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How would you properly enter hours into the Moz Local spreadsheet for a business that sometimes is closed for lunch, therefore they're open for a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the afternoon.
I've attempted below at what I thought it could be:
2:9:00:AM:12:00:PM:3:00PM:6:00PM,3:7:30:AM:10:30:AM:3:00PM:6:00PM,4:9:00:AM:12:00:PM:3:00PM:6:00PM,5:7:30:AM:10:30:AM:3:00PM:6:00PM,6:3:00PM:6:00PM
If the transcripts were first uploaded by you and they just "scraped" them, then I wouldn't worry about it in the long run. But if they are doing the transcripts themselves and you don't have it anywhere, then that might be a cause for concern.
You should definitely link to the specific landing page for each location if you have separate Google+ pages for them.
It's my understanding that you treat each subdomain as a unique site. So each subdomain should have its own unique XML sitemap and robots.txt file, as well as submitted separately to Google Webmaster Tools. But to answer your inter-linking question, I would avoid including the other domain URLs in those files (XML and Robots). Only include the URLs for that particular domain and/or subdomain. With that being said however, I would inter-link them on the actual site somewhere. Maybe in the HTML sitemap, navigation, footer, or even naturally throughout your body content where appropriate as well.
If all you want to do is measure data from the alternate domain name from your print campaign, try creating a unique landing page and have the domain forward to that URL, instead of the home page. This would also help in tracking traffic in Analytics. But if you want the alternate domain name to show up in SERPs like you suggest near the end, then all of the things you suggested will definitely do that. I guess it just depends on what you want out of the domain name.
Everything is coming up fine for me. Though sometimes Google will change or truncate your title tag depending on what keywords or phrases the user searched with. What title tag are you seeing for that particular term?
It's always been my understanding that you default to the canonical version. Now if you change your canonical version, you would have to update your disavow file urls to the new canonical version.
If you're in WordPress, changing your permalink structure will automatically transfer the pages for you with the new URLs. Then all you would need to do is add the 301 redirects for the old URLs to the new ones. So technically you would not have to create new pages, you would just need a list of the old URLs to input into your htaccess file for the redirects. Hopefully that helps to see if it's worth it for you.
Depending on your goals for the three sites you may not have to "hide" it at all. Now if you have a mini link farm thing going on then you would definitely want to hide the whois info, as well as get hosting that can give you a different c-block ip address for each domain, try looking at http://seohosting.com/. But if the intention is "harmless" and you don't plan just using them as a way to link to each other (even though they still might in a whitehat way) you don't have to hide the info. Take opensiteexplorer.org and moz.com for example, it's clear that moz owns that site, but they don't feel the need to hide it because each site serves its own purpose.
If there is no message in WMT then you can bet it was an algorithm penalty. Start with Panda for content and Penguin for links. You may have accidentally triggered something.
Instead of blocking it via robots.txt try blocking via a meta robots tag like below:
This way Google (and others) won't index the page but they will follow all of the links.
Everything is coming up fine for me. Though sometimes Google will change or truncate your title tag depending on what keywords or phrases the user searched with. What title tag are you seeing for that particular term?
You want to stay away from directories that have little to no screening process. If it's easy to get, it's not worth it. Make sure to do an "SEO background check" on them as well by checking their backlinks in open site explorer. See if they have good quality links, many linking c-blocks, DA, PA, PR, etc..
Here are some great directories, but you have to pay:
Yahoo Directory ($299/Year)
Best of the Web ($299/One-time)
Business.com ($299/Year)
JoeAnt ($39/One-time)
SEOmoz also has a list of good directories here http://www.seomoz.org/directories
I think you have the right ideas in mind. I would start with the link building outside of your site. Then after awhile if that doesn't work I would do a blog post on them or something. I wouldn't link to them from the home page.
If it's a resource that you pride yourself in creating then yes. Copyrighting this would only run you about $30 so it is always worth it in the long run. It's always better to protect yourself. Or at the very least, put the copyright symbol at the bottom like you mentioned, just to scare off anyone from ripping you off.
Moz has an affiliate program here: http://moz.com/partnersBut if you're looking to sell a lot of different products through affiliate marketing try visiting Clickbank.com or CJ.com
How would you properly enter hours into the Moz Local spreadsheet for a business that sometimes is closed for lunch, therefore they're open for a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the afternoon.
I've attempted below at what I thought it could be:
2:9:00:AM:12:00:PM:3:00PM:6:00PM,3:7:30:AM:10:30:AM:3:00PM:6:00PM,4:9:00:AM:12:00:PM:3:00PM:6:00PM,5:7:30:AM:10:30:AM:3:00PM:6:00PM,6:3:00PM:6:00PM
Breadcrumbs are more for UX like you say, however they do help search engines crawl your site's pages better as well, especially if they're not in main navigation.
I think the canonical issue is the more important one rather than what links appear in the breadcrumb. I would select which page you would prefer to rank, then put that url in the canonical tag of the other page.
So the canonical would be for Google, and the breadcrumb would be for user.
Also, who knows, maybe having the different breadcrumb is better for the user, because they came from a different path to that product in the first place. But Google would count both pages as the same.
Try SpyFu --> http://www.spyfu.com/
You put in your competitors url and they tell you all of their profitable keywords.
To follow up with what Steve said, PR doesn't necessarily determine how you rank. PageRank is determined by how high the PageRank of the other sites that link to you. So having 20 PR3 sites linking to you won't give you too high of a PR, mostly likely will make it PR3 as well. Ranking higher has more to do with overall metrics, like Domain Authority, Page Authority, Domain Links, Page Links, Social Signals, Etc..
Here is a great post that explains it better: