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We make between four and ten blog posts per day and 90% of those posts include a followed link to another website.  Our goal is to feature news, developments and good ideas in our topic area.   We have no philosophical or SEO problem with linking out.  We think that it makes our site a good information source and that attracts links, subscribers and repeat visitors.

The only downside is that we get lots of weasels trying to get a link to their crappy site.  However, our goal is to link out to sites that are BETTER than ours.

We also link out on article pages... much like Wikipedia does.  Again, we are linking to sites that have great information that is superior to ours in some way.  Don't link down, link up.

To answer your original question.... "Do you link out to good content?"

The answer is "NO" .  We link out to GREAT content.

Park A on B and redirect with explicit .htaccess.

Amazon, OfficeMax and Stapes are powerful sites owned by established and popular brands.  They have a lot of links, a lot of social mentions, a lot of domain queries.... I could go on listing a lot more of their their assets.  You get the idea.

If you look in their product SERPs only a few sites are able to beat them in a direct frontal attack.  That means... out of thousands of sites trying only a few are successful.  The odds are not looking good for your client.

Where I am able to beat them I have a whole website dedicated to a small group of products and they have one or two product pages.  My sites have product pages but more important they have information pages that explain how to select the products, how to use them, how to maintain them and a lot more.

I regularly beat them on informational queries about the products.  I sometimes beat them on product queries, but it is often an information page on my site that out ranks them.  That's OK because I have lots of calls to action that take the visitor to a product page.

I can't offer a strategy to beat them with product pages on a product site.  My strategy to beat them is to have many times their content depth with useful information about individual products and a website that earns the respect of the visitor - who, buying from you will probably pay more than amazon is charging.

I beat them a lot on long tail queries, again, it is information pages on my site outranking product pages on their site.

Beating them 4 to 1 or 8 to 1 with content is really expensive and very time consuming.  Most people are unable to do that because they are not into content production or they are into content production and their content sucks and is not engaged by visitors.   It has taken me years to get into a position where I can sometimes beat them in a very specialized niche.

It bothers me to have a website that on the basis of content deserves top rankings for lots of queries.  But, that's the way things are at this time.  How the future will go, I don't know.  I am getting stronger and they are getting stronger and I don't know for sure who has the velocity advantage.  Right now Google likes brands so I am not betting on getting to the top of all of my SERPs anytime soon.

Oh.... this is a great question.   I like it.   I'd really like to hear what the Mozzers have to say.

I think that you are going to get a bunch of opinions.

Honestly, I don't think that Google really knows what kind of guest posting is allowed because they have a hard time measuring "quality" and they have a harder time determining "intent".

I think that a lot of guest posting is done for links and links only.  People generate a bunch of crappy articles or even some pedestrian-quality articles and give them away with links in them.  I think that those could get you penalized if Google:

A) sees them on lots of websites,

B) the links are followed and have money keywords as anchor text,

C) the websites that host these articles have lots of obviously low quality articles on them (I know that it is hard for google to detect article quality but if they have lots of misspelled words, have very little formatting, no images then they are probably manipulative crap or crap that they don't want in their SERPs)

D) the websites that the links are pointing to have signs of manipulation (the smell of crap drifts downwind).

I don't think that YouMoz is any of those.   If you look at YouMoz, the post that appear there are generally quite good and the people who wrote them spent a lot of time.  I also think that Moz is not afraid to tell people.... "This ain't good enough!" or..... "Hey! This ain't a link farm".... in a cheerful kind of way, of course.

So, since you gotta work your butt off and have something that people should hear to get a post published on Moz, I don't think that Google is going to have a problem with it.

.... but, that's just an opinion.

I might not meet the stated qualifications for replying... and I am not going to talk about algos... but I will say that I have very carefully watched a small number of sites for over a decade and have experienced several huge losses in income caused by something that Google had done.  So, from the standpoint of wallet smoking, I feel that I have a good reply.  I have also been a student of Google - and shareholders.

What I am going to explain here is a long-term trend for Google.  Google used to be a very crappy webmaster.  They gave all of their traffic away.  Google used to be a revolving door.  Traffic came in and went out.  Google kept little of it.  Google monitized only a fraction of the searchers.

Over the past few years google has become a better webmaster and has become better at keeping traffic on google.com or giving a higher percentage of that traffic to people who are paying them.

Shareholders want revenue growth.  Google has owned almost all of the USA search volume for over a decade. So they are not going to get growth from claiming more marketshare.  Instead they are going to get growth from being a better webmaster.  They are going to get growth out of making more paid clicks.  That means your clients and their organic or local traffic are in the crosshairs.  For the past several years they have been the targets of google's revenue growth.  That is not going to change.   Your client's current profits are google's future growth.

