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Yep anchor text is a big Penguin target. It's a shame as this used to work well, but it's abused, and is unnatural, which is what Googles point is. Links pointing to you should be natural, and people naturally tend to add a brand term as the anchor text, which is why this is safe.

Disagree about internal links though, based on past and current experience, but always receptive to evidence

Hmmm, I've never been sure about this. As I'm a naturally crap blogger/article writer, it's never been an issue, but the whole duplicate penalty thing would worry me, regardless of any syndication clause.

But I guess using the rel=author tag could be a way of safeguarding yourself, if any syndicated articles carries this.

Guest blogging on the other-hand sounds more viable, if you are targeting authoritive sites, with relevant content. This seems to be the natural route now for link building. Researched and well thought out, rather than blasting out syndicated content, but thats just me, and I'm no expert in syndincation

Yahoo recently caused a stir by bucking the trend and ordering all of its work at home employees to start working from a Yahoo office or find a new job!

So that may be a bit harsh, but the argument was that more creativity and productivity is increased by employees working in a central office.

We did a post last year about the expected future of home working: The future will be a virtual office... and boss...

But do you think with the way attitudes are changing, and the need to cut costs that business is more approachable to the idea of homeworking and decentralised workforces?

We have an office in a business centre, with great facilities and utilise shared reception, board rooms etc, but also utilise and are big believers in outsourcing and VA's. I like the focus and professionalism an office brings, but also more than sold on the efficiency and resource saving by using outsourcing, although can't imagine not having an office, so we try and do the best of both worlds.

I've noticed though that recently, meeting with other businesses that any stigma remaining with non office based businesses seems to have vanished, and some companies even use it as a selling point, ie lower overheads, cheaper, more flexible. Has anyone else noticed this?

Do you run your business from home, or are you happy to use suppliers who you know are home based? Or do you prefer a bigger company image with premises you can visit?

Picture credit - How To: Avoid Penalties from the SEO Animals


From search engine land:


So expect some bouncing around in the search results in the near future

In case you've forgot, Penguin updates target your linking profile, so watch out for spammy linkbuilding, same anchor text, linking to dodgy sites etc.

Panda is more about your actual site quality, duplicate content, poor content etc.

I love it!! What a genius idea I can see a whole industry cropping up here, "clip a celeb and advertise your business"

hmmm clip-a-celeb.com is still free....

He was great. No longer will we hear that cracking line "so why do you want me to spend my children's inheritance?"