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Great question. I recently wrote an entire blog post about this very topic. Instead of listing all your options here, I think I'll just link to the post. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-personalized-search By the way, sorry about the intermittent problems with the Rank Tracker. We're aware of some instability and our team is working on it. Also - for non-localization, set your location to "United States". Not perfect, but it works pretty well. Good luck!

Yes it does.  Thanks for the reply.

I always look for patterns - if I examine X pages and see similar issues, that's a sign that it's a systemic problem. If you are not familiar enough with your own site to know this already, my best recommendation is to take the time to look.  Learn your own site.  It is very time consuming yet worth every minute.

In no particular order: http://www.seomoz.org/blog http://searchenginewatch.com http://searchengineland.com http://www.seobook.com/blog For a nice overview of a load of great SEO blogs, I usually start my morning with http://seo.alltop.com

The SEO community are going nuts at the moment discussing the implications of Panda 2.2 which seems to be in operation. Do a search and you'll see what they're discussing.

Thanks for everyones great feedback!

No, you would keep MOST of the link juice. You would lose between 1-10% of your link juice with the redirect.

Mike, Great advice, thank you.  I am in the health care field.  I have done well optimizing my on page seo (I get an A from seo mox grading for my keyword).  I only need to optimize for a local keyword, which shows to be low to moderately competitive. So local search and off site seo is what I am looking for. I am happy to pay for a quality service, I have not had the best results with my previous company as far as results.  What I am looking for is a very credible and competent SEO firm that works with small businesses.  Once I am successful with this keyword I am interested in optimizing or ecom site for a more competitive keyword.