OK... Where has made my wallet smoke?  One day I wake up in the morning and find one of these.  These traffic losses are not temporary, they are not recoverable, they are permanent.  BAM!

When my income has taken the greatest hits.. the hit was usually NOT caused by an algo, it was caused by a change in the format of the SERPs... and since my competition is usually confined to organic listings I have been clobbered by these..

-- In the early days of Adwords, the ads were only displayed on the right side of the SERPs.  When Google got the smarts to display them above the SERPs my retail income was hammered.

-- One day google decided to start displaying a sample of the image search results near the top of the SERPs.  I have a couple sites that are heavily based upon images and those sites lost an enormous amount of traffic.  Tens of thousands of visitors per day disappeared overnight.  More wallet smoke.

-- Then google added "Product Search Results" to the top of the SERPs.  My retail sales for pages ranking in the top three postions of the organic got hammered.  I decided to jump in to product search. Did that and got some traffic and sales back.  Now product search is pay-to-play.  Google grabs some of my profits if I want to play or some of my total revenue if I ain't going to play.

-- Then google decided to change the image SERPs.  Instead of the visitor clicking on my image and being delivered to my site they started to show my site in a frame.  Lost a little income that day.  They they decided to display my image on a page of google.com and only have a tiny link to my site.

-- One day I wake up and google is showing a big map at the top of the SERPs.  Sometimes it has pushpins, sometimes it doesn't.  Familiar smell of currency and leather smoldering in my back pocket.

-- One day google started showing carousel at the top of the SERPs.  Now, instead of the visitor clicking straight to my site it clicks straight to more SERPs.

-- This year Google started adding knowledge box to the top of the SERPs.   (Just my weak minded observation... when they did this they demoted a large number of informational pages.  Go search for "jade" the green gem.  Not long ago that SERP was filled with oriental history pages, museum pages and pages of vendors selling the green gem.  Now the organic SERPs on the left side of the page are very different.  Wikipedia is there but the museums, sellers and oriential culture pages are gone.  Instead they have a knowledge box that answers light queries, If you are lucky your site might appear in the knowledge box.  But they have obvious links to other Google queries in large BLUE font the knowledge box but links in microscopic black font to your website.

OK... Now you ask about what to do for your client.  First.  Explain that he has a little algo risk... and that he has a little competitor risk... but also explain that even if you achieve the miracle of getting his website to one of the top ten positions of google that he will still be subject to a much greater risk for which you have absolutely no control.  That is SERP format risk.

So, I would take a screenshot of his target SERPs on the day that he signs your contract... and when he calls you about his wallet smoking you will be able to show him that google has changed the playing field by changing the format of the SERPs.   Your clients profits are the field that google is plowing to get the growth that their shareholders demand.

I don't know anything about the market for Whitby Jet but I would pay $300 without flinching one bit.

I've paid many times that amount for domains.

Having the proper domain gives me enormous mental energy.  It makes me want to work on the site and make it the best in its niche.  If I bought whitbyjet.com that would make me "The Man" for that product and everybody else in that niche would be in deep trouble.

Mental energy and enthusiasm are valuable weapons and when used properly will defeat powerful foes.

Are you going to be "The Man" in this niche or what?

(paying for domains in a private sale and transferring domains can take a while... I would not be panicking after one week)

Joe, I took a quick look at your site and you have done a lot of work on content.  Also, I searched a couple of your topics on Google and saw information that you have created filling the first page of the SERPs on a variety of other websites.  Sometimes your site is on the first page too.

Our approach is very different from yours.  We produce a lot of content - as in your field the potential topics list is enormous.  However, we never give it away.  Everything that we publish is on our own website.  Why?  We don't like to feed our competitors and we want to be the "go to" source for information in our niche.

Consider this..... when I searched for some of your topics I saw your site at let's say position #5 but content that you created on the same subject on websites ranking above you.  If they didn't have your  content on their site  then maybe your site would rank at postion #3 and thus be getting more traffic (and links, likes and tweets).

We spend zero time on linkbuilding.... 100% of our time on content building.  All of that linkbuilding time (lets say you spend 50% of your time hunting links then spending it instead on content would double your content library  and put you in the SERPs on twice as many topics and have twice as much content to impress any visitor.)

The only deviation that we take is to submit occasional... maybe once a month or two... items to sites like Reddit or slashdot or stumbleupon.. where we can quickly share new content with a large number of people.

The links arrive very very slowly... but content that we launched 18 months ago and that ranked in the SERPs on page three at the start is now ranking in the top three positions.  These natural links are so much more valuable than links obtained by other methods.  And they require zero time from  us.

