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While consolidation is good, too many 301 Redirects in too short a period of time can be a hassle. I'd suggest building out other content initially, and letting the floor mats site build up some value over several months before considering a migration of that. Jumping too soon on a recently redirected site could cause too much loss of original site value as it passes through two hops.
three way link exchanges are known as link wheels. which sometimes involve four, five or more "spokes". Tread lightly. Some people sell link wheel participation. What I tell my clients: Buying into a link wheel is like throwing a pair of dice on a craps table. Maybe you'll come out ahead and maybe you'll go bust. So I don't personally recommend them. Not worth the risk.
The claim is that they're pretty good at detecting headers, sidebars and footers - and make some accommodation for these. In my experience it's mostly related to links in those areas, though there's some duplicate content consideration.
Having said that, I've also consistently seen where unless you've got a mega site with a lot of other SEO going, that accommodation is not enough to compensate for getting away with almost no actual unique content on important pages. You still need to consider the overall competitive landscape, and you still need to have more than a spit's worth of content. And the less you do in regard to other SEO factors, the more content you absolutely need.
If a category page has almost no content (other than photos and product names), then that's a potential "thin content" issue, though the way your question is worded, I'm not confident my interpretation is actually what you meant by "no content beyond".
If product names don't reference the category name, and if there's a lack of any descriptive content on the category page, that's likely even more of a problem - thin content and lack of topical reinforcement of the category itself.
A general rule (barring other issues or considerations) is to have at least a couple paragraphs of unique, descriptive paragraph based text that reinforces the topical focus of each category page. There are numerous ways to split that content out across a category page, and in highly competitive categories, more content may be needed if not enough products exist in the category.
Other factors that can help mitigate this to a certain degree include (but aren't necessarily limited to):
This is much better from the previous over-saturation perspective. Here's my next question though - all those links in the lower part that still remain - they all use "business class CityName" as anchor text.
Except none of them points to a business class specific page. So how do you confirm to Google that "these pages really are about business class services", other than by using that anchor text from that one page?
Alan brings up a good point. Anything that does not give the appearance of being natural is bound to be a problem. In nature, there are not consistent patterns. Randomness is the only pattern.
So too, is a temporary flood on a large scale, a potential problem, unless some other situation triggered it. A press release, a big advertising campaign, some major news event. These are the types of things that can naturally trigger additional citations or links. But for citations or links to happen in a vacuum, that is unwise.
I'd also like to flesh out a key thing EGOL said and that Joe touched on.
"personally don't worry about linkjuice. I just link out as it meets the needs of my content and my visitors."
In my experience, if you are spending any significant amount of time on trying to figure how to pass more or less link juice from a particular area or page of your site, you are more than likely expending energy that could be used much more effectively if it's directed toward developing more content, more inbound links, social mentions, or any number of other high priority tasks.
The return on investment of evaluating link juice distribution in a way like you've described is unbelievably minor at best. And in fact, unless you have the capacity, time, and energy to do true A/B testing on a dozen or more specific sub-factors related to that link value passing, you wouldn't even come close to being half accurate in your evaluation.
Sure, it's a great exercise, and could be fascinating to write an SEO article about. But that's really about it.
I think it all comes down to the quality of the content, the ease of readability, and the ability to not diverge too far from the primary topic.
I personally find pages that are endless content, such as blog indexes that load entire articles on the page, to be quite annoying. In that scenario, helping SEO is outweighed by harming user experience. And if the sub-topics wander too far, it can dilute the primary topical focus of the page.
So with proper planning, and user experience considerations, sure, it can be done. Heck, there's a common belief that short blog articles are better than long ones. Yet some of my best, most read, most linked-to blog articles have gone on seemingly forever.
On the flip side, my "Anatomy of an SEO Audit" articles were each strong enough on their own that it was best to split it out into four pieces. Not only did it make readability a bit more reasonable, it gave me three additional "new content" opportunities, and I got to link across all of them by the 4th article, Yet two more valid SEO factors to consider.
You can also add a canonical tag on the old page, using the new preferred page URL in that tag. This could help speed up the Google indexing issue as some have been testing this actually works faster than waiting for Google to change it out based on the 301 redirect.
Also, if there are any links pointing to that page, within your own site, or coming from 3rd party sites, it's a best practice to change them - the ones on your site you can take care of - the off-site inbound links can be more challenging - requiring reaching out to other site owners, who are not always responsive. Yet if you can do this, it helps provide more authority to the new page sooner.
whether you do retail-pest-control or retail/pest-control - either is acceptable and as long as the sequence ordering is consistent you will achieve the same results.
So they should all be industry-service or service-industry.
First, and most important, be very careful about pointing such a refined niche phrase at the home page in an intentional manner.
Your site is not, in its entirety, all about Brisbane flower delivery. So while it's natural to have a handful of links pointing to the home page with that or a variation in the link, it's definitely NOT natural to have a lot of such links.
