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    SEO Providers – Successories.com

    Today, I received the e-mail below from a SEO provider that ultimately has something to do with “successories.com”. (Celiamania.com is registered through the private domain service “domainproxy.com”).

    To: webmaster

    Reply-To: donotreply@domainsbyproxy.com

    ***SPAM*** FWD: Quick question regarding link removal… [CELIAMANIA.COM@domainsbyproxy.com] (FROM: linkremoval@linkremovalhelp.com)

    Hi,

    I am contacting you from a third party agency who is contracted by “successories.com” to monitor and improve the organic ranking of their website successories.com in various search engines. As part of a recent update to search engine algorithms, Google’s tools have detected that there are some links from various pages of your website which have now been considered “spam” by Google and are having a harmful effect on  rankings. This is due to the way in which these links were created.

    Organic rankings and traffic to the site are vital to our client’s business, and so it is important for us to bring our site into compliance so that we do not continue to be penalized by what Google thinks are links we acquired purposefully against their Webmaster Guidelines. Since this was not the case, we are formally requesting that you remove all the links to the successories.com site from your website.  In addition, I will be forwarding this email to Google to verify that we are taking the proper measures.

    The link to my client’s site is on the following page:

    212 Degrees


    http://celiamania.com/wordpress/?paged=37
    http://celiamania.com/wordpress/?paged=37&wpmp_switcher=desktop
    http://celiamania.com/wordpress/?paged=37&wpmp_switcher=mobile
    http://celiamania.com/wordpress/?stc_oauth_start=1&stcaction=comment&loc=http://www.celiamania.com/wordpress/%3Fp=100%26cpage=1&type=

    Thanks again

    As you see, they don’t give me their name or any contact info other than the linkremovalhelp.com e-mail address. It’s up to me to go search for it. But I don’t need to. The probability is very very high that this is a SEO staff.

    These SEO services have really bad rapport, and I was going to ignore this mundane request, as I was not doing anything wrong or illegal. If you actually look at my pages they refer to, it is somewhat of a negative review of the book “212 Degrees” that they (still) sell on their website. It’s not really a review of the book – but of people who gift such books without much thought.

    There’s nothing I need to do – BUT being the nice person I am. I decided to make this a win-win situation. I will go edit that old article and make the “simple text” anchor link into a “relevant text” anchor link.

    Also, notice… there are no anchored hyperlinks within this article. :)

    References:

    http://www.815seo.com/link-removal-request-email-examples-and-template/

    http://www.seobook.com/removing-links

    http://moz.com/learn/seo/anchor-text

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    Tax Season Is Here


    February is almost over and financial institutions are finally catching up with their paperwork to send out the 1099’s. This year April 15th is a Tuesday, so no reprieves for observation of Sundays. Although you can extend your filing date, you MUST [over] pay your taxes by April 15th if you are going to owe taxes.

    During this economic climate, many people change jobs often. This makes estimating your taxes based on previous year returns very difficult. The easiest way to see approximately how much you’ll owe is to go through a tax filing program like TurboTax with the information you have now (W-2, 1099, most of your medical bills) and get a really good estimate. Then you can go through your return with a fine tooth comb later to add information you can’t compile in time.

    Intuit has has many different grades for their TurboTax software from Basic to UltraMaxCandylandUnicornDream. If you know exactly what you’re doing, you CAN get the Basic version and file additional forms manually. If you need the step by step guidance, you must move on to Deluxe (for home owners), Premium (for stocks/bonds/investments) and Home & Business (for science teachers who run a lab in their basement).

    If you don’t know which one you need and you’re willing to pay for upgrades, then you can start for free online at TurboTax.com and let the website determine which grade you need automatically as you progress.

    But if you need to make many different filing scenarios to see if filing jointly/separately gets you better benefits, or if a home office is worth the calculation, then I recommend getting the packaged version and saving multiple files.