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Jeff's answer is good with regards to the sub-domain/folder debate but,

"My recommendation is to go with the subdomain, and there are a whole lot of articles that back this up:"

I think he meant subdirectory?! That would be my recommendation anyway.

One big problem with uploading static HTML files is that if you redesign your site and want historical content to match the redesign, you'll have to update every single HTML file.

There are also lots of high-quality Wordpress blogs so that's not really an issue. www.mydomain.com/blog/ is the way to go if you can. Whether to have it on your Australian or international site depends on which audience the content is aimed at.

Might it have been Buzzsumo? http://app.buzzsumo.com/top-content

[payday loans] is probably one of the most competitive, spammy keywords there is. Page 1 probably often has significant changes, there are loads of black hats who set up a new site and spam it to hell to the top of Google, only for them to disappear a few weeks later when Google catches up with them, with the same process repeated again. Hopefully Google will get better at combating this. SEOmoz has a tool for checking SERP stability for a particular keyword, though I'm not sure if it is public?

The [it services] one is crazy. I even get the same problem if I search [it helpdesk services] and [it helpdesk] - though not all are universities. Something to point out to Google I think!

Whichever link occurs first in the coding, so if the first occurrence is in the menu, yes - that's the generally held belief - though some have demonstrated ways to get around it (I don't have links, sorry).

In general links within body content are given higher value than links elsewhere, so that's why some SEOs have tried to get around this 'first anchor text link rule'. Google (and other search engines, probably) can recognise the difference between menu's, sidebars, footers etc. and main body content - it's something they're getting better at all the time so I wouldn't be surprised if this changed. But then again it could be easier for people to game so perhaps it won't.

Thanks for pointing that out - I had no idea. In the video Matt Cutts says subdomains are "likely" to be treated like subfolders. The change was also confirned here: http://www.seroundtable.com/subdomains-google-webmaster-tools-13960.html

I wonder how other search engines treat them? More research required...

There has been an error with the Q&A system so hopefully they'll catch up on the backlog soon.

Perhaps a competitor or hacker are trying to displace them from the search results? One of the 'spam' results has "2,427 links to this URL from the past 32 days" according to Open Site Explorer - have you checked to see if any of that anchor text is the company name? I don't have full access to Moz at the moment so can't see.

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/just-discovered?site=www.yolo2.cwsurf.de%2Findex.php%3Fpage%3DUser%26userID%3D4146%E2%80%8E

Check out the free Xenu Link Sleuth and this post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/xenu-link-sleuth-more-than-just-a-broken-links-finder

I haven't used it myself (yet), but Screaming Frog could help as an alternative, though the full version is paid. This post compares the two: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/crawler-faceoff-xenu-vs-screaming-frog

Do the blog links help to answer or provide further information on the question? If so I'd say it isn't a problem as long as it isn't done to excess. 100s of links from one website sounds like a lot so you should be careful depending on what quality and quantity of external links you have elsewhere.

Yahoo Answers links are nofollow so you won't be getting much (if any) link juice from them.

It's not essential but still useful to have the canonical tag, it doesn't redirect but tells the crawlers the preferred address if you have more than one page/address containing the same content. It's particularly useful for duplicate content like print versions, or results pages based on query strings.

What you've actioned could improve the rankings to your homepage as before, the search engines will have seen the two addresses as separate pages, therefore competing against each other. When the redirect comes into effect the page authority and other metrics of both will be combined into one.

I agree with EGOL.

Another problem with Wikipedia is that you don't have control over the content - anyone can edit a page.

Maybe one day your company will become well-known enough for someone to independently create a Wikipedia page about the company. At that point Wikipedia might be less likely to outrank your own site!

This video should be a great help: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

Depending on the type of site/competition it might even be possible to rank well in other countries with the current setup, by building links from these countries for a start. Assuming otherwise though...from what I've read (I'm not speaking from experience) I'd recommend sub folders, as James mentions. As well as adding them to Webmaster Tools make sure you specify the language in the Doctypes and meta language (e.g. I think Australian English is au) and adjust localised spellings. You might want to get a native of each country to check over everything - even the search terms the client wants to rank for elsewhere might not mean much or get much traffic in another English speaking country. Get some links from each country too.

The anchor text in a link is just one of many ranking factors so keywords often rank at number 1 if they contain no backlinks with the same anchor text. Also, anchor text isn't as important a ranking factor as it once was as it was abused, and it doesn't have to be exact match keywords either e.g. "orange men's shoe" could help "orange shoe" to rank and "red automobile" could help "red car" to rank.

