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H1 is a tag search engines use to help identify what your page is about. Using "overview" for all H1 would imply that your site is about "overview." (Ok, I'm dumbing it down a little bit, but I'm doing it to make a point.)

The more specific an H1 tag can be to the content of a page, the better. It's easier for search engines to understand your page and it's a better user experience (how valuable is "overview" all over the place?).

If there's that many redirects, I'd agree something is off - which is a bigger concern.

Oh, good question! I've noticed more and more people being (professional) transparent about their desire for links and giving more specific - polite - suggestions for where to link or what content may be good for it.

You mention your reports - when you send them out, do you include ways to link? Are there embedded links? If so, do they work consistently (random question, I know - I've run into issues where the hyperlink doesn't work so it's wasted). 
What about adding a section, like: For additional information and resources, please share these links: widgets: URL; exec info: URL, etc.

I think a big part of it is approach. (I'm sure you know better than to point out that a site is linking to a competitor and complain to the site/author about that.) A follow-up message, like: great post, glad to see the report is of value, here's some additional resources that could be valuable to your audience (link, link) if you'd be interested in updating your post.

I've noticed more people approaching me with specifics like that, and they do better than those who are just trolling (literally will email me just asking for any links from my site to their content). Not that I think you'd troll - like I said, it's about approach.

I also agree with Ade - it's not about a boost so much as it is about a better user experience and clarification to the search engines of where to focus.

I feel like there could be conflicting answers on this one Social sharing has been such a popular thing to push for, more I think conceptually than for reality. Very few pages within a site do well with sharing - it's just usually not the type of info users want to share (no matter what marketers want to believe or what industry experts want to tell us).

The proof is in the numbers - so start there. Are people sharing your content? If they aren't, then what have you lost by removing it? (And I realize you kinda answered this question for yourself.) I'm of the belief that it works best on pages where there's content worth sharing - news, white papers, contests, etc. - if your system allows for specifics like that. And if the change with the social sharing overall will improve the user experience (like with load time), then is that a better trade off?

Since websites can have such different CRMs/platforms/coding, there's many things (I think ) that can play into performance or issues. Like, you resubmitted that trade show page and it may have jumped because Google hadn't crawled it in a long time, vs. because the social sharing changes. Just a possibility.

I agree with Mike. Keep what you had, since it's part of the online brand at this point. And redirects are harmless, assuming they are done correctly and people can find your site (without the feeling like they are dealing with something spammy).

We had the same issue! There was a lot of desire to optimize everything, which, of course, is nearly impossible for that many pages and content that can be so similar. So we shifted our strategy to focus on the right pages, knowing that as pages got much more niche Google would still index them for very specific terms. With our focus on harder/broader terms, we were able to craft what we wanted for more competitive terms and also, like you, spend time focusing on things like rich snippets.

Are you doing any A/B testing, is that how you're changing out colors and such? That's been really interesting for us, same with changing the call to action wording.

404 is a good way to tell Google that a page is gone, which will then help it drop from index. Removing it from a site map won't remove it from index.

If you can't 301 to a good page for a user experience (for example, it'd be jarring to click on a SERP for a bike tire and be 301'd to a page about women's bike shirts) then there's not a lot of value in doing so.

We don't even bother populating that section any more. Now, that said, Bing does care about them to some degree, so it depends how much you may care about that search engine.

Matt Cutts has specifically said Google doesn't care about meta keywords, so I find it surprising that it'd be used to penalize.

Good link or bad link - has to do with a lot of what you'd expect. For example, a link from (I'm making up examples) Forbes.com would probably do a business a lot more good than a link from a site like mikesbuisnessknowledge.com. Or, links from .gov/.edu also are seen as better because there's criteria around what kind of institutions can have those URLs. One .gov link could be better than 100 links from OK sites.

Oh, good question! I've noticed more and more people being (professional) transparent about their desire for links and giving more specific - polite - suggestions for where to link or what content may be good for it.

You mention your reports - when you send them out, do you include ways to link? Are there embedded links? If so, do they work consistently (random question, I know - I've run into issues where the hyperlink doesn't work so it's wasted). 
What about adding a section, like: For additional information and resources, please share these links: widgets: URL; exec info: URL, etc.

I think a big part of it is approach. (I'm sure you know better than to point out that a site is linking to a competitor and complain to the site/author about that.) A follow-up message, like: great post, glad to see the report is of value, here's some additional resources that could be valuable to your audience (link, link) if you'd be interested in updating your post.

I've noticed more people approaching me with specifics like that, and they do better than those who are just trolling (literally will email me just asking for any links from my site to their content). Not that I think you'd troll - like I said, it's about approach.

'No follow' isn't the same as a 'no index' code. No follow just tells the search engine it "should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index."  'No index' is where you tell the crawler to not index the pages, then you can remove that if you at some future point want them indexed.

So, in theory, what you did wouldn't  have anything to do with how many pages are indexed on your site anyway.

Mike, it's a tough situation. It's so important that you are informed about your site and holding an agency (or any partner) accountable is critical. It's tougher once the relationship is over and it is a big deal if you find out you got hosed. It's unfortunate that this wasn't caught earlier.

At the very least, they should be able to give you some sort of overview. I spent most of my career on the agency side and you paid for their services and asking for information on your account isn't out of line, IMHO.

