I appreciate the points, thanks again for taking the time.

I don't know that "fake" accounts would work, but what I might be able to do is to convince some of my friends to each reply to a half dozen articles a day. Even if I had to needle them until they did, it would provide some content.

For the SEO-level- Reddit does that, and I suppose I could. As I user, I prefer a short, straightforward URL, but I suppose I could see why generating Google traffic might outweigh that. Fair enough. Thanks! ;)

The acct verification product I'm using is off-the-shelf. It was a pain in the ass to find one that was both affordable and reliable, but It's working pretty well. I don't really think I could/should leverage it.