Is buying a domain with a high PR and redirecting it to your site considered black hat?

Yes

At this point I sense an angry mob is waiting for me with their fingers hovered over the thumbs down button.

In brief, when you take actions to improve the user experience, you are practicing white hat SEO. When you are taking actions to manipulate search engine rankings, you are practicing black hat SEO.

If you own the site "chocolate.com" and you decide to purchase "fudge.com", "whitechocolate.net" or any site related to your niche, then redirect the traffic, that is perfectly fine. You have a legitimate business reason for doing such. When you purchase "acme-comics.com" and redirect the domain to your chocolate site in an effort to raise PR and manipulate your rankings, that is black hat SEO.

A debate can begin on what Google can and cannot detect, but that is irrelevant. Even if Google does not enforce a particular policy does not make it any less black hat.

As a final note, the effectiveness of such tactics has greatly diminished over time. Many sites have a great deal of spam links which have been devalued by Google. If you redirect a site from another niche, those links will not offer you a lot of value since the links are not relevant to your site. Some things to think about.

What do people not using this plug in do? I'm assuming not many people do this, right?

I presume they accept the WP default options. Our practice and understanding of SEO is what allows us to analyze and make decisions regarding tidbits such as the one you mentioned.

You think there is any benefit to doing it, or just one of those "hey why not" sort of things?

I do think there is a benefit. You are impacting a LOT of links. Every comment on your site. It may be a tiny 1% benefit type of thing, but the change applies site wide and will presumably be in place for years.

Regarding the new pages instead of posts idea, do you have a link to share?

Regarding the comment url, the page with the comment should be fully indexed either way. By changing the link, you are helping search engines better understand your site. The comment links do not represent a new page or new information.

Google clearly understands WP sites exceptionally well. I am confident you can choose various options and they will still understand those links represent comments. With that said, I would still go with Yoast on this one.

Actually, SEOmoz does it too. Take a look at their blog comments.

I just took a look at Yoast's site and I now better understand the option to remove the variables. I recommend selecting that option. From the Yoast site:

method remove_reply_to_com [line 939]

string remove_reply_to_com( string $link)

Removes the ?replytocom variable from the link, replacing it with a #comment- <number>anchor.</number> Tags: access:   public Parameters: string   $link   The comment link as a string.

Example: http://yoast.com/user-contact-fields-wordpress/#comment-110294

I understand the logic behind blocking removing the variables. They are a lot of extra links on the page which some webmasters might prefer to manage.

What I would prefer is to reform the link so it was something like: http://noahsdad.com/treadmill-training-progress#replytocom=22729

I am guessing the "respond" portion of the URL acts as if someone pressed the reply button which seems unnecessary. If someone clicks the link whether in search results or otherwise and is taken directly to the comment, they should be quite happy. If they wish to reply they can hit the reply button.

Google ignores anything after the # character in a URL. Therefore Google would see these as simply a link to the page which should already be indexed.

Perhaps you can ask Yoast about his thoughts.

Good point! You caught me scanning the headlines.

I would recommend dropping the .html / htm extensions from both URLs.

The first URL is quite long and has too many folders. I am concerned the page requires too many clicks and/or you are stuffing too many keywords in your URL.

Around SEOmoz, some of those types of link building tactics might get you the same type of response that a sales rep for Omaha Steaks might get at a vegan supermarket.

To think some people ask me why I spend so much time in the Q&A. I just need to bookmark Keri's response and that about says it all!

That is quite a URL! Definitely not the best structure.

What exactly did you search for do generate that URL?

I would urge extreme caution at having anyone else "build" links to your site. Many sites have been penalized for manipulative links. I suspect more sites will be penalized in the future.

I suspect "Angela paul" is either a misspelling or misunderstood phrase. There are many companies offering cheap link building services out of India, the Phillipines and other countries. Most of those services run in violation of search engine standards and you run a strong risk of being penalized.

Can you share any context for your question? It does not make any sense on its own.