I don't know that I would consider sponsored reviews from mom bloggers a bad tactic. Not that it matters, but I have a few clients in the home improvement niche that regularly do reviews when they get free product. As long as you aren't asking for a favorable review in exchange for samples... who cares?

Also, don't forget social... FB, Twitter, Plus, Pinterest, etc.. all has good affects on any online marketing plan.

Finally, some directories as well as blog commenting still is helpful as long as you are doing it for the right reasons... don't purposely search out do-follow blogs only for commenting. Search out the best places to leave comments and build relationships with those bloggers, I promise you if you leave some butt kickin' comments on a food bloggers' site, you will have a better chance of getting a guest post with them.

Using directories for SEO is probably not the best way to spend your time, and if you use a submission service getting a ton of submissions at once will most likely result in negative results.

The ONLY time I use directories is when I have a client looking for "local" listings. And even then I use it with the concept that it will help us get more traffic from visitors to those directories.

The links aren't worth the time in my view....

Did you try to generate a new sitemap after clicking update options and then submitting it to webmaster tools?

Generally it will only update when you add/delete pages on it's own.

It may take some time for it to propagate to Google if that is what you are asking. Are you trying to block the pages/posts completely from search engines?

Great question, and WP really should make this easier!

http://businessaccent.com/2009/06/08/what-is-my-wordpress-post-id-number-and-how-can-i-find-it/  This article explains one way to see it, also if you open up the post/page in the admin panel to edit it you can just look in your browser to see the url which will have the post ID in it... IE: www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=615&action=edit (615 is the post ID)

Hope that helped

Also, while the links do not count for SEO value towards your website because they are marked as nofollow, which essentially tells search engines to ignore them, you should still add links to your website to both the Website field and within your About Me text using the link button. Even if search engines ignore those links, visitors are still likely to click on them.

Found that here: http://realtybiznews.com/optimizing-your-activerain-profile/9876834/

That is from the profile itself, but I am assuming the same goes for the blogs. I still think it is a good network for realtors, and no-follow links still have some value as they add to your natural looking link profile, as well as can potentially be clicked for traffic.

I would echo Doug's response, get involved in the community of auto website owners, write soem of the very best articles you can come up with and start submitting them to the best sites.

This is a tricky space Leslie.

I went through something similar with a fence contractor and we ended up with a bunch of worthless sites with exact match domains for various towns around the area.

In my case I found it easier to carry the authority of the existing site to rank for new keywords on a "blog" in a subdirectory rather than a new site.

Also, looking briefly at your sites, it looks like you are linking back and forth anyway so one doesn't really help the other. Because those links under "Latest News" flow through a feed proxy, they aren't really adding any SEO value to your blog as well (I could be wrong here, but I think there is a way to change the way those links show from a feed).

I guess if it were me, I would install the blog on the main URL. Seems like the whole site could work towards the same goals then....

Hope this helps, I look forward to seeing other responses.

I am in the US (North Carolina), my name is Dutch though...

Always good discussion, and I don't think either one is right or wrong here.