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The problem comes from not being able to contact many of the sites that link to you. Whether you were responsible for gaining those links, or they were placed in an effort to instigate some form of negative SEO is irrelevant to Google, the links remain, therefore the penalty remains. What is a webmaster, or hired gun SEO, to do when there are still links to be removed but no way to do so?

I took a comment from John Mueller in Google’s webmaster groups and pushed it to the limit. John said that Having links on external sites pointing to URLs on your site that return 404 is generally not a problem (it would primarily be a problem if those URLs should show content and are returning 404 instead.

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/crawling-indexing–ranking/C-OoaJfb0Yg

Many people took this statement far too literally and started changing URLs and serving 404s in an effort to hide from bad links. But most of them also added redirects to the content they had moved, and we know that redirects can pass ‘link juice’. I decided that there was a better approach to the problem, one that left know doubt to any observer that new link building rules had been put in place.

We had a client who had years of dodgy link building that had caused a rather serious manual spam penalty. After several weeks of link removal requests we hit a brick wall with a large number of site owners refusing to co-operate, unable to be contacted, or the far more entertaining, demanding significant pay to remove those links. (since some of the links had been paid for, paying to have the removed would have been reasonable, but the price some people asked was excessive).

When we found a site linking to them, and the site owner was unresponsive, and it was a site we cared “nothing” about (it would never send any traffic) we created a 403 Forbidden Access filter for that domain. This meant that any person, or link, coming from that site would simply be blocked from accessing the site. No 404, no 301, simply turned away.

This is what it looks like in htaccess

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http(s)?://(.*\.)?(crappydomain1\.com|crappydomain2\.ws|crappydomain3\.info(/.*)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]

This can become a long process. I have seen sites with a single affiliate that has 500 domains but is unresponsive to requests to modify things on their end to be in compliance. Many of those affiliates lost their income, and a few, their clickbank accounts.

This method is great for removing sites with thousands of pages that are unresponsive. Instead of listing each URL in a disavow spreadsheet, you can block the entire domain in htaccess. Once you have cleared out the worst of the worst links in this manner it is time to look at the disavow tool.

Since we used the 403 forbidden to block the bulk linkers, the disavow list is much easier to manage. You are now listing single pages in most cases.

When you finally file your reconsideration apology (grovel) you can show that your good faith efforts included aggressively blocking domains that refused contact or were being far too aggressive in linking to you. Provide that list, along with your disavow list, and a few specific URLs so that the reviewer can go to those pages and try the links themselves to verify the blocking.

Is this a lot of work? Yes. Should webmasters be spending their time trying to remove links? No. Should Google simply ignore links it doesn’t like and kill the spammy link building market once and for all? Of course. But that isn’t the world we live in right now. Google’s algorithms need human intervention and augmentation, and this tactic can go a long way to show that human that you are serious about fixing the link profile of your site.

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This was, of course, followed by “tests” that showed that they did work. The test used a nonsense word on arguably one of the more powerful personal blogs out there. (Matt’s blog). Since the blog now ranked for that term they declared victory and moved on. Too bad they were wrong too.

We’ve used press releases for years, not for SEO (although that was a great perk) but for real traffic and outreach. For example, a few years back Elkhart, Indiana, was declared the white hot center of the economic meltdown and was even visited by President Obama. The RV industry had been nearly destroyed in less than a year. Unemployment for Elkhart county crossed 22%. But the jewelry store I was working for was doing as well as ever because of our website.

So we took the opportunity to put out a press releases of our own. Being successful during a white hot meltdown. We talked about the local economy and how we were managing to not only survive, but grow in the middle of it. We made sure it got proper exposure on PRWeb, and then mailed copies to WSJ, NYT, the president, and the writers who had all picked up the ‘white hot meltdown’ talking point.

Within a week we had radio and tv wanting interviews, newspaper writers everywhere were writing about us, and giving us links. But the traffic, and sales, from that press release were worth more than anything else.

When Matt says there is no SEO benefit from a press release, he is only half right. Any links you get from press release scraper sites probably have little to no value, but the links you get from people that talk about you BECAUSE of the press release do have value.

