Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Joe.  There's certainly many aspects to how you want to go about generating and gathering back links, but by in large you are seeing the basics. Raven Tools plugs into Basecamp which can be handy and tries to include a broader cross section of online marketing data to further help plan your campaigns and website marketing.  Still, Open Site Explorer gives you all the raw data you need in managing your backlinks and really it's up to you how you want to approach it.  You'll likely come across some sites that appear spammy but a competitor has a link there.  You'll have to decide whether or not you want to try and acquire one there as well.  Other times, you'll get widget, content, and vertical creation ideas from viewing where others--or your own site--have successfully gotten backlinks.

If you're putting a conscious effort towards acquiring genuine links you will have very little worry about appearing unnatural in Google, and emphasizing a broad source of backlinks will expose you to different market segments and your target audience (see Laura Lippay's: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-8step-seo-strategy-step-1-define-your-target-audience-and-their-needs).

You might benefit form a visualization program as well like Visio, Mindjet, or Mindmiester to figure out some of the more intricate details. Also JoelHit's suggestion of using Apple.com as an example is a good one. Even though their main sitemap is smaller than what you're describing there are some subtle takeaways when looking at it as an example (http://www.apple.com/sitemap/).

1. All their top level categories are H2 tagged major categories of their site.
        a. "Apple Info" emphasizes the brand
        b. Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad all emphasize product sales
        c. iTunes, Downloads, Support emphasize sales and an ongoing customer relationship.
2. Precedence is given to the core aspects of their business via their sitemap.
        a. As outlined above, this is elegant and functional.

Also, you'll certainly want to back up the work you do with an HTML sitemap with XML sitemaps for large scale sites and as Richard suggested register them all with Google Webmaster.

Not to be overly obvious, but part of the answer to this question is that Google is using the metrics included in the XML feed (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472#4) Things like, video:title, video:description, video:tag, video:category, etc. In addition Google is combining those with the authority and content of your website.  Since your website is an authority on painting vs youtube (videos on anything and everything), there's likely an associated benefit to sending a user to website where they can find a collection of painting related material, not just videos.  That's a benefit to the user.

The benefit to you is that you're receiving qualified web traffic that has an interest in painting and has a better chance of becoming a customer in the future.  You may receive the same benefit from a user going to youtube and then being interested in your services, but they will certainly be another step away from that, either figuring out how to contact you via youtube or leaving youtube, going to your site, and then contacting you. For visitors outside of your area you could offer a starter kit or educational material for the DIY crowd.  If they like your style of organization and view you as an authority on how to make painting projects a success they could conceivably become customers of that sort of material.

Your link from your home page to your video uses the text, "Recycle Paint" which further contributes towards ranking for that term, and the text around your link lines up semantically: take away, old paint.  All the things Google would expect to see are present in your content and links. Basically, everything is organized and categorized very well on a website that is clearly an authority in regards to painting so it makes sense to be a beneficial ranking for both users and yourself. Well done!

Hi John.  I'm surprised this question isn't considered answered yet as the group seems to touch on all the bases. Here's a recap:

1. Richard Getz highlights the ability to add keywords via folders but cautions against adding too many folders (historically due to crawling issues).
2. David Lenehan cautions against too many folders causing duplicate content issues and ungainly website architecture.
3. Keri Morgret highlights the usefulness of folders in Analytics to help track specific portions of content.  The moz also discusses this in their excellent post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-powerful-analytics-tip-every-website-should-employ

"By segmenting out traffic to URLs that include /blog/ and those that include /ugc/ (YOUmoz), we can see when/where/how each section is rising or falling in traffic and contributing to the overall site's performance."

4. Fatwallet cautions against spam negating benefits in either and emphasizes linking as driving more value regardless.
5. Aaron Dicks recommends a CMS to give you strength and flexibility in organizing your content.
6. While Pashmina reminds us of the usefulness of redirects when curtailing duplicate content or sending lost link strength to a page in greater need.

And finally since you were asking about domain\folder\page vs domain\page you're not going to run into subdomain issues.  If a short folder category makes since in analytics it's definitely worth it.  Just look at the URL above... we're in the 'q' folder.  Hope that helps.

Hi Charles.  It sounds like you're on the right track with your keyword research and have taken to heart conversion data indicating the strengths of 3 & 4 word phrases.  If you do a precise match campaign on the very long phrase(s) you indicated, chances are you spend very little money in PPC. Further, you could create a landing page that is optimized for SEO as well as receiving PPC visits.  A lot of times there's a benefit in segmenting these two, but for a client with little funds there likely won't be enough resources to make multiple pages.  Still, you can acquire great tracking insights by carefully organizing your campaigns via the Google URL Builder: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578

The phrase you suggest above can become the title tag of your newly created page.

Since you're also dealing with a brick and mortar company you may have success using highly targeted, location specific Facebook ads.

Once you show your client conversion data they'll see the point in spending advertising money to make more sales.

Best of luck!