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In my opinion there are no quick or easy ways to build links after Google's Penguin update.
A better question would be: "How to build the highest quality links?".
Also see:
http://moz.com/blog/google-algorithm-cheat-sheet-panda-penguin-hummingbird
http://www.hiswebmarketing.com/penguin-not-just-about-bad-links/
http://themoralconcept.net/pandalist.html (mainly about Panda, but also a few very interesting link related insights)
Google does "see" a lot more than just the alt text. To decide which keywords an image should rank for they take into account amongst other things:
In this video google shows how much they can "see" when it comes to images: http://youtu.be/t99BfDnBZcI
I do not think using some images from another website will hurt your SEO. Logo's on a 'our clients' page, news photography delivered through news agencies, icon sets and stock images are by definition used on more than one site. The fact that this form of 'duplicate content' is so omni present, proofs that Google cannot devaluate sites using it.
If you your goal is to rank high in image search for formica in different colours, you should make sure to get your own high res images. If this is not one of your primary SEO goals, you should not worry about using copied images.
My advice would be to focus on really good photography of the furniture you are building and do not worry to much about the thumbnails of formica samples.
PS: I agree with KeriMorget. You should get permission to use the photo's before using them on your site.
The fact that you tell Google bot to follow the links on these pages suggest that there is at least some link juice flowing from these pages.
If this assumption is true you should direct that link juice to pages that make you money. You could do that with a 301 redirect or by updating the pages with better (not broken) outgoing links.
If the assumption is not true and there is no or very little link juice flowing from these pages that no one ever visits, I would suggest to remove them all together.
My advice will be to only pay for directory links that drive enough traffic to your website directly to get a proper ROI.
If you pay for a directory link only to gain position in the SERPs you will most probably not get any ROI.
If you get the link from a directory Google does not like because it is known to be selling links it could even hurt your rankings.
In short: Paid directory links are not good for SEO.
There are a few things I would take into consideration before deciding to implement individual product pages for different formats of the same product.
Next to the arguments you mention for not using individual product pages for different formats of the same product, I see a few more:
There is however one strong argument for using multiple URLs for different formats of one product:
One last remark on ISBN numbers: Is the search volume on ISBN numbers high enough to target your SEO efforts on these?
Changing domain name will cause you to loose G+ 1's. However 301 redirects can tranfer the G+ 1's from one page to another.
Google is really smart in following 301 redirects. I have personal experience with G+ 1's being forwarded from an old URL to the new one. We made a big change in the structure of our website. We moved all language specific pages to a specific sub folder per language. We 301 redirected all the old pages and this caused all G+ 1's to show up for the new pages.
PS: cannot guarantee if this works with 301 redirects from one domain to the other.
PS: 301 redirect do NOT work to transfer facebook likes from one page to another
Domain authority, Page authority, Page mozrank, page moztrust, domain mozrank and domain moztrust all are indicators for offsite SEO. If you outperform your competitors on all of these and you do not outrank them in the SERPs, I would suggest you have a closer look at your on site SEO.
I would definitely recommend to keep your shopping cart out of the SERPs. I would not recommend to use nofollow to try to achieve this goal. In a recent video Google's head of webspam, Matt Cutts, explains why using nofollow only really works for external links. It is probably best to no-index shopping cart page your in robot.txt or in the HTML of the page itself.
My advice would be to focus on onsite SEO. Your home page and category pages seem to have very little or no keyword focused content. This can make it hard for Google to decide what these pages are about.
I would not recommend to use the anchor text of external links to create keyword focus, as this might be picked up as spam by penguin. However, I would recommend to use the anchor text of internal links pointing to the page you would like to rank for your main keyword.
I would not advice to stop bloggers from reviewing your products. The links you are getting out of that are a good way to go about link building.
PS: What is your 'main keyword'?
In my opinion there are no quick or easy ways to build links after Google's Penguin update.
A better question would be: "How to build the highest quality links?".
Also see:
http://moz.com/blog/google-algorithm-cheat-sheet-panda-penguin-hummingbird
http://www.hiswebmarketing.com/penguin-not-just-about-bad-links/
http://themoralconcept.net/pandalist.html (mainly about Panda, but also a few very interesting link related insights)
My advice will be to only pay for directory links that drive enough traffic to your website directly to get a proper ROI.
If you pay for a directory link only to gain position in the SERPs you will most probably not get any ROI.
If you get the link from a directory Google does not like because it is known to be selling links it could even hurt your rankings.
In short: Paid directory links are not good for SEO.
Changing domain name will cause you to loose G+ 1's. However 301 redirects can tranfer the G+ 1's from one page to another.
Google is really smart in following 301 redirects. I have personal experience with G+ 1's being forwarded from an old URL to the new one. We made a big change in the structure of our website. We moved all language specific pages to a specific sub folder per language. We 301 redirected all the old pages and this caused all G+ 1's to show up for the new pages.
PS: cannot guarantee if this works with 301 redirects from one domain to the other.
PS: 301 redirect do NOT work to transfer facebook likes from one page to another
Domain authority, Page authority, Page mozrank, page moztrust, domain mozrank and domain moztrust all are indicators for offsite SEO. If you outperform your competitors on all of these and you do not outrank them in the SERPs, I would suggest you have a closer look at your on site SEO.
My advice would be to focus on onsite SEO. Your home page and category pages seem to have very little or no keyword focused content. This can make it hard for Google to decide what these pages are about.
I would not recommend to use the anchor text of external links to create keyword focus, as this might be picked up as spam by penguin. However, I would recommend to use the anchor text of internal links pointing to the page you would like to rank for your main keyword.
I would not advice to stop bloggers from reviewing your products. The links you are getting out of that are a good way to go about link building.
PS: What is your 'main keyword'?
I would definitely recommend to keep your shopping cart out of the SERPs. I would not recommend to use nofollow to try to achieve this goal. In a recent video Google's head of webspam, Matt Cutts, explains why using nofollow only really works for external links. It is probably best to no-index shopping cart page your in robot.txt or in the HTML of the page itself.
There are a few things I would take into consideration before deciding to implement individual product pages for different formats of the same product.
Next to the arguments you mention for not using individual product pages for different formats of the same product, I see a few more:
There is however one strong argument for using multiple URLs for different formats of one product:
One last remark on ISBN numbers: Is the search volume on ISBN numbers high enough to target your SEO efforts on these?
The fact that you tell Google bot to follow the links on these pages suggest that there is at least some link juice flowing from these pages.
If this assumption is true you should direct that link juice to pages that make you money. You could do that with a 301 redirect or by updating the pages with better (not broken) outgoing links.
If the assumption is not true and there is no or very little link juice flowing from these pages that no one ever visits, I would suggest to remove them all together.