This is your task the next time you want to run a press release for ‘SEO’ reasons.

1. Find someone talking about some aspect of your business. The more famous / popular the better.

2. Find a way to take a counterpoint to whatever they are saying.

3. Do it.

4. Let them know about it directly.

Like every other form of marketing press releases are about engagement. Don’t just put out a release about painting your walls orange and then stuff anchor text links in the footer. Publish real news and try to engage with real people. That is the REAL value of a press release.

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SEO Graphic by SEO Book

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But, like every hot website to hit the internet, there are winners and there are losers.

Winner:

Pallet beds are all the rage in Beverly Hills and college dorms rooms.

Pallet Manufacturers: Building furniture and art out of left over pallets is HUGE  on Pinterest. From chairs and tables, to plant hangers and wall art, it seems like there is nothing that can’t be made out of this wonderful industrial material. Except good pallets simply don’t exist unless they are new.

I’ve worked around pallets most of my life, I’ve stacked them in 30 foot tall pyramids and lit them on fire, I’ve used them as flooring in the hay barn to keep the hay clean and dry, I’ve even made bike ramps out of them. One thing i haven’t done though is find an old one that wasn’t covered in grease, oil, paint and other unidentifiable liquids, not to mention the spiders, or busted up so bad that they aren’t even worth picking up.

To get a pallet that you can actually use to make any of these wonderful home furnishings, you need to go to the pallet depot and buy new ones.  Something that Pallet Depot absolutely loves to do, sell them on at a time to crafters with power tools.

Loser:

Paint chip landscapes, no paint or skill needed!

Sherwin Williams: Rumor has it that paint companies have had to institute a 3 paint chip limit at the Home Depot because of all the people coming in for free samples to glue on to cork board or to make in to boxes or coasters. Really, coasters.

Usually free samples are designed to, you know, give you a sample of a product you intend to buy, not serve as a free source of arts and crafts materials.

Winner:

Hair Care Industry: Apparently every variation of every hairstyle is the most amazing hair ever based on a survey of pin boards dedicated to hair. With all of the hair styles, and colors, comes all the boxes of coloring, brushes, flat irons, curling irons and in some cases, lumpy pillows for that carefree look. Do you have any idea how many women have gone platinum blonde with purple ends since Pinterest came out?

Bad Hair Day

Loser:

Beauty Salons: You would think that this would be in the winner category, but with all the new DIY hair ideas more and more women are staying home and doing it themselves. And the ones that do go to a beauty salon? Instead of a nice style and fluff the visit resembles more of a triage situation after a gang war between the South Side Suckers and their polar opposites, the Achy Breaky Hearts from north Dallas. Please, you have to save my hair, it’s all I have!

Winner:

Grocery Stores and Farmer’s Markets: A day doesn’t go by where 50 different ways to make a brown bag lunch for the kids doesn’t go by. Or even better, 13 new ways to cook brussel sprouts. Pinners the world over are running out to buy that one ingredient they need for that amazing new dinner idea they saw while surfing Pinterest at work. The grocery stores love it, the fresh produce markets love it, that one guy that normally only makes 4 bottles of Wattle Seed a month really loves it.

Loser:

This will taste great in 7 months

Your poor family: Seriously, name one teenager that is excited to try Wattle seed in his creme brûlée. For that matter, name one that wants creme brûlée. These poor families are forced, night after night, to smile and pretend to love tonight’s pre-made in army size quantity zip lock bag of something that used to look like something else. But the worst is when your youngest kid finds your stash of drunken Gummi Bears.

Winning on Pinterest is hard

Being a winner on Pinterest can be a challenge. With it’s growth in popularity to one of the top 5 websites on the entire internet, almost anything you do or pin can end up lost in the crowd. So make sure that your pins stand out.

Here are a few things to think about when pinning;

• Looking through the popular category to see what it hot right now
• Tie your service or product to the most popular trends going on at the moment
• Use humor in an unexpected way
• Time your pins to coincide with your best repinners activity
• Be direct – tell them you pinned something!
• Most of all, have fun, this is a social site, not QVC.

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