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Product / content focus. Some products supplied internationally not supplied in US. Should say that we are not intending to have a complete US sub-folder or sub-domain, simply a variant homepage.

Keep in mind that for a site:domain.com search, Google now includes pages from OTHER SITES that are using the canonical tag to point to your site. So, even though it says there are 300 pages indexed, 30 of those pages might be on other sites that use the canonical tag pointing to your site. The numbers of pages indexed that you're looking at may not be entirely accurate because of this.

When it comes to hosting images off site, keep in mind that there may be connectivity and image load speed issues associated with these images. I typically wouldn't rely on an image being pulled from someone else's site, even if it was something like Flickr or Photobucket. I don't think those particular services intend for you to use their service like that. Rather, we typically will set up a CDN for hosting the images or PDFs, and use a subdomain of the main site in order to host the images. For example, we would set up images.domain.com and pdf.domain.com and put the images and PDFs on the CDN.

Yes I absolutely agree with EGOL. If the domain/page authority is good I would rather have a do-follow link.  But on the other hand if that is not possible and the brand/domain is mentioned in context then I would be happy that is a signal for Google.  Maybe small but still part of the mix.

Well, I would make the company page be the rel=publisher and the author page to be rel=author and would share in the way that I proposed. In this way, everyone gets some authorship I think. Does anyone else have some insight on this?

Super! I hoped it would be, Blaine.

I'd disagree that it's fully on or fully off based on my experience, but I'm sure that it's different depending on country, ability for Google to judge location/intent etc.

IMO a simple like button in the header of the website works great. This way it's easy for a user to "like" you from any page in the site, still keeps them on your website (rather than redirect to fb page), and retains their attention as you make future fb posts.

307 Moved Temporarily (HTTP 1.1 Only) A 307 Redirect is the HTTP 1.1 successor of the 302 redirect. While the major crawlers will treat it like a 302 in some cases, it is best to use a 301 for almost all cases. The exception to this is when content is really moved only temporarily (such as during maintenance) AND the server has already been identified by the search engines as 1.1 compatible. Since determining if the search engines have identified this essentially impossible, it is best to use a 302 redirect. Source: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

Could very well be, Google has stated that they penalized m,any sites because the wrongly thought they were parked http://searchengineland.com/dropped-in-rankings-google-mistake-over-parked-domains-118979?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed-main

Hi Anthony - thanks. I wasn't aware of the inallurl command. I'll give that a try.

Hi kchan, thanks for your reply. No, it was the homepage.that was the ranking page. GWT reported a drop in traffic warning but nothing else. Hard to see how this site could have been caught up as over optimised, as no SEO ever carried out!

Thanks for your reply.

Ryan - thanks for your advice.

I think the PA (of the 'old' 301'd page) in this case will be more important than the DA. High PA on the 301'd page would 'likely' (and I say that with much trepidation) result in a quicker de-indexing. Andy

EGOL - thanks for advice. Yes there are lots of ilinks between the domains. Although I also have clients who have done this deliberately for perceived gain, I think in this case the client has made an honest mistake by simply applying their CMS (with relative links) to each of the domains they thought they should purchase. It's confused a bit further by one section using https with an absolute domain so users can end up migrating from one domain to another and from http to https! As an SEO I also have inclination to 301 page-by-page to best ranking site. However, as I mentioned to Thomas (above) I think the client will probably want to go with their preferred domain and as such I'll 301 page-by-page to that one. I'll discuss with the client and post the outcome.

Google shows keyword volume based on their internal system's evaluation of what phrases are deemed "commercially viable".  It's a severely flawed system, mostly designed to force people to spend more money on perceived higher value keyword phrases in AdWords. As the other answers show, you are wise to include location relevant words in your optimization.  Both because people are looking for these things, and because having them in the page Titles is VITAL to helping someone doing a search get the reassurance that "this search result IS for what I'm looking for in "THIS AREA".  It's a trust-to-click factor. If you want proof that people are searching for such things, go to Yelp and see if there are any results on the combination you are considering - and if there are reviews for any of those. Of course, not ALL phrases are being searched at the local level, yet many are, even if they're not reported in Google's ulterior-motivated system. Another consideration - here in Marin County, California, many people search for "XYZ + town", yet many more do in fact for "XYZ + bay area" or even "XYZ + San Francisco Bay Area"  or "XYZ East Bay" or "XYZ North Bay"...  so if there is such a regional factor in the local areas you're dealing with, consider doing research on those as well, and adding those into the mix with the more refined local wording.