I agree, I really don't think it matters that much.

It's nice to have a URL that you can easily say out loud, on the phone etc, and it's handy if you can keep it short enough to fit on your business card!

Hi Robert, That's my understanding too. (Google doesn't think hyphens = spam).

I do think that there's  a SERP CTR/searcher perception issue that you need to think about when choosing your exact match domain name.

I'm sure that the more words you have and the more hyphens between then will mean that you domain will appear less authorative and more "spammy" to searchers. (Those who actually notice the domain name!)

Sorry to hear you wasted 30 mins!

The only good reason I can think of for using hyphens is when you want to ensure that you're keywords don't get confused when placed next to each other.  penisland.com or expertsexchange.com are infamous examples domains that suffer from this problem!

Great point Ann. Obviously a lot depends on the motive when it comes to link building and in the real world you can't just measure your return on investment by the number of links...

I suspect that building connections between your own guest posts also increases the chances that people will want to find out more about what you have to say than if they just read one post somewhere.

Pitty you can't see the path people have travelled to arrive on your site beyond the immediate referrer.

My recommendation would be to spend the time building more backlinks to your site, not someone else's.

Why only earn a small share of the link value when you could get the lot? You'll get better return on the time you invest link-building.

I'm my experience it's best to just move on and build the next link than worry about the one you've already got. Do your research first, check the domain authority and the page authority of articles that are currently in the same place on the site that you expect your article to be posted. (That way you can estimate the likely page authority).

Another thing to consider when guest-posting is direct traffic. Check the number of subscribes blogs have and see if you can get guest-posts on those. Look at the content that works on their blogs (the ones with the most tweets/comments) and the kind of headlines that seem to work. You can often see patterns!

Hope this helps!

If these are relatively new pages, then they may not yet be included in the linkscape index, SEOmoz won't have calculated these stats for the page. What's the Domain Authority?

I'm sorry, I don't have any evidence from the user experience point of view,. although I would also be interested to see the results of any studies.

I will say that from a site management/maintenance point of view it makes sense to try and keep the code as clean as possible. I've been involved in project were a considerable chunk of the cost was incurred due to the amount of time and effort that was required to unravel the mess even before any new changes were made!

If you've got things like duplicate title and meta-description's going on then I'd certainly take a look at fixing those. Being able to manage these two tags is vital to managing the way your pages will appear in the search results. (And your title tag is an important ranking factor).

Normally, if your page doesn't validate then it's not a major problem and search engines won't penalise you for it. If however, your page is so badly crafted that the html errors, and general page structure makes it difficult for the search engines (and humans) to read your page then you're going to suffer.

The key is to make sure that your site/page content is accessible. How accessible is your page to someone with disabilities, using a screen reader etc.

You've got to make sure that the search engines can understand what your page is about or your page won't be seen as a relevant page for any search terms...

How bad is it? How does google render the page in it's instant previews (you can check this is Google Webmaster tools)

From a "pure SEO" point of view, whitepapers (like any rich content) can really help get some good long-tale content on the site, and may earn some links if they're good.

My personal view is that whitepaper are more useful when it comes to conversion.

Whitepapers can be used to support your offering/your proposition by providing evidence that you've understood the prospects needs, delivered a great solution to ther problem that delivers real benefits to the customer. (and explain the unique benefits of your solution that they wouldn't have received from your competitors)

Such whitepapers, like other good content may attract links too (unless they're hidden behind a subscription form)

Well presented solutions to problems that your target audience experience are of interest to people who, as Casey mentioned, may be willing to provide their email address, join a mailing list in order to receive the whitepapers. Think about the value of building such a mailing list for the business.

I'd take a step back and think about what you're trying to acheive and how you can use white papers to support these goals.

Hope this helps.