This is spot-on correct.

Hi Rosemary, Dave here.

I like to think of it like our addressing system.  Because we all use the same system and format for our addresses on an envelope we don't need a code to tell us but as you know ... everyone displays their product information and other data differently on a page. Because of that the engines can have difficulty telling what bit of data is what.  Is "blue" the color of the product, the color of the screen or simply used on the page in a "Don't feel blue ... buy XYZ !"

Structured data, as Matt well-noted, is just an idea really of matching information with what it means.  Like saying "blue" = "product color".

Of course, that's all well-and-good but we can all build our own systems and many have been.  If we're all using different systems then nothing makes sense so folks got together and created Schema.org simply as a body that could help create a standard.  Like saying, "on an envelop you put the name first, then the address, then the city, then the state, then the zip code".  If we put things on the envelop differently things would get messy so Schema basically gives us the instruction on how to pass information across.  Schema isn't the idea or even the data, it's the instructions on how to tell Google what specific data means.

Clear as mud?

What you're referring to was discussed by John Mueller a while back and Andy's right ... it's devalued.

You can read a bit about what John said or listen to it yourself at https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-content-tabs-19534.html.

Cheers.

SEO aside ... how would you know how to answer the phone?

Depending on how you've coded everything you could try to setup a Custom Search under Configuration.  This will scan the HTML of the page so if the coding was consistent you could put something like href="http://www.yourdomain.com" as the string it's looking for and in the Custom tab on the resulting pages it'll show you all the ones that match the string.

That's the only way I can think of to get Screaming Frog to pull it but looking forward to anyone else's thoughts.

Always a good rule of thumb to follow Josh's advice here.  If Google gives you an opportunity to give them more info about your business or site ... drink the Kool-Aid and do it.

Provided that there are no links to http://clientname.com/products/ and obviously it's not part of the breadcrumbs you're fine though you may want to consider adding these pages to give you a point to all products (of a list of categories of products), etc.

But no ... the structure itself isn't inherently going to cause problems.

Personally I'd start with a link analysis to answer the question, "Are they stronger than you?"  You'll want to look at their sheer volume as well as the quality and when they were built to get a feel for their current activities. After that I'd obviously look at your content.  Does your content comply with current SEO best practices in it's type and formatting and down to the technological questions such as "Do you have clean and fast code?" and "Are you formatting properly?"

If you're looking for assistance in the process Moz actually offers a list of their recommended SEOs.  It's a good list.   You'll find it at https://moz.com/community/recommended.

_When is the right time to just start over with a new domain name? _ Hindsight being the 20/20 that it is it's very hard to know until it's too late.  I always suggest to try to work with your current site as it's generally easier to repair that to replace (generally ... not always).

The variable at play now is that after two years your site may have recovered BUT not be ranking as the competition may well have upped their game or other algorithmic factors may be at play.  I've seen that a number of times where sites don't bounce back not because they didn't do the right thing but because while they were busy repairing their issues, their competition was busy moving their sites forward.

To know what to do I'd start with a round of competitor analysis.  Don't compare your rankings with where they were but rather compare what your site's strength is relative to the people ranking today. And of course, try not to think of your content or links as better simply because you like it - try to look at it all as a bot would.

They will recrawl it but equally important is that traffic following links to your site will get where they're supposed to go. A good rule of thumb with search engines as well as humans ... it's never too late to do the right thing.

(Of course, with a Penguin penalty you might go bankrupt before they get around to rewarding you for good behavior)

Hope that helps !