Welcome to the Q&A Forum

1. To answer your first question, it does count all the links.  However, there is a massive diminishing return for anything over 2 links on one site.  So, having 1,000 links from one site would not be beneficial.  Instead, have them change it so you get one link on their top two pages, and none anywhere else.  You can use Opensiteexplorer.org and the top landing pages tab to find which two pages to request a link from.

2. A sub-domain is a separate site, and would therefor have its own ranking ecosystem.  Even a www.abc.edu is a sub-domain of abc.edu.  So, getting a link from a sub-domain would be as beneficial, everything else being equal, as getting it from the root domain.   Just make sure it's just a link or two, and not site wide like you suggested you currently have.

I'm also successful doing this.

I agree with Zora that by targeting the long tail you'll also optimize for the short tail.  To go further with targeting them all individually, that would depend on the competition, and the amount of variation of the keyword phrases.  Use the tools here on SEOMoz to find out the competitive level for those variants.  If it's pretty low, then one page would probably do, but if it's a tough search you would be better off creating more focused pages.

As for actually implementing a single page vs multiple pages, that would depend on context.  I would put "for sale," and "to purchase" on the same field, but clearance, to me at least, would be different.  If I were a consumer looking for a clearance product, I wouldn't want to land on just a regular page talking about buying the product.  I would want the page to match my search.

Depending on the tool you use, you should be able to see the density of phrases, as well as specific words.  However, keyword density shouldn't be your main focus.  You should consider the overall contextual relevance of your content, as well as the readability.  By focusing purely on density you could find yourself getting over-optimized.

If the variations are for cities, then absolutely!  If they are for just slight variations of the words like "car dealers," and "car dealerships," then I would stick to just one page.

So, if it is like your example, and each page is for an individual city, then I would definitely have separate pages for each.

This article talks about a website that received the Penguin penalty, and was able to start recovering by reducing the amount of site wide links: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2180722/Google-Penguin-1.1-Pushed-Out-As-Some-Sites-Report-Recovery

"A) Remove all of the crap sitewide links, weird anchors first, B) continue building good links and C) take advantage of press by pinging Danny Sullivan to try and get it featured on SEL to get in front of Google. Obviously A) was not going to be completely possible so I was going for "remove most of your crappy links."

So, I do believe that site wide links are bad, and that it would be better to limit the number of links.  Also, here is a reference about the diminishing returns on several links from one domain: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-link-based-spam-analysis-techniques

"The first link from a domain carries the first vote and getting additional links from one particular domain will continue to increase the total value from a domain, but only to a point. Eventually inbound links from the same domain will continue to experience diminishing returns. Going from 1 link to 3 links from a domain will have more of an effect than 101 links to 103 links."

I can definitely relate.  I work in the auto realm which is less trusted than the government according to a recent study.

Anyway, rather than just writing good content, go after viral content that people will share.  Maybe pull out an "Office Space" Esq campaign where you get even with office equipment.  Stapler vs hammer?  Monitor vs ground?  Projector vs office chair?  Printer vs a large amount of fireworks?

Then reach out to bloggers and humor sites to link back to your video.

Do you mean URL wise, or content wise?

Google isn't going to penalize you for offering a relevant page to your customers.  Just don't overdo it with your content.  i.e. don't do this:

Company X has tons of Widgets for sale!  In fact, we have the best price on our widgets for sale, and will beat any other company with widgets for sale!

For example, if you are a Jaguar car dealership you are going to have to reiterate that you are actually selling Jaguars, and not just talking about them.  So, you will need to additional contextual clues of phrases like "for sale" and "to purchase."  Otherwise you might just appear as an informational site, and not an e-commerce site.

"If I suggest that they make an H2 tag with SEO..."

H1's carry a little more weight than H2's, so I'd suggest using an H1 if you can.  Ian implied that, but he didn't outright say it

Also, the page you have listed has capital letters in it, which isn't ideal, but it's still fine.  However, the lower case version does 404.  So, any links that are sent to the lower case version will not result in you getting link juice to the page.  I'd suggest using a 301 redirect from the lower case version to the upper case one that you have listed.

lower case version:

http://lightsigns.com/uniko_manufacturing_limited.html

EGOL is absolutely correct.

If it had a good reason to be there, and you had a decent link profile, then you are probably safe.  Even so, I'd say try to limit them to relevant pages.

The real question, though, is how much traffic is driving?  If it is driving a lot of good traffic that converts, then you pretty much have to leave it there.

Badges aren't a great technique for link building anymore, and I'd suggest not using them.  If you do, though, make sure to utilize branding, and not any sort of keyword rich link.

SEMRush.com has a tool for that.  It will only show the terms that you rank in the top 20 for, but it is a good starting point. From there you can supplement the rest of the keywords with Webmaster Tools.

For cases where you are going from dynamic urls to keyword rich ones, it definitely pays off.

i.e. domain.com/112342 to domain.com/keywords

For cases where you are switching from underscores to dashes in the url, it might not pay off.  That would depend on how competitive the vertical is, and if your competitors are doing it properly.  In most cases this change would not be worth it, but if things are really intense on that search, and you can't seem to budge with your internal page, it might be considered.

1. It's all about how diverse the keywords are.  If the difference is just "pizza bag for sale" and "pizza bags for sale," then one page would be enough.  Try to group your keywords together into like groups.  The number of groups you have is the number of pages.

2. The best way to utilize these pages would be to use internal links from these posts back to your main/money pages.  As long as you are writing content about something, and not just a rehash of your money pages, then you should be perfectly fine.

I agree with William.  Offsite is the single most powerful aspect of your SEO, but it is just one part, and shouldn't be your sole focus.

I would prioritize like this initially:

1. Optimize current pages

2. Fix errors (404's, etc)

Then cycle through these:

3. Write New Content

4. Internal Link Building

5. External Link Building

So, you do the initial set up of your website, then go through the process of creating content, and building links.  How you do the second part is really up to you.

• You could write the content first, and then try find links.

or

• You could find content that needs to be wrote, write it, then contact those people with insufficient information to link to you.

Either way the content is the medium you need in order to be most efficient at link building.

As long as you stuck to just "Brand" or "Brand +Keyword" occasionally you would be fine.

It's tough to answer your question simply because I don't know your sites overall strategy.  What keywords are you targeting, and how are you targeting them currently type information.  This isn't something I'd ask you to do in a public setting like this forum

My personal suggestion would be to find a SEO Mentor.  Someone you can ask questions of to learn yourself, but not directly hire.  With the potential partnerships your site offers it would be reasonable for someone to take you under their wing in hopes of generating clients through you.

You want to properly group your content together.  So, if the section of your website is "Career Resources," and all of these categories are in that section, then I would use the first URL structure.  It makes internal linking between these pages seem more natural, since they are in the same "silo."

The other benefit of the first style is if you used breadcrumbs.  By having no unifying sub-directory, as in the second URL structure, you are unable to push all the authority to a single page, which then pushes authority back down into specific categories.  Well, you still could, but your URL structure would contradict your breadcrumbs, and it would probably be harder to program the website to naturally build breadcrumbs.

I had a Car Dealer Group in Virginia that gave itself a penalty because they had all of their websites (around 20) linked in the menu a couple times.  Every time I removed them they would come back to the top of the search engines, and they would drop right back down when they added them back.

If you are worried about the site wides you could just nofollow them.  I think Matt Cutts has a video on that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTjN9x-by-I