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The links to sprint I am seeing are nofollowed.  There is also a tag on them that suggests that they are being automatically inserted by software as part of an advertising program.

If that is correct then it is similar in nature to the way that programs like skimlinks work.  They look for particular terms and place monetised links on them.   If those links are no-followed then that would seem to be totally acceptable under Google guidelines.  What they don't like is selling links that "pass page rank", which the nofollow prevents.

If you wanted to pursue that sort of approach then there are a number of programs and plugins that do this.  Personally I prefer links styled in such a way to be styled differently, so that users can understand which links are paid and which are editorial.

Why not check for yourself?  Same logic.  Put image URL in to image search, but this time add site:pinterest.com to the end.

http://goo.gl/OGgeb8

Not thousands, but there are some.  You can now check the source of those page to see whether there are followed links or not.

No problem.  This isn't the clearest example of what I am talking about, but it was the one that I had open in a tab when I got the email notification of your question!

http://www.backcountry.com/3-season-tents

The top of that page has three guides.  There are three more at the bottom.  Those guides are in a place where customers are more likely to see/use them. That makes sense as they are also great sales tools. Those that open in a modal window for that page also mean that the category page becomes the page that attracts links rather than the blog page.

If you put the URL of that image in to Google's search by image you get this list of results of where else that has been us3ed http://goo.gl/mkAdJW

If you go down that list you will find that the majority of those sites then link back to the originating site by way of a credit.  Voila - links!

So the process there was most likely to produce a list of sites that might use the infographic and contact them all to offer it (requesting a link by way of credit).  It's an effective method in terms of the number of links that can be generated from it, but it doesn't create the best overall link profile.  A lot of the links can be from pages that drop off quickly or from sites that link out to almost anything.  It also creates a very definite pattern.  Not to be overdone, but it does still seem to work.

Your structure is probably the most common.  As you say though, you do risk cannibalising your own results.  You could no-index the blog categories.

My preferred approach is to have blog and store more closely integrated.  This can allow you to do away with blog category pages entirely, and have those as part of the e-commerce category. Bringing the content closer to the products brings a number of benefits in terms of both SEO and Conversions.  It also results in much richer category pages which can be another big win.

"If it aint broke...."  Hard to argue against that!    I'd test removing it on a category though... I'm like that

I'm off to do some window shopping then.

This is totally down to a matter of personal preference.  I'd be looking for something in the way of original text.  A good way is to ask more question then total up the number of words in their answers.  You can also flesh that out by introducing snippets from recent activity, connections etc.  Do though try to include something in the way of original content in order to turn off the no-index.

I think your example isn't bad.  Add a personal slogan, or line of introduction and it is probably enough.

I think you are very right to look ahead.  That is why I try to look at things in terms of "does this add value / make sense if search was out of the equation".  I can't see that the text you point out currently does.

I suspect that your existing rankings for that term are down to a lot more than the repetition of that phrase on page.  Let's face it, Trespass gives off pretty convincing brand signals*. However it would be pretty easy to test the removal of that label on a couple of less critical categories to see if there was any impact before making any site-wide decisions.

Uhm, how to say this here... I'm not overly convinced by the Moz on page / on-site tools (Ready for a barrage of thumbs down for criticising he holy Moz).  I think they are a little dated in places and can put undue emphasis on some minor issues whilst overlooking bigger ones.  They're a really good starting point for smaller sites, those new to the web and those in less competitive niches.  I do though think that they have quite limited use for a site like Trespass.  Just add a pinch of salt to everything and that'll probably be about right.

*Google secretly uses the number of times a business appears on my credit card bill as a brand indicator

I've always been nervous about this on e-commerce sites.  I personally believe that it can be enough to tip the balance in to being seen as manipulative, although my experience is that by itself it isn't a problem.  The issue there is you never know what else is already counting against you.

It could be argued that such labels are useful to the user.  If that was a "Ski outerwear" category or similar then having labels such as "Women's ski jacket" would be good clarification.  Pushing the boundary a little you could even argue the case if it were just "Ski Jackets".  However it adds nothing for the user to have it when they are all the same.

Considering that keyword stuffing doesn't work any more the possible benefits of doing this then would seem to be close to zero.  The potential for triggering an alarm in a dark corner of Google is there though.  Weighing it up I would drop them when they match the category.

A smart approach might be to replace the "women's ski jacket" label with another useful piece of info when they all just match the category name. Hard to see what common fields you do have available.  Sizes would be useful, outer material (in the case of jackets) - not sure how easy it would be to change that based on category.  Looks like Magento.

That is quite easily dealt with.  Set some minimum levels and add a meta noindex to those profiles that don't meet that standard.

If you combine that with encouragement to fill out profiles ("Your profile is only 10% complete. Add your education now for +3%" etc) then you can solve the duplicate issue and also the underlying cause.  As they get completed they can start getting indexed again and you have a better website at the end of it.

