As far as "search-engine-spider-stoppers" does this also go for "%" in on-page copy?

When an AdWords support rep says something that contradicts the AdWords Help documentation, it's hard to know what to believe. I usually point the contradiction out to the AdWords rep, and they will sometimes do more research to verify for me.

This sounds like expanded broad match to me: http://www.wordstream.com/expanded-broad-match

AFAIK, there is no way to "sneakily" no-follow a link. You no-follow a link by adding rel=nofollow. If rel=nofollow isn't there, the link is followed.

Yes, a new website should claim its brand name on social media immediately, whether or not that improves its rankings. If you don't get your @companyname, someone else will.

You might not get the New York Times to link to an escort site, but that doesn't mean you can't get valuable inbound links. You have two huge advantages: excitement and controversy. The business is about sex. That means you have tons of content creation opportunities. People are interested in sex, talk about sex, write about sex, share content about sex, etc. Same for prostitution. It's a hot political and cultural issue. Sex work clients aren't likely to disclose their pastime on Facebook, but other people might be amused and titillated by stuff on these subjects.

Does your client network with sex workers and sex work advocates online? There are tons of sex-positive bloggers out there. If your client creates compelling, valuable content about sex work, those people might link to it, comment on it, respond to it, etc. Alt weeklies sometimes have columns on these subjects, like the ones by Mistress Matisse and Dan Savage. A lot of these folks are active on Twitter.

Depending on how much risk your client is comfortable with, they could also use HARO and offer expert perspective on the escort biz.

We do what Gerd describes in his comment -- a short description at the top of the page, then the products in the middle of the page, and then additional description at the bottom of the page. Total word count ~500.

Meta-Keywords and Meta-Description no longer contribute to ranking, I thought -- and optimizing Meta-Description is less and less important as Google becomes more likely to use whatever the heck they want for the snippet.

160 well written words are certainly enough for Google to understand what the page is about. Adding more words could help bring in more long-tail, as you include variations on the keyword, modifiers, etc. But you don't want so many words that conversion suffers.

I find that for most keyword phrases, more than twice in ~150 words feels stuffed and unnatural.

Do you have the resources to create unique content for all those pages? Because adding 500,000 pages of duplicate content will absolutely damage your site.

I don't think there's any maximum limit, unless the page gets so long that load time is impacted. If we're talking thousands of words, you might want to paginate.

I also don't believe there's a hard-and-fast minimum, but you need enough text for Google to understand what the page is about, and to make sure it's distinct from other pages on your site and doesn't get interpreted as a duplicate page. A few hundred words is a nice target, because that gives you room to repeat your keyword(s) a few times and include a few variations and some longtail bait, but 100 words might be enough.

Do you have the resources to create unique content for all those pages? Because adding 500,000 pages of duplicate content will absolutely damage your site.

How competitive are the keywords you're targeting? If you're trying to get onto page 1 or 2 for something like "women's shoes," that could take years. On the other hand, if you're targeting something like "cthulhu pajamas," you could end up on page 1 right off the bat.

Remembering that rank is a combination of relevancy and authority. It's pretty easy to make a site that's relevant for a keyword, as long as you know the basics of KW density, title tags, img alt tags, and so on. At that point, Google will try to determine how authoritative, trustworthy, and popular you are. Is anyone linking to your site?

The main concern is whether or not the spider can read the HTML. If something's broken, the spider may get confused. It's a good idea to check the site's W3C compliance and correct what you can, but I'm certain the search engines don't ding you if you're not perfectly compliant.

The real problems with bad HTML are load times and cross-browser compatibility. (Although, frankly, great HTML can have cross-browser compatibility issues, since IE still refuses to get with the program.) Make sure the site looks good in all major browsers.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the obvious: The Google AdWords keyword tool assesses competition based on AdWords, not based on SEO. A high competition keyword is a keyword that many advertisers are bidding on. It's common practice in AdWords to bid on low-volume high-conversion keywords. Those can actually get you the best ROI sometimes.

I can't see why they wouldn't.

They should count for Analytics purposes because obviously that person was looking for the company in question, even if they couldn't spell or hit an incorrect key on the keyboard.

Also, Google is returning 7-result pages for queries like "ammazon," "jc peeny," etc. so obviously it knows what the misspellings mean.

Is your company a local one, like a pizza place or a shoe-repair business? If so, then people who are in your industry but not in your city are not actually competitors. If you're both national companies in direct competition, though, I find it hard to believe they'd accept your guest post.

The category pages definitely don't look clean and professional right now, and that will impact conversion rate. You have enough copy on the category pages to establish relevancy, so I would be extremely surprised if your rankings went down after you stopped showing the product descriptions on the category pages.

If you're hesitant, would it be possible to test it both ways? Choose a couple of categories and pull the product descriptions off them. See what happens to their rankings and traffic.

Set realistic expectations for your client. It's fine if that's how they want the site to work, but explain to them that search engines primarily read text; without much text, the search engines will have a harder time figuring out what the page is about. Also explain their options: They can have more text on each page without compromising the design, by using tabs, collapsible divs, etc. Figure out whether or not visitors want more text on each page. If you can make that case, they might be persuaded.

Meanwhile, focus on the things you can control, like title tags and img alts. Then focus on linkbuilding. That should be relatively easy -- fashion is popular and has great potential for compelling content. At least you're not working for a plunger manufacturer.

If they have videos, they could add transcripts in a collapsible div. That also address accessibility and general user experience. After all, if someone is sneaking a peek at the site at work, they probably don't want to have the sound on for videos.

I think you are being blinded by your bias, yes.

If you, the web designer, insert a link to your site into the footer of all the sites you design, that is not an editorial link. It's not a link that the site owner created of their own volition because they think it's valuable content. In fact, if a company is hiring an outside web designer, they might have no idea how to remove the link from their footer. They might not even notice it.

The search engines know all this, and it's why they don't like footer links. They are well aware that web designers, Wordpress theme developers, and so on have been using this technique for years.