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Putting the product name & image in the same anchor is the best bet. You can put the image anchor in javascript without taking the image out of the search index.

You could make one of the links a javascript link or embed in an iframe and exclude the iframe files from robots.

Hi Samuel,

This is really going to depend on the type of customers the Fortune 500 company is targeting so I will go with your JCPenney example.

1. Partnerships - Find out who heads up business development and review the sites of every partner. If the partner does not have a link to you then get the Biz Dev person to call them up and ask. Another good tactic is to send a gift basket outside of the holidays, then follow up with a call asking. When a partner page already exists on the site it is easy but if you are major partners then you can ask for one to be built.

2. Charity - Does the company or employees participate in any charitable work? Check out the charities for donor pages and get your site listed if not already. Partner with the charity to do a local or national fund raising drive, hit up bloggers who are fans of either the charity or brand.

4. Identify Brand Advocates - Find the mommy bloggers and others online (forums included) that talk about your brand, competitor brands, the products you offer, etc and engage them. Let them hold a contest on thier blog for a gift certificate is a simple example. Coca Cola

5. Sponsored Blog Posts - This falls a little bit on the more risky side but it is an option. Vacations to Go has employed this so take a look at thier backlink profile for further insight.

6. Offline Marketing - Bridge the gap of offline marketing by creating a page or minisite for each offline campaign that points back to the main site.

7. Coupon / Deal websites - There are hundreds if not thousands of sites that feature coupons & deals by major companies. Dig in and find them. A good tactic is searching twitter, google, technorati, etc for words such as coupon, deal, rebate, sale, discount, promo code, promotion, promotional code. Create a list of the sites and submit your coupons & do an outreach campaign to the bloggers / twitter users.

8. Conferences - There are both industry & consumer focused conferences. Become a sponsor or speaker and get listed on the conference website.

9. Create a Youtube Channel - Make videos about interior design, cooking, back to school shopping, etc. However people use your products make videos of that, just be helpful. There is a reason Oprah, Dr. Oz, Food Network are so popular.

I could go on but this should give you a good starting point & keep you busy. The idea is you need to energize & engage the people who already use your products and leverage that to expand the customer base.

I would recommend doing SEO to the site particuliarly if you are going to promote via TV ads or anything other than PPC that could result in search queries. The reason being is you could capitalize on QDF, real-time results and auto suggest queries.

To keep it extremely efficient make the page a template where you can just change the "keyword" in a file & save so it updates on the site. A slightly more lowtech way would be a global find & replace on the html file for the "keyword". Basically, you do the onsite SEO once and then spend 5 seconds updating to the new keyword every 5 days.

You will want to post a short blog post each time there is a new promo to help get the search index updated quickly; just make sure to ping the appropriate services with your blog.

For offsite I'd recommend the general social media sites (facebook, twitter) and any extremely relevant niche social media/forum/community sites. If these are promotions that would appeal to mom bloggers & deal finding sites then do an outreach campaign telling the site owners you are going to have a new promo every five days and offer to give them a "heads up" before the general public. You can then build an e-mail list & blast out the promo to them. At the same time you can offer to have them follow your promo twitter account.

There is no way to do it from the web application interface and in my talks with SEOmoz in the past there is no way to set to a specific time or day. I'd recommend either calling or sending a request to customerservice@seomoz.org. Phone number is on http://www.seomoz.org/about/contact

I would recommend creating your own long or short list of directories you want your site in then outsource the submission using odesk.com. Others here have offered great advice on building that list (Casey & Kris).

One thing you should always check is that the URL your link is going on is in the Google index. If you have a link to your site on a page that is not in the Google index try pinging that link or dare I say tweeting that link so it has a chance to get picked up. If the URL the link is on is not in the index it passes no value.

Yes, and duplicate content doesn't matter. So if you want the same copy with different layouts/design it is good.

You will be fine as long as you follow these basic rules

1. No redirects
2. Content on the page
3. Navigation on the page

Highly recommend excluding the pages in your robots.txt file for extra protection.

1. Make sure you have unique content (phone number, hours, address) on each city URL you want to use, pictures are a big plus.
2. Use the bulk upload, see https://www.google.com/local/add/g?hl=en-US&gl=US#uploadfeed. Before you submit make sure to read, http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?answer=178024 and http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=28247&topic=28291&answer=173669
3. Make the name in your bulk upload spreadsheet unique for each location (Business Name - City, State)
4. Use the store code field which uniquely identifies each location of your business
5. Fill in as many of the "optional" fields as possible that make sense for your business
6. Use a different phone number for each location
7. Use a unique description for each location

Those are my 7 top tips; I'll add more if I think of any.

Two other options that may help but I have no real experience/proof on is advertising your locations with Google Boost  and Google Tags. If you are legit & spend money you may be able to get your account rep to coughhelp/pullstringcough