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A ratio of 1:100 words for targeted key words is a rule of thumb that has worked well for me.

Mark - I agree with Dennis. You have some competitive metrics but best case scenario you are mid to bottom of page one currently, in terms of expectations.

I think Mark has the right idea, I would build out a landing page on your main site for the keyword, then 301 the emd back to it. Bottom line, emd results are short lived.

Richard - can you provide a little more information about your site? It's going to be impossible to offer any real insight here without some specific details.

I agree completely...and yes I think when it's not possible to have individual pages, combining but doing so strategically and sparingly is key here. You want to maintain good keyword density for your most lucrative keywords.

I think that is exactly the right strategy - cherry pick when to use follow links

1. Yes, worry. 301 those old page to your new page or new web site.
2. I don't know if this is a question but I'm assuming you're talking about the links from the first question and whether they are meaningful. I say yes. Nofollow links are a critical component to a solid link profile.

3. I would not worry about this. Again, a natural link profile will have anchor text that is not ideal.

I have a different opinion based on my extensive experience working with subdomains. The big advantage to working with subdomains, is that they all benefit from the Domain Authority of the root url.

If you owned tacobell.com (with a DA of 80) and decided to create a web site on a subdomain for each location like tambabay.tacobell.com, that subdomain would benefit immediately from the root.

In my experience is the same is true for penalties, regardless of how the subdomains are linked, if in the example above, tacobell.com begins the spammiest seo campaign of all time, tampabay.tacobell.com absolutely will incur some, if not all of the wrath.

Yes, unfortunately, there's nothing else you can do for SERPS for specific keywords that are being flooded with 'news' like this. I would just wait it out for a couple of weeks and see if those results go away. If not, perhaps modify my on page optimization to target some related keywords that are not affected.

To echo what John said, the short answer is no.

The longer answer is those guys have their PPC down to an exact science. If they can bring their CPC down a few cents in a month, it likely saves them THOUSANDS of dollars. This means they have smart people who manage their account, looking for every competitive advantage possible.

I would focus on keywords that target advantages that your business (likely better, more customized service) offers so that you aren't on such an uneven playing field.

I've noticed with my ISP (time warner cable), when I type a URL that doesn't exist, it will route me to it's own SERP that has a list of businesses that are quasi relevant to the URL i typed in. Could this be happening for you?

Yep, same issue here many occasions. I disconnect my GA account and then reconnect and this usually fixes it.

One thing I noticed is that your using the rel="author" tag twice on the blogs you provided, one to link to your internal profile and one for your Google+ profile. I would try removing the tag from the internal link and leave it for the Google+ link and see if that makes a difference.

CTR in my experience, has the greatest impact on your QS in adwords.

If I needed to improve my QS on a competitors branded name, I would do the following:

1. Create a new campaign titled "competitor x"
2. Create ad groups for each of the competitors products
3. Create ads that are transparent that you ARE NOT the competitor but offer a similar, if not better, value.
4. Employ dynamic keyword placement in some of your ads (test with and without)
5. Build landing pages that contract your business with your competitor (again transparency will avoid problems from people feeling duped that they clicked on your ad when they were looking for your competitor.

You can setup a thank you page in google analytics by doing the following:

1. Log into your Google Analytics account and go to the website profile for your site.
2. Click on the “edit” button to the right of your site link.
3. You should now see an area if you scroll down a little called only “goals”. Click on the first link on the right to “add goal”.
4. Once there, name your goal. I named mine “subscribers”. Under Goal Type, select “URL Destination”.
5. After that, you should be given more options to input your “thank you” page information. Under “match type” select “exact match” and input your goal url as “/thank-you/” if your whole url was http://www.mysite.com/thank-you/
6. If you want to track sales, you can additionally input the value of your average sale too (win!).

Thanks Colin - very good feedback. I was leaning that direction but you're advice pushed me over the edge. I agree, I think all the 'off site signals' are what's got my non geo home page ranking for Dallas.

I have a site that sells widgets. It's called widgets.com. I want to sell widgets locally in 10 different geographic areas so my url structure/kw goal is as follows:

URL                                       KW I Hope to Rank For
widgets.com                         'Widgets'
widgets.com/houston/          'Houston Widgets'
widgets.com/dallas/              'Dallas Widgets'

So I've optimized my site accordingly where my home page has no Geo optimization and my 'city pages' are all geo optimized, complete with hcard brick and mortar addresses that are all legit offices that sell our widgets.

My problem, is that despite all that, my home page (which again, is not geo-optimized) is now ranking for 'Dallas Widgets'. This is messing up my strategy and very frustrating because the home page does not have any information Dallas residents will find helpful about widgets.

So my question is, am I better off just owning this 'Dallas' label is forcing on my site and just optimize the home page for dallas and keep the rest of the 9 cities in their directories? Does anyone have any experience with getting pigeonholed geographically speaking?

yes your understanding is correct, building links to your home page will increase your domain authority over time and domain authority is defined as (paraphrasing) 'the likelihood of new content on your site to rank'.

That being said, every site owner has pages they'd like to showcase and more importantly, ensure that the page is getting good SERP placement. For that deep linking is critical. If you don't deep link, Google will sometimes display your home page as the url for a keyword that you'd have preferred go to an internal page.

For instance if you want your home page to rank for 'Widgets' and you want MySIte.com/purple-widgets/ to rank for 'Purple Widgets', your better off deep linking with 'purple widget' related (for link diversity purposes) anchor text to your interior pages. This will help you make sure your home page doesn't rank for 'Purple Widgets'.

Long answer: see above.

Short answer: not worth it.

As far as your page title; It depends what specific keyword you're trying to rank for. What is your kw goal for this page?

I would direct submit to all the biggies and then submit through LocalEZE (now Nuestar (sp?)) for the lesser directories. Chris ^ is exactly right, there's diminishing returns on spending the 5-10 min to claim your listings on every directory and if you look at the David Mihm infographic that Chris shared you'll see that LocalEZE feeds most of the lesser known directories. That's what I've been doing for my clients for years and it works well.