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My gut instinct tells me to choose the one utilizing the .com/exact-match/

This coming from a customer perspective.  When I search for Diving Equipment I'm going to want the phrase, or something similar, in the url.  Of course, both of these match that idea.  However, the second one allows me to read it as one piece, and my subconscious is more likely to perceive the page as such.

As for the search engines.  Using the latter one will give a more clarified answer to what this page is about without additional context. The only point where I would see it being too complicated is from the length of the url; especially with blog posts.

http://www.dive.com/blog/The-Absolute-10-best-scuba-diving-accessories-in-2011/

*That being said, I have no documented proof of such, and have never seen a case study for it.  It's just simply my interpretation.

-Maximum number of internal links on a page

Depending on how powerful your site is, I would suggest keeping it around the 100 links mark per inventory pages; at least initially.  If you offer the ability to see more products at once that will keep all of your customers happy.  However, the fewer links per page, the more power you send down to your product pages.  If you start building links to these product pages, though, that could become irrelevant - depending on competition.  If you still need to give extra boost to specific products, look for ways to link them internally from other pages.

-If Google frowns on really long category pages

From what I read, Google doesn't really consider the navigation pages to be very valuable content.  However, I would only be concerned with that if you were trying to rank your search pages.  So, I would focus on what your potential customers would want.  If you feel like you need to rank for a specific phrase, generate a landing page that leads into that specific inventory search.

-Anything else

I would suggest testing multiple designs.  It's easy for us to tell you what you should do, but it's better to hear it from your visitors.  Also, don't spend a lot of effort trying to get a specific search to rank, instead create a landing page for that product category, which will then lead into your search.  You will have a lot of unique content on there, and your customers expect to see a landing page.

I've talked to a couple people that have said that 301's will pass on the penalty.  A better alternative would be to try move the links over to your new website in waves.  If you experience a drop, then you know the link exists in that group.  Just do some quick checks on their domain, and see what you find.

Of course, if you are working with 10,000+ links, your batches are going to have to be pretty large.

Then again, if you don't have more than a couple hundred, go through the various domains, and try to identify problematic links.

I've personally had good results with it for local search, but it's main purpose right now is for rich snippets.  I like to use schema-creator.org to generate the code for me.

I don't know if this is the case, but occasionally there are ranking spasms.  For example:

I ranked #2 for the search "City Car Dealerships" even though I am located over 150 miles away.  To make things even more complicated, I had used that phrase one time in all of my pages of content, and did so as a comparison.  For all intensive purposes I shouldn't have ranked that well for it.  Anyway, I stayed at that position for about 2 weeks, and have since dropped down to page two - where I should probably rank.

My advice would be to keep checking things out, but don't stress too much unless it lasts more than a few days.

I use SEO Majestic as well as Open Site Explorer.  Go try out the free program, and see what you think.

I would use this: http://www.paywithatweet.com/

People have to tweet about your book in order to download it.  Social Marketing at its best.

Sadly, I'm in Montana, and have very few bushes around, so option D) is out of questions

How is the new domain ranking for other keywords?  Maybe like 4 slice toaster, or whatever phrase gets a lot of traffic?  If it's ranking high for other phrases I would use it as a temporary test dummy.  Pretty up the website, and find out which phrases, designs, etc. convert the best while you improve your original /toaster website.  Once you have all the data you need, and a highly improved /toaster page, just 301 it over.

However, if you don't have that much time, I'd just 301 it over, and go on with your day.  There's always room for hopes and dreams, but this whole 24 hours in a day thing can get in the way if you don't have help.

If you choose to redirect, I would definitely put it on the inner /toasters page.  It looks like you already have a good amount of links pointing to your home page, and not many to the inner page.

It's not so much that you have to have a blog, but you do have to have content on your website.

Awesome content that is link-able = Good for SEO

Also, don't make your blog a stand alone thing.  If a post is relevant to a page on your website, make sure to link over to it!

Outbound Links can be beneficial to pages if they are linking out to authoritative sites.  You have to analyze the number of outbound links, as well as the nature and quality of the links.  If they have 1 link going out, but it's to something completely unrelated, it was probably bought or an affiliate.  If they have 15 links going out, but they are citing additional high quality resources, then go after that link!

Reviews would be a great way to go, too.  You get the press, as well as a link.

