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No, just no! 
Automated software is never really a good idea and although it may result in short term gain, the long term prospects are not very good at all.
Concentrate on creating high quality links that require a human to put effort it. 1 high quality link will out shine 1,000 spammy links
The idea of the link acquisition tool is to simply provide searches that you can use in google to get results that may yield good link opportunites.
If you click on any of the links it will open a google search for the keywords shown.
For example money hoodies + "suggest url" is searching google for sites with the keywords 'money hoodies' but also where there there is an exact match on the site for the text "submit url". This should therefore return sites which are relevant to your keywords but where you can also submit a link.
It's pretty handy tool for finding some quick wins that you may not have thought of, but there are many other search terms you can probably think of yourself that may yield results which are as good if not better.
Quicker than a toilet stop in rattle snake country.
Go to Open Site Explorer > Type in your competitor's URL > from the 'show' drop down select 301. Job done!
If you can't get the perma-link structure of wordpress to match as many of the old pages as possible then, yes, I would personally 301 the old pages to the new ones.
You'll lose a certain amount of "link juice" by doing this, but it's better than losing it all!
Atul,
To start with, I would direct you to the following resource;
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
It contains surprisingly good tips for people beginning SEO and some gems for experts alike.
Looking at your site, I would suggest the following;
Reduce the number of links on your home page. The big 'blob' of links of the tops looks incredibly spammy on first glance and you need to categorise these. Perhaps under a 'New Essays' category and then maybe just include a few 'featured' new additions at the top. Adding an image and a short description for each of these may also help with the look and feel of the site.
Get rid of the ' in FAQ'S at the bottom and replace it with a small s. Not a big one, but it's bad grammar.
Your H1 tag is too long. It should concentrate on a particular keyword or brand you are targeting for your home page. Perhaps 'All Kind Of Essays'
The alt text for your images could be better utilised. Put some more appropriate and keyword rich alt text.
The page is missing a meta description. Although not a big impact on SEO, it's useful to show in the search engines so that users have an idea of what the site is about
You need to start building some quality inbound links to the site. The beginners guide above has a good section on this. Make sure the links are high quality, perhaps guest blogging. You could also submit the site once it's cleaned up to some quality directories such as Yahoo Directory and Best of the Web. Avoid spammy directories.
Is there an incentive to donate a paper? I can't see one at the moment. Maybe you want to be creative and award users points or something similar to attract paper submissions.
There's no text on the home page describing what your site is about. You need to have an informative and eye catching blurb to describe the page. You can then drop the odd keyword in here and use it to hook people in so they don't just bounce straight back off your site.
Create an XML sitemap
If you want to restrict Google's bots to access certain sections, create a robots.txt file in the root directory.
I would definitely consult the guide at the top of this response, it should help no end; it also contains useful links to other useful articles on how to optimise a page well and build links effectively.
I hope this helps
Paul,
OSE is no-where near as complex as Google's algorithms and can only rank links in a relatively simplistic manner. Although it's a very good tool for getting an idea of what's going on, there are so many other contributing factors that Google will use that just can't be included in OSE.
For example, the directory links may be ranked highly in OSE because it's algorithm looks at all the links going into the directory and determines that it's probably quite a good source. Google however may have penalised the same directory (something OSE can't determine) and so any links from that directory may in-fact be worthless.
When using OSE, I tend to use my gut instinct as well as the stats to tell whether a link is worth anything or not. If a link looks particularly spammy then it probably looks the same in Google's eyes.
Also - it's worth remembering that OSE's index is much smaller than Google's, therefore although most of the decent links will be in there you may not be able to see some awesome links that your competitor has, simply because they're not in the OSE index yet.
Unfortunately getting links from quality sites, isn't generally an easy process.
If you want an easy process then you could always buy links from some sites with a high mozrank, but I wouldn't generally recommend this as it's a path that may lead to being penalised.
Try using open site explorer to check the bank links of your biggest competitors, you can then check the mozrank of the sites that are linking and make a 'gut' feel on sites where you can submit links with relative ease - e.g. by guest blogging or contacting the site owner and promoting your content.
As long as the blog is connected to the website in question; I would make the blog part of your current domain, preferably in a sub folder rather than a separate sub domain. This method then allows you to add fresh content onto your blog that will also have a positive effect on the site as a whole.