Wikipedia pages do so many other things well - in depth content and internal linking being just two. And the site has huge authority of course.

Will you get any relevant traffic from the link?

Does it look like a good place to get a link? Is the content worthwhile?

What other sites do they link to? How many? Are they good quality?

Will they place your link whatever it is if you 'donate' or will they only link to related websites? Is there an editorial decision to be made?

Is the link nofollow or is there a chance they might make it nofollow in future? Do you have any guarantee that the site/link will remain there in the near/distant future?

I don't think I would do it but they are a few things to take into consideration. Here's a WBF I just found but haven't watched yet: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-we-bought-links-and-it-worked and there will be useful stuff here: http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=paid+links

I should probably have opened the post with this, but here is Google's stance on paid links: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736

The SEOmoz recommended company list is a good starting point. Have you read Google's advice on hiring an SEO?

I guess you may have already read these:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-recruit-an-seo-the-seo-industry-leaders-reveal-their-secrets-14183 http://searchengineland.com/attributes-to-look-for-when-hiring-an-in-house-seo-41852  (may be a bit outdated by now)

Make sure it's someone who keeps up to date with this ever changing industry and ask them how they keep up-to-date.

And perhaps the best, most established SEO will pay multiple times over for your unborn children

I don't have time to write out an answer but here's a useful link: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pagination-best-practices-for-seo-user-experience

Google have recently introduced support of rel="next" and rel="prev" too: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

I thought it was a useful answer, it's pretty much what I'd say.

I don't know of any studies into whether it improves CTR.

The sole skull & crossbones looks quite effective, but the descriptions and titles with the stars look spammy to me, so I probably wouldn't click them. I'd say be subtle, perhaps add something that might be enough to catch the eye without putting people off clicking. Remember Google can change the meta descriptions and titles if their algorithm deems they're not appropriate for the search - another reason not to go overboard.

I can see this getting to the stage where everyone in some SERPs has added a load of symbols to try and get noticed - that's when Google might add it as a negative ranking factor, or just not display descriptions and titles that use it.

I'd forward http://www.headoverheels-fashion.com/nl/ to http://www.headoverheels-fashion.com - your title and meta description are in Dutch so it's obvious it's a Dutch website in the search results.

I prefer using subfolders rather than separate sites as its easier to manage and the link equity all goes to the same domain, instead of being spread around. It's still possible to geotarget Google Webmaster Tools to the subfolders. I think Google's advice is pretty good on this: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en

"If they are only going to be visible in the SERPS and you know they are going to be cut off then they will never see the words after the cut-off point."

That's not always true, but I see you question it later on - I have seen a few examples where people have used long meta descriptions with the intention of the SERPs displaying something different depending on the search made. Here's one I've just found: http://sharkseo.com/whitehat/meta-descriptions/ - though I've just done a search and I got the same meta description ("Dave is a freelance SEO consultant...") for both suggested searches.

If Google doesn't think your meta description is appropriate there's always a chance they'll replace it with something else on your page or the description from DMOZ.

You should definitely not add the ellipsis yourself, what if the length displayed is changed for example? I'd just ensure your first 155ish characters are well-written in a way that entices users to want to click through.

In most cases I've seen I'd say make the content on each page unique, but in your case I'd say 301 them to the main page where you're based (yes, you will 'lose' them if you 301). You're misleading customers - your search result for [lichfield web design] for example would give potential clients the impression that you're based in Lichfield, and when they click through to see you're not some are likely to press 'back' straight away. Increased bounce rates can lower your search rankings.

Also, I wouldn't write like this "At every stage of the creation of your web design Tamworth and web development process" - it looks spammy and you should really be writing for people, using natural language. I'd imagine that sort of wording is likely to put some clients off. It's not necessary to keyword stuff, you can write natural content that still uses your keywords, and they don't have to be together. "We are a web design company based in Tamworth" does the trick, sounds natural, and keeps the 3 words close together. "Web Design Tamworth" is okay in the title for me, though some may disagree.

If you visit potential clients that could be a way you could naturally get the other locations onto your main location page ("Serving Tamworth, Lichfield and Stafford" for example) or you could say "only xx miles from Lichfield", or give directions if you have a public-facing office. I wouldn't list too many places though as again, it will look spammy.