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Sorry, I meant to respond to this days ago.  Started, but didn't finish and then it left my mind.

It sounds to me like you want to place a Google map on your site to show the location of the business?  If this is correct, I wouldn't use KML nor KMZ.  I would just use a javascript point market that represents the one location using the Google Maps API.  You can see what I mean as I have several points on one site I'm finishing up at http://www.snoshield.com/contest/christmas2012

You can also show service area like this: http://www.kcdirt.com/contact

Both of those maps use strictly JavaScript, there is no KML or KMZ on them.

Does anyone have good tips for finding someone who can do guest blogging for me?  I don't have the time to track down good blogs to post on.

I'm not sure if you are referencing SEO in this post, but here's the breakdown from my experience (Several years in the GIS realm)

KMZ when you have a lot of markers in the map making the file size is large and you know the end user will use a Google product to read it.

KML if you are needing to read the file with a program outside of Google due to incompatibility issues with the KMZ format in other programs.

In case you aren't sure what EMD means - Exact Match Domain.

The first thing to remember is that Google will treat the subdomain as a completely different website.  So if you want Google to view your subdomain as it's own site, yes it will bring benefit.  If you are looking for your website to have relevance to the keyword on the domain.com site, then create some content that is relevant to the keyword and put it in a page on the domain - domain.com/page.

Must have been a really good TV show.

There's not much in SEO that is more fun to watch than a competitor take a hit like that. Maybe achieving rank #1 for a competitive term.

Nothing worse in SEO than taking a hit like that.

I have never had a local website, but I have a friend who owns a company that would be strictly local so it made wonder:

If a company is located just outside a major metropolitan area, is it possible for this company to compete with companies that are located within the actual city.

Here's an example.  A construction company located in Plano, Texas wants to rank for Dallas Construction Companies.  Plano is 15 mins from downtown Dallas.  Does this company have much of a chance ranking on the map for Dallas Construction companies when they have a business address of Plano, Texas?

#3 is the most obvious choice to implement.

All joking aside, I use to run a web design business and the majority of links I had were footer, site wide links.  I still have my site up even though I do very little anymore and haven't focused on any SEO for the site in a long, long time.  After the Penguin/Panda hype, I jumped from page 2 to top 3 consistently for keywords I was once targeting.

I don't know if it was just that my competitors had spammy link profiles or what, but for me in this case site wide footer links seemed to be all I needed.  Take it for what you will.

Clean URLs will help you out a lot, but you will probably still your site dance a little bit as Google gets to know the new content.  You're not going to see near the damage though I first mentioned.  The more you can keep it like the old the better.  If you clean it up a little bit as you implement the pages, you could actually see an increase in your rankings when things settle down because it will look like fresh content to Google.

If you are able to get those exact 20 posts on one URL page (all in the same category), then I'd just use a PDF printer program like PDF Creator and print the website to a PDF.

The only thing I add to the comments already made is, give it some time.  It can take a couple years sometimes to get a good amount of blog traffic.  Just keep writing and over time visitors will come.  Don't give up!

I personally would go with #1.  Definitely not #4, you never want special characters in the URL.  The reason I say number 1 is because it separates the 1 from the 2 in your 1/2.  #2 could be confused for a 12ct diamond earring, WOW.  #3 I typically avoid underscores in all URLs.

To sum up my choice is #1.  Looks cleanest and when you optimize your page with the 1/2 ct wording, Google is smart enough to see that.  Overall, it won't probably make a huge difference in the end.

I'm afraid you're going to feel this one no matter what effort you go to, but you can definitely minimize the pain.  You WILL see a drop in traffic, but oftentimes a change like this is necessary for long-term success.  Long-term in this case can be up to a year and you may see traffic drop by as much as 80%, so be prepared.

301 Redirects:  Take full advantage of 301's.  Try as hard as possible to make sure you have a place to point all the old pages to in the new site.

404: If  When you run in to a situation where you just can't 301, be sure to set up custom 404's to help search engines, and more importantly visitors to find what they should be finding.  No matter how careful you are in migrating, you're going to end up with some 404 page not found issues, so this is a majorly important step.

Contact sites that have links to old URL and request the links be updated.  Painful, yes, but worth it if you can get them to change.

My opinion is, why are you building a web page for a search engine?  The search engine is never going to convert into a sale for you.  Focus on making your site for humans.  Humans convert, search engines don't.

However, with all that said, I understand that you have to create a page the search engine will refer humans to you with.  If you are creating pages for search engines to see, create a sitemap so the search engines will find them and crawl them, but create content that is worth my time as a user to read.

My definition of relevant in this case is: the keyword is often used in sentences with the term.

If my keyword was cold cereal, the words milk, bowl, and spoon would be relevant.  I could then build pages for the long tail search terms:

Cold cereal bowl

how much milk should I put in a cold cereal

What is the best spoon to use with cold cereal

On each of those pages, I would link to my main page which is optimized for the keyword cold cereal using the anchor text "cold cereal", but only if it made sense to me as a user to see that phrase linked.  Sometimes you have to be creative in your content copy, but most of the time it can be done and make sense to the end user.

Google is very good at recognizing these relevant keyword patterns.

It is important you keep in mind the terms relevancy verses optimized.  A page can be relevant to a topic (main keyword) without being optimized for that keyword.  When this is the case, you can focus on a long-tail keyword for a sub-page and have relevancy for the main keyword.   You would then want to link to the main page with the main keyword from the sub-page.

In this case I would say that what you learned in your class is true, keep AT LEAST 50% of the pages RELEVANT to the main keyword, but not optimized to the main keyword.

The end grading factor though is, what works for your site?  A lot of SEO is trial and error based upon bsaic principles.  Sometimes you just have to try what your gut tells you to do and watch and see if that works, if not try the next idea.

The first thing I would take in to consideration is, how much did you pay for the class?  Was it a quick one day thing, a couple hours long or a week?  How in depth was the instructor able to go?  For a complete newbie just getting in to SEO with a small website (4-5 pages) these would be some good tips because it would give them experience optimizing pages and watching a keyword start to climb.  With a site that small, it's most likely something that is trying to climb in a local search.  In a small populated area doing local SEO, this would work very well to rank in most areas.

There is a possibility this could lead to cannibalization, but it all depends on how you structure the 50% of pages that are "optimized" for the keyword.  Ask yourself, "Is there one page that is clearly about my keyword that others reference?"

Other strategy to ask yourself is, "Does it make sense to the user or just the search engine?"  Search engines themselves don't buy anything.

I think the solution to this in your case is to place microdata around your reviews (see schema.org).  The search engines are smart enough to recognize the perceived "keyword stuffing" as reviews when you markup your code content.  Not only will it help with avoiding a keyword stuffing penalty, your rankings may begin to show up with enhanced listings in the SERPs increasing CTR.

I wouldn't worry too much about DMOZ.  I have seen where one of my sites was de-listed and another of my sites was listed and the de-listed site lost no rankings and the listed site gained no rankings.  These sites were competing for the same keyword.

I'm guessing you've heard the famous line, "build quality content and it will build links for you".  If not, I hate that line as well because it's hard to get links as a brand new website.  However, that's the sad truth about the industry.  Quality user experience builds website rank.  Granted there are a few things you can do in the beginning.  I suggest looking at the directories here on SEOMoz for a few ideas of getting initial links.  http://www.seomoz.org/directories

Also focus on your on page optimization.  Don't cannibalize yourself trying to rank for the same keyword on every page.  Craft your site so it is user friendly and provides real information.

When it comes down to it, there is not a magic "wave your wand" formula that makes SEO easy.  There is a reason people are paid to do SEO.