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Wow, that is really a bad situation and sounds like you are going to be very limited.  When I mentioned limitation, I was referring to things such as Google Analytics Admin.  Some of the platform sites have their Google Analytics account Admin, but will not give Admin and GWMT access to 3rd parties (marketing agencies).   They package in Analytics with their platform monthly rates and set Analytics to mail a report to the client each month.  I have had developers refuse to add a video sitemap.  I have had some that gave me access to their site backend, but it was hosted on an IIS server and required them to do the manual 301 redirects, and they refused to do this.  These are just a few examples of "limitations" I have seen.

Having said that, I really feel your pain here.  In your initial question, you called this a "great prospective client," but it is not a great situation as there seems to be a bad breakup with residual bad internal politics.  Without knowing your entire situation, here are my recommendations based on what you have mentioned so far:

Option 1 is to not accept the project as it might be too draining and time consuming because of the company politics.

Option 2 is to start by placing proper expectations with the person hiring you - sounds like you have established a good relationship with them.  You have to let them know how important on-site optimization is and how the IT dept seem to be unreasonable.  Without onsite optimization, your entire campaign is going to be inefficient - it will take a ton more work offsite in order to get results and it is not ideal.  Even blogging sounds like a serious pain in that it has to go to a test server first, then you have to wait for an IT person who doesn't "get it" to approve.  You should also consider raising your rates because of the situation.  This is not typical, so your typical rates that you may have quoted may no longer apply now that you know the whole story.

Anyway, good luck with this. I hope it works.  I would love to hear how it plays out.

Hands down, your site/ blog.  Then social share it and get the word out.  Not even a close comparison.

Yes, those are the big 3 data aggregators.  They are not syndicators per say.  Their models are different.  Instead, they provide/ sell their data to other sites.  There are some other minor ones that provide this type of data, such as Factual.

It can take a while for your data to propagate beyond these sites.  It depends on how often the various sites that pull their data update their own lists.

These alone are not the answer.  You need to make sure that your data is accurate in these (so that your updates on other sites don't get reverted back).  Once you have that, you need to move to the other types of sites:

• Search portals (Google+ Local, Bing Places for Business, Yahoo Local)
• Review sites like Yelp
• Business directories and Internet yellow page type sites
• Social sites like Facebook and Foursquare
• Maps sites like Mapquest
• Hyperlocal and Niche specific directories

There are listing services like UBL and Yext that charge you to do a lot of this.  UBL does get your info to Acxiom and Infogroup, but not Localeze.  You need to do Localeze yourself.  Yext gets the listings out fast to individual sites, but does not create accounts for you, so if you need to respond to a review, etc. you will need to go in and claim your listing and setup your account yourself (even if Yelp is managing the data to that site).

Unfortunately Google is still in limbo here.  They are moving forward, very slllloooowwwwllllyy.  Last May '12, they started the move from Google Places to Google+Local.  Previously Places was too static and didn't allow enough engagement, etc as they were dropping the Google+ overlay onto all of their properties.  Well it has been over a year and they are still in limbo.  You fall into the category of non-merged.  You shouldn't do anything right now until they finish the transition.  It will only cause problems as Oleg suggested.

We have seen a lot of our clients already merged, while many aren't.  Until it happens, you need to make sure that you have everything completed on both and that it matches up.  Don't neglect the Places page

The best guideline to telling which of the 3 scenarios you fall into, is outlined perfectly (with visuals) in the Search Engine News Local Search book (called Unfair Advantage) that was just updated this month.  You fall into the category that they suggest to not do anything with right now.

Based on your description, there are serious problems in how the Title is displayed in the SERPs (wrong syntax and language).  If this is the case, you need to fix that immediately.  If not, you will likely suffer a bigger problem - no clicks and your CTR plummets (a trust factor).  You will start dropping out of the rankings fast if you competitors are getting those clicks.  Nobody clicks on faulty titles because it often is tied to a faulty site.

I agree with Takeshi that normally you would want to segment and test before committing to a massive overhaul, but it sounds like you are in a more urgent situation right now.

Yes, as Cesar stated, this is not uncommon, and you can push the tasks to them.  Over half of our clients' sites are on platform based sites and their developers do not give us access.  While there are some limitations, we provide them with a nice zip file with paint by numbers documentation of what we need them to do.

