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I think you should use a review aggregator like YotPo. These will deliver reviews to your contractor's sites without duplicating the content because the content won't be in the source code. Any plug in you can design will prevent duplicate content. You will basically display the content without it being in the code. The only HTML the robot will see is the coding for the review system.

Hello Menachemp, Google is really good at detecting affiliate links, especially from any known network. To answer your question in the title, the best SEO value would come from a home-grown affiliate program that doesn't use any of the link footprints or networks that others are using. In terms of a linkbuilding strategy you'd be paying for links so essentially it could get your entire domain in hot water. Getting random affiliates to remove all of those links after the fact would be a nightmare. So unless you are ok with the very real possibility that you'll have to scrap the domain and start over again somewhere else I'd stay away from it as a linkbuilding strategy. Some people run those links through another domain first and then 301 them to the destination. That way if Google figures out what you're doing you can just dissconnect the redirects and remove all of those links with the flip of a switch in the middle-domains' htaccess file. Google knows about this tactic as well, and I would be very surprised if they haven't addressed it already, or very soon. This isn't a whitehat / blackhat or a moral thing for me. It is a matter of risk tolerance. In this case the pay-off would have to be big and fast for me to have enough risk tolerance to chance burning a legitimate business down. People have been trying this tactic for at least five years (that's about the time when I first thought of it myself, though I'm sure others were doing it long before that) so this is nothing new, especially to Google. Keep that in mind when planning it out, and get someone to build it for you from scratch if you're going to do it. Good luck!

While it surely up to you, but with guest posting, I'd rather focus on the quality of the blogs than the number of unique ones. That said, recurring guest articles at SEOmoz or Mashable will work much better than dozens of unique guest posts on low-quality blogs. That doesn't mean you should focus only on huge established blogs. Here's what I do: Identify several large blogs in my niche and guest post their at least once a month At the same time, be in the constant search of new promising blogs and guest post there as well (to discover new communities and build more links) Looks like my answer here is: do both

I would recommend using either Vimeo Pro or Wistia. Both are excellent out of the box solutions that work for link building. Of these, Vimeo pro is the cheapest, but Wistia is probably better. With wistia's  "superembeds" embed code generator, it allows you to quickly build out your video player style to include social buttons and embed boxes which will help to encourage people to share the content, while ensuring everything is secure and indexable by Google.

We've seen a pattern with this stuff - it works temporarily, then gets cut in value. TLA is the one I tested last year - rankings went way up, but as soon as we dropped the links they fell (indicating that TLA stock did work). However, when we observed and talked to folks who'd turned it on and kept it on, they reported that rankings, then dropped (within ~90 days with TLA). Recently, we've seen Google start banning many private blog networks (warning, links below contain a LOT of black hat stuff and some none-too-friendly posters as well, unfortunately): http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/559454-google-banning-paid-blog-networks-afraid-3.html http://www.internetmarketingtoolsupdate.com/internet-marketing-tips/seo-link-monster-warning/ http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/black-hat-seo/418104-panda-isnt-killing-blog-networks-scrapebox.html Those are all in just the past week. Google's not stupid, but I do think their webspam team has been swamped. Recently though, it feels like they're making a bit more progress, and I wouldn't be surprised if they continue kicking some tail in the link spam/black hat world.

Well then, I guess my question should be what easy SEO steps for a non-SEO person should go on that PDF?