Theoretically I think it's a bad idea in many ways but at the same time, without a noncompete in place, if you have a client paying you $500 to do something and one in the same niche wants to pay you $5000, that's a tempting offer. We actually have an unspoken noncompete in place for everyone but as I need to point out, that's kind of a luxury.

Thanks for making me feel like a cranky old lady Hugo!

Sites unfairly hit by Panda frustrate me, especially when I think they're actually not doing anything to cause the drop that happened. That's a Google frustration though...what really frustrates me is when I am working against the client, who is conducting his or her own link building campaign that kind of counteracts what I'm doing. I get very tired of making good faith recommendations, having no one implement them, then getting fussed at. I hate it when clients rank where they want to be after we've worked with them then decide to leave. I hate having people ask me why I charge what I charge when this basement-dwelling nobody is offering to give them 50 authority links for a labor charge of $100. I'll shut up now.

I think they're still a good source for links but mainly for traffic (hopefully) and diversifying your link profile.

Same as Jill...I've never gotten anything out of it.

Is it Google's fault or is it our fault for continuing to let them be the leader? I fuss about them yet I use them for everything. I fuss about their unfair ppc system yet still use it and only it for paid search. I use them for searching, for mail, for analytics...for everything.

If I didn't run my own agency I am not sure how I'd respond...I'd be more tempted to do something different if I worked for someone else I imagine, but as it stands now I can honestly say that I've never been happier than I am right now. i have amazing staff and nothing thrills me more than seeing them grow in the industry and ask me questions that keep me on my toes. My link builders make something that's usually tedious become something fascinating and addictive, and I adore them all for it. Seeing really creative people in action is always good and this industry attracts some amazing minds, so right now, no, I can't see myself leaving. I love it too much.

I've only had one site to get banned in Google (back in 2005, for cloaking, so hush) and it didn't affect it a bit, trafficwise, because it was a fundraising site whose traffic almost totally came from direct hits. I think their Google traffic was maybe 1% back then, if that, and they got nothing from anyone else. That is the only instance in my career where I have thought that search traffic didn't matter and because of it, I'd say that yes, you can definitely have too much. If you're dependent upon Google and they change the algorithm, you can get royally screwed as everyone knows. If you're not getting traffic from your links and getting direct hits, you need to fix that asap I think.

My sysadmin blocked Facebook at work, and I use Twitter on the web because I'm constantly reading about what's going on in the industry. I don't really get caught up in silly stuff there usually (didn't say I didn't start silly stuff of course) but I haven't found it to ever be a problem in terms of concentrating on work. I enjoy multitasking though. I never check Google+.

We actually calculated our labor costs for 6 months in order to determine what we should be charging for labor for one link IF we buy that link. We have another range of costs for guest posts depending upon the niche, if we go that route. With anything else we do, it's usually a custom cost that depends upon how tough the niche is and how tough the method will be.

I think we'll see a redistribution of the traffic for brand pages, with some subpages getting more initial hits than the home page. That could potentially help with deep linking efforts I imagine but maybe I'm just being overly optimistic. For brands it's great, but like Jill says, if this starts showing up for non-brand searches, I think it has the potential to steal lots of traffic from smaller guys.

I think they're more important, as 5 years ago I could cloak the bejesus out of a site and stuff the content with keywords and rank it in no time. I can't do that now...not that I would want to of course. Ahem. We can still rank a site with links alone but it's still harder than it was even 6 months ago.

Bit of nastiness going on here I see...

I have a few clients who ask for a ranking report in conjunction with their link building report, and that's fine with me, but more and more are monitoring rankings on their own. I personally check rankings on my own anyway for the clients and try to keep an eye on them, because they can tell me a lot about what's going on.

Like others, I think it will be a secondary option. However, I was wrong about Twitter and Facebook so god knows, I suck at predicting success. I don't think the general public know enough, or care enough, about Google to NOT use something they create so I imagine those that have recently flocked to the other social sites will try this. If it succeeds, my opinion is that it will be because of the popularity of social though, not because they've done it particularly well themselves.

So far my children (6 and 8) are very computer-literate without doing too much social media, but Mason (8) has asked for a blog and I am setting one up for him so he can alert his friends to all the frenzied Pokemon thoughts that he has. Both of them do use youtube but neither has a Twitter or Facebook account and I'd like to keep it that way as long as I can mainly because I'm addicted and need the computer for myself.

I think that there is a definite place for automated tweets, such as if you have audiences in vastly different time zones and you write a new blog post that you want to reach them all, or if you find a few gems that you want to tweet but you don't want to blow up someone's tweet stream. With the tools that tell you when you can best reach the most people, if you're tweeting in order to promote something and you can't be physically there when the best time comes around, I see nothing wrong with setting the tweet up to run then.

I think networking with people at a conference is one of the absolute best ways to learn. I've learned more having a drink with someone than I have by looking at slides and listening to a lecture, even though of course that's valuable and necessary. Also remember that most people love to answer questions but don't abuse it.

I think the concept of having social signals as a ranking factor is nice, but I am too pessimistic to think that people (like myself, ahem) will NOT easily game this. We spam, we buy links, we buy votes, we'll soon buy this, too. People will visit their friend's craptastic website and +1 it to be polite. People who have no clue what it actually means will use the system, which is useless. I also don't really notice results being any different yet. Of course, I'm so used to spammed up results, I doubt it would catch my attention. Now I am going to go drink a glass of sunshine and stop whining.

@Nunney: I'm not 100% sure...I don 't have access to their anayltics, only rankings. I just can't find anything that would have caused a Panda slap to occur based on anything else, so it's definitely not conclusive evidence.

I have no proper evidence that I can share due to an NDA but I do know of a site whose rankings tanked with the UK Panda rollout and the only thing we can figure out that was wrong is that the sites linking to this site were knocked out by Panda. So yeah, kind of, in a non-evidentiary roundabout way.

Absolutely.

I feel quite apathetic about things after reading the comparison of SEO ethics with guns. Wow. Maybe I don't take my job seriously enough.

I absolutely do not support it in any way. I like to save my tattling for calling the police on the teenagers across the street who get drunk and sing loud emo songs.

I agree with Jill. I'm not sure why it's such big news to be honest.

If anyone kind of has an idea of what I do they always say "oh so you're the one spamming my email." Um, no. I will now, after having heard that, though.