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Google is a great tool for this. Example query - Blogs AND intxt:"marketing" or Blogs AND inurl:"marketing".

Hope that helps some

The site was hacked so I would be concerned redirecting a hacked domain to a new domain. What steps did you take once the site was hacked? What extension are you using to inject the html code for canonical tags into your site?

As far as learning Moz is a great starting place to gain information to get you started. Go through all the whiteboard friday's if you can and read blogs related to SEO.

One reason for the low traffic is you now have a new domain. I would consider not 301'ing the old url's to the new domain since the website was hacked. I would also look at canonicalizing any duplicate content. For the different url's showing the same content I would consider either adding canonical tags on those url's or redirect them if they serve no purpose.

I also recommend reading the beginner's guide to SEO that should help you get started if you havent already read it.

I recently came across a great article that might be able to help you out. Ideally, you would want to organize individual content pieces within their appropriate categories to help Google and other search engines easily decide what it is about. I would recommend updating your site structure.

Bruce clay talks in depth about how to silo content and I think it will answer alot of your questions.

Have you thought about adding rel canonicals by chance? Also, how do you know the robots.txt is being ignored are the page showing up in search results? If so maybe the syntax is incorrect in your robots.txt file. Check out robotstxt.org

It is super time consuming. Another idea I did and it worked fairly well and got me some success was using epicbeat.epictions.com to source for links. They have a free version of their platform too so all I did was input a broad search term related to my nice. Then I pulled a few of the top performing content pieces that I thought I could write and bring a unique perspective into it. I took those url's and ran them through SEM rush or another software to see who was linking to it and built an excel sheet with metrics such as, PA, DA and contact information.

Give that a try too and see if you have any success.

hope that helps some.

Maybe they are using really niche directories that are relevant to their industry. That could be a possibility,however this might help:

"Your Industry" + intitle:“write for us”
"Your Industry" + intitle:“guest post”
"Your Industry"+ intitle:“contribute to”
"Your Industry" + intitle:“submit” + inurl:blog
inpostauthor:guest + "Your Industry"
inpostauthor:”guest blog” + "Your Industry"
inpostauthor:”guest post” + "Your Industry"

There are some directories that can be follow like dmoz and yahoo directory. But using directories as a linkbuilding tactic is not a good idea. What tool are you using to spy on your competitors backlinks?

If they are high-quality directories that are relevant within their niche then they would offer some benefit I would imagine. If they are low-quality directories I know Google devalues those links.

It depends, I would take a look at your rivals backlinks and see what types of content people are linking to on their website. Then I would consider recreating it or developing something better. If that seems feasible I would go for it.

However, I think it would take a lot of effort to move the needle in terms of your current domain authority. If you have the resources I would say go for it. If not then I would target less competitive terms etc.

I would begin by reading Moz's guide to linkbuilding to get started. They will provide some insight into how to get a solid linkbuilding campaign started. You will also want to conduct some research and build content that will earn links as well. For example, if you find a backlink you would want from your competitor look at the content piece or page that earned the backlink. Decide if you can build a more compelling content piece or elaborate on a specific topic. Then reach out to the webmaster and start that relationship and pitch your content piece.

That is one example to get you started.

Hope that helps some.

I would think you would want to create unique content and either remove duplicate content or implement rel=canonicals. I would imagine hiding duplicated content could be seen as manipulative to Google.

It is hard to tell without knowing the industry. But if it is an industry you know something about or are interested in immersing yourself in then it might be a good opportunity. I would check Google trends to look and see if the industry as a whole is growing. I would also check variations on the keyword or keywords you did some research on and see how competitive other terms are as well.

One thing I would check out is that you correctly claimed your local citations. You can use the Moz local too to run a quick scan and check for accuracy and make sure everything has been claimed. I would also recommend running a moz crawl because when I ran a quick crawl a lot of pages are showing a "429" status code - Too many request. This could be a server issue. Here is a previous Moz thread on this issue https://moz.com/community/q/429-errors.

Hope that helps some.

I would be inclined to scrap the domain and start over. However, if you redirect the old domain to the newly created one you could run the risks of incurring the same penalty. Here is a discussion about some of the ramifications of moving a penalized domain. I would not make the decision lightly but if your SEO company isnt gaining any solid traction and new competitors are outranking you then it might be time for a different tactic.

Duluth trading co has some good examples of product level page content. However there isnt a lot of category level content on most pages. But I think they have some good examples and ideas anyone can borrow from.

Sorry I misread your issue. Since you are online only I would not claim any local listings. I would clean up and remove all those citations if possible though.

I would do some keyword research and get into some content marketing. Moz's beginner's guide to SEO has plenty of resources to help get you started.

You can clean up your local citations by using Moz's local search. You can see which citations are off and make adjustments as needed. As far as Google local business and Bing listing if the address didn't change I would claim that local listing if you haven't or contact Google and explain the issue and they should help update the listing.

There is a blog on creating product pages that convert https://moz.com/blog/heres-how-to-create-a-product-page-that-converts. Adding unique content to category pages can address thin content issues, dup content issues, allow for internal linking from category to product level pages along with additional keyword targeting.

Hope that helps some.