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For analyzing backlinks of competitors my approach is to download the CSVs from Open Site Explorer for the top competitors (filtering for the entire domain and followed links).

Put these CSVs into an Excel workbook and convert each sheet into an Excel table (to make it easy to filter).

Sort the rows of each sheet by descending Page Authority.

Go through each sheet and highlight any URLs that catch your eye as potential link opportunities.

Lastly, filter the list to put the highlighted rows at the top so that you can look into these opportunities later.

The following Google query has worked well for me:

keyword phrase inurl:links

Not directly, but you might be able to find someone by searching LinkedIn for employees at TripAdvisor and then use Distilled's technique to guess anyone's email address using the Rapportive Gmail plugin: http://www.distilled.net/blog/miscellaneous/find-almost-anybodys-email-address/

Option 1 would send more link authority (i.e. "link juice") to your specific product pages where the conversion will take place. This is also known as a flat site architecture (which is generally recommended) where there are fewer levels in your site hierarchy. As long as there are not an overwhelming number of products (which could hurt the user experience) option 1 is better for SEO in my opinion because the product pages will receive more link authority and have a better chance of ranking well in search results. If you have more than say about 20 products on each category page, then option 2 starts to seem more attractive for two reasons. First, the user experience is worsened as the page clutters up with too many options (see The Paradox of Choice) and also each additional link on the page will dilute the amount of link authority that is passed to each individual link.

While searching for outreach targets I came across a site that charges $100 to post your infographic with a review. I think this is similar to someone that says "Sure, I'll publish your guest post. First, please send me $100."

I'm curious what others think about the practice of paying for guest posts? (It seems like it could easily be lumped in with paid links from Google's point of view).

Hi Moz Community!

What do you think is the optimal guest post byline or bio paragraph at the end of a guest post.

Is it better to link to your homepage with your site name as anchor text AND a deep page with a target keyword phrase?

Or is it better to just use one link to a deep/money page on your site with a keyword phrase?

The best directories in my opinion are directories focused in your niche. For example if your website is about web design services, I would look for web design directories. You might search for something like allintitle:web design services directory

Search engines are increasingly using signals from social networks to determine the trustworthiness and value of webpages. If people are bookmarking your pages or sharing on other networks, this suggests that you have a quality site and are less likely to be a spammer.

Hi Moz community!

I was wondering if anyone has ever seen a site penalized or dampened because of too many exact match anchor links or know of any examples.

I don't want to be overly concerned about it if it is a low risk.

Thanks!

Hi Mozzers!

Can you share your experience and observations in implementing rel=next rel=prev on sites you've worked on?

Have you tried using advanced search operators? Here is a good guide: http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professionals-guide-to-advanced-search-operators

Some possible searches that might work are:

allinurl:robotics directory

allintitle: robotics directory

robotics * directory

intext:robotics directory

Have you tried using advanced search operators? Here is a good guide: http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professionals-guide-to-advanced-search-operators

Some possible searches that might work are:

allinurl:robotics directory

allintitle: robotics directory

robotics * directory

intext:robotics directory

I think that another factor that could reduce domain authority is if you add a significant number of additional pages to your site without earning a proportional number of new inbound links. This would dilute the authority across the domain.

You can try entering your website URL into Google like http://www.mysiterocks.com and hit search. On the left of the search results, click on "More Tools" and then select a time frame like past 24 hours or past week. You can often find pages that recently linked to you.

Although the ideal path is to make each product page remarkable and worthy of generating links, itdepends on how much resources are available. I like the example of Woot who creates really humorous and entertaining product descriptions. You can also create original content like videos and photos instead of just using the boring manufacturer's descriptions and photos. I like how ThinkGeek encourages customers to post their own photos of them using their remarkable products. Creative ideas like that can make you stand out from the crowd and make your pages worthy of generating links.

Google will allocate a limited amount of resources for crawling your site and your site's "link juice" is a factor in this. Earning more links to your website is one of the best ways to help your site get more pages included in the index. Some of your pages may not have enough "link juice" flowing to them so Google may not consider them important enough to be included in their index. Other things you can do is submit an XML sitemap or improve the internal linking of your site.

Article spinning pollutes the Internet with poor quality content. Google's mission is to organize the world's information. Why would Google reward sites that make their job more difficult? I would focus instead on a tactic like guest posting by creating content that people willingly publish and adds value to readers.

SEOMoz updates their domain authority about every 4 weeks and just did a fresh crawl of the Web on November 2nd. If you improved your site and earned links since the last update, the domain authority should have improved.

http://apiwiki.seomoz.org/w/page/25141119/Linkscape Schedule

Links outside your niche are still very beneficial. For example if you are a home remodeler and the local news site writes an article about you and links to your site, this will be a valuable link even though it is not from a home remodeling site.

There are many factors that determine the value of a link. Relevance is just one of the factors.

In terms of receiving quality backlinks there are a lot of things you can do. You could create a resource for the best restaurants in your local area and have a great badge designed on Elance. People love to put badges on their site that show they were recognized. Another idea is to offer to write a guest article on local blogs where you offer your advice for free. Guest posts almost always include a link back to your site in the bio paragraph. Another idea could be to interview local businesses that might link to you. People who you interview are more likely to link to you because they have a strong incentive to promote their interview. Be creative and think about creating an incentive strong enough to compel people to link to you.

Hi Christopher,

It is perfectly fine to use the keyword Chevy on multiple pages because it is creating variations of the keyword phrase. For example if your home page focuses on the keyword phrase "Miami Chevy" and you also have a page that focuses on  "Miami Chevy Learning Center", that would count as different keyword phrases. Google will serve a different set of results if you type in "Miami Chevy" or "Miami Chevy Learning Center" so you will not be cannibalizing your search traffic significantly by using these different variations.

SEOMoz uses "SEO Software" on their homepage and "SEO Tools" on a different page. It is a best practice to focus on different variations of your top keyword phrases on different pages, but it is usually a bad idea to have two pages that both focus on the exact same phrase like "Miami Chevy Learning Center".

One idea you could consider is pay for StumbleUpon traffic. If enough people give it a thumbs up (hopefully it's something remarkable) then I believe you can stop paying and it will continue to be served to people. If a lot of people discover your linkbait on StumbleUpon and like it enough, they might share it on Twitter or Facebook.