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Agreed with Matt, but surely social signals are going to be in play too. Encourage social sharing of your pages and the links, G+'s, Likes and tweets will follow, then the Page rank will flow.
Get comfortable as its going to be a long process though!
Best of luck.
What is the benefit to the user for an individual sites for North, South and west?
Are you not just creating a lot of work for yourself, especially since as you state ''would like to rank well for Blue Widgets generally" which ultimately means each site is competing against the others.
I would rethink my strategy, Your more likely to rank 'generally' for your chosen terms if you focus your efforts on one site and perhaps use canonical tags on the other two to ensure Google knows who to attribute the content too.
Agreed with Justin, however I would also hope that my guest post page authority would grow over time.
I generally like to do a social campaign on guest blog posts to ensure I get the URL in front of as many people as possible in the hope of helping the PA grow.
I think it depends on where you want your site hosting.
In the UK I like Rackspace for top end stuff (expensive, awesome), Heart Internet for my mid level stuff and one.com for my cheap stuff.
There is no need for the content to exist any more if you have 301'd the containing URL.
Yep Google places rather...Told you my exposure was limited!
I understand the mechanics of the upload and set up. I think I may have worded my question incorrectly.
I'm looking for tips on creating 'well optimised' Google Places for each of my other business locations. Are ther any best practises to follow, or is it as simple as uploading the CSV and were done?
Hi our company is expanding and we are opening up branches throughout the UK. I want to register a Google Local for each of our new branches. How is best to do this?
My exposure to Google Local is somewhat limited, though I have set up single businesses before, I've never dealth with multiple addresses.
Any help or advice would be great!
Thanks
Aran
I'm doing what I always have been doing.
The above strategy has worked for my site getting me to top spot for my chosen keywords. I've just leap frogged my biggest competitor whom has 15k+ links compared to my measley 350+.
Quality not quantity 
EDIT: Anyone with a wedding orientated blog offering up some guestpost opportunities, please pm me 
My advice would be to get some decent content on your site then hit the social sphere though twitter, pinterest, facebook, stumble, reddit etc and get yourself noticed.
Whilst thats happening get some other great conet that you could use for guest posing on other websites.
these are just the initial steps, theres plenty more to do as Matt says. Check out Matts link.
Glad you like.
You could also setup a facebook page for your business and require people to like it in order to get at the free content (similar idea just using facebook over twitter, though I prefer twitter to help drive serps).
I'd go with option 1 personally and look to leverage the content another way...
I love the "Pay with a tweet" idea, there are services which require you to Pay for a download with a tweet. http://www.paywithatweet.com/
This is a great way to get some credit for your work, spread the word socially and attract some links/authority from relevant sites and its all perfectly natural!
Option 2 sounds a little shoddy and difficult to manage.
Option 3 could prove to be dangerous with hundred/thousands of ;links with same anchor text
Option 4 Woah there buddy, this sounds a litle 'grey'.
If you want to be 'Completely clean' go with option 1, ask people to share socially or link to you in return for the content.
Hope thats of some help.
Aran
I use http://www.dreamstime.com/ its cheap and cheerful and does the job.
I personally like the 'Find out why' bit, adds a bit of intrigue and makes me want to click through.
Not sure if its just me but when I scan through the SERPs I generally only read the first sentence or less of the description. With this in mind I would want to put my best statements first to ensure I grasp the audience and lue them in without them reading the whole description.
Hi All,
Just wondering out of the SEOmoz community who has come out on top after Penguin and who has been hit and why.
Personally my site has come out on top. I started workig on the site back in December and NOTHING had been done, no link development, no onpage, nothing, a virginal website.
The site was chock-a-block with issues both technically and in content. After 4 months of hard work, we have climbed from 100+ to top ten on most of our phrases and post Penguin we have climbed even higher as some of our competitors were dragged down into the murky depths. So I think thats a win (for now).
My focus has been on Guest posting, social outreach, reviews and getting my on page right (still a ways to go, but our CMS is clunky to say the least).
A little humour attached (Why has no one yet stuck Matt Cutts head on a Penguin?)
Are you a Penguin Winner or have you experienced the wrath of the penguin.
Thats down to a inherent limitation of our CMS, and a massive pai i the backside.
if I had a choice it would be /Category/Product. Other sites which I have worked on over the years I've always used Category/product to great effect
I very much doubt you'll get and problems with that, though i would possible look at revising your H1 content, reads kind of like a keword list.
"Suppliers of Wholesale Coffee from our Online Coffee Shop and London Based Roastery"?
Think usability, if Im browsing the category, /Buttons/BlueButtonsadBuckles and I get redirected to /Buckles/BlueButtonandBuckles, all of a sudden I'm not where I am and I didnt ask to be moved.
See my point?
