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Just an update for everyone. We use sitemaps, rather than meta tags, to do the circular href lang mapping for our localized domains. In doing so, we've found the HREFLANG XML Sitemap Tool from The Media Flow particularly AMAZING! Talk about saving time! Just make a csv file with a comma for each language/locale, upload it, and then download a zip file with all your sitemaps. Beautiful.
Thank you Aleyda!
Do you know which type of targeting has more impact ... language or country?
I don't know that we need country targeting because we don't display currency or sell offline in physical locations. Also, I doubt we would create multiple French sites ... even if we do want to target France specifically.
Kate,
What if I have one url translated into French but want to target French speakers in multiple countries? Would I do this with my hreflang tags:
Note: I generated these with Aleyda Solis's international sitemap generator. Does hreflang="x-default" ever get used?
Does Compete.com do that? I've never used them, but I know they offer competitive metrics. Traffic Travis does some link breakdowns, but it doesn't have a report exactly like that. It will tell you:
RavenTools also has a really cool link manager. However, I'm not sure whether or not you can use this on competitors' sites.
You may also be able to accomplish this in a moderately automated fashion with a combination of Excel and Majestic SEO. You could identify a lot of blog links, for instance.
Yes. The layout markup should not mess things up. Just put the whole street address within itemprop="streetAddress", and you should be fine.
You would do the first option. The "streetAddress" property needs to contain all the information, even if it spans two lines.
Check out the example over at Schema.org - http://schema.org/streetAddress. That address contains 2 lines.
I know you can use Google's Adpreview Tool to see how your paid listings appear for different locations (down to zip code). I'm not aware of anything like that for organic listings, however. And anyway, there's no way to automate that process.
Here's a totally hypothetical, non-tested approach that might work: What if you used a proxy tool like Proxybonanza with a simple desktop rank-checking tool like Web CEO or Traffic Travis. (These really have nothing on Moz in terms of feature set, but rank tracking isn't terribly complicated as far as SEO tools go.) I would assume that when you run a desktop rank tracker through a proxy (especially if you can define where the proxy locale is), the results would be for that location. That said, I have no idea whether it's possible at all to find and use proxies for a specific zip codes. So all this may just be me being dumb.
Again, that's a completely non-validated approach. Just trying to help you think outside the box. My level of local-SEO expertise stops at the country level. And even there, I've got a lot yet to learn. 
I would not use bit.ly or any other shortener for internal links.
If you want to track internal links, then you should use Google's enhanced link attribution or URL builder. I prefer the link attribution tool over the URL builder, though. This approach is more natural for visitors to your site, and it allows you to reap the SEO benefits of good internal site linking.
If you want to track external links, I'd recommend Google's outbound link tracking, a url shortener, or both. For Wordpress sites, Joost de Valk has an old (but good) post on one way to do this with a plugin. But the idea can be replicated on other sites. Basically, you link internally to a directory that's behind robots.txt. Then 301 those links to your affiliate or shortened url.
Hope that helps!
I would point out these key differences.
1. A blog gives you more control. With a blog, you can target the keywords you want to target. You can edit the content after you've published it. You can time when posts go out. Of course, it takes a lot of effort to come up with good content, but you're in the driver's seat.
2. A forum gives you less control, but you don't have to write all the content. The attractive thing about a forum - for SEO purposes anyway - is user-generated content. This is great because you don't have to do all the heavy lifting that real writing requires. The bad thing about a forum is also user-generated content. All those things you have control over with a blog ... you kinda lose them with a forum. You could exert a lot of control over your forum if you want, but then folks will stop contributing and you won't have a forum. Also, all that heavy lifting you save by not having to create the content may get replaced by the necessity of moderating the content.
3. You can build a blog steadily over time. With a blog, you can go from "Hello World!" to a good following just by disciplined, regular, quality publishing over time. You can start small and build.
4. Nobody likes an empty forum. Unlike a blog, a forum needs to go live with content already in it and conversations already happening. If you're going to launch a forum, I suggest getting some dedicated customers involved in a pre-launch. Seed the forum with a number of conversations before launching it to your full customer base. Otherwise, most people will get stage fright and you will have wasted your launch.
LindaLV is right. Here are some screenshots to help you out.
1. Expand the hamburger menu. Then navigate to Tools > Extensions (#1 attachment)
2. Either disable or delete the Moz toolbar. (#2 attachment)
That said, I recommend leaving it installed. I don't use it terribly often, but then there are those times that it comes in really helpful. So for most of my browsing, I leave it disabled. If you find it's covering up content while you're browsing, you can just click the toolbar icon to disable it and make it inactive. That's how I browse most of the time. (#3 attachment)
I would not use bit.ly or any other shortener for internal links.
If you want to track internal links, then you should use Google's enhanced link attribution or URL builder. I prefer the link attribution tool over the URL builder, though. This approach is more natural for visitors to your site, and it allows you to reap the SEO benefits of good internal site linking.
If you want to track external links, I'd recommend Google's outbound link tracking, a url shortener, or both. For Wordpress sites, Joost de Valk has an old (but good) post on one way to do this with a plugin. But the idea can be replicated on other sites. Basically, you link internally to a directory that's behind robots.txt. Then 301 those links to your affiliate or shortened url.
Hope that helps!
You would do the first option. The "streetAddress" property needs to contain all the information, even if it spans two lines.
Check out the example over at Schema.org - http://schema.org/streetAddress. That address contains 2 lines.
You can probably set it to ignore parameters you don't want added to the sitemap. Here's a screenshot from my standalone version to give you an idea of the settings.
If you have ftp access to the root, you can simply overwrite the current one with a new one. Google will pick it up.
Also, you should include a link to all your sitemaps in a robots.txt file - also in the root. If you look at SEOMoz's robots.txt file, you can see how to do that. http://www.seomoz.org/robots.txt
Kate,
What if I have one url translated into French but want to target French speakers in multiple countries? Would I do this with my hreflang tags:
Note: I generated these with Aleyda Solis's international sitemap generator. Does hreflang="x-default" ever get used?
Yes. The layout markup should not mess things up. Just put the whole street address within itemprop="streetAddress", and you should be fine.
