The SEOmoz blog features a suggestion form that allows users to submit comments or questions for the blog. Just now, I discovered that many of those messages were getting filtered into my spam box - apologies all around. To atone for this grievious oversight, I'm writing a post that should help to answer a lot of the best questions I found from the last 3 months.

In several instances, I've modified the question to be more readable or to have a broader application. Let's get started!

1. Have you heard about www.spotzer.com?
   I haven't heard of them until now, but I see that they provide the same basic service as a company called Spotrunner, which we've covered in the past. The major difference appears to be that they target the European market. If anyone's used them, I'd love to hear your experiences.
2. Can you comment on the Google server errors discussed in this DigitalPoint forum thread?
   Originally, when I wrote about these, I pointed to Todd Malicoat's rundown of their definitions. However, Todd updated his opinions and pointed to Detlev's analysis as a more accurate version. Folks who are interested may want to check out his thoughts to help get closure on the matter.
3. What are the Pros and Cons of changing a page title - can it hurt your rankings?
   It could conceptually hurt your rankings if you remove keywords from the title tag that were helping you get found, but there is no inherent search engine algo piece that gives a benefit to long-standing title tags or penalizes those that frequently change. The best strategy is to pick a good one, modify, test, refine and then make an informed decision. Remember that it's not just rankings, but CTR in the SERPs that you should be watching for.
4. Any books on the subject of web design/development or marketing that you particularly recommend?
   Actually, this is an are where I'm relatively weak. I love Krug's Don't Make me Think, but beyond that, I haven't found a book that I love on the subject of webdev. In the analytics and user experience field, I think the Eisenberg's book - Call to Action - is very valuable, too.
5. Am I helping/hurting myself by running an Adwords ad on a SERP where I'm already ranking first?
   In most cases, you're helping yourself, as long as the ROI is worthwhile. Once again, the formula of test, measure and refine is best - try removing your ad and watching CTR and referrals through the organic side, then put the ad back in and see if you're canibalizing your own traffic or if you're simply getting more visitors who would have clicked someone else's ad instead of yours.
6. How dangerous is it to build too many links, too fast by using common SEO strategies like directories, link exchanges, writing articles, etc.?
   For a new site - it's fairly dangerous. For more established sites that already have quite a few links, it's not as problematic. Still, you should always be asking yourself whether Matt Cutts would want to count that link if given the choice. If the answer is no, you need to decide if the possible temporary value is worth the money or effort spent obtaining it.
7. How about some recognition for the amazing work of eBay's Developer Programs?
   Absolutely! There's two site that were recommended to me, both of which showcase these programs well. The first is the eBay Developer Blog, which runs through all the amazing things the API guys at eBay are doing. The second is Best of eBay Blogs, which actually contains a compliation of blog posts from eBay employees. If you're into the eBay scene, these make for great reading.
8. Could SEOmoz pick up on the meme developed by 456BereaSt about web knowledge levels and create the "levels of SEO knowledge"?
   That's a great idea, but I think it deserves its own post - I'll try to make time tonight.
9. (Question from this DigitalPoint post) Could Google start with a known "bad neighborhood" to help them build out a map of "untrusted" sites (i.e. the "Inverse of TrustRank")?
   That's a pretty spiffy idea, actually. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see Google seeding their "anti-trust" crawlers with bad sites and then using the machine-learning algos to pick up on shared traits of URLs they'd rather not have in the index. Only a Googler could answer for sure, but, to my mind, a smart SEO would prepare for this type of technique and keep white hat properties as far removed from low quality neighborhoods as possible.
10. What's your opinion of this sitewide duplicate content analyzer tool?
    It looks quite good, though I haven't got time to run it on one of our properties at the moment. As the tool states, it's NOT designed for big sites, and I fear that people might get the wrong impression about duplicate content with something like this. If 90% of your pages have 80% similarity, that's acutally perfectly alright. Many times, the only thing unique about pages is a single photo and a few lines of text - the rest of the permanent navigation and template accounts for the great majority of a page's content. Search engines really don't care about sites/pages like this - they know that e-commerce and many content sites look this way and ignore the duplicate portions in favor of the unique elements.
11. Any thoughts on the winner of the V7N contest?
    Jim did a bang-up job in two areas - #1 - he registered a great domain name for the contest and #2 - he had the right connections and friendships to make his links exceptionally robust. The problem with the contest is that its for a completely invented term and has little bearing on what the search engines do with real queries to real users. We'll never even know if the criteria for the contest was ever altered by someone playing around at the 'plex. It certainly didn't keep a low profile in th search world.
12. Can you clarify the ideas behind term weight?
    The most important thing that I've learned from term weight and KW density is that it barely matters. If you have a keyword in your title tag and in your H(x) tag and mention it in the content of the site naturally once or twice, you've gone 99.9% of the way towards perfect on-page optimization. Anyone trying to reverse engineer the formulas for that 0.1% is probably wasting their time.
