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From a coding perspective, applying the nofollow to the links is the best way to go.

With the robots.txt file, only the top tier search engines respect the information contained within, so lesser known bots or spammers might check your robots.txt file to see what you don't want listed, and that info will give them a starting point to look deeper into your site.

Keep in mind that no tool will ever be able to track all the links you've acquired. Also, since you've only just got started, you need to give it some time before you see all the links you've earned appear in the reports.

Last thing. Some sites just aren't considered to have any real link value, so while they might appear in your report, that doesn't indicate the quality of the link.

I don't know if this will solve your problems, but could you program the site using breadcrumb navigation? That will go a long way in your seo efforts.

You should only include one link in total in your post. I know others might have different opinions, but if you are trying to build a link profile, each site should have it's own set of unique inbound links.

By having 2 or more links pointing to different pages, you are diluting any link juice you might get from that post.

Just my $.02

A quick check into your robots meta tag might help. Make sure it's set to the following:

<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="Index,Follow" />

That should ensure what you want in Bing.

The questions I would ask:

Expectations - how long will it take to get ranked?

What techniques will you use?

While you can certainly ask as many questions as you want, at some point in time, you just have to trust that your vendor is delivering value to you. By asking for weekly reports and ALL links that point to your site, you are taking time away from your vendor to do work that will get your site ranked.

Accountability and transparency are important, but if you are constantly asking your vendor to "show your work", they won't have time to get your properties ranked!

I understand that every dollar spent has to work for your business to grow. At the end of the day, you have to trust your intuition and go with the people that are interested in your success.

Good luck!

I should have been more specific. While the social icon buttons should be present, you should also include the open graph protocol on the site.

First off, great looking site!

I wouldn't worry about the li tags vs the p tag - quality content will always trump any display issues.

The banner is of great concern since that is what I was tempted to click on first, thinking it would lead me to more information on your site. I noticed that you don't get a navigation option until the images for your content appears in the banner. If possible, you should really push for that same treatment for the starting image of the banner.

The only other suggestion would be to include some social code (open graph) so that you can get some link love from FB!

Hope this helps!

The only experience I've had is a client who was heavily involved in Social media (youtube/twitter/fb) decided to create a new brand under a new domain.

We did so, and 301'd all the social "link juice" to the new domain. We were able to keep most of the traffic that was arriving for about three weeks, then it started to fade away. Keep in mind we actively told readers about the new social profiles to follow, and convinced about 75% of the audience to follow the new profiles.

As to the link juice getting passed along, The new site only needed about 3 months to get ranked, so my take is that yes, using a 301 will send the signals along.

good luck!

Google will index them, the question is will you be able to get all of them ranked?

I've has this same question asked before. There are a few answers that should easily justify the creation of the page.

1.) At the very least, it's a link from Google and we all know how much Google loves itself.

2.) A better reason is that one never knows when Google will change up what it considers local. I have a client that used to rank in the top 3 for their Google places page for a service related terms in their region. Then one day, Google decided to drop Google places listings and instead serve up traditional organic results.Just as Google made this change, at any moment, they could always revert to this type of display again.

3.) As you mentioned, it has reviews and the client can always post a reply to the opinion that was left. Very powerful.

4.) Some words are easier to rank for with a Google Places page.

Will be following to see what other tidbits there are!

If you can confirm that your IP address is on a "spam" blacklist, you should move your site to another hosting provider ASAP. While it's not your fault that your IP address is on that list, it's going to make Google look at your site very carefully.

One way to build a brand is to be linked many, many times over for category terms. Also, to be found in directories that are listed the same way as your links are being created.

Anytime you promote your site, the brand and whatever service or product you mention with it helps to craft the brand.

When someone says "Xerox", what do people think of? That's the power a brand name becomes over time.

So, to answer the question, having many references to these category type terms will get your brand associated with them.

Sounds like a tough situation. Once your site gets back online, visit your Google Webmaster tools to see what they are saying in there. You might be able to reply with a message telling them what happened.

As long as you can get your site back online, you might only see a drop (if any) for a few days.

Good luck!

Big flags go up for me here reading about your strategy.

Why would someone expecting a Christmas page want to be shown a Valentine Day's page?

Always look to the user experience as a guide to fixing your problems. Sure, some traffic might convert, but also look at the scenario from Google's perspective. You have all these links and traffic about Christmas now going to a page about Valentines day. How is that relevant?

Deploying this method will actually cause you to lose rankings. Stay on target and keep the right traffic lined up with the right content, and instead, use your marketing efforts to boost the rankings for the correct holiday near the correct dates.

Hope this helps.

From looking at the site, there are seo best practices not being followed, but I don't think that is the reason for the drop (You have multiple H1 tags on the home page, there should be only one)

The Schema code shouldn't impact the site in any negative way as well.

Even if someone was link spamming your site, Google wouldn't count that against you, otherwise seo would only be about link bombing your competition!

If Google came to crawl the site and nothing was there, it might also have been the deep crawl, and that might account for the missing snippets.

The key here is not over-react. It sounds like you have everything in order, and might have just been a victim of bad timing.

I know it's hard to be patient, but give it a week to see if the snippets return once the fresh bot has hit your site. You might also want to send a message to Google through your Webmaster account, they are pretty responsive.

Good luck!

Videos! - 50% of all online activity is watching video. Zappos makes videos everyday since they have stats that prove that conversion rates improve for products or services that have video.

Good luck!

For now,  I don't see any changes needed to traditional linking methods. Most people who are not marketers probably are going to be slow to use Google Plus, since they've already invested their time into Facebook.

You should always be building links to your site as if search engines didn't exist anyways - that's just a good practice for link building. You should be getting links on topical sites where your target audience already is.

Even if Google Plus does somehow get anywhere near the amount of users as Facebook, I just think the privacy issues and monopoly issues will surface. That will force Google to ease up on the forced exposure of their own products in order to make it look like they are being fair in the eyes of the Government.

But, stranger things have happened!

I don't have a specific answer in regards to the Swedish market, but if this happened to me, I would go on the notion that some links that are pointing to the site have been devalued, based on the other information you provided.

Sounds like an effort to earn high quality authority links will be needed to re-gain those rankings.

i know not everyone will agree with this, but we really don't monitor how many links are follow/nofollow.

The key is to get links pointed to your site that are topical. Just by that tactic alone, you will get a typical blend of both kinds of links.