Too many people in SEO only get half the concepts then run with them. This is why so many sites are routinely slapped, devalued or otherwise penalized by Google over the long haul.
Always use the "is this natural looking" lens. Most people who do not have any idea what SEO is would link a Brisbane specific link directly to a page on a site where that specific page is about Brisbane.
And since 2010, I have seen sites devalued for specific keyword phrases that were too refined to be relevant when pointing to the home page when there were too many similar or identical links. So please - be very cautious with that aspect of your work.
As for the page name, whether it's SEO or nothing to do with SEO, it's perfectly valid information retrieval logic to name an individual page this way, because that's a great way to identify that "this page is really about delivery of flowers within Brisbane", though a slightly better use would be "Brisbane-Flower-Delivery" or "Flower-Delivery-Brisbane".
Penguin should not have (and I'm HIGHLY confident it did not) target properly named page URLs.
Always think of user experience when deciding whether something would be a negative for SEO.
A blog post on an unrelated site wouldn't be of much value in the link aspect because it's linking totally unrelated content.
But the biggest key is why a link would exist pointing to the unrelated site at all. If the link is valid in how it describes something related to the focus of the article, it's a valid link. If it's as you describe in the second scenario, that would definitely be considered a low quality link. Especially if you use the keyword anchor text that way. That's the one that could cause the biggest red flag.
On the other hand, if the author had a box at the end of the article, or as part of the opening of the guest post, describing how that person is connected with the tech product, there's nothing wrong with linking the author's name to that tech site. Or using the name of the tech site as the anchor text.
Actually Google does read the text in some images. It's far from perfect, however it does happen. The key to success, whatever way you go about it, is to provide more unique commentary for each section you quote than the quoted content itself. It's important both as an SEO issue as well as a protection within "fair use" laws (at least here in the U.S., anyhow).
Also if you're doing it in a blog, use the "blockquote" feature if you're not using images. And either way, be sure to link to the original source toward the opening of the article.
In reality, there is not specific "right" length of anchor text. Search engines fully expect everything from single word to several word anchors, a mix of keyword specific, brand, and generic random text.
In an ideal world, it should come down to "what makes the most sense here from a user perspective". In the case of the example you point out, it looks odd, but not from a spammy perspective - you don't get seo value (perceived or otherwise) from including "click here to view" in the link.
Instead, it is less than ideal from a user experience perspective. It's actually a failed marketing attempt at motivating people to click on the links.
the number of directories is pretty much illusionary - it's how many clicks to get to something that matters.
That's the key. It ultimately depends on how many case studies you're dealing with as to how you link to them.
Here's an example
Cases is a top level site-wide link.
On the Cases page, there's a description of each service, and a link within that description to that service's page.
Then on that service page, there's a brief snippet for each case study, where you group them on that page by industry type.
That's three clicks down to the individual case study. And in that scenario, you can go with the URL syntax I previously suggested.
So while the "folder structure" "appears" to be four layers deep
case-studies/pest-control/retail/company-name/
The linking methods above are only three deep. So you're totally within SEO best practices.
yeah it's annoying that Yelp specifically states it's against their TOS to actively solicit reviews this way, yet they are perfectly happy if you display their "We 
Yelp" stickers all over the place.
And oddly, places like the BBB's stand-alone "Trust-Link" reviews site is the exact opposite. They encourage business owners to seek reviews.
Absolutely. In my presentation at SMX Advanced this week, I touched on the critical need for inbound links to have a healthy variety of anchor text, as that is the only way to emulate natural links.
Brand variations
domain name
high level keyword phrases
mid level keyword phrases
long tail phrases
generic text
These should all be part of the mix, over time. And this would include, for local sites, anchors with and without various forms of geo.
it's the freshness factor. Unless we find way to promote such content on a longer-term scale, it's going to be diminishing returns. It's one of the reasons Google wants fresh content.
Only one way to find out. Pull them and observe rankings, organic visits. If those numbers drop, put the box back. If the numbers rise again, you're onto something.
That's the nature of SEO. Without testing, it's impossible to know with 100% certainty what the outcome will be. It's your responsibility to build a case as to why they're harming things.
Has every other major task related to SEO best practices been performed? If so, a 30 day test (checking two weeks after taking the box out), isn't unreasonable a process to test, but only if the owner is willing to risk it.
If they're not, that comes down to us needing to understand that sometimes our gut instinct isn't enough to cause site owners to let us experiment on their site.
"I shouldn't be telling this stuff."
LOL EGOL you know damn well that if weren't telling it, me or someone else would. Sure, we're fools for giving this info out for free when we could be charging thousands.
Yet you also know how enriching it is to give back what was freely given to us, or that we earned the hard way and now have within us to want to help just for its own sake. 
And please - don't discount the true appreciation the rest of us who help out when we can here have for your contributions. You carry a lot of the burden in the Pro Q&A system.