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I think there may be an important distinction here - are you talking about potentially registering dozens of domains to rank for long-tail phrases? I think we're all assuming that you mean your primary domain choice. Registering dozens of exact-match domains to rank for long-tail phrases is a lot less effective than it used to be (and will probably get even less effecting over the next 1-3 years). People abused that tactic, for starters, but it also splits your link-juice, social signals, and typically creates either doorway pages or large-scale duplicate content. The negatives outweigh the positives in most cases. If you're only talking about one domain, and it really is a very long-tail phrase you want to target, then that's a bit different. In the example you give, most of the keywords are very common and a bit ambiguous, so you're right - a short version might not make much sense. On the other hand, the long version is going to target one very specific phrase that probably gets a small amount of traffic. You could target that phrase through on-page cues, inbound anchor text, etc. (the domain name is just one small piece of the puzzle).

90% of your answers were discovered through SEOMOZ's On-page Analysis tool Correction for Title Optimization: 1. The visible portion of the page title in the search results extends to 66 characters, after which the engines will often truncate with an ellipsis. In order to optimize for the best possible title (and provide the most compelling call to action for searchers) keeping the title tag under 66 characters in length is recommended. Correction for Meta Description: 2. Since the meta description isn't used for rankings, and the snippet cuts off after 156 characters (in most instances), it's unwise to have a longer meta description tag. Words beyond this count won't be seen by anyone. Correction for Keywords: 3. Search engines have, for years, ignored the meta keywords tag as a ranking signal. Although it technically does not harm rankings, it can be used by competitors as a method to extract your targeted terms and thus, we recommend against its use. H1-H6 Tags: 4. a. H1 tag above the fold is a bonus b. Use your Main keyword in H1 tag preferably towards the front. c. H2 tags is used break down the main topic and is effective d. H3-H6 should be used as sub topics only if it going to be natural otherwise it may come off as spam. Bold & Italics text: 5. In testing, search engines appeared to have a preference (albeit slight) for pages that employed a targeted keyphrase with one of these elements than those missing it. This may also be valuable to users who can more easily find references to their search query thanks to this highlighting. Image Alt Attributes: 6. Keyword usage in the alt attribute of an image employed on a page is surprisingly positively correlated with good rankings. It also helps considerably with image search, a popular and oft-employed vertical/universal search system. Body Text of Competitor: 7. Body Text:  I wouldn't worry about competitors, work on your own strategy

I agree with what they've said above, but one piece that's been missed is Google+. Be sure to get a Google+ brand page set up and link it to the website and other social sites. When you do a search these days, not only do they show Google+ pages in the normal SERPs but they also show a callout on the right sometimes. Having a Google+ strategy is a necessity these days: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-every-marketer-now-needs-a-google-strategy

None of those is there anything else we should avoid?

Cool thank you, was starting to lose hope of this being answered

I agree, Julie. Google is not going to, or able to (unless the site with the link has Google Analytics) flow more link juice to a link that gets more clicks than another. To answer the original poster's question, just because a link is getting a lot of clicks does not make it valuable. Traffic means nothing in the grand scheme of things. It's all about what that traffic is doing on your site once they get there. Are they purchasing? Are they turning into leads? Are they bouncing immediately? In all likelihood the traffic has some value, but to truly measure which would be better would require more information. All else being equal, a link that drives traffic is better than one which does not.

What if they accepted it? then what.. I have a blog that all the content that is posted on it is also posted on sites such as ezine, and these articles are already published. What would you recommend? re writing all the content of the blog, that there wont be any duplication? or just leave everything and be sure to not do it again?

I just want to add something that will higher user interaction on the site, The seomoz tool would be ideal, the user would see their SEO score for their site just like the site explorer results but without all the links just the page authority, domain authority, linking root domains and total links. If thats not available an onsite tool checker should suffice.

To answer this question: Do search engines only count links that have google analytics? No. That sounds ridiculous. What about omniture and webmetrics?

I'd say you need to have a reason why your forum is better than what is already out there, and why a broad forum where any topic goes is better than a niche forum. I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum from you. I run RC Naval Combat, a forum that is devoted to RC warships that shoot and sink each other. We have a custom design warship registry where you can show off your boat and list details about the scale (1:96, 1:144, etc), class (USS Iowa, HMS Revenge, etc), type (battleship, cruiser, destroyer, etc), local club, and more. We have a number of subforums for various aspects of the hobby. That site has more activity and members than the warship combat subforum of a couple of major RC hobby forum sites. Those sites are much bigger, but look at us as the crazy people who shoot ball bearings at each other and sink each others ships. There can be helpful advice in the other subforums, but they just don't have the experience with fully submersing a ship and how we need our things set up differently in many cases. Think about what exists out there already, and what you can do better. You're going to have this battle in many subject areas I would imagine. You need a value proposition about why people should come to your site for their discussions. It could be ease of use, mobile friendly, unlimited image uploads, a way of doing something way better than most everyone else is..but it's more than a build it and they will come proposition.

Natural backlinks are links that are created to your site without you doing anything to request or buy them.  They could be in content, in sidebar or anywhere on the linking site.  These links are usually EARNED but sometimes the linking site is scraper that does not wash out links.  Natural links are usually high quality but they might not be. Quality backlinks are links that might provide traffic or help your site advance in the search engines.  They can be high PR links on relevant sites but they don't have to be.  A link from an obscure page on the Pope's site might not be relevant and might not be high PR but I bet it would help your Google rankings.

