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Really interesting question about user engagement metrics that we don't have a clear answer to, but we've received hints from the engines that they track this sort of thing through toolbars, logged in searches and other methods. Bill Slawski recently wrote a post on a Google patent that would adjust rankings on exactly this type of behavior. Quoting directly from the his article, the patent described user signals such as: The percentage of searches in which the user selected the first result (or one of the top results) in the list of search results The average first click position (i.e., the numerical position within the list of results) The percentage of searches that had long clicks (i.e., the percentage of times that a user selects a link to go to a result page and stays on that page for a long time, such as more than 3 minutes) The percentage of searches that did not have another search within a short period of time The percentage of searches that did not have a reformulated search (i.e., a search where one or more search terms in the original search are added, deleted, or changed) within a short period of time A combination of different metrics, and/or the like So a single click, in the ocean of web results, probably will never make a large difference. Or even multiple visits by a single user. But if you have a large number of users click on a result, and then click the back button to choose another search result - this is almost definitely going to have impact on rankings. Or, another example, if a large number of searchers consistently choose the URL in the 3rd position of a given SERP - and staying on that site - that particular domain might have a good chance of rising. This past April, Google announced "we are beginning to incorporate data about the sites that users block into our algorithms." Again, a single person blocking a site from their search results probably isn't going to have an impact, but a large number of such actions probably will. Engagement metrics are becoming increasing important, but all indications are they must be taken in aggregate.

Whether or not to do a press release is a question I keep getting conflicting information on. A couple of years ago pre-Panda seems like they were more useful. Now it seems that a lot of news aggregators can be billed as duplicant content and have lost what little of the link juice they may have still had. Now if you have a truly news worthy story than indeed it may get picked up and reap benefits, but how often does one really have newsworthy material? I have looked into PRweb and they have a program for unlimited releases for one year for $3995. If one had newsworthy material on a weekly basis this would appear to be a good deal. However, if the content is not newsworthy or the content is released every couple of months then this would not be such a great deal. To research whether or not the press releases where worth it or not from PRweb, I went to their website and looked at several of the recent press releases in the  "Newscenter" section. I found out whom was doing releases and looked at their corporate websites through my SEOmoz browser to check their ranks and most had pretty poor PA and DA even with lots of links. I wish press releases were a good source to get out the word on a business and help with building SEO links, but I just can't see it for sure one way or another. I will be checking into reddit and slashdot as EGOL suggested. Any other suggestions appreciated.

I believe it doesn't have a huge impact on SEO as of right now but I think it will sometime in the near future. I'm in the process of making a marketing plan for my clients based on +1's. Furthermore it's not going to hurt to gain +1's now, it's better to be early than late.

We were in the middle of looking at a lot of the PR submission sites and at that time the latest Panda came crawling. We did a bit of checking and even the one with Warren Buffet and the patented SEO program took a hit. From what we have been able to learn PR Web did not take a hit, but....we are still not ready to spend client money on it until a few more weeks past.

This reply is worth a LOT of money.

Yes, go ahead and ignore those warnings. There was another recent question about this and the help desk said they could be ignored. The help desk generally doesn't just browse Q&A, as they keep busy enough with the help forums and the tickets submitted to them. If there is a problem that might be affecting a large number of users, then I'll flag a Q&A question and ask them to come and take a look at things.

Assuming this pages are dupilcates. then only one will rank, with a canonical you can choose what page that is, if you dont use a canionical then google will choose. if you have too many, then google may see that as bad,

With this particular keyword phrase, I'm not surprised at the difference between the two search estimates. If broad match targeting is selected for this phrase, ads would be eligible to show for searches containing the words find and deal, either together or separate, and possibly with other words included in the search query. If phrase match targeting is selected, ads would be eligible to show for searches including the words 'find a deal' in that order (I don't believe the "a" is factored in), in addition to searches including other words, as long as the keyword phrase is in order within the query. See: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6100 for more details on keyword match types. Without doing any additional research, I would suspect that the keyword phrase "Find a Deal" when targeted with broad match would include wide ranging possible searches, e.g. "Vacation Deal", "Deal on Umbrellas", "Find Shoe Stores", etc.  Obviously, the numbers from broad match targeting here are going to be higher in volume but much lower in relevancy.  In contrast, analyzing "Find a Deal" with phrase match is going to be limited to searches such as "find a deal on electronics", "how to find a deal on hotels", "find a deal on Seattle hotels", etc.  This limitation should result in lower impressions but greater relevancy and conversion rates. So as far as what match type numbers are most important to you, I would say that it depends on what your business offers and how precise you have to be with your targeting in order to attract a relevant audience.  If you offer every possible deal on anything under the sun, broad match becomes a bit more attractive.  However, I imagine this isn't the reality of the situation, in which case you'll end up often having a mismatch between user demand and website supply, as well as lower CTR and CPA with higher cost if employing paid promotion.

Because the engines ignore the link juice completely. You won't move up in rankings at all.

Thanks guys!

You could write a positive article about them or provide them with a testimonial that they can add to their site.

if you mark a payed review as paid for and put a nofollow on all links it is perfectly legit and white hat. Any changes to that make it "darker".

Well there's miles difference between good and great. I'd say a good 90-95% of blog posts out there (let alone guest blog posts) aren't StumbleUpon worthy - and most fall within the "good enough" range.

You definitely need to be getting links from other quality domains to the article. Go find tech and budgeting sites and let them know about the article. If it really is a good article you will probably have some of them mention it. Google says they use social signals and I think Bing has said the same thing but I haven't seen anything that quantifies the value of likes yet.

Yes, I would fix every thing that is or could be a problem, it is hard to rank, and you dont weant anything working aginst you.