After reading the Post by ZOOMPF http://moz.com/blog/improving-search-rank-by-optimizing-your-time-to-first-byte I was wondering if any of you have optimized your TTFB and noticed improvements in rankings.  Have you optimized and not noticed any differences?

My pleasure!

Exactly - as Keri explained, they try to crawl the most valuable links.

By linking to the correct pinterest page, you will signal to MOZ (and google) that your Pinterest profile is worth crawling/indexing, and it will gain more page authority as well.

It is because the MOZ crawl didn't pick up that pinterest page.

One thing I would recommend - on http://www.chicfamilytravels.com/: Your link to "follow me on Pinterest" which goes to http://www.pinterest.com/ChicFamily+/ is a dead link.  Update it to the correct link http://www.pinterest.com/ChicFamily/

Hope that helps.

I would stick to the hyphens, and vertical bars. Google recognizes those two as separators.

While tildes, apersats, and slashes could hypothetically work as well - there will certainly not be any gained SEO advantage.

Wow - nice graph!  Where is that data from?

No worries! Appreciate your input.

Interesting note on the discriminatory aspect - I was under the impression that as long as the directory provided real value to users, Google would be lenient.

While I agree that there is nothing more annoying then telemarketers, our company does not have a choice, we pick up the phone when it rings. (And I have a feeling your company is the same way.) Our phone number is on our website.  I don't think being a part of "Dial a Human" would cause any extra telemarketers to call us.

I was asking more from a link-building aspect whether you thought this link was worthwhile.

I know people have mixed feelings towards submitting their sites to directories, but this one really seemed special, so I decided to share the opportunity with the Moz community, as well as open up a discussion on the value of being a part of this directory (and similar ones.)

We recently submitted our site to Dial a Human (www.dialahuman.com) It is a directory of companies' phone numbers, which go directly to a person (bypassing the machines.) I think this directory actually does provide users with value, and is far from your typical link farm.

The Page Authority is 56 and the Domain Authority is 47, and it is a PR5 site.

The other companies listed are all extremely reputable (most of them are fortune 500 companies.) The fee to join is $75-$150, but to be included with this group of companies, we felt it was very worthwhile.

We would join this type of directory over and over again.  Would you?

If you have any other directories which are of the same caliber please share!