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Most likely after next Mozscape Index. If the 301 is done correctly and PA is not reflected in the short term, I wouldn't worry that much. Make sure to monitor organic positions and traffic to those landing pages for any fluctuations.

I think it's a good move. I have seen thumbs down for some of the best replies and could not figure out why other than the points your brought up. Sure, thumbs down is good for spammy-self promoting-irrelevant threads. However, if the reply is informative/useful and keeps the discussion progressing in an useful matter, why do we need them? The tricky part is implementing a mechanism to filter these two items out. Good luck.

I don't see it as well. This is a competitive keyword and will be difficult to get in the top 3. The best way to do it is to get some coverage from popular websites and contextual relevant sites (with of course dofollow links).  Good luck!

Good point Patrick. Adding another layer, typically these rogue accounts may have just a few MozPoints and are newly created. If a user has been w/moz for let's say one year and have a couple hundred points, they may typically be more prone for spammy comments.

No, I wouldn't not use them. Rule of thumb--if some or all the content looks spammy, it doesn't help you by putting your links there.

Try building relationship with bloggers that you can submit beneficial content for both your sites.

As Egol & Michael said--stop immediately. Here is some helpful information for disavowing:

http://moz.com/community/q/best-practice-to-disavow-spammy-links
http://moz.com/blog/googles-disavow-tool-take-a-deep-breath http://moz.com/ugc/how-to-create-an-excel-spreadsheet-to-remove-link-spam-post-penguin Good luck Daniel!

I think "Experts in their Fields" heavily means contextual relevant &/or popular links. An example of this is when you were in school and the class had to write on a specific  topic, on let say wicker furniture, what sites would your classmates and you research and claim on their works cited page? If the works cited page cites your site by many students, it probably would be recognized as a good resource for the term "wicker paradise" (and thus experts in your field by a range on papers --or in this case sites).

Here is an article on it: http://www.ranksolid.com/seo/link-diversity.php

As you probably know, make sure your links are natural. I have seen sites heavily saturated w/one type of inbound link type rank very high and diverse link profiles, not so much. It all depends on the quality of the links--not necessarily where they are coming from (ie-press releases, directories, social mentions & etc.).

Wow. Look at how much negative PR this created. Much more than $500. I'm sure they get plenty of emails on vulnerabilities, but each one should be looked at. If not, look at what happens...

Bob, sounds like you have some great skills! I see you in the forum on a regular basis, so #1 is passion for seo and it looks like you have it!

One thing I always look for (that is not covered above that i'm sure you have) is great organizational/problem solving/analysis skills (although you did cover competitor analysis). Specifically know your way around excel and be able to implement solutions based on what you find in your analysis. Good luck.

Run. Google is extremely good at figuring out unnatural link profiles, so please don't do this.

The key is to earn links by having unique, compelling content that people want to link to.  Invest time and resources creating content that is useful. This is difficult to do (as you know), so read up on successful campaign and look for firms in your industry that is successful in doing this. Try mixing up your content strategy to see what works (video, images, how-to guides or whatever). Study your analytics and leverage any data source you have to get inspiration. Good luck!

I agree with 2. Always do 301's to pages that are most relevant. If not, organics and conversion will most likely drop.

No problem deleting them. Google and Yahoo does not use it as a ranking factor. Also, if stuffed could impact your rankings on Bing who uses as a spam signal.

For long-tail keyword phrases (such as "Barista Classes Los Angeles") that do not have much competition you can easily have poor on-page seo and rank well. Another example is that if you have poor on-page seo but strong backlinks, you can easily outrank competitors' sites for that kw phrase.

Are you using phrase (close variant)?

It always seems to be buggy. Specifically, some users with more points are below others with less. I also clicked on some users that were high with zero. Once you clicked on them, you could see thay had points.  See attached.

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Try to push more informational content and be the subject matter expert on what you are passionate at.  If you have valuable content, it will act as link bait and people will find that content when trying to find a solution to an issue. If you are the expert, they will be more inclined to hire you to do some consulting. IMHO, that's the best way to differentiate you and your team and get additional business. Good luck!

Extremely important (and will continue to be).  Also, continue to use alt names and meta info.

It's also good to have good naming convention for image files on your site.

Never heard of doing this. The title/meta description is ideally written to match searcher's intent. However, if the searcher's intent is to contact you, this answers that intent quickly (always nice). Also, since the user's intent isn't searching for blue widgets (where blue widget's should be in the title), no seo harm that I could see (may reduce click-through's though--doesn't matter much in this case).

Always think about the user experience. Are you placing links for the users or the spiders? A "rough" guideline though is about 100. Also, take a look at Dr. Pete's article How Many Links Is Too Many.