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Would handpicking the best links and contacting the sites to ask them to switch their links to your new website be an option? That way you can be more confident of not damaging the new site whilst trying to retain the best of the old sites backlink profile.
You might find some of the success stories posted on the Magento website interesting, Atterley Road, for example: http://www.magentocommerce.com/customer-success-stories/atterleyroad/
Hope that helps!
Greg
Personally, I would replicate your website structure, so in this case, go with by Country. I imagine you'll always get a cross-over which ever option you choose, but for simplicity now & in the future, this sounds like the easiest option!
Ahh I see, I think if I was in that position I would try and have the dodgy links removed where possible, if you think they might be doing more harm to the site. Remember just because you've not received a warning notice in Webmaster tools, it doesn't mean that these links aren't negatively affecting your sites rankings, it may just be that there's not enough to have triggered a warning message, or as mentioned before they've simply been devalued.
What was it that caused the popularity around this particular blog post?
Do you mean that the decline in overall site traffic is down to a decline in traffic to this specific post? Or that it just correlates with the decline?
Hi Novos Jay,
Do the shady backlinks you mentioned still exist and point to the site?
Have you used the disavow tool at all?
The reason I ask is that it might just simply be down to the fact that the links that were holding the rankings and traffic up previously, are now gradually being devalued through various algorithm updates, so in spite of your recent work to do the right thing, there's still going to be an overall negative effect.
Perhaps with a little more information about the types of links (the shady ones) and quantity/% of the total backlinks, I/others might be able to give you some more specific ideas on what's happened?
Thanks,
Greg
Hi Sara,
It looks like it's an update being pushed out over a number of weeks:
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-confirmed-16981.html
& http://www.seroundtable.com/mozcast-update-not-really-16995.html
Thanks,
Greg
Hi Carla, yes it's possible to merge Pages that represent the same thing and have similar names, so in this case it looks like it should be no problem at all...
What's causing the blog posts to rank above the product pages? Better information? More in-depth photos? Reviews? More content in general? If it's any of these, then think about you can apply these positives to the product pages so people start sharing and linking to those more.
Hi Demetrios,
As the other replies have said, no, it's definitely not typical. I would be a little concerned if this is a typical contract clause for this developer.
Thanks,
Greg
As others have said, definitely the new/tweaked version, it's a big improvement, nice work!
Greg
Hi Pete,
It sounds like you're new to SEO, so I would recommend reading the SEOMoz guides to get yourself started: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
In particular look at the 'Link Building Basics' & '5 Samples of Link Building Strategies' sections.
There's plenty of tools to help you analyze competitors links, and to help you find potential websites to get links from, but understanding what type of links you need & why is far more important.
Good luck!
Greg
If you're looking for SEO benefits, the obvious answer would be YouTube as there's a ton of potential traffic & visibility through their search alone, there's also the possibility of receiving benefits of video listings on Google SERPs with YouTube videos thanks to their ownership.
The only downside is that you may end up having a competitor advertising via advertisements on your video.
Another option is Vimeo, but they have very strict rules on commercial content, so it would depend what you're planning to upload, even with a pro account I think some people have had issues with commercial content.
Here's a few related Pro Q&A that may help you further:
Hope that helps in some way!
You can find that particular badge on the My Settings page of your Pro account:
https://www.seomoz.org/users/settings/
Hope that helps! 
Hi Kollin,
I've tried a number of the big outsourcing sites for copywriters, and the best I've found have come from People Per Hour, by quite a distance. Be realistic with your budget, check for samples/portfolio & you should have no troubles finding some good quality reliable writers.
Hope that helps!
Greg
Hi Carla, yes it's possible to merge Pages that represent the same thing and have similar names, so in this case it looks like it should be no problem at all...
Personally, I would replicate your website structure, so in this case, go with by Country. I imagine you'll always get a cross-over which ever option you choose, but for simplicity now & in the future, this sounds like the easiest option!
You might find some of the success stories posted on the Magento website interesting, Atterley Road, for example: http://www.magentocommerce.com/customer-success-stories/atterleyroad/
Hope that helps!
Greg
Hi Gareth,
It can take a couple of weeks, depending on how often Google visits your site to check for changes/updates. Try a quick cache search to see when they last visited:
Search 'cache:htttp://www.yourdomain.com/'
You could also check Webmaster Tools to see how often the spiders are crawling your site.
Hope that helps,
Greg
http://apiwiki.seomoz.org/w/page/25141119/Linkscape%20Schedule
"Our goal is to update the data at least every 4 weeks."
There's an update due on the 18th, also worth following SEOMoz on Twitter/Facebook as they tend to post an update once Linkscape has been updated.
Hi Nick,
Personally I would ignore those OSE link results from sites that are now parked domains, I would assume that Google has already cached the newly parked page & as a result the link is no longer active, or that Google will be caching the parked page pretty soon. It's probably just the case that the OSE data is out of sync, and you should see those old links drop off with the next linkscape update from SEOMoz.
I would definitely create better content and focus on building better links, you should definitely be aiming for quality over quantity with your new backlinks.
With regards to redirecting old URLs/creating new content on this site, have you received any webmaster tools notifications for the domain name in question?
Greg