What are the perceived negative effects, if any, of doing a silo structure?

I spent some time using a silo plugin for a wordpress site early on, and also spent some time with a theme that had a silo format, but ended up switching over to a flat site architecture, I just did like the theme for wordpress that used silo, and the plugin seemed like junk.

I'd love to take a look at a well run silo site if you know of one.

I really enjoy topics like this, thanks for asking such a great question.

Thank you for clarifying and sharing your knowledge.  I think it is easy to get stuck in a link building rut with little variance when working on local, so this will very much help.

I agree with you Alan in respect to the need for geo modifiers.  I was just thinking of my own individual brick and mortar business.  Making me extremely selfish in my questioning.

Do you see any value in linkbuilding for a local brick and mortar business without the geo modifier in the anchor text?

Utilikilts.com

While most people currently search with the geo modifier, my belief is that many will no longer use this modifier in the future as they become comfortable with the understanding that searches know where they are located automatically.

I think it is important to be ahead of the curve and work on terms that may not be readily searched for, and that includes simply typing in the "keyword" only into google and looking at the local results.

For that reason I would love to know if backlinking for the "keyword" only will have an effect without the geomodifier to influence the local results.

I was under the assumption that it made no difference if the site was set for local under webmaster tools or not, and Google would figure it out.

Is this actually of benefit in local search?

As far as the local search volume goes, I am unsure how that matters, since their are two sets of results with and without the geo modifier.  So how can backlinking influence the one without the geo modifier?

If anyone here is familiar with local SEO, you may have noticed that there are different local results for:

"city + Keyword" and just the "keyword".

When building links will you end up targeting both with a geo modifier in the link, or is it beneficial to build links without the geo modifer for the keyword?

Trying to get Google to undo a negative could never be a fun proposition I assume.

Without getting into the good vs. bad conversation, my mind wanders into the necessity of giving anything away for clients to give you a review.

If a company has a strong client base, it could be as simple as asking for a review via:

• Face to Face Meetings
• Social Media
• Email
• Mailers

With a properly worded request, and an easy to follow link, many clients will give you the review without any incentive.  Simple loyalty goes a long way.

While I am sure more people might fill reviews out for a prize/gift, but is that the way a business receives accurate, non-biased reviews?

Reviews are great for a number of reasons, including SEO and placement in Google Places pages, but they also serve a different purpose.

When a person gives an honest review, positive or negative, that information can be passed on to the business owner to continue what is successful or look at the needed changes to get back on track.  This actually happened with my business recently, as there ended up with a few complaints about my staff.  I had to look long and hard for solutions to tighten up the ship, and luckily those truthful reviews didn't get lost in a bunch of ego stroking fake reviews.

Honesty is always the best policy, and false or inaccurate reviews will be found out at some point.

While I have read that the importance of a business name matching the domain name exactly could be deemed extremely beneficial, having the city name in with the appropriate keyword, and proper optimization should make for an extremely strong listing.

If you are starting from scratch, I think it is extremely beneficial to have a keyword rich domain that includes the name of the city.  This of course depends what other words you have go with the rest of the domain name of course.

I do not believe you will win with a keyword rich domain name alone, but again...it's a fantastic place to begin.

Lightbox should have zero negative impact in regards to SEO, providing you have effectively labeled your photos.  I love the look of it, and although has a similar effect to flash, they have nothing to do with eachother in regards to negative SEO.

I am fairly confident that Google doesn't go around slapping websites with linkfarm status unless they are certain that they are up to no good.

I would recommend doing proper navigation with appropriate subdivisions.

If you did a website about Animals, which is obviously a huge subject, you would start with:

Animals - Homepage

Aardvark - Antelope - Bears - Birds and so on

You would then follow up with the proper subdivisions sorted by species of said animal, or by color, or whatever.  There is a chance that on each subpage you may choose to not have subdivisions in the main navigation, but actually in the body of the main text for that animal.

If things are done properly how could this even be considered a link farm?

You do mention 100 links per page, so if it is appropriate that is fine, but I do not know of many subjects that are worthy of 100 links or more per page.