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Hello SEOMozzers,

As I embark on yet another client's link campaign I ask myself where best to spend resources(time and money) on link building. Typically I provide a mix of blogroll links, article syndication contextual links, social media posting and high PR one way links. I would like to know if anyone here finds one form of link to carry weight over the rest. I have my suspicion and my own theory on it but I would like to know what the moz concensus is.

SEOmoz does have a link analysis tool that is very helpful for spying on what your competitors are up to. after studying this you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

" how would I find out which of these is a better long tail phrase "how a parent can get more sleep", "how parents can get more sleep" "How parents of babies can get more sleep" "how new parents can get more sleep"

What is your definition of better? More traffic or better conversions? That is what those tools I mentioned are there for. Anything beyond that can be determined by analyzing your analytic reports and see if there are other phrases people are reaching you for and moving from there.

Hey I am Noah's dad too! Great name. As far as long tail is concerned, you can get some solid research on google keyword tool for free or step it up and subscribe to a service like wordtracker or keyword country. Both services proved extensive research and numbers based on inputted seed phrases. I have been using wordtracker for the better part of a 10 year professional SEO career. I highly recommend it.

There is actually a great SEOmoz video from rand on duplicate content. What would scare me here is "place a module on your site that reads your content and syndicates it into our network of millions of users"

Syndication of your content can be really helpful if you do it carefully and sparingly.

Good responses all around. Nothing in SEO is guaranteed. Anyone guaranteeing you anything in SEO is lying or trying to sell you something. SEOmoz metrics are a measurement of best practices. You will do well to follow these but getting straight A's will guarantee you nothing. In extremely competitive niches, it is important to max out in all categories including on-page and all off page methods. In such a niche quantity AND quality must work in concert to get any kind of results and EVEN THEN, it is a gamble.