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Facebook is a place where people share everything or anything they feel like sharing and only their friends and friends of friends see it. Actually I have control over my Facebook Privacy settings.. I can control who sees my stuff.

SEOmoz is all web related/marketing and I have no control over who sees my posts.

You are correct, Facebook does not have a dislike button. However, SEOmoz does. If someone is going to give a thumbs down for something, how am I supposed to know what his/her thoughts where? How am I supposed to learn from my mistake or how are they supposed to learn that I am right.

Thumbs up on SEOmoz makes us as users happy. However when we get a thumbs down i think we deserve to know why... Otherwise how do figure out what the user disliked.

IMO anytime someone wants to leave a thumbs down they should also have to put a comment down explaining why.

I have been guest posting for a little while now and I can tell you from experience good sites (authoritative ones as listed above) are not easy to guest blog on. You will need to give the author of the website something valuable to his readers. I noticed you are focusing on little details on what Google counts and what they dont. IMO forget all that, give the users something valuable so that they will like your site, mention it, and bookmark it. If users like your site so will Google!

We are currently working on a new site structure and we would like to take out a WP plugin that adds a .html to the end of every URL.

From my understanding it is best to not use this plug in. Once I take out this plug in will I need to do anything for all the external links to count. Will the link juice pass through? if you type my url now without the .html in your browser it adds it in the .html. However, all the external links we built have the .html in the URL link.

Do I need to do any 301 or canonical to pass link juice or will I be fine after taking out the plug in?

Over optimizing is having an [Exact keyword] all over a page.

If you url is http://url.keyword

If your title is - keyword

H1- Keyword

decription - keyword

body - keyword... most people who overstuff will add a ton of words just so they can include there keywords many times. 1 keyword per 100 words is a good number to go by... so they add 10000 words and 100o keywords

image - keyword

footer - keyword

When everything on the page is designed for a bot the bot will know. The best practice to avoid over opting is to include your [Exact] key in some places where it would make sense.

To avoid over optimizing use broad for some keywords and exact for some.. Mix it up and focus on where things will be best suitable for your users.

If it helps your users find something they are looking for Search Engines help those users find you.

I like where your heads at and this can be a great way to build links. However, I would only allow relavent and authoritative sites to link to me. I would also be sure to have all these external linking anchors in variations to avoid over optimizing penalties.

Instead of just having them add a link and they get a promo code. Make the promo code something you email after manually reviewing the site.

Overstock had done this on a large scale and many of their backlinks were .edu. IMO a site all of a sudden getting a ton of .edu links for many different keyword terms but all linking in [Exact] is a good reason to sound the alarm.

I would not 301 redirect because it passes link juice, it will also pass the link juice from sites that have nothing to do with your phrases. What I would recommend is starting a new site. Manually check all your old backlinks. Find the backlinks that are authoritative and relevant to your topic (usually sites that have your keyword phrases in them), and contact them. Your email should be: Dear____ , we have moved our site to a new location can you please edit our link?

I love giving value.. The more value I give the more value I get (aka karma, and yes I am a hippie)

When you contact these sites webmaster you can check their sites in a broken link checker tool or find something to help them improve. If you cannot find something to improve at least be somewhat entertaining. Remember webmasters are people too!

With all the new over opting talk, one of the things mentioned is having the same anchored text linking to a page over and over without variation. Is there a good estimate on how many external linking in keywords should be exact versus how many should be in variation? Also, keeping value of pages links in mind. Would it be best to use [Exact] phrase for the higher PR sites or more relevant higher traffic sites? and save the long tail or keyword variation text for the lesser valued sites.

When to use exact phrase and when to long tail is my question/discussion

I always stay relevant in my link building, and all my links are liking within context. Because I know that relevancy has been an important factor. After watching this video from Matt Cutt's http://youtu.be/KyCYyoGusqs I assume relevancy is becoming even more of an important factor.

No you use robot.txt to restrict pages from pages. Rel-canonical passes link juice. However, I would also look into what Dr.Peter is suggesting.

I would look for strong linking structure, so that you can build even stronger structure for your site. I check the "anchor text" tab to see what keywords they are targeting, and in what variations they are using these keys.

There are many ways to build links. Spying on the competition is to give more ideas, help you find something they dont have. Help you give value!

Read this

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

All you really need is a canonical code.

Hmm, your link juice will flow through with a canonical code. However, I don't think this is the problem, in your case. I would experiment try adding the code and see if your results are back up in a few days... If not take the code down.

There are many ranking factors and yes, having keyword placement first in a title is great from a SERP perspective. The user typed "keyword" they will most likely click on "keyword" when its the first thing in your title it is more likely to get clicked on.

This should help you understand more about all the factors and how much they really matter.

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#metrics-6

BTW. most Forums by default show your signature on all posts you comment on. Unless you change this from the user settings, or un-check the box manually for posts they will show.

This is just an example. The point behind it is to optimize your site and structure it for the user via educating/entertainment/enlightening content with keyword variations.

Build your content to help your users, and keep keyword variation in mind.

This is a very brave move Rand! I must say. I really hope this case study pans out. After all what were doing as good SEOs is helping the web evolve via education/entertainment/experimentation/etc.. the list goes on. If Google can really decipher good from bad while understanding and preventing malicious attacks I will be very happy. Thanks for your response.

Sorry, Changing my answer. Heres what I have learned today.

If your keyword is [Exact] for all the following factors on one of your pages Titles, H1s, Bodys, Navigations, descriptions, and footer there is a good chance of a ranking loss for your [Exact] _keywords _in a SERP.

Rand recommends that we use helpful keyword variations for each of these.

For example.

Your Title can be: **company [keyword] | Explain what the page is about [maybe keyword]  **

Your H1 can be : **Explain what lies beneath [keyword] **

Your Body can be: 400 or more words 2 [keywords]one in bold

Your** Body Links** can be: Learn more about this 2 [keywords]

Your**** Navigation** can be: [keyword] **

Your Description can be: Whatever will attract your demographic from the SERP (no keyword)

Footer - contact us / sitemap / company info / ** no keywords!**

Every learn link needs to lead to a page where the user will learn. Always offer more value to your readers, they are the ones that will help you rank.

I cant tell you the answer to that, there are too many different opinions on the matter. What do they count? what dont they count? Now they are indirectly claiming to count what other can do to your site as well. In other words hurt your rankings. (aka negative SEO)