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It depends entirely on your goals.  This mother of a post is kind of the holy grail for video embedding: http://moz.com/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo

Great points above.

Keep in mind, some directories for some niches actually drive a decent amount of traffic.  These high quality directories are usually for a service that people don't commonly use, and likely don't have any in their personal offline network (such as lawyers).  Without knowing what you do I can't say if that's the right path for you, but if your industry has high quality directories that are specific to your niche, go ahead with it.

There are a few ways to do it that have advantages and disadvantages.  Your best best is probably to serve users based on their location, rather than their language -- since someone browsing in Chinese in another country probably has no use for the China based version of your site.

I know that can be done through Javascript, and I imagine there are other ways to do it.  I'm not an expert on that, but there is a lot of information out there about it.

Oh, and here's Google's bare bones explanation of the dos and don'ts of Multilingual sites: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en#1.  There's not a lot there but it's important to keep in mind.

This is a big question and I'll do my best to answer it as much as I can.

First off, it's VERY important.  Mandarin to English Translation within browsers is terrible (I say this having lived in Beijing and worked as an English Language web marketer there).  Make sure your cheap translation is done by someone who is Bilingual and proficient in translating English to Simple Chinese, otherwise you can end up with a translation that doesn't make grammatical sense (the differences in grammar and characters make accurate translation difficult).

SEO is different in different languages, you have to consider what users will be searching for.  Also keep in mind that many people will be searching with Baidu or even Bing rather than Google (which is semi-blocked in China), and you will have to adjust your SEO tactics accordingly.  Baidu almost exclusively indexes and serves pages in Simple Chinese, (the language of their users) so a good translation is crucial.  Also -- you're going to have to do some link building from Chinese Language sites, your English Language link profile will not do you much good.

It's takes a long time, but if you can get a regional address (ie .cn) that is a big trust signal.  Local hosting also helps.

Finally, it's important to realize that China is a decently developed space with a lot of national pride.  You're not going to have a great user experience if your pages are poorly translated, especially if there is a local alternative.  If you want to do business in China, make the investment in an excellent translation.

Hope that helps.

Thanks, that's very helpful.  Signals on the video are mostly positive, I was just a bit worried about the repetitive word, but I guess I really should have been focusing on the user experience, which is just fine.

No -- thankfully it's not that bad.  Thanks for the answer!

This question is a little bit on the whimsical side.

Let's say you have a video on your page, and a transcript of said video.  The speaker has a tendency to repeat a certain (key)word, somewhat excessively.  Maybe it's an important term for a technical video, maybe it's a nervous thing, whatever -- that word is in there a lot.  If you include a video transcript, could you get slapped with a keyword stuffing penalty for excessive use of said word?

It depends a lot on what you're going for.  For example this video of a tiny cat wearing a tiny hat eating a tiny ice cream cone as an ad for an ice cream company has hundreds of thousands of views: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMnpWYaCKB0

As a person, I love this video.  I show everyone, it's kind of ridiculous.  As a marketer, I'm curious about it's value in terms of direct human visits to the ice cream shop.  I've seen this video many many times, and for the life of me as I write it I can't think of the name of the shop.  I'm also east coast based, so my love of small cats doesn't transfer into money for their shop.  Obviously they're building brand awareness (and improving their rankings) but they aren't necessarily bringing people in the door.

Conversely, lots of law firms (my specialty, shameless plug) and other complicated service companies will have informational videos on various parts of their practice.  It usually does very little for SEO since these videos barely break 1000 views, sometimes even 100.  However, we've noticed a great return on these ads, since they fulfill a specific need, and are so highly specific (long tail search for location, type of lawyer, specific legal claim) that the few people who do see them are generally far in the buying cycle, and contact us.

It really depends what your goals are.  Finally, this article on the moz blog " A SEO's Guide to Video Hosting and Embedding" is very helpful. :http://moz.com/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo

It should be fine.  Here's an article about it an the important quote: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017603.html

"As long as the web server always blocks IPs from (say) Africa, it's not doing anything special/different for Googlebot, and so it wouldn't be considered cloaking, but geolocation instead."

Lots of good points already.  I find that small logo in a corner is helpful because even if the image is stolen, saved to a computer, reused, posted on facebook without context, whatever -- your brand is still prominently displayed.

You want to commit to one and put a 301 on the other.  Googlebot should be smart enough, but it isn't really.  Some things aren't best to be left to chance.

Here's the Moz 301 redirect article: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

Edit: Here's another article about www.mysite.com vs mysite.com http://www.stepforth.com/resources/web-marketing-knowledgebase/non-www-redirect/#.UlbGl1Cko2s

Post on your website, put a snippet and a link on your G+

Be sure to check the specific licence and do your due diligence, but the Wikipedia commons has some great images: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

I can't seem to load your page at this moment, but I would generally recommend trying to tie your brand to yourself.  For example -- When someone offers a helpful answer on Moz (or a personal finance blog, or whatever else) users are inclined to see who they are.  In your case, if you're providing useful financial information over the appropriate social channels then people will be interested to see who you are.  Your experience and the quality of your responses will draw people to your brand, as you have built some trust with the users.

TLDR: Your name is old and experienced, but your brand is a new player in a crowded space.  Use your name to draw people to your brand

Hope that helps.

Can you get into a little bit more what you do?  If your company is just you, or you yourself are the product (think lawyer, florist, mechanic, anything where the specific individual is important). This seems to be the case with you since you say your face is a huge part of the brand then I would focus on building your personal brand.  That being said, be sure not to neglect the company either.  Since your company is relatively new, it's important to have a strong push of promotion for each.

I notice that competitors who set up places accounts before Local (which I did not have the opportunity to do) do better in search for subcategories of specialties that aren't listed in the preset categories.  I'm sure Google will eventually deal with this, but I would say if you have the opportunity to include categories that aren't on the preset list, it may give you a leg up.

Obviously things like Mozrank, domain authority, relevancy signals, authority signals, and other fundamentals are a great starting ground, but I was wondering how people put value on a links.  How much time is a link from a page rank of x or a moz rank of y worth.  How much time, money (not in terms of paid links, but in terms of manpower, copyrighting required, etc.) is a link of a certain rank worth.

Obviously there is no exact answer to this question, but I'm very curious to see what people have to say in this regard.

Moz has a very comprehensive list of recommended firms here: [http://moz.com/community/recommended].  I can't personally speak for any of them, but the list seems well researched and vetted.  Hope this helps.

Can anyone with experience with 360 Photos chime in on their utility or lack thereof?  Is the sense that 360 photos are being phased out, as Miriam suggests, or that they will be of more use in the future.  Any feedback at all would be helpful.

I'm considering getting Google's "360 Business Photos" for the office I work in.  We have a beautiful office, and I think if someone saw the walkthroughs on Google it would encourage them to come in.  That being said, I'm not fully convinced that anyone actually looks walkthroughs, and what their SEO effect is outside of the general consensus of "it probably helps" in all the write-ups I could find.  Does anyone have any experience with 360 Photos, or any data to support or condemn it?

Thanks.