13. Could you tell us more about the blog software that powers SEOmoz and why you chose not to use an existing blog CMS like Wordpress or Typepad?
    SEOmoz is hand-developed because we like to be able to modify a lot of things about the site, including a recent posts page (which is basically my homepage) and better prevention against blog-spam. We also like our members to be able to have a real profile here and, not surprisingly, as a whole, those profile pages get an enormous number of page views. Lesson here - if you comment on SEOmoz, create some data for your profile because people are clearly interested.
14. What's G-man's take on DNS Cache Pharming and does he use it?
    Luckily, I talked to G-man just recently and he's doing OK after the surgery, which we all celebrated in the office. I'm not sure when he might get to this question, but I'll certainly drop him a line.
15. Why doesn't PageRank increase a site's traffic? What is Google's purpose for showing this information?
    PageRank doesn't incrase a site's traffic because it is a query-independent measure of importance. Traffic through the search engines is entirely query-dependent, hence the dichotomy. Google's purpose? At this point, you'd have to ask them, though my guess is that it's primarily a form of propoganda and a helpful public relations tool - if someone asks about how Google ranks, they can point to PageRank, despite the fact that those of in the industry recognize that it carries very little importance. BTW - I'm assuming we're talking about toolbar PR. Several folks have speculated on other kinds of PR which I won't go into.
16. What's your take on Webaroo?
    It seems a bit odd, but I'm sure some folks find it useful. Personally, I'm thankful for the few times in my life when I don't have instant web access and can take a break with a book.
17. When will the Sandbox Detection tool be back up and running?
    Matt and I just looked at his schedule and I'd say Thanksgiving would be a good time to place your bets :)
18. What's your opinion of Live.com and the search system there?
    The interface is quite spiffy - I'm glad it works with Firefox finally. The results are also nicely laid out, but I'm not sure how much this will catch on with mainstream surfers. My opinion of the site is positive, but trying to rebrand search based on Windows Live because it worked for the Xbox is pure insanity. Honestly, it seems like a huge mistake to me.
19. How can you tell when Google does a datacenter update? Is it important to pay attention to these?
    Matt Cutts just talked about this, so let's leave this to him. My personal take is that no - it is absolutely not important to pay attention to the updates if you work on primarily mid-large size brands in the white hat world.
20. We keep seeing increased traffic from Google, but decreases at Yahoo! & MSN - what are we doing wrong with those engines?
    You might not be doing anything wrong. MSN & Yahoo! haev been losing considerable share to Google over the past 2-3 years, and demographically, Google has been even more dominant in certain areas. If you're primarily talking to a tech-savvy, blue-state dwelling audience, Google's stats should be even more skewed than the Comscore numbers.
21. Can you talk about the differences between Yahoo! vs. Google users?
    This relates quite well to the last question. Since this is a short answer system, let me just quote a statistic I heard earlier this year that codifies my answer quite well. Despite Google getting twice as many searches as Yahoo!, Yahoo! has a greater number of searches per day for the terms "NASCAR" and "WWE." That should help you understand the demographics of the searchers (at least here in the US). Greater details are available here.
22. Yahoo! answers are creeping into the SERPs - is this affecting SEO?
    I have no doubt it is, but I also know that Yahoo! loves how successful the Answers program has been. Rather than fight 'em - join 'em. Get an answers account, point to your resource sites or blogs when relevant and build a profile - leveraging social search is now at the core of a good SEO campaign and Yahoo! Answers is a great place to start. BTW - I love that they got questions (and answers) from Dr. Hawking recently.
23. How does SEOmoz typically get clients - how do you market yourselves?
    Actually, we get most of our clients through calls and emails to us. A typical week after the Newsweek piece came out had between 15-30 inquirie. Now, that's down to between 5-10. Mostly, people know about us through finding the SEOmoz website and the articles/blog. We've also got a good conference presence that makes a big difference. Maybe in a future post I can go into detail on how I'd market a new SEO company.
24. What are some ways to plan how much time it will take to be listed in the top 5 or 10 results?
    A tough one, but I'd say that the KW difficulty tool is something I always use first. From there, a lot of it is common sense and competitive analysis. Is this a sector where linkbait has a strong chance of success? Can you re-focus content towards a techy, bloggy audience? Are you competing against mid-level sites or high-powered, big brands? Are you starting with a new site (add 6 months, minimum)? These types of questions should help you come to a conclusion, but there's really no definitive formula. This one might be worthy of a post in the future, too.
25. How do SEOs apply the information from a competitive intelligence service like Hitwise to their projects?
    Tough to say - I use Hitwise only very occassionaly, and primarily as a way of checking how skewed data from Alexa is. Hitwise is a better tool for those on the business and marketing side of big brands, who want to compare what their competition is doing and how they can leverage those tactics to compete for the same traffic. The blogs at Hitwise are a good place to start to get a better idea of what the information can be used for.

 Wow... It's like 25 blog posts in 1. As always, feedback is appreciated!