If you're planning on doing this with a non-disposable, branded website it's a bad idea as there are can be lots of negative effects.

If you're planning on being black hat, having a network of disposable sites, and are going to be masking (or trying to mask) everything you do, it's just another tool in your toolbox.

Like people already mentioned here, it's better to make worthwhile comments that can be traced back to a reputable looking source as those could even have the added benefit of bringing you additional business, not just a boost in the rankings.

You could focus group the two and see which people prefer.  Or you could buy several and test their performance via Adwords split testing before taking the plunge of transferring or creating the new site.  Really this boils down to not what has possibly worked for others, but what works best for you.

Mostly no.  I say 'mostly' because a lot of times when you look at a site using www and no-www if both of those work they're almost always pulling files from the same location (hence the warnings around duplicate content), so both www.domain.com/robots.txt and domain.com/robots.txt are going to work.  This is the dominant example of a subdomain sharing a robots.txt file. However, on domains that are set up as their own subdomains they have different robots.txt.  Take a look at the many differences between subdomain1-1000.wordpress.com/robots.txt vs wordpress.com/robots.txt.  If you set up a subdomain that isn't just a reflection of your root domain, then you'll need to create a robots.txt file as well. Cheers!

Thanks for the clarification Lauren. Have you been able to determine if the organic results are news based? Based on the landing pages are you aware of any rankings that might have jumped up recently?  If you can get any insights from Google's Search Console you might get tipped off to some new rankings that are accounting for the spike.

Hi Angelos. Dofollowing internal links, is fine, especially in the context of relevant articles as those links are tying together information both in relation to search and for users that want to quickly dig deeper while reading your work.

Why yes the is! In 2013 Kaila Strong wrote an in-depth article here: http://moz.com/ugc/guide-to-using-unlinked-brand-mentions-for-link-acquisition-20981 as one example.

One suggestion I'd add is the creation of a Media Kit page that provides pre-approved pull quotes, company related imagery (in various sizes), timeline and more can work well in either gaining hotlinks to the images or providing citation samples that make it quick and easy for someone writing an article to cite your company.

Yup! That sounds like a good interaction and a lively page that will keep presenting fresh, meaningful content each time it's updated. The only comments I'd worry about are spam (which you've screened) and really off-topic comments, but neither of those seem to be a problem. Since people are commenting under the same topic(s) as the article, it just adds to the page as a whole.

Why not change the file name to 'red-for-truck.jpg'? That would probably have a more positive effect. Much of what dictates image optimization is the same as on page factors, as described here: http://moz.com/blog/is-optimizing-photos-more-important-than-you-think. (On page factors: http://moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors) Plus Google has its own guide for image sitemaps here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636.  Cheers!

Hello Laruen!  You'll want to look at your direct pages and see if they're getting legitimate traffic in your referrals report: Acquisition >> All Traffic >> Referrals

From there you should be able to get an idea about what recent news or articles that have gone live that have been influencing your traffic. You can also use the Fresh Web Explorer here to see what pages might be mentioning you and sending larger amounts of traffic as well as various tools in Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools).

I'm not seeing spikes across clientele so your situation is likely unique to you in that some of your pages have been recently referenced on high traffic sites or has popped into the news cycle. Cheers!

Rand recently did a whiteboard (beard?) Friday on this ~loosely~ under the broader scope of "Engagement" and I think you have to stick with keeping page views lumped into the overall scope of engagement, i.e., saying X page views per session = Y ranking boost is likely something no one can define precisely.

However, creating an on-site engagement score is something that is loosely feasible. For example you could look at time on site and a divide it by your GWT average time spent downloading a page to give yourself a rating engagement rating that. Lower the download time and you raise your score if the time on site stays the same. Increase time on site and the score goes up as well.

Does the number of page view equate into engagement? Maybe, although a site setup for getting lots of page views (pop culture sites with click lists, news articles, etc.) is going to have more than sites that do the bulk of their business via the home page. Perhaps a page view engagement metric you could create would be derived from your organic bounce rate: http://moz.com/blog/solving-the-pogo-stick-problem-whiteboard-friday

Hopefully this gives you a little direction in what to improve.

It's ok. It's a little tricky to get as this aspect has changed over the years as well. And Feed The Hungry is a good example of where their brand matches their domain like Monica mentioned earlier.  As a business "Feed The Hungry" is what goes on their business cards, letterhead, LinkedIn, etc. That the brand name is tied in to an applicable search is helpful partly for people who remember them and create a link back to them (branding) and partly as an EDM. Still the press they've gotten, DA they've built, and networking they've done online and off under the name "Feed The Hungry" has a stronger weight than the EDM. That the EDM ties into it though smoothly is icing on a cake built from all those other efforts.  So, EDM isn't worth zero, but you shouldn't sacrifice branding to get one.

Another search that's instructive: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=google incorporated When you search for Google Incorporated you get different results than just searching for Google, same goes for LeSEA Global Feed The Hungry, Inc vs Feed The Hungry.  Search Engines have done well at figuring out search intent in addition to nuanced differences like lack of spacing in the domain vs the business name (earlier example).  An excellent litmus test would be to go with the name that you feel most comfortable promoting, pressing, and talking about as that's the work that's going to get you to rank.

Welcome! There are benefits to each. When people refer to your URL you'll have your keyword set there and when they talk about you as a business the name will be more readable. Very few business come to mind that keep the TLD as part of the business name: eBay, Google, Yahoo... maybe Pets.com--due to it's generic name without the '.com'.  So it's partly a branding decision in that regard.  I think if you do some analysis specific to what your 'blue widget' is you'll come up with a good answer as far as your branding goes. As far as SEO both will work if your presence grows.