/us/Find-Business-Reviews/. There is nothing wrong with not being registered with the BBB, but registration is an indicator the business complies with certain standards and is actively open to mediating complaints.

c. Check with DUNS and BRADSTREET: http://www.dandb.com/businessdirectory/. The US government requires businesses to use their DUNS number in order to bid on government contracts. DUNS is the key credit reporting number for businesses. Many businesses do not even realize they have a DUNS number.

d. Check any industry groups to see if your SEO is a member. One example would be SEMPO: http://www.sempo.org/?page=member_directory

To be clear, the above information needs to be considered as a whole with the other information you collect. A business could be a fantastic web design agency which has all the right credentials, but has limited experience and knowledge related to SEO. Checking the above items will help filter out a lot of low quality companies, but passing this "test" does not mean you have made a good choice for a SEO agency.

3.** What has your SEO agency done lately**? Many companies performed well pre-2012 and are absolutely bombing in 2012. If you were looking for a stock broker, would you hire one who showed great results 2000 - 2010 but had a horrible 2012? Google and Bing have both made huge changes recently. Panda and Penguin are game changers. A few companies have been able to adapt, while most have not. You want to know who can help you in the current SEO environment, not that of years past.

4. Ask for a high level SEO plan. Most agencies will tell you they intend to build links to your site. My advice...run! At a high level, SEO comprises three elements: website architecture / design, content, and site promotion (social media + earning links). Once you have a solid website with great design and fantastic content THEN you can begin promoting the site.

Many SEOs are still caught up in years past where you could simply build links to a site and get it to rank well. They never learned about onpage optimization beyond adjusting a few meta tags. In my experience the best long term results are achieved for a new client when you first focus their website architecture, then work to raise the quality of the site's existing content to "best on the web" levels. You need to distinguish between "link builders" and SEOs. A working analogy is the difference between a guy who changes oil and a certified mechanic. There are too many oil changers who are presenting themselves as mechanics.

5. Insist on full transparency. If your car was not performing as well as it should and your mechanic said "we will use our secret process to improve your performance", would you buy that line? In 90%+ of cases, "secret", "proprietary" and similar terms is slang for "black hat". Here's a suggestion. If someone offers you such a line, ask for the information in writing. If you are speaking on the phone, ask if you can record the call.

6. Consider the SEO providers commitment requirements. What happens if you sign a 1 year contract and then are unhappy after 1 month? What happens if you pay a large upfront fee for work and then are unhappy? In either case, you are pretty much screwed. If you find an agency who does not require a term contract nor large upfront fees, then you can walk away at any time.

7. Consider the SEO's availability. I loved IPROs statement "We're booked beyond capacity..." Many of the best SEO agencies are completely booked. Growing the business in a quality way takes a LOT of time. It takes months to train a recent college graduate into becoming a productive member of a SEO team. Hiring existing talent is hard because many "SEOs" are simply link builders or use black hat techniques.

There is a lot more areas which can be discussed but ultimately you need to chose an SEO in the same way as you would consider hiring an employee to perform SEO. You need to consider your budget and your expectations. If you have a low budget and high requirements, you are setting yourself up for failure. You need to invest some time considering several providers, avoid any high pressure sales pitches and seeing through presentations to determine what is meaningful for you.

A final note. There are many metrics related to SEO. Ranking, PR, traffic and conversion rate are just a few. Here's the thing. For most business owners, none of those metrics matter. Each of those metrics can be manipulated. The truest measure of performance for a business owner is profit. Another metric is sales. Keep that in mind when discussing other metrics.

A search of your site shows this issue is more widespread then the one link. Perform a Google search for "viagra insite:planetherbs.com"

I have seen this issue before and my recommendation to resolve it asap in Google is to add the canonical tag to your pages.

As to how this happened, you can review server logs in an attempt to gather more information but I would recommend taking all steps possible to secure your server. I am not a security expert nor a Joomla expert but I notice you are using Joomla 1.5 as a CMS. Joomla 1.7 was just released and addresses numerous security issues.

There are a few other SEOs who have more experience with Joomla then myself who can offer more details. In general, upgrade your software then do a basic security check of your site. There are many Joomla guides online for this, but here is one of them: http://docs.joomla.org/Security_Checklist_7

Is there something like an IP specific Google penalty that can apply to web properties across an IP or can we assume Google just picked all pages registered at Google Webmaster?

Think of Google as an intelligent business. They have processes which algorithmically penalize websites. They also have systems which flag sites for manual review. When a penalty is deemed appropriate it is possible for it to be applied on any number of factors such as an IP address, a Google account, a domain, etc. It depends on how widespread of a violation has occurred.

What is the most likely cause for our penalty given the background information? Given the drops started already in November 2010 we doubt that the Panda updates had any correlation t this issue?

You mentioned a few points which can potentially lead to a penalty. I am not clear from your post, but is sounds like you may be linking to casino and gambling sites. While those sites may be legitimate, many have a reputation for using black hat SEO techniques.