Just put together your strategy exactly the way you would if you were going in there to do it yourself.  Spell each item out so that it cannot be misinterpreted.  I always include a READ ME FIRST file that explains the content of the zip folder.  Once you send the file, schedule at time to verbally go over it and confirm that they completely understand your instructions for them.  A lot of the times, you will get a grumpy response as they just don't get why these things are so important to you.  Just work through it.  Find out what they may not be able to do and problem solve to find the work-around.  Have them send you documentation once they have completed the tasks.  Do an audit and make sure everything meets your satisfaction.  Keep the paper trail (email trail) of everything saved, just in case...

Agree with your conclusion.  Go with your brand and build the asset.  Exciting!

It is likely not available to you at this time.  It is only being offered to a limited number of verified accounts still.

With the Penguin update there are several people in the forums commenting on 302 directed affiliate sites (using shady tactics) moving up in ranks on the first page.  Despite this, I would not react to it or assume that it means that 302s have more power.  They are by definition temporary.  And typically after a big algorithm update, G will correct the occasional outliers that weren't expected, like the example above (meaning I doubt that they will last very long).

http://pingomatic.com/

1. Update your sitemap (if it doesn't automatically update).
2. Do 301 redirect from old URL to new version
3. Ping the new URL

I would not abandon ship.  You are still ranking, even if it has dropped some.  Seems like you have a great business and you have put some time into your site marketing.  Based on what I am seeing, I would start bailing water.  No reason to abandon ship until you have actually put some effort into it first.  I think you are in better shape than you realize, but you need to take care of some basics right away:

• Make your site mobile responsive - MC just stated that this mobile usability was going to be a factor in Penguin.  Last summer Google even said it prefers responsive sites
• Add publisher markup and authorship to your site
• Use Schema coding
• Focus on your local SEO efforts and hyperlocal authority

You have some pretty tough competitors, including the university on a very strong .EDU site, so you have to get your expectations aligned properly.  Despite this, I think you can do have success.

I agree with Thomas on the hosting.  I haven't personally used Zippy Kid, Pagely, or Presslabs, but I do use WPEngine and Synthesis.  I am in the process of migrating 2 more sites over to Synthesis this week.

There are lots of great benefits to host your wordpress on these servers.  They are built very specifically for Wordpress and have gotten rid of the bloat of a traditional server.  Your sites will load faster, even without a CDN.  They keep everything backed up and secure too.  Peace of mind is what I always look for in a web host and that is what you get when you host with a team that loves wordpress and only do wordpress.

There is not enough room to cover all the benefits and details.  Just look them up and be sure to read the FAQs on each.

Keyword does not have to be in your Brand name or your domain.  You can compensate on deeper pages as needed.  You unique brand name will separate you from everyone and better build your asset.

I have seen similar situations to what Jonathan described (even in some of my own online projects/ businesses).

Having said that, while EMD's are being carefully watched now, I do not think they will automatically hurt you.  What hurts you is not providing value to your target market on your domain, regardless of whether it is a brand or EM domain.  Most people that squat on an EMD blog never put high quality, high value content.  At best they typically throw crap articles on them occasionally.  This is just adding pollution to cyberspace and we should all fight pollution;-)

This is reinforced by the link Thomas included:

"One common misconception is that EMD means that sites with search terms in their domain names no longer will rank as well as in the past. I’ve not seen evidence of this so far, and it’s certainly not what Google said.

Google specifically said EMD was designed to go after poor quality sites that also have exact match domain names."

#1.  "Citation building" refers to something completely different than #2 citation.  It is typically used in local seo marketing for local businesses.  In this case, a citation is a business mention.  More specifically, it involves the business's Name, Address, Phone (NAP).  Citation building helps build authority to local businesses online.  They work like traditional link building, but without the link necessarily being required, meaning the search engines can recognize the signal as being a mention about that specific business.  It can help any business with a physical address, especially ones that want local customers from a specific geography.

#2. Proper coding of citations using the cite attribute is the correct thing to do when referencing the title of someone else's work, regardless of SEO value.  Having said that, just having a "cite" element by itself may not add much SEO value.  It may however help enhance the impact of certain co-citations which are becoming more important, but that is a completely different topic (not to confuse the issue;-)

#3.  They are different elements used for different purposes that are pretty well defined, so you have to decide case by case.

Disclaimer: I am not a graphic artist/ designer.

New 1 and 2 seem unremarkable and kind of disappear on the page.  New 3 stands out a bit more.  I guess I am not clear on what your new logo is.  In # 1&2, it seems to be the USA map with arrows and SDR.  On 3, there isn't one, unless the grad cap icon is it.  #1 actually has both the map and the grad cap.

