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Hi Tomek. Here's Moz's best practices: http://moz.com/learn/seo/url regarding URLs.  There's an upper limit in IE of 2048 or 2083 characters so that's one consideration, but the example you provide above seems fine.

If I was only giving 8 hours I'd spend it all on project mapping.  The work a site requires to be effective is way more than 8 hours but you could construct a broad project road map that would lead you consistently in the right direction for a year or more.

With the above context I'd be working on increasing domain authority and auditing site architecture to get the most bang for the buck.  Steve's suggestions are spot on.

You'll want your IT team to look at the referrer strings within your server logs identifying which ones are from Google. Just subtract out the ones that are from paid placement and you'll be on your way.

If your client has listed with every place that Moz says they get listings then it looks like your client has already gone the DIY route as mentioned on the Moz Local "How" page...

Still, as a designer you might be able to tie in something like photography services to make their local listings look all the better. Google has been emphasizing higher res especially: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038221?hl=en, "For best results, add photos that are at least 2,000 px wide and no wider than 2:1 ratio."

This might help your copywriter: have them incorporate neighborhoods from those other cities as well as testimonials from past customers based in those locations to help produce different content. Typically cities have their own separate ares: industrial part of town, hip, business sector, etc. that interact with service companies in different ways. Using your knowledge of how you've served people in those areas not only adds in a lot more familiarity to the page as well as localized referrals, but it should differentiate your content too.

P.S. The Moz.com developers recently wrote a blog post on duplication that really gets into the nitty gritty of why it's important to have pages that are canonical: https://moz.com/devblog/near-duplicate-detection/.  A bit technical, but excellent stuff if you have that bent.

The same domain with a folder is perfectly fine and often recommended. See: http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday. Cheers!

I agree with EGOL.  Typically a blog is used to enhance the content and freshness of the site where the blog is located and getting links to the blog enhances the site as a whole.  Sites that are exclusively blogging platforms (wordpress, blogspot, livejournal, blogger, etc.) typically make use of the USERNAME.domainname.com structure.  This is the flipside of the coin that EGOL outlined: these companies want to disassociate themselves from the content on those new domains.

If you feel like your theme site is going to be far enough removed from your company that it could stand on its own, there could be justification for the new domain.  It also might be easier to get linked to on design forums and resource guides if that site is its own entity. As you mentioned it would also give you flexibility in linking back to your company site.

To recap, consider how much effort the new domain can be given, who is going to own keeping it fresh, and check to see if it can stand on its own in your target market space.

Since you're hiring part-time you might want to make the work more piecemeal in relation to your site, i.e. hire for specific tasks that are aiming to achieve your overall goals. When you're hiring full-time you have more options as you can compete with agencies for their talent. (Sorry for mentioning that agency friends!)  As Sean and Ray mentioned above, finding people here at Moz with a proven track record helps as does some out reach via PM.

Correct. It's pretty much US focused, per their "how" page:
Q: Do you support listings in all countries?
A: Moz Local currently supports U.S. business listings only.

I don't know if they're planning on expanding though.

Page speed is a factor. But the video / moving banner thing has been a popular design feature of late--see https://www.paypal.com/home as an example, and wait a bit for the banner image to move--but even a company with bandwidth like Paypal doesn't make the animation overly long. They also achieve their look and feel prior to the animation. In one example, here's the video as a stand alone: https://www.paypalobjects.com/webstatic/en_US/mktg/wright/videos/OneTouchCity.mp4  It's only 10 seconds long and 2.1MB vs 21.2MB.  You might be able to use this example with your client as a company that is highly focused on quickly loading pages and caution against including an element that would cause the whole page to suffer as a result.  Also, making watching the video an event in Analytics would tell you how many people are really interested in seeing it, versus those visitors who are not.

Hi JoAnne. I have updated data in some of my campaigns so all seems to be in order. They do roll out in a staged fashion as they're processed so an instantaneous update isn't to be expected. If you have your older data or original crawl data in there it should be working and update accordingly. Just give it some more time and you'll likely see fresh data soon. Cheers!

Hi Joost. The reasoning behind noindexing category and tag pages is because they have a high tendency to show up as duplicate content--as you've just experienced. People like to keep them as part of their site due to user friendliness but often these pages on their own are a reshuffling of content and can be highly repetitive from a search engine perspective. Ideally you keep your top level categories that are unique within the index and noindex the rest.  Feel free to keep links within your site as followed.  Cheers!

In the long term, building the blog on your own site will help the most with branding, messaging, linking, and the site's overall strength. If, however, you get referenced and linked to from a well-established blog (not a new blog created on EXAMPLEnewblog.wordpress.org) then that would likely give you the near term boost you're looking for in both referrals and ranking increase.

Hi Peiken. Status Code 200 is actually a good thing.  That's the HTTP status code that just means the page is OK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#2xx_Success

Within the duplicate content checker on Moz.com you'll get a better view of the duplicate content issues by downloading the CSV using the "Download CSV" button.  Once that's open you'll have a better look into the pages with duplicate content.  My guess is that a root page for a thread or discussion is being compared to "duplicate" ones deeper in the thread.  Take a look at the CSV though and see if that begins to make more sense.  Cheers!

Hi Kristie.  Here's the part you'll need from the help doc:

Moz Local takes the time and hassle out of managing your listings across multiple sites and directories. When you submit a listing on Moz Local, it must match an existing Google Places or Facebook listing across all of the following attributes: Business Name, Address, Phone Number, and Website. Because you've already gone through the phone or postcard verification process with Google and/or Facebook, your Moz Local listings will be validated if they exactly match Google or Facebook.

Some of our partners—such as Infogroup and Best of the Web—may call or email to confirm your listing information is accurate, but no postcard or PIN entry is required.

It sounds like the account was created using Facebook as a match and you'll need to make sure that the Google Business listing you have matches that one exactly in the attributes listed above.

Hi Franci. You might consider using rel=canonical for category pages... There was a YouMoz post written about this topic a few years back that still has lots of applicable tips that you might consider: http://moz.com/ugc/guide-to-ecommerce-facets-filters-and-categories. Without knowing the details of how your site is using categorization, filtering, faceting, etc it's hard to be precise as to what you should do. That article should help you quite a bit though.

The latest update is scheduled for Thursday but you should have seen some updates via email regarding the crawl and completion of your campaign. Chances are you'll see further data once you've completed a Thursday week to week cycle currently. Cheers!

Hi Paulo. Typically allowing links to be followed is fine, but you might consider using noindex instead for pages that would be drawing search equity away from your target landing pages. Good candidates for noindex would be: my account, login, duplicate / close to duplicate category listings, and so on.  If you really want to limit your links, it's best to do so from design  and CRO point so that people are better using and converting within your site.

Another thing to consider is setting up canonical tags for your root product and category pages. Lindsay Wassell wrote a nice article discussing pros and cons of this technique in addition to others here: https://moz.com/blog/restricting-robot-access-for-improved-seo

Still another resource--while specifically for Magento--is here: https://moz.com/ugc/setting-up-magento-for-the-search-engines  You'll find a lot of parallels though between the settings discussed there and your own ecommerce implementation. Hopefully these help point you in the right direction. Best of luck!

I see. Here's an instructive search: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pop urls

The news aggregator popurls (always conjoined in their branding and links) ranks highly for the spaced search while the discussion on the RFC 2384 - POP URL Scheme is further down the list.

Even if you get more far afield in your searches https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pop urls#hl=en&q=face+and+book the conjoined, but well known site ranks higher.