By putting the blog on a separate domain, you're moving the positive effect of having the blog away from your website, and therefore your website won't benefit. Sure you can create links from the blog to your website, but if it's a new domain this won't carry any authority and if the blog is on the same server/registratio details as the website then Google will be able to pick up on this and possibly devalue them anyway.
So, unless the blog isn't connected to the website or you're looking for long term gain in building the blog up as a separate domain then keep it on the website.
As Zachary says, these results are personalised.
The best way to check is to use incognito in Google and Private browsing in Firefox whilst being logged out of your google account. This should remove any personalisation from your searches.
I'm experiencing severe delays trying to export OSE data into CSV over the past couple of days. Relatively small reports I ran 2 days ago are still pending!
Has anyone else noticed this?
Also my campaign rankings have not updated since 24th April - anyone else?
Logged with Moz Helpdesk but no reply as yet...
Yes. I would say that domain authority is a better ranking factor than page authority and as long as the domain authority is suitably high then go for it. The only exception I would make to this is maybe if the page in question was for some reason particularly spammy, but with a high DA site, this shouldn't be the case....
Say I manage to get a link on the bbc's website. Whether the page with the link was a couple of sub pages deep and brand new doesn't really matter. It's still a cracking link as it's from a highly trusted domain.
Traffic Travis?!.... More like Traffic Travesty!
Joking aside, nothing in my opinion comes close to what SEOMoz offer; the tools, linkscape/open site explorer use and knowledge available from the team and forum is light years ahead of what you can get elsewhere (plus the community is nice).
SEOMoz are at the forefront of new tools and ways of doing SEO, and this coupled with the tool-set and knowledge base is what you're paying your $99 a month for. Traffic Travis only seems to offer a more limited tool set without any automation features.
SEOMoz all the way!
Generally link building from directories and the like can still have a positive effect as long as you don't let the link profile of the site get too spammy. A link profile filled with just spammy links is bound to raise google's eyebrows and you may find your site being devalued because of it.
If I'm building links I tend to look out for the following;
If the MozRank of a site is 1.5+ points higher than the page rank, then there's probably something fishy going on and you may want to avoid getting a link from that source
If the site has many, many links coming in, but only from a small amount of domains then again, probably something fishy there, which google could easily pick up on.
Gut instinct. If the site looks spammy as hell and has a rubbish human editing approach then you may well want to avoid it.
Remember there are plenty of decent directories about such as Yahoo! directory and Best of the Web.
Also, you're less likely to create bad links if you find directories and blogs that are relevant to your site. So if you find household directories or money saving sites, then google will have less reason to devalue the links.
Lastly, check out SEOMoz's beginners guide http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo - Don't let the 'beginners' part put you off, there's some great up to date tips and links in there that will help any SEO.
If the "static page" you are referring to is your blog page then you can just use the tag each post to specify where you want the summary to end on the blog page.
The only tool that does that successfully is Google I'm afraid, otherwise it's a process of using Open Site Explorer to look through the links and make a judgement based on what the profile looks like;
Look at the domain list and see what sort of domains are linking. If you see lots of directory links then that's a tell tale sign of spammy
Look at a few links and see what sort of links they are. Lots of blog comments doesn't bode well whereas some links in a news story on the BBC site would bode very well indeed
Have a look at the MozRank and MozTrust metrics. Although these are only a rough guide, MozTrust will give you a good idea of the quality of the site. A MozTrust higher than the MozRank is a good sign because it tells you that good sites are linking to the domian
There's a tool in the Moz toolbox that checks the spammyness of the domain itself, but otherwise it's gut instinct really.
You can use the 'top pages' tab on OSE to see the shares of all the top pages on a particular site. You could then download this data to csv and sort by the shares column to rank it by the most shares.
EDIT - Scratch that, just looked it only gives you the top 25 pages with shares 
Come on SEOMoz! We want all pages included.
Have you setup custom meta descriptions and titles in All in One SEO?
If so, you'll probably need to manually migrate these from one to the other.
If you've just relied on the default/automatic settings in All in One then you should be fine to swap over. Obviously each plug-in is different, so you may notice some changes to how it handles meta tags, redirects, etc. so you might see some impact on your search results (not necessarily down), but I would imagine it would be negligible.
Personally I'd go for Yoast's plugin over AIO, as it offers several features that AIO doesn't have. It's also kept more up to date, and Yoast really knows what he's doing. If you're going to make the switch do it now and then stick with it.