You can make links, likes and tweets occur a little faster by making it easy for visitors to share your content socially.  We use the AddThis.com buttons to facilitate.  They work great.

You asked  what other people do for links... there you have it.

Thirty days.

That might be possible for some really easy terms such as "dancing pink hippo sneakers"... but if you wanted to get top rankings for terms such as "texas holdem"..... "payday loans"..... "digital cameras".... "physical chemistry"... it would be virtually impossible with the resources of any scriptlance bidder.

Taking a page to the top of google for any of those terms would be very expensive and I am willing to say beyond the skill level and resources for at least 95% of the SEOs on this planet - even if you gave them an unlimited amount of time and a $100,000 budget.

I would simply say...

If I owned a business like yours I would not build 150 different one-page websites.   I don't think it is going to be a good use of your time and money.

If he wanted me to work on them I would decline.

Here is what I would do.

I would look at my analytics to see if any of the posts in these blogs is getting any traffic from search engines or from links on other websites.   If you have some pages that are getting that type of traffic, then I would spend some time to make those pages a lot better.

I would delete the posts that are getting no traffic to very little traffic and 301 redirect those URLs to the homepage of the remaining blog.

If one of these blogs has just a couple pages that seem to be valuable then I would improve the content, place it on the one remaining blog and 301 redirect the original post URL to the new post URL.   Then 301 redirect the rest of the posts on that blog to the homepage of the remaining blog.

If I simply wanted to throw the entire blog away I would 301 redirect everything to the homepage of my website.

Steve,  I am confident that most of your MOZPoints are coming from other members giving you the "thumbs up" because they enjoyed your post or it made them think.  So, you can consider the points to be "earned" rather than "manufactured".

You can bet big money that members here will give you the "thumbs down" if they see any BS or blasphemy out of you. 

If they can't find a technical solution for opting out you can always send a fruit basket or pizza to the team.

A few years ago, Google wanted authors to create a profile page and share their content on Google+.  Then we were to "register" our authorship with a rel=author link to our Google+ profile.

Even though Google abandoned "authorship"... today, perhaps we should be using Google+ in a similar way to communicate our E-A-T (experience, authority and trustworthyness)?

On-page optimization, or link-building?

If this is a content site.... neither.... Spend the time to make social sharing very easy.    Any left-over time trying to get links from hub sites in that niche.

If this is a retail site... would go for links from the easy industry and community resource sites.

For both sites would ask for 8 more hours to brainstorm highly linkable content that the site owners will produce.

The last public statement on how pagerank works on nofollowed links from Matt Cutts is....

"Pagerank on a nofollowed link does not pass to the target site, instead it simply evaporates.  So, if you nofollow the link, your site will gain nothing and the target site will gain nothing."   What you really communicate is.... "they paid us!".... or ... "we don't trust them".

Of course google could change their mind about how they do this and they could have changed it already and not told anybody.

Keep in mind that DA is closer to logarithmic than linear.

It takes 10x as much work to move the needle from 40 to 50 as it did to move the needle from 30 to 40.

So, you said things seem to have "levelled out"..... Sir, the pitch has become awfully steeper and when you hit 60 the pitch becomes desperate and overhanging.

I really like the 10X concept.  I think that it is great and everyone should keep it in mind.

I think though for economic reasons, you can't sink resources into being 10X in every facet of your business because the cost of doing that is way too high.  If you can pull off 2X or 3X, I think it will have the same impact.

Let's compare Amazon.com to HappyJoeDrillPress.com.   Amazon stomps HappyJoe on price and on free shipping. Everybody knows that almost nobody beats Amazon there.

HappyJoe has more content on his website than all of his competitors and even the manufactures combined.  His customer ratings are 4.8 stars out of five.  He has articles that rate each of the different brands and models of drill presses.  He has articles and videos that tell you how to select them, how to use them, how to increase productivity in assembly line work, how to repair them.  He sells all of the supplies and repair parts that you will ever need.  If you have a problem you can email and get a carefully considered reply from HappyJoe himself. If you buy a drill press from HappyJoe you get a phone number that you can call if you have a problem.  If a part on your drill press fails a few months after purchasing you call HappyJoe and he will send a part to you without cost (was manufacturer's fault and not covered by their warranty but HappyJoe takes care of you - that's because he is HappyJoe).

HappyJoe has a carefully optimized website and all of that content that he wrote rules the entire longtail of the drill press niche.  Nobody beats him for advice, fix it, how to, or other customer service queries.

So, Amazon is 10X on price and free shipping (they get crap marks for carefully packing your drill press, they ship it in the retail store box) but HappyJoe boxes each one carefully because he wants you to get a good one).

