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Or 5. Shorten the keywords in the url post ie title: Some Post titles are quite long as they are long tail terms url: /parent-category/child-category/post-titles-long/

That's a great study - thanks for sharing it with me.

Comprehensive... thanks!

Try and do you best to stick to quality websites for links but most importantly make sure the link is tied to relevant content. Beyond that i always look at 3 factors when choosing places to reach out to: Do they have a domain Moztrust above 2 Are they currently indexed in Google Is the content focused, relevant and to the point Also if you ever want a sanity check on your link profile, http://www.linkdetox.com/, does an awesome job of automating the process of telling you good, suspicious and toxic links in your profile. Plus it is only $40 for the tool which is totally worth it! Good luck! Kyle

Confirmed, my suspicions. Thanks Philipp!

Branagan's suggestion is a good one. You might also want to consider blogging in a manner that highlights geographic terms associated with your target audience.

While no follow definitely does give you "link juice" (wow, that term is the worst), links on Twitter definitely have SEO value. Besides for conversation, the second reason people go to Twitter is for content discovery. You definitely have a huge potential for traffic, and from social media, this is the biggest immediately boost that Twitter gives you. Other things: 1. Build your community and your brand presence. 2. Get your name in front of people's eyes who might not have seen you. 3. Loyal community members really help you in the bad times. If you've build an awesome community who's loyal to your brand and say, the economy dives and you sell a luxury product, you'll see people still buying and advocating your brand. Or say when something goes wrong, people care a lot. For instance, at SEOmoz, when our tools were having tons of issues in Sept of last year, our community stuck by us and even made us a get well Roger card. 4. Serve as an extension of customer service. Using Twitter as customer service can cut down on customer service costs - a tweet vs a phone call. And also be an early warning for issues and save you money say if someone spots a problem with your product and you can fix it before hundreds/thousands notice. 5. Okay, a lot of those weren't SEO, but there is evidence that Google definitely indexes Twitter and while Twitter's links may be no-follow, Google isn't stupid and if they see a lot of people pointing out the same link / having the same conversation on Twitter, they know it's hot. Social signals do count. We just don't know for how much / how long they affect the Algo since we don't know the Algo's exact formula.

All absolutely valid responses - we currently just write copy for our users and optimise HTML for the search engines, seems to be working well thus far Thanks guys!

Interesting point Simon! Often times, search engines which aren't Google are overlooked. Perhaps for good reasons, but certainly worth thinking about. Thanks!

underoptimizing is the new optimization strategy rather than over optimizing. I agree with Beardo.

Yeah, that's the general consensus around blogs, subfolder >subdomain.  Reinforced in this Moz guide. However, I recall someone dispelling this myth with backup from Google or Matt Cutts that they are treated no differently from each other. There's also this post that concludes that there isn't a difference. Aaron Wall, well respected in the industry, thinks subdomains are arbitrary and aren't treated as a separate case. My preference is to remain with a subfolder - I genuinely think it looks a bit neater.  Consensus is somewhat split over the whole "which is better for SEO", I'd stick with a subfolder if it's easy for you to implement and you're not too bothered about presentation in the URL.

Assuming I'm not cloaking any content, how would the Search Engines know it's for them rather than users? Essentially I'd be adding relevant content which, as far as users are concerned, is superfluous. I guess my point is, should I create content for users who are never going to read it, for the purposes of SEO? Thanks

Thanks guys - I appreciate the question is vague but I'm afraid I can't give away too much at the clients' request