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In a vacuum, yes.  However hopefully you'll be linking in and out anyway.  Like most things in SEO it is good to understand the principal without being a slave to it. If one area is picking up lots of links then fantastic. You could link back around the site to spread that link equity.  Better still - try to ensure it is your money pages that are getting the incoming links!

you're welcome

From what I know your looking to gain 2 things! 1. Users linking back to your blog and 2. Sharing the content on social networks. Building up social lists on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc so when you do post something new you have a hub of users to help push your post by sharing it on social networks which should also help to generate more backlinks. Yes and there's more... Building up social lists is very challenging, it takes time and added value. The goal is to make friends with people in your or relevant to your niche. By interacting with their posts and contributing to their posts you will also be able to find good content that they are missing or add to content that they have already created. Building a social lists requires a lot of engagement, but when done properly you win. Is this the main purpose of a blog for SEO? Would anything else apart from the above effect the SEO for the site? Maybe the freshness of content also has a positive impact! The main purpose of your blog should be to help your users and other users that are relevant to your niche. Also if your blog is picking up lots of links, for this example lets say 100 links a month and the rest of the site outside of the blog is picking up 10 a month will the blogs power of picking up links effect the rest of the sites rankings, would you need to anchor text link out of the posts in the blog to make the most out of it? The blog will help the entire site. Include anchored text where it would make sense for your users. Example: If I had an article about creating content: This article is about creating content bla bla and also learn how to share content bla bla bla I would try to include my keywords, but always think of the users. Is this going to help them learn more? Is this going to entertain them? _The external links that are generated will be natural if your content is natural.  _

You can also check their link profile.. Do they have a natural back link profile or are they over optimizing. Also check the onsite work, do they have a site that is trying to manipulate spiders (footer links, hidden text, stuffing keywords). Do they have a blog on their site? when's the last time someone posted on this blog? dare these blog posts shared? Is the sites social media activity real? If they have a good site with a good linking profile and If the site is active (frequent posting) and it has real followers on twitter or likes on Facebook with interaction/commenting then it is a good company to link with.

Yeah, if you have got your target audience right and taken time to build a relationship with appropriate influencers I think you are on to a winner in any niche...

I'd say we can only guess... There are so many variables here. Guest posts may go down the archive and thus the link value may be decreasing. Or possibly there are some flags - which would be not a smart idea though because I see dozens of blog who nofollow links with no intention (because of installing a new WP plugin. So honestly, I don't have the answer.

Yes the Google Author tag lets Google know that you are a reputable source. It gives you as a user authority/credibility. IMO your Google + page has a PR and even though there is no case studies on this yet, I would bet that it helps your site gain authority. Heres more about it: http://www.slideshare.net/blindfiveyearold/google-plus-seo-and-authorship

Nice distillation here Justin, thanks.

If you are focused on generating local results, it is very important to have the geographic location in your keyword content.  In London, you should also look at the impact of neighborhood or "borough" or section of the city....listed with plumbing services. The Blog provides two opportunities: The first is keyword content. Google looks to your site to establish keyword relevancy. The blog provides you an opportunity to do that on a consistent basis. The second is related to linkbuilding.  Because relevant content has become so important, the blog can provide frsh content consistently to people that participate in discussions on the web...in the process you can earn links and listings from other blogs. In addition, good content can create some natural linking and viral sharing...this is the "linkbait" that you mention. Regardless, all of your strategies are sound. Here is a great article from SEOMOZ on a 6 month plan that is advanced but will give you solid detail on the subject:   http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-6-month-link-building-plan-for-an-established-website Hope this helps. Mark

Sounds like that may be part of the issue but I wouldn't expect such high fluctutions. Keep on creating good content, share it and promote it, and keep away from using really anchor intensive keywords. Best of luck!

My short-term goal is to provide some at-a-glance drill-down metrics (like domain diversity or EMD influence) on the Mozcast site. That way, when something happens, people can immediately  look at half a dozen metrics and see if there's a pattern across the data as a whole. No ETA on that yet, but hopefully within a few weeks.

