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Screaming Frog's a great one, a few Google Chrome plug-ins I would use are:
ReDirect Path -> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirect-path/aomidfkchockcldhbkggjokdkkebmdll
Check My Links -> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/check-my-links/ojkcdipcgfaekbeaelaapakgnjflfglf

If you use these in combination you will hopefully be able to find any errors in your new design.

Bob,

I would suggest creating great content and then using social media and email to spread the content like fire. A term that we stole from Jay Baer is content is fire and social media is the gasoline to that fire. For example why don't you add an important piece of content to your email signature or email it to a few influencers in the community. They might find it important and want to share it with everyone or even link to it.

Wisam,

Sounds like you have bigger issues than just a writer. Your company should be about creating an experience that people are excited to see and to work at.

I personally would just hire a writer and let them use their account. If they do leave, just have them update their Google+ profile to past instead of current contributor. By allowing them to connect to your website as a contributor it will give them authority as well as you. To you because you hired them and for them because they will have established content in a particular niche or area. Also remember in the hiring process you don't want to scare them away and not give them credit for the work, especially if they are active in the community/niche of the product that they work for.

A blog is just a list of articles and posts anyways, so it sounds like you're actually writing a blog anyways.

I agree that this is a great idea, when handled properly.

Oleg pretty much covered everything but this 2013 post from SEORoundTable.com covers this tactic as well: http://www.seroundtable.com/competitor-domain-name-17032.html

I agree with Oleg. In theroy it's a great tool, but we've seen issues with it as well. It sometimes doesn't always work and it somtimes says things are "broken" when in fact the listings are correct.

What we suggest is that you use it as  a "brain storming" tool for where you should build links to your local listings.

I would be careful. When you say "multiple websites" a few alarms go off in my head. You definitely don't want to get in trouble with duplicate content.

Also with multiple websites you might have a content issue. Why don't you put all of that content in one place and condense everything to one website.

I tend to agree with everyone's thoughts here. The idea of "starting generic and cheap" is a great thing to do. It's often best if you start off bidding on a "broad" perspective compared to a phrase match or exact match bidding philosophy, to get a better idea of how people search for you.

Be of the understanding that you will lose money the first 3 months, but just like anything this will allow you to research and better fine-tune your strategy.

Also PPCHero.com is a great blog to read for PPC tips, tricks, and overall advice.

Directories have definitely lost their value and when you ask our team, the best directories are of the local citation kind. Saying that, I would review Yext and Getlisted, for the best local citations to go after.

www.Yext.com www.GetListed.org

With questions like this, I tend to look at it not from Google's point of view but from a person's point of view. The spiders are getting smarter after all and Google always says to write content and create websites for people not the Spiders.

So to answer your questions, you might want to ask yourself these questions:

• How am I supposed to know that the links on my website are broken, because a site I was linking to is now down?
• How do I know that the domain I am now visiting was down for a month or even a year?
• How do I know said blog is being used for black hat purposes? It it has relevant content and helps me, that's all that matters.

My understanding is that Moz does not do this, but I could be wrong.

I do want to ask why you are worried about visitors. You should worry about conversions not visits.

There are no problems at all. Google+ Local's ranking factor is a bit different from Google organic rankings.

If you actually link building for local citations, you will also find a variety of link building opportunities for your organic ranking as well.

Masoko-T,

If you're sure that the penalty is from link building, you should have no problem. As mentioned above a refresh of the content, might be a good idea though.

I agree with Keri, can we get some more info.  You mentioned multiple locations? Are they connected areas, for example "North Carolina & South Carolina"

You say these arn't spam sites, my only concern would be how active the Authors are on Google+.

As Fedrico said, Google is looking at these profiles to be active so it's important that these profiles stay active and engaged with other G+ members.

I agree with ameli, SEO has not changed that much from the early days it's more that the tools have changed. Twitter has turned into Buffer and Hootsuite, G. Analytics has changed into some weird combination of Analytics, Raventools, and Moz, and so on.

It's all changing on an everyday basis but the basics still remain the same. Create an awesome website, engage with your customers online, and care.

I would use the keywords, imagine if you just had the title to go by what that would say to both the user and to Google's spiders.

I like Kevin's strategy but one thing I would stress is focus on the content being unique. You don't want to get penalized for duplicate content.

Awhile back cologne' company Burburry had their US page flagged for looking too much like the Europe page. So keep that in mind.

Nightwing(I like the name),

I definitely like the idea of using 301's as Tom said there is no point in losing the traffic that those pages are bringing in.

I agree with everyone said above.

In the terms of social media, I want to point out that Google+ has been known to make pages get crawled faster.