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I would say it's like most things, if you can do it yourself then in the long term that might work best.. but then if you don't have time then it can pay to get some help.

Depending on how competetive your sector is, you may be able to pick up some good rankings with good quality content and strong on-page optimisation.

For your initial link building you should start by trying to identify the main sites in your area.. there will likely be some niche directory sites that you can submit to, and that should give you a kick start

One think to be wary of with link building is the types of sites where the links are built and also what happens if you cease working with the company - will these links that have been built stay in place or will they be removed?

It would be possible to have the text at the beginning of the html document but then display it further down using CSS, not java script.

I don't think there is a massive need to do something like this. In the past Google may not have indexed all of the content from a page, especially if the document size was very large. This position trick would ensure that the important SEO focused content would be indexed.. if you build your site properly and take into account the size, page load speed, make sure the code is clean etc then there should be no need to move the content around.

It sounds like you have set up your CDN slightly wrong.

After setting up a few like you have I realised that I was actually making a complete duplicate of the site rather than just the images or assets

I imagine you have your origin directory for the CDN in the public html folder.

Create a subdomain, set that as the origin.

Eg.. I'm working on this site at the moment: http://looksfishy.co.uk/

I have a subdomain called assets: http://assets.looksfishy.co.uk/

The cdn content: http://cdn.looksfishy.co.uk/

Files uploaded here:

http://assets.looksfishy.co.uk/species/holder/pike.jpg

Displayed here:

http://cdn.looksfishy.co.uk/species/holder/pike.jpg

Check the ip address on them.

It does make uploading images by ftp a bit of a faff, but does make your site better

There are quite a lot of posts about this.. OSE doesn't crawl every single page on the internet, so some links may not be listed/discovered. Even Google may not discover all of the links to your site.

Take the figures with a pinch of salt, try not to be so specific, but make sure that both figures are generally always increasing.

shouldn't you put a slash at the end of the directory in the robots file?

you can create the robots file through the Google Webmaster Tools

If you are going to go down the paid directory route then just check that you read all of the submission guidelines first.. each directory may have different rules on what they do/don't like.

I'm not a big fan of directory links and it's not something that I put a great deal of effort into.. there are lots of other ways to build links or encourage social sharing.

There are quite a few things on your site to look at.. I would work though all of the issues on here: http://gtmetrix.com/

I've got a range of sites that have them either in the content or outside, say fixed position so that they are always visible.

I havent noticed a big difference between the two, but I would say that I am often quite suprised by how few people actually use them. Most SEO you speak to will emphasise how important they are, but if you ask an average user, eg my Mum, she wouldn't know what half of them are or how to use them.

Much of the decision about where they should go will often be led be the design. Thats generally my approach, if they fit in and look visible then they go in the content, but if not they end up on the side. I do quite like the sideways approach as they are very clear, you can use other things to make them more visible, on a recent site I used a small gif to draw attention: http://thedoubleglazingfund.co.uk/

I looked at the site for a couple of minutes, but there are a few more on page tweaks that could be done, have a look here: http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.musicliveuk.com/WbGhsMXk

Also, your site is hosted in Germany, it would help if it was hosted in the UK.

I would stick to optimising the main site.com/zip/99999 type pages

As the other ones have no particularly unique content and the fact that they arent permanent pages (eg when no listings) means you will never be able build links into them

I think to get a better understanding you will need to provide more information.

Although you have a lot of pages that look the same, most websites use the same templates/layout across sections or areas. How unique is the content on these pages?

Has anything else on the site changed?

I would say it depends what your rankings are like and also how many pages you will need to redirect.

If you leave it as it is you should put some content on the www.mysite.com/process/ page to stop people encoutering the 404, it will make the site more useful

slow websites are rubbish.. even if it's not a ranking factor its pretty boring waiting for stuff to load!

without moving server you can still improve the code to make it faster:

http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.buy-research-chemicals.com/sOqqeQx0

I think thats it's kind of ironic how long it takes to get listed in DMOZ..

I know lots and lots of people who havent been able to get listed in there... but then you look at some of the sites that are in there and they are complete garbage!

Yeah. pretty much. It will also cause problems potentially with accessibility and how easy  it will be to make your site responsive so it can be viewed on different devices.

Each image will be an http request.. depending on the rest of your site these can add up and make your site slow

It will also cause problems in the future if you want to add/remove/update things

If your rankings are good then I would leave it as it is.. put it on the list of future plans and then change it if you do some major dev work that requires you to change urls

I don't think you would find a better company than Sonassi: https://www.sonassi.com/