Of course, Google will be adding more weight on Google Plus because it is their products and they have got all the data. Tweets and Facebook likes also help gaining more online exposure but what I believe is that social signal is important but it is not as powerful as links. Google, just like any other search engines depends heavily on links. Social signals are important but they cannot override the importance of links. Moreover, the sample size of the test is small and therefore, a definite conclusion is hard to draw from this.

Encourage your users to engage with you by leaving comments or publishing on their own blog. Social buzz generally gives some authority to rankings only because people are interacting with the content. And when users/readers interact, the content is usually good or engaging. Thus this will usually get more attractiveness to the webmasters that wish to link back to your article to give you more authority as well. Social sharing is one metric but the effects of social media is another thing.

_I think if the article is not excessively long for say 10000 words long and available in a single page, both the links will share same value. Of course the number of out bound links matter here. If you have included 50 or 60 out bound links in the domains, definitely the link juice will get divided. But as we cannot tell how search engine algo works, we can only assume here.  _

I would think that if you are aiming for authoritative websites then the data will be fairly accurate, however, if you were looking at getting links from lower DA/PA sites then I think making comparisons could be slightly more difficult as I suspect these sites may be more likely to attract links from outside of Mozscapes index (The number of sites and pages crawled is not infinite and less popular sites may not be included). If you haven't already it may be worth reading Rand's post on the latest Mozscape update: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/july-mozscape-update  Can you look at the keywords some of these sites are targeting and see how well they rank as another indicator?

Thanks everyone for the responses given me a good idea now so I guess it's just a case of pen to paper and drawing out the structure. Thanks to Ryan as well for input.

ActivitySuper- Here are some answers and clarifications: 1.) Personal and business pages both can generate significant results. Depends on where you want the traffic to go and what effort you put into it.  Here is something specific from Rand regarding his recommendations:  (URL link is http://www.seomoz.org/blog/21-tactics-to-increase-blog-traffic-2012) RANDS comments:  Leveraging these networks to attract traffic requires patience, study, attention to changes by the social sites and consideration in what content to share and how to do it. My advice is to use the following process: If you haven't already, register a personal account and a brand account at each of the following -Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn (those links will take you directly to the registration pages for brand pages). For example, my friend Dharmesh has a personal account for Twitterand a brand account for OnStartups (one of his blog projects). He also maintains brand pages onFacebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Fill out each of those profiles to the fullest possible extent - use photos, write compelling descriptions and make each one as useful and credible as possible. Research shows that profiles with more information have a significant correlation with more successful accounts (and there's a lot of common sense here, too, given that spammy profiles frequently feature little to no profile work). Connect with users on those sites with whom you already share a personal or professional relationships, and start following industry luminaries, influencers and connectors. Services likeFollowerWonk and FindPeopleonPlus can be incredible for this: 2.) There is nothing stopping from someone from dumping links and content onto a business or personal page. that is the true power of social networking. If you have something important to say and you think it warrants attention, then do it. Make sure you provide them a link back to your personal or business page.... 3.) If you are getting comments on your posts it doesn't automatically notify everyone in their circle. But remember, if they are getting to your post than they are interested in something you are saying. Make sure you provide them an opportunity to link to additional content or your own pages. You will see on the right hand side of google plus a people and pages link that they can add.....once they add you then you will have access to their "circles". Hope this helps. Mark

Targeted likes and shares on facebook page will matter on brand credibility, if like and share comes from different areas where the business should be just a local business would give an alarm. Why? Because questions will arise from there, are the likes and shares for real? are they not just spam accounts?and so forth. It won't really give much on keywords SERP, unless you have good content on your facebook fan page that includes yourr keyword or they are currently active and engaging in your fan page- I was talking about the fans. Hope this helps.

Thanks for quick reply, I understand the first part, I was really looking for answer to the second part 'After Index', which sounds like it's a bit of a grey area. See you say a few days and I would be inclined to agree but I have in the past created 5 links in a few days, stopped all activity and 8 days later then seen the movement. I like to put myself in Google shoes and think what would I do and in this case, most likely want the link crawled more then once to make sure it was a genuine link. So with this in mind maybe it's down to how frequently the link is found, BBC link could be found 3-4 times a day, where as a blog link could be found once in a week. Just a thought.

** http://www.seomoz.org/blog/life-after-google-is-now-9-pieces-of-advice-on-how-a-new-site-can-succeed-without-search** Try this S