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Think of the Yahoo Directory.   It has cost associated with it and a listing there indicates a real website rather than spam.  Whether no-follow or not, if a directory carries trust and authority it is beneficial.

Regardless of what is said, these listings do add to your metric profile and do contribute to ranking.  Just like all the other "non-working" link types (read Press Release etc).

Don't believe me?  Go disavow or remove all your no follows.

Crawl the site with screaming frog.  It will ref in linking page.

If you themeforest themes are meeting your page speed and other needs then there is no reason to go with a different framework.

Themeforest is location where multiple developers input their themes so there is not a general issue to be found.  This is mostly elitism and personal preference you are finding.

However.  Genesis is doing a good job of moving into the semantic web and using proper markup.  It is these kinds of things you should consider in the future.  That is not to say that you can not achieve the same results with your Themeforest purchases either though.

Maintain the single account.  You want to concentrate your efforts into a single location for interaction and max SEO benefit (testing done you naysayers so shush about it not being beneficial)

Studies have show an optimal interaction (tweet) rate is roughly around 4-5 tweets a day.  I have a feeling this is because people are sick of seeing what others had for lunch or when they went to the restroom but keep these numbers in mind.

I would suggest a business keep it below 10 tweets a day at max as you are not an individual user.

I would create a piece of content for the head term and call it the mom.  Then I would create many children with each child targeting a tail set of synonyms referencing  the mother.

These children would live on the target site as well as related topical sites and web 2.0 properties.

Mom and children alike would get pretty and all dressed up with table of content's style interlinking to encourage user engagement and long click like activity, especially on the target site.

Long story short is that both are important and if the content is good you will receive tiered social signals and linking naturally via this practice.

That said... I am a very big proponent of increased site production and if I had to choose one over the other I would take fresh topical content with proper interlinking on my site any day as it means new ranking opportunity, user engagement and almost always new traffic.

Don't stress on this.

Say you write an article about a business/product or two.  One of them catches wind and references that article in an article or a news page.  Do you see a reason for penalization?

This kind of thing happens all the time and it is fine.  So unless you are trying to catch a case of Artificial Growth Syndrome by manipulating recips you've got nothing to worry about.

In your specific case, make sure you are not creating a significant percentage of your total incoming links in this manner since you are actively pursuing.  Maybe create a badge/seal of approval in this case.   As Seen on etc.  Then instead of emailing begging for a link you can email and let them know they have been reviewed and deemed worthy of your approval

If they are repeating keywords in all those links there is potential harm and from a structural stand point this type of linking leaks theme all over the place.  If they were my client I would be pushing to at least remove sub cats.

Firstly, is there anything wrong with the move? Could I have lost my rankings for this reason?

It appears there may be an issue with the redirects.  I am seeing strange headers resolving elsewhere beside your new domain.  I would ask your guy to look into them.

The 301 is hitting the new domain but there are 302s in the header response codes pointing to another location as well.  SEE: http://screencast.com/t/53MnOfHCK3

ADDED Below due to a complete lapse in memory of country specific functionality.

Keep in mind that could just be country specific redirection based upon the tool so don't quote me but I would disable the functionality after a move.

My notes on disabling this are to add the following to blog head section:

If there is conversation going on in your market I would suggest you be there.

Michael Edwards list the benefits nicely.

You will be surprised the content ideas that arise while conducting conversation in your space if you keep your eye out for industry woes/pain.

I would crawl the site and look for and spider traps or potential duplicate content.   I make it a point to do so every time I see one of these notices and I have found things after these notices that could potentially  or havecontributed to a Panda filter.

Although I do recommend at least weekly crawls on larger sites, these notices area  good prompt to do it if you have been lax on your audits.