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I have good results in the past when I optimize for the plural term - it usually picks up the non-plural term as well.

But I do agree with tomcraig86 that you should go after the terms that highest search traffic.  If both the plural and non-plural versions are similar in traffic stats then I would say go with the plural term since the non-plural term is automatically included.

I agree with all of the others especially about testing on a few keywords that are not mission critical.

My experience and past sites I have optimized are not affected much by H2 tags.  The main factors that really made a difference were the title tags, H1, page interlinking using anchor text (not over-optimized - vary it).

There are 200+ (from the last info I heard) ranking factors. Obviously having all of these work together in synergy is best.

The good news you already have domain authority etc. I would think that it definitely won't hurt and may even help slightly.

Yes you are correct it is anathema.  However it was the best use of our time with the resources we had when we were getting started.

We have gone back and optimized our site. But we knew we could more/quicker results with the path we took.  Also, early on we started with a series of landing pages rather than a website - tested the concept (incl. PPC) and validated our hypothesis before we built a website.

But that definitely has me thinking that I should also go back and give PPC another try now that there is a website backing it up.

And finally another reason was that all of our clients were teachers.  They were looking for freebies but we found that many would not complete reg - no matter what method we used. They weren't sure of who we were - brand new to the education vertical - so even if we did rank on Google I don't think it would have mattered much at that time (now it does).

So partnering with a 20+ year education industry veterans gave us the street cred. with the teachers.  Also, teachers hearing from influencers in education were more likely to sign up rather than going through a Google search or PPC.

The first 6 - 9 months were really about the word or mouth credibility that came from partners and influencers that got us the biggest return.

Hey Strathcom - That is strange as they did stop with texts and phone calls because of folks gaming the system.  The only way to do it was through a postcard.

But if you have the phone option do it to a direct line or your cellphone just for the verification process.  I did this previously and it didn't pull the phone number through to the listing.

Just did a little more research - Apparently one reason they do offer phone verification is if it was already listed and needs to verified only or you previously verified by phone.

No follow keeps the link juice on your site. Do follow passes it to their site.  It all depends.  Do you want to pass page rank authority to their site?  Some find that appealing and will get ad space just for that reason alone.  Others won't care as they will just be looking for a good solid site to get the word out.

So if you site has great traffic and is providing value for someone in their niche market I say go with no follow as your site will do better in the rankings by keeping the page authority within your site.

Totally agreed - we did go back and optimize once our website went live.

In that I case I would guess that they are PR sculpting as Google would not be able to discern if they are passing links through a paid service.

Also, if the site is relevant to a specific niche and not just a link farm I would further believe that Google would not penalize the site.

Its kind of like SEOMoz - after a certain amount of points you get a do follow on one of your links.  I don't think Google would be able to discern if SEOmoz was asking for people to pay or not.