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Depends on where you are at in the SEO timeline. I just started and made one comment on a site and now I get more traffic from that site than several of my paid boards combined. If the comment is on a high traffic board and is very relevant that it could pay big dividends for a new website like mine. On the other hand there may be other great ways to continue developing SEO for the long term. For the short term though..this one comment has been gold for my newbie site.
Boo
I put my twitter url on a directory and it was not working...so they changed it.
They sent me the following message.
The following changes have been made:
** Twitter Id changing from http://twitter.com/widget to http://twitter.com/#!/widget
Should I have them change it to something else?
Yes...I will end up doing both...because staying up until 4 or 5 AM many nights is not going to work for me in the long run. 
We are a nationwide group with very little local traffic. I think I will probably start focusing on getting links from industry specific sites with good domain and page authority. I will also follow the link you suggested. I had no idea that good directories and blogs were under fire. Thanks!
They said 8 hours minimum for $250 an hour and then each hour thereafter it would just be at the same hourly rate. The would have been doing all the set up including keyword research. Seemed a little high...so I have been burning the candle at both ends to learn this stuff. Bought two new books yesterday ($70). If I new for sure that I would have the ultimate optimized site with the proper keywords it might be work it to me. I guess I just have to research the company more to find testimonials etc.
SEOmoz has this recommended list of directories and "BOTW.org" is the 15th best directory to purchase a link from out of 229 recommended sites. I just looked at the site and saw a bunch of my competitors on there. Since I only had 3 links I felt I need to purchase a couple. For the rest of the year I will just be linking to industry related sites. I have a feeling that these "good" directories will be okay as long as I get them in the proper ratio to my non paid links. Will probably take a hit right now because I bought two. Also got Business.com.
I am getting ready to add WordPress too and change some url's. My understanding is that redirects are only necessary if you have links on those pages....is that correct?
Can me paying an SEO firm $250 for one hour of work benefit me more than buying a lifetime link on Best of the Web for $249? ( Firm said I had to buy a min of 8 hrs though)
The firm strongly suggested that I not purchase a paid link. (All my major competitors have paid the $249)
Boodreaux
Which is the best way to set up the 301 redirect on my main home page?
http://horsebuggy.com to http://www.horsebuggy.com
Or does it make a difference?
Boodreaux
I didn't know you were just looking for a validation of your experience. I just was addressing the "tools" part of your comments. Glad more experienced folks could help you out.
William,
The 6 weeks I have been around, I have found it to be a wealth of information and everything has worked fine for me. I think the site is basically for sharing insights collaboratively with other SEO folks and webmasters. Everything has worked fine for me but I am a novice and may not be utilizing everything properly yet.
I have not tried to contact customer support before but I think most issues are resolved on the question and answer board.
Thanks....EGOL, I have started to add some substantive text in the form of a "page envelope" that you had mentioned a few weeks ago and it seems to be really helping right now.
I can't wait to start adding images. (fast loading ones) When you say captions do you mean just captions under the images?
Okay...so 301's are for links....gotcha. My 12 pages do not have any external links on them except for internal links. Are 301's necessary for internal links?
Thanks for your response Alan! The new keyword is related strongly to the old keyword and has just as much traffic and same difficulty as my term.
My site has been up for only 4 months. Will I still have to use the 301? Why not just put the new page out there without a redirect? Maybe have both pages with duplicate content and remove the old one once the the spiders/crawlers pick it up?
Here is an example of my the end of my url after my domain name. It has no relevance or meaning whatsoever.
/search/index/subspecialty/262043
I already rank on the first page for all 13 of my main keyword terms. Is it possible for me to start ranking for additional key words on those page by adding additional content on the pages? How much impact will this have and will the new keywords still juice from my already good keywords?
Also if I am already ranking well for those key words...with really horrible URL's. Would it be possible to add my new key words into the URL's? Since the current URL's seem to have nothing to do with my current rankings maybe I can keep my current rankings but then also get a huge boost for my new keyword rankings?
Thank you,
Boodreaux the novice.
PS. I have already heard the great advice of keeping my old site map up for a while after I change the URL's in order to let google catch up and re-index the site.
We are also doing a URL rewrite soon....I am looking forward to seeing responses. It is probably not relevant but I read on here somewhere about making sure you old site map and new site map or on the page for a while until google starts making the connections.