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Instead of paying people for social signals and spending time investigating the value of this paid service, please turn your attention to publishing content that will delight your visitors.   If you do that, your visitors will create the social signals for you.

I'd slap some big Adsense on it and enjoy!  

I believe that one off topic page will not hurt anything - especially if the page is an outstanding example of content for its topic.

I know sites that publish on a wide range of content and have fantastic rankings.  These sites were once single topic,  then departed with a single page that struck gold - and then started plowing that field into a hundred pages,  and soon ranking #1 for the single-word root keyword.    They then hit gold on a second topic, and a third.  Now these sites have diverse branches but have found ways to interrelate the topics.

I don't think that Google has a problem with conflation.  You might even make Google think that the two topics are complementary.

For me...

-  Academic traffic is down because schools are closed... but, I can see many visits coming in from course management systems.

• Retail traffic is good.  People are still buying online, but if they don't have work for a while, I expect sales to slump.

• Some article pages are getting crazy traffic.  Others are getting less than normal traffic.  It depends upon the topic.

This problem has been around for over 20 years and thousands of companies who have used shortcuts lost a domain to penalties and algorithms.  They call this the doorway page problem, the jump page problem, the cookie cutter page problem, the portal page problem, and a dozen other names.

If you want all of these pages you will need to put a team of people onto the task of writing substantive content for each city.  If this company is truly large enough to deserve thousands of doorway pages then they should have the resources to author substantive and unique content for each one.

Please reread, noting the bold words below...

This type of error or sneakyness is one of the most common causes of rich result removal.

Incorrect selection of the category, or improper use of the code.

The sentences below are copy/pasted from the Report Spam in Rich Results Page.   This type of error or sneakyness is one of the most common causes of rich result removal.

"A rich result may be considered spam if it harms the user experience by highlighting falsified or misleading information. For example, a rich result promoting a travel package as an Event or displaying fabricated Reviews would be considered spam."

Source:  https://support.google.com/webmasters/contact/rich_snippets_spam?hl=en

In the question between a subfolder and a subdomain...  it is clear and it is murky...

Search engines say things and often do the things that they say.  They also do things without sayin' that they did them and you are left to figure out what happened or how things work on your own.

If you have been running websites for a long time (24 years here), you might know that Google and other search engines have treated subdomains and folders differently,  identically and murkily.   It depends upon what year and month you are talking about.

**The constant is that subfolders have always inherited ranking ability from their parent domain, and will likely do that into the future.  **

So, if you want assurance into the future, using a subfolder is your best bet.

Looking at DA... it is irrelevant in the subdomain and subfolder discussion.  DA is a moz number that kinda correlates with search engine rankings, but just part of the time.   Ranking ability and DA are different things.

Any advice on DA ratios to procure & frequency of procurement would be welcome.

This suggests that you are going after manipulative links.

The best way to gain links is to "earning" them with high quality content rather than building them.

You are selling products where knowledge, practice and skill can improve a person's satisfaction.  You need educational content and video demonstrations.

You are selling products where a complex decision is needed to make a purchase.   Again you need educational content and demonstrations.

You are selling products that require some maintenance.   Yes EC and VD.

A very similar business to yours is Braun.  They have a great website with lots of high quality, professionally-done  informative content with lots of videos.   I am a customer of theirs and their website has been very helpful.  I have gone there several times and will go there again in the future.  Check it out.    I bought their product twice because their website was so helpful.

I agree with Gaston, that setting your goal on a DA target is not the best approach.

I set my goals by deciding what content should be on my website to make it an outstanding resource to my potential clients  (for a site that sells products or services) or my potential audience (for an informational site).   What content would you need for your site to serve the needs of the visitors you desire to attract?

You can make a very ambitious content list that might take years to produce, or you can take it in stages - by topic.   All of my sites were started over ten years ago.  One achieved its content goal in two years.  The others have a content goal for which the goal posts have been moved outwards every few years.  I don't think about DA.  I think about the next article to write.

Tom Zickell has it....

Honestly, money spent on high-quality content and high-quality work will go up not a very sexy answer but an honest one.

Twenty years ago, content conquered the SERPs.  It still does today.  I think it still will tomorrow.

If you listen to Google when they say "do this"... "do that".... "make this code".... "make that code".... "mark this up".... "mark that up".... then, next month, Google doesn't use that stuff any more.   My point is that chasing "trends of the year" is very costly.