HappyJoe is 10x on content, 10x on offering free expertise by email and by phone, 10x on  service, 10x on being a great guy.  HappyJoe also pays his workers fair wages and respects his suppliers.

Now how do these companies compete in the SERPs?

HappyJoe owns the longtail.  Amazon, WalMart and two manufacturers rank #1 #2 #3 and #4 on the purchase intent SERPs because they are Billion Dollar Companies that Google thinks should rank up there because people would miss 'em if they were gone.  HappyJoe fights it out with HarborFreight and DrillPressesRus.com for #5 #6 or #7.   HF and DPRus have no content, you can't call them for help so, HappyJoe by default becomes unpaid customer service department for Amazon, WalMart, manufacturers, HF and DPRus, so he stops taking phone calls (just like these other guys) but still has all of that content and gives email replies to anybody and phone consultations from his paying customers).

Google just doesn't recognize the person in this space who is an expert, and a good guy, and the person who is doing all of the customer service work for everybody everywhere on every drill press topic.

HappyJoe does have a few fans who buy from him no matter what.  But he would sell 10X as much if Google ranked him in a position that reflected his position as an expert and good guy.

So, when you decide to become a 10X company, you have to decide where you are going to be 10X because you can't be 10X for everything.  HappyJoe knows that he can't charge lowest prices and he doesn't have a distribution center in every state.  But HappyJoe decided to be 10X in treating people right, and being helpful.   He is doing OK today, but that might not be enough tomorrow when the first page of the SERPs is five adwords ads and three big retailers and two manufacturers.... and when he becomes unpaid customer service for five more companies who sell drill presses but don't know a damn thing about 'em.

...my problem is that the website developers are telling me that SEOMOZ and all the other tools are wrong...

Trust developers/designers for making things look good - if you like their style.... but when it comes to SEO you need to have your head examined if you are going to listen to your developer instead of trusting SEOmoz.

Here's something every professional SEO knows.... developers/designers generate a lot of business for SEOs (and lose a lot of money for webmasters) because they don't understand search engines, change all of your URLs, hide text because it stinks up their design, want to make your entire site in images, create navigation bars that spiders can't crawl, allow session id's to generate duplicate content and suck up all of your linkjuice.... I could go on and on here... You must be very careful and watch what they are doing - closely.

Do i believe the developers and trust that google has it sorted or go through the process of hassling the developers to get a rel=canonical added to all the pages?

lol.... I don't think that "hassling" is a very good word.  I would either be kicking their asses or firing them and getting a different developer who understand who owns the website!!!

Sometimes you have to assert yourself when somebody is going to screw up one of your websites. If they were trashing one of my good sites I would exert my authority as owner of the site.  If it is a choice between my site and their opinion... they lose swiftly.

Now i believe i can fix this by chucking in a rel=canonical at the top of  each page ?

Great, you know what to do.

I've been waiting for Matt Cutts to talk about this for a long time... finally a YouTube video!

"Should you syndicate your articles out to sites such as ezinearticles.com as a way to build links?"

He discussed this from an SEO perspective and does not recommend it.  I thought that he was way too polite about it... but if you are a guy like him it isn't good to talk trash about the specifics.

One topic that he didn't address was how article marketing can impact your competitive position.  It feeds existing competitors and creates new competitors.  You write twenty articles and they are each published by twenty sites, now there are 400 pages with your keywords out there competing against you.  Not smart, IMO.

Here's the link to the video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5xP-pTmlpY&NR=1

I have not looked at vistaprint or moonfruit but those types of systems are generally awful for SEO.

If I knew a person who had a tiny business and needed a website I would point them towards a wordpress site using a template.  Then they can focus 100% on the content and easily change or improve the design in the future.

They might need some help getting started, so there could be a small expense and a learning curve - but you will have that with anything.

I would also register a domain and have the wordpress on my own hosting.  This cost is very small - probably under $100/year.

In the end you have your website on a platform that is very versatile, functional, well supported, and can easily get experts to improve it when you are ready.

It does not bother me to see disagreement on how to SEO a page or a website.  That gives the person with the best BS filter an advantage over everyone else.  It also makes the person who stops, thinks, and researches an additional advantage over everyone else.

I believe that most SEO advice posted on the web is bad advice, including a lot of the advice that I give.  Again, it comes back to giving the person with the best BS filter a huge advantage.

So, when I read this article my BS meter goes off here....

While I can understand that preaching “build good content, focus on growing your brand’ sounds great and it’s what people want to hear, for a HUGE percentage of search phrases, this is just no longer relevant....   I just can’t take anyone seriously who mentions these things anymore in 2013,

.... and the rest of the article doesn't make much sense to me.  But, since I think that about 95% of SEO is based upon good great content, it doesn't surprise me that I don't "get" the rest of the article.