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Trusting one metrics or the other is not the right question to ask. There's no such thing as a perfect tool for measuring domain/page authority. Combining multiple metrics (not just PR and SEOMoz, but data provided by other tools as well) is what helps you understand the real value of a page.

Thanks for reply. That put some confidence in my commenting activity. Anchor text titles worry me a little because if I spend the time writing a nice comment I wouldn't want it to be removed. I look at it as if I was running a blog, if someone placed an anchor text title on the comment I would straight away assume they was posting for one reason. Although I would love to gain a few more anchor text links this way. Thanks.

I agree with Shane. Look at the language Google use. They are always really careful and they use "Social Signals" not Social links. So its not really the links its the signals they give off. Look here back in 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM5ap8NqkuY Matt Cutts is talking about using it to determine authority and reputation. And here he says it again. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-links-social-15396.html Here he's saying it's a complex mix that's getting more social over time with links never really dying. Like shane says Social is more than just rankings. You get to build brand awareness and keep engagement. Its an awesome tool if used right and you can do it efficiently. For eg. say you create 3-4 types of facebook posts. Come up with 20 or so and schedule them for release at the rate of about 4 facebook posts a week. Keep them short and simple, work out your target audience peak online time and tailor your posts to suit. Try and come up with ideas to share, comment, like etc... then keep up with comments and build social links within the industry people who like and trust you and will share your content and you theirs and you very quickly have a campaign that is managed within 2-3 hours a week. Not only that if its good content you'd enjoy sharing others as welll as your own.

Try to get your targeted keyword in the front of the Title tag if possible. Your example above doesn't dilute the page as it doesnt compete with any of your other page (blue paint, green paint etc), it just adds some enticing copy to encourage clicks. When you are faced with a challenge of either using a highly searched exact match term like "Red Paint" but feel that it doesn't read well in the serps, go with what users would prefer. Example: Best for SEO : Red Paint at Great Prices - CompanyName Best for SEO + better click through's: Quality Red Paint at Great Prices Use the first example as much as you can, (the exact match keyword) and use the second example when the exact match keyword doesn't make sense or doesn't sound enticing.

Based on my conversations with Google, relevance is absolutely something to think about - if your site is all about oranges and you get links from sites/even blogs that are all about cars, it's  flag because it can look spammy. Unless it's an outlier and is just one (or two) random links from sites that aren't related in content to yours, you risk harming yourself by connecting your site with unrelated content.

I'd still be slightly cautious. That blog post is two years old. A lot has changed in two years about the success of such tools. I would still highly suggest you follow the tips in that other article and earn the link.

Thanks for that Barry.

Thanks. Seems Google will change the title tag to increase CTR, so that's why Google is switching generic tag for brand only tag when a brand name search is performed. Makes sense.

I am going to keep it brief and say this: Google is using an algorithm that mathematically combines 200+ factors. Within that there are many ways to have an odd result here or there. So, what I suggest is to look at a couple of things and determine your answer: Search engine ranking factors on moz. (These are opinions) Search engine periodic table from SearchEngineLand From these, you can see what matters to move something up. As to your search and where you land there are even additional factors like are you using non personalized search or are your results impacted by previous searches? So, a bit to learn, Good luck,

Ryan Kent makes it all clear at http://www.seomoz.org/q/so-what-do-you-get-when-you-become-an-oracle

"Google is currently looking for a way to measure the quality of people's Facebook and Twitter followers. This is to prevent companies from being rewarded for simply creating a bunch of fake profiles to "like" their own page in order to look more popular. " Kind of seems like what the Google Algo is doing rooting out spammy sites (fake profiles) "Right now, there is no way to measure this. " Sort of like Pagerank. If somebody is a big celebrity and 1m people follow them they will rank high. If they only follow 100 people--chances our those 100 are pretty important as well and will rank them a bit higher because of it (just like links).

Paying to be included in a directory is not the same a a paid link. You are paying for membership, & if your website meet the requirements then the directory will accept you & link to your site as it does with all it's members. I have used directories for a long time, they have worked great, & they will continue to work great. Think the key to making it it work is diversify your links, you need all kinds of back links to be successful. Also when it comes to directories, I try to create unique description for each listing. If you copy & past the same description for every link you build then some them may get ignored.

Social signals are the nearest thing to crawlers having human eyes.  There's a pie chart somewhere on SEOmoz about this, I think social was about 7% of what search engines take into account.

I'm a bit leery of this. Where's the concrete proof that he ever worked for Google? I realize nothing he said was overly shocking, but still . . .

Haha I wondered if you would read the article and notice that - I think your evidence above my prove that button colours really can make a difference. I have found the same to be honest. I also found changing the colour of a call to action resulted in a significant increase in click-throughs from my landing pages. Some times I think things are just common sense and in a lot of cases I have found that the more you can spell something out for visitors the more they complete your desired actions. You can't argue with metrics and split testing in my opinion.

Check List: Move old content to the new domain 301 as many pages to the same content on the new domain as possible Submit a change of address through Google Webmaster Tools Contact site owners that give you high quality incoming links, request they change the links from the old site to the new site (personal preference) Keep building new high quality links to your site's content level pages. Note: If it's a brand new domain, Google is going to put your site through about a three month trial period before it accurately ranks you. From my understanding it's done to help prevent spam.

No worries Ann, I like to share resources I have faith in. I have had a quick look/see at the service, and the insides look very interesting/promising. It's defiantly worth a look either way, im just wondering now if VCB would work well with Followerwonk!

I have 17,000 subscribers.   That brings lots of traffic into my website every day.  Imagine the opportunity loss if they were not getting daily invitations to my site.

As you say, I think it means that Google will pick up a higher CTR on ads. When SERPs are dominated by one site with a list of sitelinks, users will see diversity in the ads.