So from Tom's answer... spend your time on high-quality content and you will not go wrong (unless you write mediocre content and think that it is 10x).

And, from his answer... "high-quality-work"... to me that means... improve your content (text, images, data, media), improve your navigation, improve the appearance of your site, make your title and description elicit clicks.  This is old school stuff that we should focus on always.

"Trends of the Year" are often (usually) decoys away from what is long term successful.

You can buy traffic, every day, every day, every day.... you will paying until eternity.

Or, you can create content that "WINS" traffic... and instead of you paying you will be earning.

And, that content will earn traffic every day, every day, every day.  The cost of content that earns traffic is cheaper in the long run than paying for traffic.

I am creating content today that will start earning this week.  It will still be earning for my family after I am dead.

"hiking tours Italy" is really broad  and there is a lot of fine detail.

I think that you need to go to Italy and do some hiking.  Then you will have first-hand experience, know what people see, know the routes they take, know the destinations, have real photos...    Each of these is a separate topic for content.  You could spend a year hiking in Italy.

Spend a month hiking the vineyard country of Tuscany, another month hiking on Sicily and seeing volcanic landscapes,  a month in Abruzzo with history and views of the Adriatic.   Hike in the day, write every night.

People want more than a "hike".   They want to see stuff, they want to learn things, they want experiences.  Each part of Italy is unique and has different types of hiking.

If your one post per month is the best post on the internet for its topic then you might be able to compete in a sleepy to semi-sleepy niche.  If there is meaningful competition, then you will probably not get very far.

Twenty years ago, when the internet was new and competition was not stiff, I used to have a lot of sites.  Today I have three and have three people helping me every day.  These people are not noobs.  We are doing great, but we are in the fight of our lives.

You must have enough writing talent and the resources to be competitive in your niche.  Search for the keywords for which you want to compete and look WHO is there.  Those are the people or companies that you must beat.  Can you do it?  Can you beat their content and their posting volume?  If you look and you think you can beat them then go for it.  But the more projects you have running the less competitive you are going to be in any one of them.

If I was starting out, I would put all of my effort into the site that best matches my expertise and talent.  When I get it kicking ass then I would think about a second site, but then only realizing that working on the second site puts my first site at risk.

Another thing that can produce mixed content is... you have an https page but within that page your display images, videos, widgets and other resources that are brought in from an http source.

Yes, they will notify you.... but.... they must be able to find your contact information.

If they notify you, they will provide information about the infringing resource and they will let you know who complained.

"I've had someone tell me that google doesn't pay attention to H3 tags -- only H1 and H2. "

Pay this person no mind in the future.

The answer given by Nicholas White is perfect.

Here are some of the many things that can cause a page to disappear from the SERPs.

**  Another webmaster grabbed your page and published it on his domain and now he is ranking for your keywords instead of you.

**  You grabbed another webmaster's page and published it on your site and now that page on your site has disappeared from the SERPs.

**  You have built or received links on other websites with anchor text that matches the keywords that you are no longer ranking for.  (a page falling from the SERPs for this usually has a number of exact match keyword links)

**  Your page has text or an image or other intellectual property on it that belongs to another person and they filed DMCA to Google.  Now your page is not ranking.

**  Another person has filed a false DMCA to Google that accuses you of taking their content.

** You have accidentally placed a no index for this page on your website.

**  A hacker has placed a no index for this page on your website.

**  These pages are relatively new and are in-and-out of the SERPs like many new pages do.

**  You have done (intentionally or innocently) some sin and now Google has whacked your page.

Usually one of the above will account for a page missing from the SERPs.  There are other reasons... but the above usually nail it.   Rarely,  Google will  temporarily lose  track of a page (really rare but can happen).

It is always possible that a title tag change with decrease the relevance and optimization of a page for some keywords.  Changing the title tag can also change the click-through rate.

A few years ago, we were doing some aggressive title tag experiments.  We were changing title tags every few weeks on about 80 pages.  On about the fifth iteration, all of those pages dropped out of the top ten and stayed out of the top ten for a few months.   Fortunately they recovered, we waited a while, changed to our best test results, and the pages have been ranking great for years.

A lot of the "related product" widgets are presented with images and an article title, and sometimes with short article descriptions of the articles.  I don't think Google has a problem with them.  We use them.

But, you said these were "footer links".... and I would not use that.  And, if someone came to my office and wanted me to add naked footer links, I would kick them out the door.