How long ago did you 301 your old domains?  301 redirects don't pass all your link juice, so you likely lost a bit in the transition (hence the PR0s).  I still see some pages indexed for windows7port.com too, so it could be taking Google a while to figure out what is going on with your site.

I really don't see anything that would stand out as a Panda red flag.  If you build strong links, I'm sure your traffic will improve.

How long ago was this, and over what time period are you looking at rankings?

Unless you were previously doing something deceptive, my guess is that the rankings drops have nothing to do with the rich snippets. Google's algo changes all the time, and rankings fluctuate all the time. It's easy to try to draw some kind of cause & effect relationship here, but likely the results have nothing to do with the rich snippet code (assuming you implemented it correctly).

Yeah, that is weird.  Rankings shift all the time though.  If it wasn't a named algo update, it could be just some change that Google made to the algo.

For example, if you have a lot of sitewide links (or blog links, or directory links) it could be that Google lowered the value of those for your type of query, relative to other types.  Or some of the sites that are linking to you could have been penalized for selling links, or seen a drop in pagerank, or got shifted into a different niche from your site, which lowered their value.

Whatever the case, unless you're being directly penalized for something, your best bet is to just build more links.  If your competitors have high value links that you don't, that could be a good starting point for regaining your ranking for your keyword and improving your site traffic overall.

I have not heard of personalized subject lines tripping spam filters (not saying it's not possible), but it is a good way to increase open rates.  A person's name is their favorite word, and they will respond well to it (unless you're being spammy).

Look through your inbox, and you'll see that practically every major company uses personalized subject lines, from Google & Facebook to your bank and phone company.  It's an effective tactic as long as you don't overuse it.

For location pages, Facebook users can give the location a star rating on their page (if you visit the page, you should see it on the right hand column). Facebook will also prompt users to rate places they've visited in the right sidebar. I'm not aware of anywhere you can go to view the reviews, it just appears as a star review at the top of the page.

301 is the right type of redirect, it just doesn't pass all the link value, unfortunately. Just give it some time and continue to build more links.

If the ranking dropped around a Penguin launch, then it could be a Penguin penalty. What does your anchor text profile look like? With the latest updates, anything over 30% is considered risky, although you might get a little more wiggle room since the keyword is your domain name.

It really depends on how much unnatural links we're talking about.  Hundreds?  Thousands?

If your current site doesn't have too many backlinks (aside from the spam), moving to a new domain could work.  Just check to see first whether your content is being scraped on other sites, as they may outrank your new site if so.  Not sure how canonicals would work in a Penguin situation.

The links from the press releases themselves don't carry a lot of link value, although PRWeb has higher domain authority so might give you a slightly bigger boost.

The key is to get your press release picked up by high authority news sites and blogs, which requires having a newsworthy or interesting angle.  If your piece is really newsworthy, it can be more effective to e-mail newspapers directly.  Most new sites have a "tips" section where readers can submit news.  I've had some success directly e-mailing local newspapers with tips.

You can try creating templates for your pages, and fill them in with details for each appointment type.  For example, something:

"Thank you for you interest in X, which is one of the best properties in Y.  To request more information about X, simply fill out the form below, and one of our representatives will contact you right away.  You can also find more information at Z"

Just add a simple template like that to your pages (obviously flesh it out more, include images, etc), and fill in the variables with specific details from each listing.  Your developer should be able to automate that for you.

There are no silver bullets in SEO, no guaranteed rankings.  The best you can do is create great content, build good links, and build your brand.  Try to be the site where Google would be wrong for not including you in the search results.

As for increasing traffic, besides just writing new content, try networking with other bloggers in your niche.  Do guest posts on their blogs.  Answer questions on forums, Q&As, and commets. Build relationships and good links, that will get you lots of traffic over the longterm.

This could be because your homepage is being penalized for over-optimization, but your contact page doesn't have any spammy links, hence it still ranks for "balloon" based on the strength of your domain. Likewise, if you over-optimized for "balloon" your site may be penalized for that keyword, but "balloons" is a separate keyword and you may still rank for it.

By search pages, I'm assuming these are automated pages being generated by users searching for things on your site?  Pages like these can be seen as 'thin content' and could lead to a penalty from Google.

Also, the question to ask yourself is why are these pages outranking your actual content?  Is it because you're linking to them more prominently?  Then you'll want to improve your internal linking.  Is it because they have a lot of content?  Then add more content to your main pages.  Is it because they target keywords that your main content doesn't?  Then create content around the keywords that people are searching for.

Nope.

If you see a steep, cliff-like dropoff that corresponds to an algo update (see: http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change) that's a good sign you've been hit.

Tools like OSE and Majestic SEO can analyze your link profile, and tell you if you are at risk of being hit by Penguin (>60% exact anchor text), but no tool can tell you if you've been hit for sure. With Penguin, you will generally receive a warning first in GWT.

Search Engine Land & SEO Roundtable are probably the 2 best news sources when it comes to keeping abreast of the latest algo updates:

• http://searchengineland.com/
• http://www.seroundtable.com/

5xx errors refer to server errors, and can be caused by serious issues with the way your server is configured.  I would definitely look investigate it further.

I'm not a Penguin-recovery expert, but it is possible to recover from the penalty. I would continue to reach out to the site owners who are linking to you and disavow any spammy links in webmaster tools.

You might also want to focus more on longer tail keywords like "balloons UK", "where to buy balloons", "balloons cheap" etc that probably convert better than a broad term like "balloon" anyway.

Sure, here's some pseudo-code:

• 

  position:relative; z-index:50">

  Jessica Simspon

  Extra 20% Off

Hope that clarifies things.

Do these sites generate any traffic for you? The SEO value is going to be minimal since the content is all duplicate, and could land you in trouble if Google has difficulty identifying the original source of the content, and ranking their content above yours in the SERPs.

Yes, no need to repeat the "RewriteEngine on" line.  It's also a good idea to include the canonical tag on the homepage, just in case.