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It probably depends on the site. There are some high-authority sites that are basically platforms for other sites, so in that case, no.

I would think a relevant link from an integral but low-authority page on a high-authority site would be a plus, especially because the authority of that page might be higher than you think (maybe Moz just hasn't found its other links yet, for example).

As far as your problem, to start, I'd take a close look at the pages that used to convert and see if there are any on-site improvements you can make. Use the on-page grader and make sure you have your bases covered on that end.

I recently did something similar and left behind a bunch of "thin" pages, just be sure to check your internal links to make sure you are not linking to a page you are 404ing. [Screaming Frog is great for this—if you don't have it, you should get it.] You can always "revive" any that you see a lot of people trying to reach. My redirects took hold quickly—I couldn't even say how long, it was that fast. [Mine was an old domain and frequently crawled.] Good luck!

Some people shorten their links differently to make them more memorable. In the case you mention, MZ.CM is like MOZ.COM.

This is done through bitly: "A Branded Short Domain (bsd) is a the domain that takes the place of “bit.ly” or “bitly.com” in a shortend URL. Adding a Branded Short Domain to your bitly account is free of charge although you must purchase a bsd from a third party domain registrar. Domai.nr, GoDaddy, and 101domain are great places to begin your search, also visit our help article “Common Domain Hosting Providers”. Keep in mind that your bsd must be less than 15 characters, including the dot."

The page title should be what makes the best sense for the page, so no, you do not need to maintain the same pattern across all pages—just make sure the keywords you use describe the page. In many if not most cases brand will not be the first keyword you want in the title. Read more about titles here and here.

When we create meta descriptions in our headers, those are only suggestions to Google. It will show what it decides is most relevant to the searcher and what it shows will depend on the user's search term.

For example, I just searched on: "thuman agency homepage" and saw:
Thumann Insurance Agency | Commercial Insurance Dallas, TX Blog · Contact ... An Independent Insurance Agency in Dallas, TX ... Our agency specializes in commercial insurance for Texas, ranging from business owner ...

And "thumann agency dallas tx" brought up:
"Thumann Insurance Agency | Commercial Insurance Dallas, TX Get the most competitive rates & exceptional customer service from the Thumann Agency in Dallas. Specializing in all commercial & personal coverage's."

That search brought up several sitelinks as well. ["coverages" should not have the apostrophe, btw] You can also see that the words I used to search were made bold.

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It is a known bug and Google should fix it soon.

First, although it's great to keep on top of your link profile, you do not need to go overboard. What Google says about link disavowal is: "In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool."

As far as link assessment, Moz has this built into Open Site Explorer. Enter a URL and it will give you the spam score for the page.

That's a very broad question. Common keywords for what topic?

Here is a post describing how to get demographic information around search terms using Google Adwords. (Though Adwords is less generous with its data than it used to be, especially if you are not a paying customer, you might get some ideas.)

I have never used it but seems like a risky thing to do, even if it does give some short-term bump (and it's not clear that it does). This is black hat. Do a few searches and read comments about it, then decide if this is something you want to risk.

The numbers in the MozBar, PA, DA, links, can be found with Open Site Explorer. Just input the URL you want to examine and hit enter.

Right now, the MozBar only works in Chrome. (Scroll to the bottom of the thread to see the latest update.)

I love this add-on (I especially love it when I do a search and see all the data on each result) but you can get the same information by using the tools inside Moz, you just won't see it immediately as you look at different pages.

I myself prefer Firefox and was disappointed when the MozBar stopped working there. So my compromise is that I still mostly use Firefox but just switch to Chrome if I am doing something where the quick information from the MozBar would be useful. You could do the same with Safari.

A canonical link looks like this: and goes in the head of your page.

Some people use these to keep credit for a page that an outside party may have scraped and used as their own. I assume this is what you are worried about. A canonical won't necessarily protect you (not everyone scrapes all the content) but it can serve as an extra signal to Google that the content was originally yours. (And adding a self-referential canonical doesn't hurt.)

I didn't know about that remove functionality—you learn something new every day.

The point about internal links to the 404 page is a good one. Having those links sends Google mixed messages and could be a reason for a 404 page not to drop out of the index.

If you want the non-www URLs to be the ones that show up in search, yes, the canonical should be the non-www ones. You are sending mixed messages. Google will pick for you in this case, but why add confusion.

If it is a true 404, it will drop out of Google's index on its own. If it is a soft 404, returning what looks like a 404 page without a 404 response, you should fix it so it returns the correct response code. (Though it will still drop out eventually, because the content is not there.)

Fetch as Google is handy if you want Google to recrawl your page, to make sure it sees the current content.

Assuming the keyword is still relevant, why not update/rewrite it and keep the page one ranking?

I'll keep an eye on his site. Thanks!

Interesting—I guess Google doesn't completely keep things to itself, you just have to know where to look. Thanks for the information.

Yes, that's a good point. Canonicals are suggestions for Google, not commands.

I see your point, and don't worry about it. Sitemaps help Google find all of your pages and can provide certain other information, but they are not required so no need to overthink them. In general Google is pretty good at finding what it needs to find. And it will certainly find your homepage.

You can try Moz's Keyword Explorer to dig into the sites that rank for "roofing contractor" or related keywords. I am not sure what you mean by "the ability to make manual edits."Are you trying to buy an existing site and repurpose it?