Hi Samuel,

Text links will definently pass more link juice than an image due to the fact that crawlers can better read the html text than alt attribute from an image, as it is more difficult to parse.

Also in my experience I have found people linking to the site using an image really do not put an alt attribute

Hope this helps,

Vahe

It would be better to use the complete address for the following reasons:

(1) This can be cited across other websites, which can help your site build more links

(2) Depending on the URL shortner service (in this instance Google does), does/doesnot contain a 301 redirect, which means either way you would be loosing some link juice value you would have otherwise received for a page.

Hope this helps,

Vahe

I would suggest you specifically look at competitive intelligence tools like compete.com or semrush as they can provide somewhat accurate estimates.

Here's a reference from SEM Rush on how they collect their data

"SEMrush analyzes keywords in the first 20 search results in Google. We now have over 100 million keywords and 71 million domains from the Google top 20. We use our Live Update algorithm to keep our 25 regional databases fresh."

The main benefit of RSS feeds is to keep users updated with your latest content should they not access your site directly.

From an SEO point, if you have activated the "pingback" feature, this will ensure that every site update will be notified to search engines & browser bots and specific blog/content submission sites. RSS feeds also provides additional internal links to a page hence providing more link juice and page authority. Make sure you don't have too many internal links on a page.

It is therefore important to be smart about RSS feed placement and making it compatible to access and read fpr all types of sites mentioned above.

This is why you'll notice people using Google's Feedburner, whereby you can  have more control optimising the meta data per RSS feedback and automatically connecting social media accounts i.e. twitter or digg for automating content promotion.

Hope this helps,

Vahe

From my experience targeting the higher traffic term usually captures traffic/rankings for the lower traffic term aswell, since they are both related.

I would go with "shoe" however optimise the content for both shoe & shoes. In addition you would need to build links for both terms, so that you can improve the ranking for both terms.

Hope this helps.

V