It looks like those sites update the alexa rankings of the sites they list daily. This means that where a site shows up on those lists will change based on when the site did their scrape, and when alexa updated their information. The information you see in open site explorer is then based on when OSE did their last crawl of the list sites. I think open site explorer releases a new index monthly (I could be wrong on that) so it would make sense that it doesn't keep up with a site changing its page content daily. As for link juice, I wouldn't give those sites much weight in terms of prioritizing link targets for your site. They seem to exist mostly to serve ads which pretty much flies in the face of what google's leaked document about rating guidelines notes: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/16-insights-into-googles-rating-guidelines

Yeah, thats the Idea a forum of all forums : )

I think it is a given that more people click on organic vs. PPC by about 85 to 15. (Yes, different verticals will have different results, I am speaking globally here). And, I believe it is a given - and I have seen it with PPC and organic - that those who come through PPC tend to be more "results oriented" in their query and therefore do convert a bit better.  I believe the math on the two based on recollection from The Art of SEO:... by Enge, Fishkin, Spencer, and Stricchiola that organic still pays off between 5 and 6 to one. So, while PPC converts better, the fact that organic gets so much more traffic at a lower cost (generally) makes it be the obvious choice whether or not you do PPC. Hope that helps,

It matters depending on your audience and your off line marketing efforts. The best is to use http://site.com because it avoids many potential problems. For example with 301 redirects. Also technically it makes sense, why the hell host your site on a subdomain, it should be in the root??? But we do use www. because our audience is an old and traditional audience, so they think a site with out www. is not even a site. So to maintain UX patterns we use www. But in future we will switch to the more sensical root domain.

Hey Donnie, Yes, from a pure link building standpoint commenting on blogs is worthless (in most cases). However, the best way to get links is to have other bloggers notice you. There is no better way to be noticed than by commenting on blogs. The owner needs to approve the comment and more often than not they visit your site to see what you're all about before approving. So, no those links with your name as the anchor text pass no juice to your site but, the potential of another blogger's link will. If the blogger shows up at your site and sees interesting content, he will link. NOTE: Be sure that your comments are thoughtful and they add to the conversation. Another Note: Yes, people do click on your link, if and only if, you are commenting in a thoughtful and interesting way.

It would not officially penalize you, but it won't help you either... You're content would fight one against each other, so you should put a rel Canonical, stating this one is the source. This will tell google which one is the source but this would take sometime and won't give you the same benefit has 5 content. Also the Panda updates are in some measure looking at devaluating  poor quality duplicate content ( The one not compensated by Huge linking as for a Newpaper site). In my opinion, maybe you won't get "punished" but you won't help yourself either... Better to do 2 Unique content then 5 not unique.

My main readership is moms, so they are very active on pintrest. They repin a lot of my content, and spend time looking at other pages on the site once there.  However, they know what they are getting before they come to the site. Like the others have said, it really just depends on what sort of audience your site has.  For me, it's been good (I actually want to step up my boards, and make them a bit more organized...) but may not be for you.  Also remember it's invite only at this point, so even though there are a lot of people on it, not every one is. So you'll have to decide if it's worth your time at this point.

I think TEST is the keyword  when Duane is talking about the index. Further down the page it makes it quite clear they will kick it back out again its no good. “If the users love it, it stays. If the users don’t like it, it gets dropped. This is a way to determine if the users feel this was a quality result.” Duane has said many times that they will not be indexing everything; they only want your best pages. "Rand: Right, yeah. I was going to say, and Bing has been pretty good about penalizing a lot of the links that look manipulative on the Web too. Duane: Yeah. It's a natural part of keeping things clean, right? At Bing, we are very keen on having a quality driven index. So, the main focus we have is making sure that everything that gets in is a good resource, when someone makes a query they get a realistic answer that is actually an answer to their query. Not, here's some shallow depth data. I'm going to click on it, and then oh, it's not really what I want. I go back and I try it again. We're trying to shorten that number of searches to get to the final answer." Duane: Right, exactly. I love this idea, Rand, this whole pick your top 200, whatever the number happens to be for you, pick it and run with it. You don't need everything indexed. Pick your best stuff and make sure that's in there. Make sure your quality content is in there, right? Be sure that you look at the site and say, "What's the goal of this page? Is it to monetize ads? Is it to convert somehow? What is the goal of it? Is it optimized properly to do that? If it is, I want that indexed in the search engine ranking well." http://www.seomoz.org/blog/bings-duane-forrester-on-webmaster-tools-metrics-and-sitemap-quality-thresholds That’s good news about the Social media, because every thing I build seems to rank high in Bing, with no social media. I guess that’s something I can fall back on, if rankings start to slip.

For this strategy to work effectively you need to use distinct domain names. Keyword domains tend to rank well for those keywords, but it will take time to have a measurable effect.  The domains (minisites) will still need incoming links to do well - at minimum submit them to a couple of relevant directories, but the more time you can put into promoting them, the better. You should probably have localized landing pages on your main domain too, but make sure the content isn't the same as that on the keyword domains.