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The tools I typically use are Semrush.com and kwfinder.com.  Kwfinder.com offers 5 free searches per day, and gives you 50 relevant searches for each inquiry you put in.  Could be a good solution for your research.

Those are good ways to add variant keyword links to those pages.

A) Is it Women's Widgets used naturally in the posts?  If you are going to use the phrase you might as well link with it.  While you don't want every link on the site to have the same exact anchor text, the threshold for onsite is very, very high.  It's when you get to offsite links where things get messy quickly.

B) I would not link with the long tail.  This would be like claiming that you are the best golfer in the room, but then telling everyone that this other person is the best golfer in the roof.  Doing it once probably wouldn't be a big deal, but I always aim to keep on the safe side of things.

C) I wouldn't use your company name as the link, but you could use words in close proximity.  This could help keep things well rounded.

Another thing to consider is the overall frequency.  If you have 5 pages using the exact match link, assuming it can be used naturally, then it isn't a big deal.  If you have 20+, then I would definitely consider keeping things well rounded with proximity links.

I would suggest migrating the whole site, and 301 redirecting all the http pages to the https versions.  Without a proper redirect you risk the possibility of losing any link juice that would be directed at that page.  A canonical should technically cover that, but the hard 301 leaves no room for robot interpretation.

Also, why leave the http version when you have a secure version available?

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.

How closely related were the long tail pages to the head terms?  Was it like

blue widget

vs

blue widget prices

Are they sites that you built, or are you looking for a solution for Dealer.com and other automotive website vendors?

Having the same registration, in of itself, will not hurt SEO.  Where you may run into problems is if you are doing blackhat SEO, or doing things against Google's terms of service.  If that happens you could run the risk of your "neighborhood" getting similar punishment/treatment.  If you are doing everything correctly, or mostly correctly, then there should be no problems.

I haven't reviewed all of the comments on this post thoroughly, but I thought it was imperative to mention this.  If you are paying someone to review your product they are required by law, at least in the U.S., to acknowledge that.  Not doing so would be violating FTC guidelines, and bring on potential fines.

Source:

http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus71-ftcs-revised-endorsement-guideswhat-people-are-asking

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.

I also agree with Dave.  My company works with dozens of local businesses, and creating targeted landing pages is part of the strategy for most of them.  The difference between original content and keyword swapped content is often the difference between first page rankings, and 3rd+ page rankings.  Take the time to write in depth content for each of these pages.  You will want it long enough to rank for your main terms, and any variations that may exist.

Any chance you've been taking screen shots of this SERP to keep track of the changes?

I'm also successful doing this.

If you have the time I would highly suggest training your own writers to work as contractors.  It took me about 8 hours to train two writers, who are free to right for anyone they choose, and I get optimized content for .05 a word.  It also gives me the chance to actually sit down with them to discuss improvements.

I use two ex journalists for mine, but you could easily find someone pursuing a writing degree that would be interested in doing it as a side gig.

As for the original question, I wouldn't pay that.

Nofollow links still pass some authority, but no where near an in body link.  I commented on blogs like Website Magazine, and a few other real high authority blogs.  I just used my actual name, and didn't try optimize the link.

Ranking for web design is definitely a little different because of inflated numbers.  You should also keep in my that link analysis tools, like Moz and Majestic, don't find every link on the internet, and can take a while to discover some links.  Always take these stats with a grain of salt, and focus on getting quality links.

If you are working local you can always try identify links pages in your area.  I was able to get one from a couple historical societies and a mall just by asking for it.  You can also have a link in your signature on forums, but try to limit these since too many would look spammy.

That's a tough one since you work in house for an eCommerce website.  The reason why it is so beneficial for an agency is that anything I learn that really works can help build a reputation, which leads to more customers.  You won't get that from the conference.

You will definitely learn something from the presenters at Search Love.  All of the speakers are by invite online, and they are the best of the best.  There are also a couple of ecommerce experts speaking.  You will get some of the latest information on product pages, and A/B testing at the conference.

Internet Marketing Ninjas have bought a few forums in the past years, and kept them going. Webmasterworld.com is the most prevalent of these.  That was the forum that lead to the creation of Pubcon.

There were two initial reasons for the 100 link "rule."

1. Google's crawl budget was limited

2. Each page has a given amount of authority it is able to pass on to internal pages.  Less links means more authority for each link.

The first part is out the door now.  Google has plenty of crawl budget for most sites, and will give plenty if your huge website has enough authority.

So, the problem that you need to evaluate is if you are spreading your authority too thinly across all of these pages.  Would you be better off limiting it to certain categories, or are you going to be a rock star at link building, and don't need to care?

After you consider that you will want to consider your users.  Are you giving them too many options, and causing choice overload?  Test different options, and see what performs better.  There is a Ted talk about Choice Overload that used jelly as an example. One test had over 20 jellies to choose from, and one had around 6.  At the end of the day people were more likely to actually buy the jelly when there were only 6 options.  What the study determined was that having too many choices overwhelmed shoppers, and led to less sales.

Moral of the story, don't give people too much jelly.

What service do you provide?  Are you a SEO?  Would you be interested in having other agencies out source to you?

Just being frank, the real value of these conferences are in the networking.  You can buy the presentation video later, but you can't buy the experience.  Do you have a group of people that you can email and get suggestions from?  How many people do you know in the industry?  Are they blogging?  You can learn a lot, and meet a lot of people going to these things.

So, yes I believe that Search Love would absolutely be worth going.  Just be ready to step up to the opportunity, and make the most out of it.  Ask questions of the presenters, meet people and engage in the social gatherings.

Matt Cutts has talked about the diminishing returns of multiple links from a single domain.  His video says that anything after 2 gets to be pretty minimal.

The other thing you need to consider is that site wide footer links aren't as strong as an in body link.  If you are doing your part to get legitimate in body links, through interviews or contributing to a blog in some way, then you are going to get farther than these site wides.

I ran into a similar problem with one of my sites.  I was up against a dozen web designers who have built hundreds of websites, but I was able to outrank them with just a handful of nofollow links.  They weren't great at on site SEO, which helped, but I knew that a lot of these links weren't worth much.