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I think you can create a "separate experience" on your domain, while still keeping some elements of your brand in tact. Look at a landing page like Moz's for Mozcon for example. The site header and the color scheme are the same, but the layout and design of the rest of the piece are nothing like the traditional Moz blog post, tools or guide. It's totally OK to create a unique experience on your website for a dedicated landing page centered around an event, contest, etc.

Report the results to Google, not that they will actually care, but if you open a thread in the Webmaster Help Forums, someone from Google may see the thread and tell you what's going on. Anyway, that's completely normal and I see that in every possible niche. Bad sites being ranked above good ones, they are just "awaiting" a drop, it will come, the question is when... Try to get in touch with someone at google, tweet Cutts, open a thread in WHF, write about it, get the word out. If you really deserve a better spot then all that may get Google's attention.

Spyfu and SEMrush for me.

I don't have a perfect answer to this yet but since you don't have any, I'll take a stab at it. Basically, I have my site setup on .com and .com.au  - I have used the hreflang tag  to identify a specific domain to be shown to Australian users.  This means on Google.com searchers see .com and on Google.com.au they see .com.au  but the content is essentially the same. So far, the difference is that my sitelinks have not (yet) been indexed in Google.com.au even though they have in .com  So it's not a perfect translation but the hreflang tag is new. What we have also done is simply direct the site over. http://highonseo.com.au/blog/ http://highonseo.com/blog/ You should also check out one of our best Australian SEO blogs on the topic.

Hello Jason, I understand where you are coming from. I was in a similar boat. My site is under a year old and I am in the Real Estate industry which is extremely competitive online. My tactic is multifaceted. Write Great Content Market site & Content on all social media platforms Host or Sponsor a local event and then write a press release and send to your local reporters. Blog like crazy, Google loves fresh content Make sure your internal link structure is set up properly. Network with other local websites Guest Blog on similar sites as yours Pay Per Click Campaign is a good temp option Focus on Conversions, better 10 visitors and 7 sales than 1000 visitors and no sale. Be patient, SEO is a long term commitment. I hope this helps. Good Luck

Thanks for all of the advice everyone - very helpful, really appreciate it.  We're looking into this stuff now. Jason