If you can get the data, great, however you know enough to not let it stop you. I mean, if you can hold them accountable, OK, but that won't change your predicament, right?

It sounds like there's plenty of black hat stuff you need to clean up and are smart enough to know to make it a priority before it really hits your site negatively.

And you know for next time -if there is a next time - who not to go to or what to make sure no outside partner does

Good luck!

A few things could be at play: they have their on page content optimized properly (keywords are in the page title and used OK in the proper technical sections on the page). The domain is older than the other sites ranking after it (2007 vs 2009, etc.). And, the keywords aren't highly competitive.

All this means is that you just have to do a bit more than them to possibly surpass. Ex: they only have 2 links - get 10+ for you. Add solid content, update it often enough, etc. and you should be able to surpass. Again, it's not that their site is great - there's just a few things in their favor for right now.

Ah, the fun of semantics! It's amazing what a difference it can make, though, when trying to convey messages to a non-SEO or Web group.

I traditionally use "on site" and "on page" SEO for the "internal" items you have. That's partly driven by the fact we have some people working on  internal search on our site so people get confused with those projects if I use the term "internal."

I do use the term "external" or "site SEO" for the projects you list as "external." I try to differentiate what' specific to a page and what's specific to the overall site to help people understand there's different layers. And to help educate that because you optimize one page doesn't mean you've done SEO

I also like to educate on "technical" SEO so my team understands it's not just about keywords, but site performance and other things that can mean developer and IT resources. I learned fast that there was a perception that if you just put the keywords in the right place, revenue would come.

As for more social related information, I use buckets for social sharing but also make sure I hammer home the need for "in bound" marketing. There's a difference between those as you need the content to drive in bound but you use social to help give it visibility. And I think it's a more comprehensive element of marketing.

I would argue though that visibility isn't segregated by how you mentioned in. The technical build as well as the keywords selected can both play into visibility. You may not have any 500/404 problems, but if you picked keywords only a small audience cares about, you also limit your visibility.

For me, part of my terminology is dictated by our own internal jargon and how to map back to it so more people "get" it...while I talk about complicated things out of their wheelhouse that can end up confusing them anyway!

I've had mine take several days and Moz has told me that's not unexpected (even if it hasn't happened to you before).

If it goes longer than let's say today, contact their help desk. It's possible something got stuck (it's happened to me) and they have a great help team who will get you taken care of. They are very responsible and approachable.

Personally, I don't go by score. I go by content and what's best for the user and what's most "matched" or "alike" so it reads naturally. My intention isn't to sound smug, but when writing content, I can tell when it's stilted and the same word is used over and over (both my reading and doing a count of it) vs using variations of it. Also, there's tools that I use to at least get an indication if Google might think something's up (i.e., not diverse enough).

Also, my site isn't about one topic - we have a few core things, but we sell more than 30,000 SKUs so it's easier to be more diverse, even if there are similar variations (arc flash labels, cable labels, etc.) which makes it easier.

I track my site/words in a spreadsheet so I can make sure we're not optimizing the pages for the same words and competing against ourselves.

As for backlinks, that can get a bit trickier because I have less control on how people select to link to our site. For that, I monitor and when I feel it's needed, make suggestions and/or collaborate with other sites. (Keep in mind I have 50,000+ pages.)

Exciting opportunity - good for you! I, personally, do an audit. I don't usually spend hours and hours on it,  but I look at both content and technical to get an idea of what I'd be getting myself into. It's also a chance to bring up things that the client may not even realize.

So, then you look smart. Better, though, you showed you pay attention to them and their needs. Don't overlook the power of asking questions: What might their content be missing you'd suggest? What changes might you make on what they have now? Why did they layout their site the way they did?

I'd also do a Screaming Frog or Xenu crawl to check the health of the site and see if there's a lot of broken links or missing page titles, content, etc. Also, maybe do a page load test, too, which is really easy and there's a ton of sites that do those. Check backlinks (SEOMoz tool) to get at least an idea of how spammy or legit those are.

We "put up with it" because it's part of every facet of any business. There's always trolls. I mean, at this point if anyone believes that a Nigerian prince is going to send them millions as a thank you for fronting him money via a wire transfer, serves you right for getting hosted. That email scam has been around for years and people still fall for it since a sucker is born every minute

The best source for topical information is your customers, trade groups and general trends. First , are you noticing an uptick in a certain service or are you getting the same question over and over? These would mean people want to know about that topic.

Next, look at seasonality - March is home improvement time so what can people do to kick off their lawn care? Summer: if it's extra dry, what considerations should people think through to manage their lawn care? Or, if it's overly wet, what might they need to know? Fall: what should people do to prep their yard for winter? (Depending if you are in an area with more traditional four seasons.)

From industry trade shows - are there certain plants or trees that are a hot trend and being pushed? Is there a fear of any type of bug or insect infestation people need to counter?

What about best practices or care tips? "Tips from the pros." Your industry has plenty of information there - it's just a matter of you looking at it from a different perspective.

Google Trends is one way to see what people are searching for, and same with the Adwords keyword tool to gauge what type of searches people are conducting - not to mention any analytic data you see that drives traffic.

Think less like a business person and more like a reporter - address the topical relevance (timeliness - there's a reason why tax articles are more popular starting in January because it's when people start preparing, not in September), the problems (what problems do customers have and how can I solve them?) and the share. (Who, what, where, why, how?)