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What I'm looking to do is pass the link juice on from about 5,000 backlinks still pointing at our old site (which exists in domain form only a present) to the new site.  Are these links pointed to the home page? Or are these pointed at relevant landing pages? If to the home page (and page is same on new site) nothing is needed. If  these links are pointed to a landing page, you will need to route them to a related page on the new site and 301.

Are you saying there's not point in using a 301 if the page doesn't exist? Yes, no point unless there is a new landing page that is some-how related.

I don't really understand why you'd use a 301 if the page still existed...? If the page is on the new site and is the same url, no 301 is needed.

Not really, since the resource doesn't exist anymore. If the resource exists (or something close to it) it would be a 301 and link juice will be passed (although not 100% of it).

If you have a relevant page, you should always 301 them. I would go through analytics and makes sure any "valuable" page has a relevant landing page. If no relevant landing page exists, you should 404 the result will eventually fall off.

I would also advise on creating a custom 404 page that explains what they are looking for and doesn't exist and show alternative pages/search bar. Users may get confused if they were looking for something specific and land at your home page.

2.) Are you talking about a catch-all? You can use 404 and redirect them to whatever. Try to redirect as much as possible though. Good luck!

ErrorDocument 404 /index.html

I know that there is a thumbnail meta tag:  --but I doubt this populates it. My gut tells me that Google will do this automatically.

On seorountable, they speculate it may come from product schema/market and the rich snippets Google shows for them.

Don't agree. Many time you have room for your company or branding and it is a good idea. It's an easy way to gain market awareness.  Also, stuffing a ton of kw's in a title can look spammy.

Yes, I typically always do and place it after the topic of the page:

Plagiarism Types | Brand

It helps with brand recognition.  Just remember that if is a long brand name it will get truncated. Also, make sure you have a compelling meta descriptions to improve click-throughs.

Good luck!

Another clue to look at is: property="fb:admins" content="122139651156250"...

Don't believe it is the issue though.

Is the link to an image? If so, that is the cause. Try uploading a simple html page--should work.

I would create a HTML sitemap as well (useful for users and spiders) and also the XML sitemap (spiders). They both will help in indexing and will hopefully help in get the remainder of the 750 indexed. No worries on the duplicate content. Good luck!

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!

The best Wordpress Plugin (IMHO) to generate xml sitempas is: https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/ 

Don had a great answer on this. I focus on directories that have some sort of value to the end-user and any site just can't get listed (for the company I work for is industrial B2B). If it doesn't meet these two criteria, it's most likely spammy and not worth getting listed in. I wouldn't get hung up on a set number or a specific pagerank.

Eric's answer was perfect. After launch, I also do a site:nameofdomain.com and click on a random sampling of links to make sure the rules work perfectl (this is more useful if the page name changes). Good luck!

See below. Google doesn't always nail this. I'm guessing that if it's Google isn't getting EuroFlorist  from one of your pages. It's from another source. If you query "telefleurs EuroFlorist " a bunch of results. This could be the other sources.

Form: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en

"We may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources. However, sometimes even pages with well-formulated, concise, descriptive titles will end up with different titles in our search results to better indicate their relevance to the query. There’s a simple reason for this: the title tag as specified by a webmaster is limited to being static, fixed regardless of the query. Once we know the user’s query, we can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. "

Yikes! If there are 7.4 billion people on earth that is over 24 urls and 169 links per person. Bit scary...

I don't see any issue with placing 4 locations neatly in footer. It gives you some added credibility and it's where visitor's expect to find it--so good usability.  Also, use schema.

You stated : after making links in directories, forums and article directories." Were these the old backlinks you described? If not, were any of these new backlinks spammy? Did you get any earned links?

I'm typically on the receiving end of the gifts. I'll start with what I hate getting: calendars, usb sticks, fruit baskets, chocolates, candies, office desk knick-knacks and etc.

My favorite gifts are Amazon Gift Cards, business books and liquor/wine. Basically anything that I will use!

It could be a wide-range of issues involving both on/off-page (as I'm sure you know).  I am guessing it service + location keywords you are trying to get higher organic rankings for. What are the keywords?

Along with what Tim said, I typically search on youtube.com or look on Lynda for a video. The only one I found on Lynda is SEO for Local Visibility. One section does get into schema. Good luck!