Rather than creating the same report layout for each of your campaigns in Moz Analytics?
Anyone know?
Maybe Google have started their own SEO business??
That would be a sure way to wipe out the competition and earn some cash!
Seriously though, unless they have access to some amazing link resources then this has to be black hat doesn't it? unconsenting at that! like you say, if it's dodgy then some serious damage could be made here in the long term.
What does the forum think the best strategy for social bookmarking is?
Obviously white hat, user generated would be preferable but looking slightly darker; you can obviously get services that create social bookmarks over a period of several weeks, but are they worth the investment?
I've seen some other South African sites like this that have ranked really well. In fact our brand name is a big term is South Africa, hence the reason I noticed the odd .za site appearing in the rankings. I'm not sure if the algorithm is different for the area and that's why it works??
To be completely honest with you, what you competitor has done may not be sustainable in the long term, but you can see he's got some easy links from 'high ranking pages'. I won't endorse it and sooner or later he may get a penalty, but he does seem to have found some easy wins for the moment at least!!
Google has a public cache (i.e. what you see in the search results) and it's own private cache which is used to evaluate site rankings.
Although when the public cache is refreshed it more than likely updates several ranking factors, there's also crawling done behind the scenes. Backlinks can and most likely will be picked up before the public cache is refreshed.
I've noticed google is getting quite fast on updating rankings and new back links can have an impact sometimes within a day or so now.
You should probably start a new Thread for this Tina - you'll get more responses.
The only way to remove bad links really is to contact the site owners where the bad links reside and ask them to remove them! There's no quick fix unfortunately.
You can use opensiteexplorer to seek out the links which are bad, then you'll need to go through them one by one, seek out the contact details for the site admin (using WHOis if necessary) and then ask for the link to be taken down.
If you have spammy links, you should also concentrate on creating QUALITY links at the same time. Google will usually ignore most spammy links as long as you have a reasonable number of good links in your profile as well.
Hope that helps.
Thanks Anthony - Not what I was hoping for, but guess white hat is the only way!
There are two quick methods I use to check if a site's ranking has been devalued or penalised;
Compare the Page rank of the site in question with MozRank. If MozRank is 1.5+ points different, then the site may have been penalised by google and lost some of it's PR.
Pick a sentence from the site of 5-6 words and search for this sentence in google enclosed in quotes. If you find the the site is ranking on the first page, then it probably hasn't been penalised or devalued heavily.
I also use gut instinct for a lot of links and usually that's good measure - If a site look spammy, then it probably will to google. As for nolo.com, it looks like a pretty decent site to me, so I would be surprised if it's links have been devalued.
Not unless the google-bot creates an account for itself and then proceeds to login 
That's the problem! Although some do surprisingly!
Google's wise to this though and so if it sees that you have a good number of quality links, it won't penalise you for it. Otherwise a competitor could just build spammy links on your behalf and ruin your ranking!
Yes, it certainly is. I'm always searching and hoping for a 'quick win' strategy, but nothing can really beat earnt links unfortunately!
If you ever find software that can create some great content then go out and network with people and share the content, then get some links back in from these credible sources, please let me know!
By the way, if you need some help with excel and vlookup, check this link outl
http://www.distilled.net/excel-for-seo/
These links may help you also;
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-inside-look-at-competitors-backlinks-with-open-site-explorer
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-profiling-with-open-site-explorer
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/weed-out-your-lowest-performing-pages
Activitysuper,
I see you're using the rel=canonical on the non www version, but really you need to use a 301 re-direct on the domain with the non www to direct it to the www version (if that's which one you want to use), you can then set the www one as your preference in webmaster tools and remove the non www version from your account. You can do this quite easily in IIS on your server, by setting up a separate site for the non www version and simply using the re-direct feature to 301 it to your www site.
The site has the potential (to a googlebot) to look slightly spammy in the fact that it's a single page with no external links coming into it. I would try and get some quality links going to your domain to give it some link juice and trust.
It's also an easy site to copy from a content perspective. Someone can just come along, rip your content and setup their own page on a more established domain, so make sure this isn't happening. Google could give credit to the other site in this instance.
What's the forums opinion on using Sponsored Tweets (i.e, sponsoredtweets.com) to drive traffic,links and/or followers?
Has anyone had any experience with it they can share?
Vjay - good question
I think it really depends on the quality of the directory. I think that relevant (industry specific) directories are generally ok as long as they are high quality and not rife with spam.
