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Who's suggesting anything? I was merely asking for some information about blog networks, and how (if at all) they may be utilized for SEO...

Ok, thanks. I get the overall point you're making, and will indeed focus more on link quality... I guess my gripe is that if the # of linking root domains (for example) are to be counted at ALL - even as a corollary ranking factor - then it would be really good to be sure of the accuracy of the data, which it's hard to be when Majestic, for example, presents such different numbers in each case.

You will learn way more detail here: http://support.google.com/adwords/certification/bin/static.py?hl=en&guide=23648&page=guide.cs This is for the Google Advertising Professionals.

Thanks Cyrus, you've been incredibly helpful.

Having a complete backlink profile is key to success. That means having follow and nofollow blog comment links along with authority links.

You want to have usability at the forefront of your mind when deciding this.  From an SEO standpoint you will want to make the architecture as flat as possible (i.e. as few clicks as possible from the homepage to reach the deepest content of your website). As for your ideas though, I like number 2 better.  Why?  I imagine the mindset I'd be in if I was trying to remove sauce from my couch: 1. What material is stained. 2. What stained it. 3. How to treat it.

OK. So My takeaway from this is that it's probably best (since it's so much easier) to go mostly for brand-related anchor text, other perhaps than in cases where I'm really trying to make a push on a particular page? If that's correct, then my last question is: Are brand anchor text links to a particular page thought to be weighted considerably less by Google than page title anchor text for that particular page?

Yo!  When you have content you are sitting on money.... put it to work as soon as you can! 1. Going slowly leaves room for better keyword optimization etc. huh?  Just do it! 2. Google seems to favor aged domains/content, so 100 good articles now certainly isn't as advantageous as 100 articles 2 years from now. What?  We are not talking about aging cheese... get it out in public view right away! Here's the only concern that I have about what you have posted.... it seems like you have a factory that can crank out  100 articles quickly.....    I would rather have one fantastic article than 50 that have been spun or written quickly by people who are not expert expert on the topic.

Always optimize for the user, not for the bots. What I mean by that is, create titles that are typically phrases that make sense to people as they'll be more willing to click on that result within the SERP's. The title tag is simply just a one-liner of what the page is about, just in a catchy way.  If it looks/sounds robotic, people will notice, and in turn, crawlers will notice. To fully answer your question: unique is always better.  Creating custom title tags whenever possible, outside of the template, robotic style, will warrant you better results.

Bah, I haven't read the white paper yet, but now I'm even more confused! Both previous answerers veered towards "use the keyword difficulty too, go for keywords you think you have a good chance of hitting the first SERP for," whereas this study would suggest doing otherwise might not be a bad strategy. Hmm.

I absolutely agree Marc. This is a HUGE Pro Tip that took me a while to fully appreciate. By targeting the long tail version in the short run, you can build up some traffic, trust and other metrics. But you're also simultaneously targeting the head term so as time goes along you'll likely end up ranking for both (if you've followed a well devised strategy of course) Thanks Marc, Cheers