On 1& 2 you use a sans-serif font on the SDR, but a serif font on the words spelled out.  Was that intentional?  Nothing wrong with using 2 different fonts in a logo, but going from sans-serif to serif when switching from the initials to the full words seems a bit strange.  I personally prefer sans-serif fonts online, but I get the connection between serif and academia for a student targeted ad.

Have you tried swapping the logo with the words spelled out in options #1 and #2.  Put the words spelled out on the left and the logo in the center?  Even if this looked better, I will still try to get some attention-getting color in there like you did in your current one and #3.

The best way to decide is to run a split test and see what behaviors occur with each one.  My guess is that #3 would outperform #1 and 2 simply because it stands out more.  This is a perfect thing to split test and keep tweaking until you get the best results.

Using it the way you proposed is encouraging engagement with your post which is a great thing.  Aggregating these ratings for each blog post using proper Schema is a great use of the function.  Shouldn't cause any problems.

The negative problems I have seen were related to aggregating ratings and reviews from established authority sites and placing them on a page.

One area where it will have an indirect negative impact is in CTR from the SERPs.  The Title gets a searcher's attention, while the Desc sells them on the click.  Anything beyond 70 char is not there for the searcher or visitor's sake since they won't see it.  This could lead to a negative impact in CTR which is a trust factor issue.  If your CTR is less than surrounding sites in the SERPs on a consistent basis, you will likely start to see rank drops.

Here is a Matt Cutts video on Title that emphasizes this point: http://youtu.be/THYguer_JrM

Beyond the user experience concern, it comes down to whether the extra characters are being used for keyword stuffing or not.  If not, it probably won't have a significant negative impact, but then you have to ask yourself why did I choose to use these extra characters...

Yes.  I know it seems strange to put a # in front of H, but it works.

Incidentally, I have found that Google listings will maintain the space between '#' and the letter (H), just like ExpressUpdate, whereas we are seeing them remove the space when the # is a number.  Either way, this 'space' issue has not caused us problems so we made it part of our method of operation to just not use it in new clients that have not had work done.

The key comes down to search engine recognition that the citation is the same.  In the past, I found it necessary to be anal retentive about the precision.  But now it seems like the SEs are better at correlating the citation despite extra spaces, commas, etc.  I have a feeling that being so specific with citations may not be as necessary in the near future, but it seems to still have impact so we all have to choose our method of operation.

I have been testing this thoroughly for the last two years.  I am aware of that article, but it has a lot of the blind leading the blind in my opinion.

The first thing you have to decide is whether you are going to use both address lines or a single one.  Google tells you to use the second address line for your unit # or suite.  Everyone else tends to lean that way because Google does.  Unfortunately, this does not play out in the real world.  There are lots of sites that scrape and pull data, and many of them ignore Line 2.  If you doubt this, then test it and you will start to see all the sites that don't have your suite or unit.  So you get a lot of broken citations that don't have the # or suite on them.  I can't stand this inconsistency, therefore I have chosen to not use the second line - ever - and I think it has paid off.

So now to address your question.  You should choose either Ste or #.  The only caveat you might consider is if your client has had tons of citation work in the past with Suite spelled out, and even then it still might be worth it to clean it all up.

'Ste' is the USPS version and a lot of sites still scrub their data and convert it to USPS, so even if you use '#' it might get converted to USPS.  On the other hand, if you use 'Ste', InfoGroup (ExpressUpdate) will convert it to '#' no matter what, and every site that pulls its data from them will have the # in it.  So how do you decide?

We have tested it both ways.  Up until about 4-5 months ago, we found the 'Ste' method to be our preferred method.  Then we started noticing in Google+ Local that they started converting the 'Ste' to '#'.  [SCREAM]

So here is my recommendation (for what it's worth)...

On all new campaigns that haven't had anything done, use the Line 1 address only and use '#' instead of 'Ste'.  Also, we have found it best to have the # next to the number without a space - for example, use '#400' instead of '# 400'.

If you have an existing campaign running where you have used Ste or Suite, you will need to decide if there is any reason to change it at this point.  If all is going well, don't mess with it.  If you have not been getting your desired results, then consider changing to my recommendation above - just make sure you cover all of the major data aggregators, search portals, review sites, IYPs, and biz directories with your new change as quickly as you can.

I know this might be controversial (since it includes ignoring Google's recommendation about using line 2), but just sharing our opinions based on a lot experience testing this specific issue over the past couple years.