If you want to remove a penalty, be certain that you do not provide a followed link to any questionable site. When you provide a followed link to a site, you are basically saying "I trust this site. It is a good site and I endorse it". If you are found to offer a link to a "bad" site, your site can be penalized.

What are the best ways to resolve our issues at this point? We have significant history data available such as tracking records etc. Our actions so far were reducing external links, on page links, and C-class internal links

Hire a professional SEO to review your site. You want to review every page to ensure your site is within Google's guidelines. I am highly concerned about your site's links to external sites. I am also concerned about the automated link building that your current SEO has been doing. A professional SEO company should not lead your site to incur a penalty. I am having difficulty understanding how this happened in the first place, how it has not been fixed in almost a year, and how this SEO company is building links for you. Frankly, it's time to consider a new SEO company.

Translating content to other languages is fine. You can take the exact same article and offer a translated version for each language, and even country. For example you can offer a Spanish version for your Spain site, and a different Spanish version for your Mexico site. As long as these sites are targeting specific countries then there is no duplicate content issues.

After all this time wo/ resolution, should we be moving on two new domains and forwarding all content as 301s to the new pages? Are the things we need to try first?

The penalty would follow to your new domain.

The external linking structure of the pages is very keyword and main-page focused, i.e. 90% of the external links link to the front page with one particular keyword

Not good at all.

Summary: your site needs careful, professional review by a SEO professional who adheres to white hat techniques. Every day your site is penalized you are losing traffic and money. The cost you pay to fix this issue may be extremely small in comparison to the amount of revenue you have lost.

Google will only associated the anchor text to the first link discovered on a given page to a specific URL target. If the first anchor text is "golf" the second anchor text is irrelevant.

Will a home page link from a PR8 chinese site help me? Will my site be penalized?

Maybe yes, maybe no. If the link isn't devalued by search engines, then yes it will provide some help. What kind of devaluation can happen?

1. The link could be completely devalued if Google suspects the site involved is receiving or making a payment for the link

2. The link can be partially devalued if it is a footer link or otherwise not used in content (i.e. a list of links)

No one except a current Google or Bing employee who decides to break the company's NDA (non-disclosure agreement) can properly answer your question. In other words, we are guessing.

What we do know is Google is a very intelligent entity with some of the best minds on our little planet working to ensure their results are not manipulated. What makes sense is Google locates sites which sell links and then adds that site to a penalty list and devalues all of their links. This could have already happened for the Chinese website you are considering. None of the SEO tools you depend on such as Open Site Explorer have any idea if a link has been devalued, so you simply see a high DA/PA site.

My recommendation is instead of trying to manipulate the system with such an effort, why not put that same money towards legitimate efforts? Even if your link does work for now, it can be devalued tomorrow or a year later. When it happens you will wind up back on these forums asking "why did my site drop in rankings all of the sudden?" We see it all the time.

If you have money to burn and desire improvement, some suggestions are:

• if you really want links, focus on the few accepted directories who offer links with value: BOTW, Yahoo, BBB, Dmoz. Also consider any niche directories for your industry.

• spend the money on trust symbols which add value to sites such as Verisign, TRUSTe, organizations like GBB.org, etc. Also consider any niche symbols related to your site.

• hire an SEO for a site analysis. Most sites have opportunities on page. Improve your site so it naturally ranks better. On page SEO is half the battle.

• hire a quality content writer. Most SEOs agree "content is king". Even for those who disagree, they understand content has a big impact on your rankings. Look for "best of the web" content, not just average internet content

• invest in graphics. Improve the look and feel of your site. Make it an award winning site to where it is discussed by graphic designers and other sites about how amazing your site appears. Create an infographic for your niche which others will naturally link to

• create a useful widget which your site's visitors can use and will offer a backlink

• hire an expert to write or officially review an article. Articles written by doctors, attorneys and other experts add credibility to your site.

• hold a content and give away a prize. If the contest is performed correctly, you can gain a lot of social media and other attention.

• create videos for your site. Quality, original media can make a big impact. This works for images as well.

You can pay a SEO to perform quality link building as well. Rather then hiring a permanent SEO, you may wish to hire a dedicated, intelligent college student who is capable of learning SEO basics and your niche. Let's say your site is a health food store. This link builder can then read the overwhelming number of health blogs and forums daily, offering comments and feedback as appropriate and occasionally linking back to your site with helpful information.

The list goes on but the point remains the same. There is a huge number of quality, white hat methods to grow your site in a sustainable way which provides real value and will last for years? It doesn't make sense to pay for links which may offer no value at all to visitors and may offer no value to you either.

The best practice would be to be aware of your competitor's links and look for opportunities. Look for high quality pages where the competitor earned links.

Most blog commenting is very low value from a SEO perspective. If you are an authoritative member of the community which offers the blog, you are one of the first commenters and you share a quality reply with a link then it can have value IF the link is followed and the page is not stuffed with 100 other links. Most blogs which don't nofollow their links have almost no value as they are filled with spam and links.

You are presuming the site's links are the reason why they are outranking you and it is entirely possible the links are not the reason at all. If you would like more detailed feedback please share your site URL, your competitor's URL and a couple sample keywords where you are being outranked.