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I'd also recommend checking out the SEOmoz articles on Link Building to give you some ideas http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4.

I'd say that standard link building strategy for a content site is split between: Proactive: doing webmaster outreach by email and asking for people to share the content Passive: encourage people to share the content on their own (social sharing buttons being the easiest way to do that) Depending on the value of the content (you'll have to be honest with yourself as to whether it's amazing content, or just decent content) you can have great results from proactive outreach to other site owners. Think of who would find the site valuable and start looking for sites like that. The best place to get started is by reading up on link building / outreach posts here on SEOMoz: http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=outreach - Pay attention to email templates and how you might be able to use them for your own situation. Competitive analysis is a great place to start, and there's nothing wrong with spending a little time on directories if it's a one and done thing. I wouldn't spend days on it but there are plenty of high quality directories, especially for specific niches. Don't be scared off without researching each directory first, here's a good article on testing their relative value: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/using-blekkos-seo-data-to-evaluate-web-directories-14678

Another useful feature is the ability to remove pages from the index. I've needed to do this a couple times. It's free and only takes a few minutes to set up so I'd do it for every site. Google seem to be developing and refreshing a lot of things at the moment too so I am sure Google Webmaster Tools will only improve with time.

You're welcome, Bob. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I think I need more information. When you say you are targeting Salt Lake City and San Francisco, do you mean that you have offices in those two cities and are doing a true local campaign for the cities (optimizing the site for them + getting Google Place Pages, other local business index listings, etc.)? Or, is your service virtual and you are just targeting cities with your content only? If the former, then if the Local SEO is not handled correctly, Google can get confused as to why you've got two distinct addresses. In such a case, they may lose 'faith' in the validity of their data about you and that could, potentially, cause a drop, Please, come back with more info if you can. Miriam

If you're logged out and click the Like button, a dialog should pop up asking you to log in before you can like it, or see the page you're liking. Thats just standard facebook, they hide all content behind the registration wall. If you're saying the likebox has no content except for a login box, that is weird, however I don't really know why it would be doing that, sorry. I can however point you to the FB developers support page

Good catch Jennifer! That was it. Thank you so much, Bob

If it's one IP I suppose SEOMoz would be ok with that, but I'd contact them just to be sure ~ http://www.seomoz.org/about/contact

Vahe, I accidentally clicked 'Good Answer' twice for EGOL Your answer was informative. I will be sure and get you next time.

Wow Perfect Marcin, thank you.

For design purposes I never used it.  Maybe a few times.  Only for SEO I've really used it. The code that you don't care about Google seeing first is what you put down on the bottom and absolute position it to the top so the website still looks the same.

Awesome, thanks Istvan and Andrea!

Hi Bob Working on the same thing! still to Implement but reading up on these at the moment. If you sort it before me please let me know. http://www.bigskyphotography.ca/design/tutorial-facebook-like-virtuemart/ http://forum.virtuemart.net/archive/index.php?topic=82536.10;wap2

Hi Bob, here's some resources to get you started! BloggerLinkUp My Blog Guest This YouMOz article has some ideas: 15 Smart Ways to Find Guest Posting Opportunities You can search google for blogs that cover the same topics as your site that accept guest posts using queries like: finance coaching blog "guest post" There's more about using google to find guest blogging opportunities here: 3 Smart Google Search Tips to Hunt for Guest Post Opportunities You could try searching twitter. A great way to do this is to use followerwonk to search people's bios. You could do searches like: nlp coach blog Take a look at what others are doing, see if they have their own blogs that might accept guest posts or even if they don't you may be able to find out where they are guest posting. Think about where your potential audience are going to hang-out too. If you can get guest posts infront of them and get some direct qualified referral traffic to you site then this can be even better. You may find that people arriving through this channel convert better. Remember that guest blogging isn't just about getting those backlinks. It's a great way to build your reputation/authority and position yourself in your chosen niche. Again, hope this helps.

Good responses all around. Nothing in SEO is guaranteed. Anyone guaranteeing you anything in SEO is lying or trying to sell you something. SEOmoz metrics are a measurement of best practices. You will do well to follow these but getting straight A's will guarantee you nothing. In extremely competitive niches, it is important to max out in all categories including on-page and all off page methods. In such a niche quantity AND quality must work in concert to get any kind of results and EVEN THEN, it is a gamble.

Sorry, but not remembering 100% what I was thinking at the time of writing the response since it was a week ago, but trying to reread through what was written, I believe I was talking about how the SERP may have been manually rated.  While some of the SERPS are ranked via the algorithms google has developed, I've heard and read that there are a number of them that are affected and rated manually by humans.  If there was any human interaction by one of their manual raters, they may have deemed your site less "relevant" for the search. Have you ever seen the "Give us feedback" link at the bottom of the SERPs?  Let's say somebody decides your website and the other 2 competitors are not what they were looking for when it came to the search "nlp" or "nlp training.  Well, they could complain and potentially be reviewed by the manual raters or whomever responds to the complaints and drop you.  Since it was before the most recent panda change, I was speculating that this could of been a cause.

We found out that we had 2 other domains that were duplicates of our site. Could that be a problem?

What's a top keyword? That's the question... It's not always the keyword with the most traffic. You can use the Adwords Keyword tool (for example) to find related search queries and the search volume. But even when their is a lot of traffic, it's not sure it's a 'good' keyword for you. When you are running an Adwords campaign you can find search queries "Tab Keywords -> See Search terms".  This Search queries are also in Google Analytics, but with information about conversion, time of site visit, etc. So you can use Adwords + Google Analytics to find 'converting' search queries. Thereafter you can start optimising (seo) for this search queries. See also http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/advanced-seo-keyword-research-tips-and-ideas-14216 for a lot of information.

Casey, Devlive, and Slava, Thank you for the interesting responses. I am wondering, as I stop around PA 20 (I don't go below that) in OSE, what is the smallest DA that you guys would target, keeping in mind that I only want to incorporate sites in it for the long haul.

such excellent responses from both of you, Thanks!

Technically you are allowed 1 AdWords account per Company/URL. Is the new account for the same website? If it is for a different URL as the other account, using a $100 credit is perfectly fine. If it is for the same URL, is there a specific reason to you are setting up a new one? You can still use the $100 coupon on this site - Google will never know, but it would be against the TOS so I will leave that judgement call up to you. Coupon guidelines from Google: Coupons are for new AdWords clients only (Accounts Created within 14 days). Coupons may only be used for accounts in US or Canada   (Coupons redeemed outside of the US or Canada are not considered part of your coupon activity.) One coupon per client only, subject to terms and conditions Use marketing materials available on "Marketing tools" tab to get your clients motivated and provide guidance on AdWords campaign set up Coupon TOS: https://www.google.com/adwords/coupons/terms.html