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Perhaps a Mozzer can verify this, but I remember someone saying they Moz doesn't crawl some big sites that aggregate lots of data (twitter, BBB, yelp, domain listings, etc. etc.) because of the size of their servers, and the likelihood that the user put it there themselves.  They have smaller servers than say, Google or Bing.

Every engine uses different signals to determine placement.  There's probably not one specific thing that it putting you in the fourth place, but consistently making improvements and studying your competitors will eventually yield results.

http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/ is a great test of sites for China.  Not all Wordpress based sites are banned, but you should check yours.

Also keep in mind that your site needs to be in simplified Chinese to be indexed by Baidu, and there are some other considerations like having a local TLD and loads of other things.  Here's a good article on Baidu SEO: http://searchengineland.com/the-b2b-marketers-guide-to-baidu-seo-180658

Oh, I didn't realize how thin the linking site was.  I was picturing some design sites I'm aware of that have detailed write-ups with examples.  Analysis of your page is fine, a link among a sea of links I would shy away from.

If you're getting editorial links from authoritative sites tap yourself on the back and go home.  As long as the links are earned and the sites are legit you shouldn't worry about spam.

Where do you want to rank?   What kind of business is it?  Where do you get a lot of your traffic from currently?  Where do people in your industries have reviews?  If you were your customer where would you look?  If it's a restaurant, coffeeshop, etc. many people search on yelp.  Mechanic, Lawyer, Plumber, Google Local is hugely helpful.  Bar, concert, event, Facebook or Foursquare could be a good bet.  Also keep in mind where reviews can help your placements on the engines.  Yelp should go to both, facebook may only go to bing, google local probably won't go to bing and vice versa.

Be sure not to post the same on more than one or you could get slapped with some duplicate content.  I like some on the site as well for good measure.  Also -- you'd be better off letting reviews come naturally than mandating customers go to a particular service, or you may get faced with a penalty.

See what your competitors clients are doing and what successes they are (or aren't having) and go for them.  Different industries are searched for in a variety of ways.

Happy to help.

Local directories are definitely important, this post has a great overview of where you should post: http://moz.com/blog/2013-local-search-ecosystems.  I'd recommend printing it out and going through each.

On a global scale, the only other directories that provide serious value are those that are very specific to your niche, and offer some sort of objective ranking or specific information on your page.  Specific directories for your industry can be very helpful in gaining a relevant link that will look good for search and draw direct traffic.  Google has made it clear that anything that anyone can submit to has little if no value going forward.  I'd stay away from those types of directories.

Google is definitely your friend in this regard.  If you can find something easily on Google, a link from them will generally carry more weight.  Directories are mostly out of fashion at this point, as is some forms of guest blogging.  It's fair to assume a site relying on a directory for guest posts on their blog is doing a lot of things Google isn't fond of anymore, and a link from them would not be valuable.

I can understand hosting the forum on a different sub-domain if it's markedly different from your site.  If you market the forum separately and the forum and your page link to each-other it could have an SEO benefit, but if you don't plan on treating them as two separate entities under your umbrella, I'd look for new hosting.

Another thing to keep in mind is how the DA of your competitors has been behaving over the same period.  The number doesn't matter so much as how it moves in relation to your competition.

Do you think the drop could have to do with seasonal changes though?  People are using the computer less since they're on vacation (in the same way that some industries see a drop on the weekends, and over thanksgiving?)

Miriam,

I did not know that!  Thank you.  It seems the answer is within, rather than outside.

Amen, I've been having to log in multiple times a day.

I'm looking for a tool that will give a feel for local search results in a location I'm not currently in.  Can this be accomplished with a proxy.  Is there a tool out there or some easier way to accomplish this?  Any guidance would be appreciated.

Thank you for the clarified guidance, even if it is just speculation.  It seems that I may have been looking for a new under-researched development, where none yet exists.

Interesting -- Thank you for a great response.

For this question I'm just focusing on YouTube.com specifically.

I have one followup question to your answer, when you say results are highly personalized, does it also have to do with connections on G+? (eg. pages you are connected to, or perhaps even people that the video itself is connected to)

Hey Peter,

Thanks for the link.  I've actually read that one -- I was hoping for something a tad more recent but it's good to know I'm not the only one who is noticing how tricky this can be.

I notice that that on YouTube, the related links that show up at the end of our videos are a smorgasbord of our competitors and other videos similar in theme (which makes sense, as those are truly related videos).

What I'm curious about -- and have had difficult finding, is tips and case studies for improving and maintaining appearance in the related video sections, and perhaps some insight into how those videos are rated for for related videos.  Correlation on YouTube seems to be spotty at best, I know keywords and user metrics are key, but any more specific advice or clarification on the issue would be appreciated.