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Not to bring this topic back up, but is this still valued? I understand the perception point of view, in that a lot of people still trust the BBB as a company that highlights good businesses to work with. BUT, as the links are now no followed, and the price for the accredited profile is very high, is it worth it? I can see it being so for a contractor, but for an agency?

As you already know Yahoo directory, business.com and DMOZ are sites that require a review process and in the first two a large financial investment that prevents spammers from taking advantage of low hanging fruit. They have a do follow attribute when it's part of the directory not the ads. Google trusts these sites.

As far as I know it does NOT affect SEO. It does increase the likelyhood of someone linking to you though. "IF" you want to know if this is worth it, look at your Google Analytics and see if people are converting on your website. Measure your FB and Twitter visits and assign a value to it. My point here is not to focus on "will Likes and Tweets increase rankings".  My point is "Do those Likes and Tweets turn into conversions". Here is a secret of mine. Social Media does land me business, but not as much as Google Adwords. Adwords KILLS social media in my clients' industries. My clients only care about more money in the bank, not about FB Likes and Tweets. LEARN how to use GA.

Hi Echolls, You can view the Linkscape Update Calendar here: http://apiwiki.seomoz.org/w/page/25141119/Linkscape%20Schedule Generally, the index updates around every 4 weeks or so. It takes a couple weeks to crawl the web (yes, all the important parts) and another couple of weeks to process the data. So for very recent links, it could take up to 6 weeks for them to show, depending on where they fall in the schedule. Once the links are indexed, it's very likely your DA and mozTrust will be effected as well. Best of luck with your SEO!

If you feel as if you're being "sold" or "double-talked" you probably are. Still kills me to hear that, after calling several SEO companies, this is the impression you have come away with! Appreciate any insight you can give me before I spend any money on SEO work. Thanks so much! I'm a new user and really, really like this community! I'd start with this list: http://www.seomoz.org/marketplace/companies/recommended Not all SEO companies operate the way you have described above. You do run a big risk for paid links - some people are willing to take that risk, but it can mean a penalty or significant drop in rankings in the future. My recommendation is to go with a company you feel comfortable talking to, if you ask what their techniques and strategies are, they tell you directly without trying to talk around the issue. They may mention a few specific tactics to obtaining white-hat links which also drive referral traffic.  They'll tell you exactly how they go about getting the links.  Plus rankings, page rank and DA are just another way of "selling" you - a good company will talk conversion, and ROI and how SEO fits into your overall marketing/business plan. -Dan