The secret to good SEO is to stop wasting time with automation tools. SEO simply cannot be automated and left to a robot. If it could, none of us would have jobs

If it automates directory submissions, bookmarks, articles, blog comments or anything else, it's useless and should be left alone. Far too many SEO folks waste far too much time tinkering around with them...only to figure out they are useless and that they wasted a lot of time. The Onion comically gives us another great way to stop wasting time:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/openminded-man-grimly-realizes-how-much-life-hes-w,19273/

I wouldn't necessarily look for stats or studies about meta descriptions here, but look at research done on PPC copy as well. There is likely a whole lot more of it for one, and its a very similar concept. Which words get more clicks? That's what it boils down to. I'm sure if you look more for stats in the PPC side of things you can find more concrete sources on what language is most effective.

Ask yourself why you are using a domain and if you can accomplish the exact same thing by simply making a subdirectory. If you can, drop the subdomain. Always use subdirectories.

Google treats sub domains as separate websites, so having a different IP address doesn't matter, just makes it more separate I guess. That's why I wouldn't bother. Why separate your content?

There is SEO benefit to forwarding these domains if they have any incoming links. If so, a 301 redirect to your main domain could send some link juice and help rankings.

If these parked domains aren't even indexed by Google and have no links, then there is no SEO value in a 301 redirect because Google won't even know about it anyway. I would still do it as there is no harm that could be done, that's for sure.

I would recommend against doing any kind of meta refresh, as Google frowns upon those. Just 301 redirect the parked domains to your live website and it will either do nothing or help a little, but it can't hurt.

Hey all, I've just started at a new company. We spend quite a bit on Adwords and I'm tasked with seeing how that is going and assessing that spend. The problem is, Adwords and Youtube ads have been given to a third-party advertising agency. They are only willing to share the number of clicks, cost and conversions, stuff like that. They refuse to give us access to the account.

Is this legal? I mostly want to get in there to look at keyword history, see what we have bid on, how often it was searched, stuff like that. But they won't let us in and I'm wondering if they are required to let us look at our account as I would think they are. Please help!

I use xml-sitemaps.com if the website has proper navigation and is less than 500 pages. It works pretty well, you can download the sitemap afterwards in xml, html or txt.

Kind of a loaded question but let me see if I understand. You have a call to action button and you want to use it in multiple places on your website but don't want a duplicate content penalty. You wonder if making the button in text might be more effective. Is that correct?

First of all, I think there is a lot of research out there that your image call to action will be more effective than any styled text could be. You have a lot of options with fonts, colors, shading, etc. in images, not so when styling text. I would definitely use a button in that regard. Also, you want it to stand out. That isn't always just bright colors, it's contrasting colors. SEOMoz for example has a light blue background. Right now there is a pink "call to action" of sorts (more of a look at me I'm important note) at the top for the expiring private messages. Stands out, doesn't it? Because a warm color (pink) contrasts with the cool color palette established by the blue background.

You don't have to worry about a duplicate content penalty on images that I'm aware of. What I would do is only use it once per page in the best place you can put it and make sure every time you use it on all your pages you maintain the same alt text. I've seen that it's possible Google isn't a fan of repeating an image with different alt text or calling lots of different images but using the same alt text.