You can't really expect to get any SEO benefit from embedding someone else's video.  What does that bring to the table that is original and unique?

There is nothing with embedding someone else's video in your site (with permission, of course).  However by itself it won't add anything.

If that video was embedded as part of making the most useful page around on the topic, which happened to include embedded versions of a curated list of the best videos on the topic, then yes.  Likewise if adding the video is the "cherry on the cake" of an already good page, then brilliant.  In those cases the method you use to embed will make no difference.

If you have a full list of URLs you could check for cache date on each at Google.  Unless you were doing that manually it would be technically against google TOS, but so is SERP checking.  More to the point I don't think it would be foolproof as indexed pages will sometimes return no cache date.

It's a bit of a convoluted method, but I think that might be your only option.

I'm waving!   Beautiful here on Hayling Island too.  I wish I could see a window from here!

If they allowed crawling, but 404d everything it would de-index anyway. If it was large this could be slow though.

Removal in the manner you suggest shoudn't cause any harm to the main domain though.  I'll say upfront that I haven't tried this (My dev team learned a long time ago that I get more than a little grumpy if staging content is allowed to get indexed!), but the theory is sound.

I've been eyeing them too. My only experience so far in in having their re-targeting follow me around the web. Just chiming in to keep an eye on what responses you get.

The answer to this depends on what you are trying to achieve with the video.  Video can serve numerous purposes in online marketing and the best methods to employ differ a bit depending on what you are trying to achieve.

If the aim is for as many people as possible to see the video then you want to include it (or a version of it) on YouTube. YouTube is in itself the second biggest search engine on the internet, so a properly optimised video there has the potential to be seen by a huge audience.  This is perfect for video that, for instance, introduce your product or service as a solution to a common problem.

One use of video that we employ is to obtain rich snippets.  A video rich snippet can leapfrog your page above others in the SERPs and also bring an improved click through rate. Win!  If your video is hosted on YouTube and embedded on your site then this is not going to help you.  The reason for that is that the rich snippet will lead to a youtube page, not yours so you want to host it privately.

Privately doesn't have to mean on your own server. In fact, in most cases we avoid that.  Services like Wistia and Vimeo have paid options that allow you to upload your video with all the ease of youtube, but control which sites the video cam be embedded on. This protects your video and helps you keep that rich snippet result to yourself.

We often now look at using Wistia/Vimeo for the main video, but doing a second edit for YouTube if the content suits their audience.

As Dana says, Phil Nottingham has put out some very good posts about this, and also how to get the most out of whichever path you go down.  There is an outfit called reelseo who have also done some good posts on this.

The best links are the ones that your competiors don't have and aren't going to get. That means that backlink analysis is not much use in uncovering them (other than maybe for inspiration).

Tools like OSE (or majestic seo / ahrefs ) can be useful in picking up low hanging fruit.  However it seems to be the big ripe juicy fruit further up the tree that makes a difference at the moment. The best tools for finding those are Google + Inspiration.

More is best.

C Block refers to the "group" that an IP address links to.  Lots of domains linking from the same C Block might suggest related sites or a network.  Having your links coming from a wider spread of C Blocks is generally seen as good.

Like with most things in SEO it is not just a case of "more wins".  the C Block of a site that links to you is just one factor amongst hundreds, maybe thousands that influence rankings.  Most importantly an unusually low number compared with linking root domains can be a sign of something odd.

If you are going to create a description then as Todd says, use the first 150-160 characters (note characters - not words).  However, you shouldn't need to crawl the site to do that, they should be generated automatically as part of your page template.

I presume your forum generates pages from content in a database. If that is the case (it almost always is) then you just need to adjust the template and the descriptions will automatically appear when the page is output.  A simple job for whoever looks after development for you. If you use a common forum platform there is almost certainly as "seo" plugin that handles this for you.

For forum category pages you can probably write these manually. This is where they are probably more likely to do good as well.  Personally I would focus on those and not worry too much about adding a meta-description to the thread pages.  If you don't mind tools like GWMT and MOZ flagging up the fact that they are missing, their absence is going to have very little impact compared with taking a snippet from the body text.

I know that some people will scream in shock at the thought of not having a meta-desc.  I do though notice that even Moz.com don't bother on thread pages (like this one)

I'd largely agree with Ron, although there could be a small secondary factor. Many believe that having traffic from a broad range of sources sends a strong quality signal to Google. Links from your emails would count in that respect.

Really though the question is whether adding those links would be useful for the people reading the email.  If they would then add them. Whether or not there is any "SEO benefit" you'll still have happier recipients. Good thing.

If not, then don't bother. If it isn't helpful for them then they won't click the links so no benefit anyway.

It's also worth remembering that most email spam filters look at links in email. Each links will add a little to the likelihood that your email doesn't reach it's intended recipient - so only include them if they're doing a job.