Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Difficult to say, but I would say much sooner than 6 month (I would say 30-60 days or sooner). Take a look at this link scheme  help article from Google and if it fits, let them know (link in last paragraph).  Good luck!

No, Bing doesn't use it.  Source from Bing's Duane Forrester.

Also here:

"But as the engines get smarter with and about signals, and as new, trustworthy signals are grown and adopted, the SEO of yore becomes a bit less relevant. No one really cried when we all walked away from tags after they were inundated with spam. No one cried when keyword density became a passé topic, largely covered up in the then somewhat novel approach of “making quality content”."

Unfortunately, many of these case studies are from agencies trying to sell their service.

Here are some I found that may help:

• https://vwo.com/blog/ecommerce-optimization-customer-reviews-increases-sales/
• http://www.bazaarvoice.com/case-studies/onedirect-case-study.html
• http://mountaineerdebbie.blogspot.com/2015/03/e-commerce-retailer-case-study.html

Good luck!

Casey is correct. Focus more of your attention on the long-tails.  It is extremely difficult to compete on the competitive keywords, so switch up your strategy and focus on creating great landing pages focusing on these long-tails.

A great resource is Google Trends where you can receive a bunch of great info.

Good Luck!!

Use those funds to create compelling & valuable content (blog articles, videos & etc.). Also, if you need to buy relevant traffic, setup and optimized ppc.  Gym Equipment is heavily competitive, so I would focus on mid & long-tail terms and track to see what converts.  Good luck!

I wouldn't change a bit. I always focus on making sure a site is accessible and has an optimal site architecture first. For on-page content, I will create (or attempt to create)  a compelling user experience by offering content that helps solve an issue the prospect may have and focus on optimizing conversion. Most people underestimate how difficult and resource intensive this is to do because it takes a ton of time involved with data gathering, analysis and creating the content. So after you are 80% happy with this (because that last 20% will take as long as that 80%), begin implementing your off-page strategies and work in conjunction with a continual effort on improving and adding on-page content. A core objective is focusing on great content and earning the links, so that is why I typically start there. As you know, this is a process that never ends. Good luck!

I usually start optimizing for the long tails (many time the competitive kw is in the long-tail phrase) before competitive keywords. What is crucial (as you know) is having a compelling landing pages and begin building the funnels to these pages.

I don't believe you can find out if someone is using Webmaster tools or not. However, you can easily check to see if they have a sitemap by  filetype:xlm sitemap site:domain.com (you may have to play around with this). Also, this doesn't mean it has been submitted as well.

You will be most likely fine. I'm sure you will take a look at analytics and see how much traffic/conversion these landing pages are getting and prioritize. If some of the pages are irrelevant (not contextually relevant anymore), no logical alternative and no traffic you may consider sending them to a 404 page w/search. Good luck!

Google stated last year that they render pages as a normal user would. So if content is initially hidden in an accordion, Google may asses a value less than if it wasn't hidden in the first place. This also assumes that the hidden content has been crawled and indexed. Thoughts?

Also, SpyFu can be used.

I use Google Trends to look at what keywords (and their trends) that people are looking for. Once you have a kw inventory work backwards and see if competitors are using those or not. If not and it is relevant, there may be a good opportunity to leverage them.

Yes, for the most part. Google wants to deliver the best results for visitors based on their search query. So if something is hidden from initial view this would impact ux and especially if it's poorly implemented (not intuitive). As you know, original and compelling copy is the best. Unfortunately in many situations, such as a large ecommerce site, it is resource intensive. It's best to avoid thin content. However, it does get ranked as you can grab a snippet and place in Google and look at the results. So yes, it's possible that Google will rank these pages with duplicate content in a hidden view.

I would advise you to tell your client to remove any hidden content and rewrite product descriptions. Depending on resources, they may/may not want to do this. If they don't, at least you made a recommendation. Good luck!

Never heard of it either (I will take a look).  I typically use the Google Keyword Tool and believe it is the best.

IIS? If so there is a way of doing that as well. Some good tutorials out there. Should be a simple way of doing it if the pages are the same - the html. Sorry--not well versed in IIS. I strongly recommend getting this done prior to launch to maintain those rankings as best as possible.

SPyFu/KW Spy. Premium tools, but worth the expense.

Tymen had it correct w/301's. Setup the new site, replicate all the pages, 301 redirect them from current site (via .htaccess) and remove these pages from the preexisting site. Hundreds and low thousands (especially w/common pattern) of 301's should not be a big issue. Good luck!

I would pursue optimized long-tail landing pages as long as you have resources and the page provides value.

For example, you noted "student information management software" &  "information management software". If you only offer "student information management software" and no other, you should optimized for that page with those terms. If your company offers many types of "information management software", these should link to the different types (including student) on child pages. By doing so, you will have a chance for two pages to appear in the serps. In my experience, since these long-tail landing pages convert much higher because of less competition (see Logan's chart), the resources are typically worth it.  Furthermore, since these long-tail landing pages are more optimized, your Quality Score will be higher in PPC and you will pay less and better visibility of your ad. Good luck!

I check these periodically during most days (some are forums as well):

• Warrior Forum
• Search Engine Land
• SEJ
• Search Engine Watch
• Webmasterworld

Yes, they will. However, Google will weigh the exact phrase differently. If all other factors are removed, Google will likely rank the optimized page with the long tails higher as opposed to the keywords being fragmented. Do a query of the long-tail to see if any result pops up for the exact phrase (using quotes). If you see many pages that come up, probably an indication of value and create an optimized page.

A directory needs to be well organized (site architecture), great content/reviews (linkbait), appears well on many devices (responsive) and much more. As Donald pointed out, MOZ has a huge amount of guides and resources that should help you create some tactics in improving your rating/review site. Good luck!