Do you have a decent amount of links pointing at these internal pages currently?  If not, that would be the second step (after the menu problem).

A Second Alternative would be to create two different funnels.  One for customers in CA, and the other for the customers in UT.  You would then have to create landing pages specifically for each City, State in order to most efficiently utilize the system.  So, your current home page would be for brand searches, a CA landing page for those keywords and a UT landing page for those keywords.  This would cost you quite a chunk to build, unless you can do it in house, but you would have the benefit of your current domain authority.

Just as a reminder, there are many different pieces to the SEO puzzle, and my offered solution may hinder you in achieving the results an a very competitive market.  If you do have stiff competition, or anticipate any, than a new domain would be the best answer.

Either way, you are going to have to do some on-site SEO, like Ryan said.

Just like external links are little votes from outside sources of what is an important article on your website, internal links are your little voting system.  It's your way of telling Google/Bing what your page is about, and how important it is.  So, you are going to want more internal links pointing at your important (money making) pages than something like a disclaimer.

However, you have to put these internal links in perspective of your other pages.  If one of your pages has 2000 links, and then next highest is 20, you should look at balancing it out a little.

I think it could generate quite a few leads for you.  Even though there is quite the controversy over their ranking factors (I've read money is the main one a few times), I've talked to quite a few companies who said that they receive quite a few leads from it.

Here's how I would look at it:

• People outside of the SEO business are going to go there to find talent (because there isn't really any other place that offers rankings).
• People in the business aren't going to hire you unless they know you.  You are going to generate these leads by attending conferences, meetings and other social activities.

I would just let it ride, and see what comes.  You probably couldn't get your money back anyways, so just enjoy the marketing

How's your internal linking structure?

Do a site: domain.com check to see how Google perceives your internal linking.  Are your relevant pages on the first page of your site search?  If not, you may have an internal linking problem.

To check this I used a web based program to find all the outbound internal links of each page on my website (only 200 pages).  I then transferred this data into Excel where I sorted it by page.  From here I was able to see that my most important pages had 20 less links than the unimportant pages in front of it. I then went through my website adding additional links to my important pages, using the same keywords I was trying to rank them for, until they had the most internal links pointing at them.

Internal linking is typically a problem with websites that didn't plan ahead for SEO.

Personally, I would do subdirectories just because its easier to say.  "yoga (dot) DenverStudio (dot) com" instead of "denverstudio (dot) com forward slash yoga"

However, I've only read about the benefits of sub-directories within very large websites, and wouldn't know what the benefits of a smaller website would be with it.  Although, www. is technically a sub-directory, and most websites use it.

I'm at the 18,000 mark with mine (Actually much lower because of Title and Body being counted separately)

We have 10+ matches of each Make/Model of new vehicles, a finance page for each of those vehicles (going away soon), a test drive page for each of those vehicles (going away soon), request more info page for each of those vehicles (going away soon), as well as some other random duplicates.  It's been a process to convince the developer to do any of it...

There are many variables involved with a redesign.  The biggest concerns being:

1. Are you using the same url's from your previous pages?  If not, did you 301 redirect them into the new corresponding pages?
2. More importantly, did you make sure to check which pages had links pointing at them, and make sure those were reused or redirected?
3. Is the new redesign more efficient?  urls like domain.com/blue-widget instead of domain.com/reallylongstretchofcharacters
4. Have you submitted a new sitemap?  Did the sitemap change?
5. Is the website faster/slower?  Do a google speed check to see how its doing <80, you may need to make a couple minor changes.
6. Has Google went through and indexed your website?  How many pages have been indexed?
7. Do you have well developed content that is created with keywords in mind - without being spam?

Anyway, if you made sure to 301 redirect all of the old pages, or reused the urls, you should see a recovery.  I'd advise that you do a big link building push right away, though, in order to speed up the process, as well as be beneficial all around.

The best solution would be to work within your Content Management System to provide the best possible Title and H1 Tag for your customers, and then use an auto-generator to produce content.  I work with companies that have less than 1000 products, so I don't have a lot of experience with the auto-generators, but it will give you a slight benefit.

If I were dealing with that many DVD's I would make landing pages for each Genre, some for major actors/actresses and major directors, and go after those niches while I hammered out the issues with my content management system.