There are also some credible directories still such as yahoo directory, best of the web, etc. So if you can find a decent one with decent inbound links and a solid auditing process, then why not.
Google uses WHOIS to determine the age of the domain under a current ownership, however if the WHOIS data changes and at the same time the content of the site changes dramatically, Google may reset the domain age of the site in their opinion.
I'm not sure but I would imagine Google have their own records on domain age outside of WHOIS registration.
Generally, I correct the error and then wait until the next crawl if I'm confident that I've fixed the problem.
If I'm unsure then I may run a manual crawl using the crawling tool, however for me the format just isn't as easy to read as the weekly crawl diagnostics.
Yeah any custom of the AIO custom fields you've configured will probably need to be re-entered into Yoast's custom fields. You can just copy and paste these out to a spreadsheet or something and then paste them back into the Yoast custom fields.
So yes, the functionality is retained to have separate search engine titles/descriptions and blog page titles/descriptions
Umit - very good question!
Either it's magic or it's got some awesome links from domains that only google seem to have crawled!
You should read this http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139066#301
Google seem to prefer 301 re-directs where possible, but in your case it may be much more straight forward to use the canonical tag. It was created pretty much for times where you have variations on a product (such as different colour shoes but otherwise identical, each with a separate page)
Why wouldn't you want to include a link to your help desk? If it's a resource that visitors will use then you should include it.
As for a nofollow link, this is just going to stop link juice being passed to your hepdesk page, but other links on your page will pass less link juice as a consequence, so without more information, it doesn't seem to make sense to do this.
If there's a reason why you don't want visitors to access the help desk then don't include the link at all.
David - Thanks for your reply - to be honest, even though it is pretty simple to do, I don't want the hassle of even having to open a PDF up and would rather the reports were all branded up as soon as they were emailed.
I'm considering moving up to a higher subscription level as it is, but if this functionality is part of the parcel, then it will be much more convincing for me.
It looks like when archive.org tried to crawl that site the crawl bot met a 302 error, which is a temporary re-direct which was either enforced just on the crawl bot or on the site on whole at that time.
It's strange, the site seems to just be carrying the same Page Rank as the site it was re-directing to which is http://www.withcauses.org/. So my guess is either that it's a coincidence and what Ryan says carries for this site as well or some method of re-directing the crawl-bot was instigated which meant the page rank was retained by the 4causes.org page or something else fishy is going on.
Browsing the site posing as a googlebot doesn't make much difference, but i'm intrigued so I've asked the Mozbot to crawl it to see what results are returned.
Whether the PR is valid or not, who knows. As Ryan correctly says, the PR indicator can't be fully trusted and although PR is calculated on pretty much a daily basis, it's only updated to the toolbar cache every 4-6 months (and this isn't always accurate).
Your site is relatively new and so a spammy looking link profile is something that will not work in your favour. Take a look at this video by rand from a few years ago; http://www.seomoz.org/blog/belated-whiteboard-friday-can-bad-links-hurt-me
You definately need to work on some high quality content and then try and create good links to the high quality content you are creating. Google will then recognise your content and see that it's being linked to externally which is a positive sign.
Atul,
Try reading this, especially the website content section;
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
There's some great stuff in there that every SEO can learn from
OSE share data is based on page rather than domain, so that's a massive number of shares for a single page!
It almost certainly has to be a follower/like service. They're a dime a dozen. If they were running significant facebook ads you would expect their facebook page likes to be much higher than 25.
Just got the crawl report back and strangely that site is 302ing the Mozbot on some sections of the site to elsewhere, but when you navigate by browser, no redirection at all.
I smell something fishy afoot
It doesn't really make much difference. Relative is useful for navigating when your web site is off line in the design stage, but it makes little difference.
If you were to put links in content, it's probably best to use absolute links, incase anyone scrapes your articles to replicate on their own site. Then at least you might gain an extra link back to your own site.
Please be aware that if you use several different types of links to navigate to your home page such as;
http://www.mysite.com/index.html
Google and other search engines would count this as 2 different links and cause some duplication issues. So in that respect, I wouldn't refer to your home page's actual page my name. Just use the / either in an absolute or a relative sense.
Mercreece
SEOMoz do a weekly introduction webinar. It's every Friday and you'll get shown around the tools and be able to ask questions relating to it.
Check here and you can reserve your spot