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Either by looking at the source on the page (right click in most browsers) or right-click an example of the link you want and "Inspect element." In the <a>tag, you will see "rel=nofollow."</a>

<a>Inspect element is great for looking at the source code of only the section of a page you want (instead of scrolling and scanning forever). It is helpful with de-bugging code (for on-page SEO).

If you are prospecting links en masse (like through OSE or another backlink research tool) there is usually a field to tell you what links are nofollowed.

Does that make sense?</a>

Not quite.

There are two types of pages we're talking about here. That's because Google+ functions as two things for business owners: it is a local business directory and it is a social network.

Google+ Local listings: These are like your Google yellow pages listings. You should have one for each location (i.e., one for Dan's Pizza in Newark, one for Dan's Pizza in Jersey City, etc.) These have phone numbers, address, some photos, etc. This is where customers leave reviews as well.

Google+ Business (Brand) Pages: There should only be one Dan's Pizza Google+ Business page. It is for the brand as a whole.

This page is where you can post "as" the business, interact with followers, etc. It's a lot like what Facebook business pages are like. This is a more robust page than the ones above and is more or less the face of your business in Google+ as a social network (rather than Google+ the local business directory).

As of now, you can link your Brand Page (the social media page) with only one of your listings. If you choose to do this, it should probably be your flagship location, or your most popular. At some point in the future, you should be able to link your brand page with all of your listings.

Obviously, there is no 100% right answer.

Google's bias toward brands and larger, more powerful websites appears to only be getting stronger. Having one strong domain can often be of greater benefit than having two, weaker domains. I have personally had success with merging pages and domains to consolidate authority and link equity. If the primary site is the one that converts and brings in money, you could strengthen it in the way you suggested.

On the other hand, it can (sometimes) be easier to build links to a domain that is focused around one subject rather than a subpage. Depending on how you are working on your linkbuilding efforts, this could factor into your decision. Additionally, If the secondary domain is performing well, you might want to let sleeping dogs lie and potentially focus more of your efforts on promoting that site. This is a business decision only you can make.

Is your primary site still penalized? Do you have reason to think the secondary site is at risk for a penalty? The mere act of merging domains carries no risk of penalties that i know of (anyone is free to correct me here), but there is the potential for one site to "infect" the other. [Side note: you may want a few more naked URL anchors pointing at your sites, especially arenalvolcanotours.com.]

All in all, if someone you trust conducted a thorough audit and this was his/her advice, I would consider it.

Do you mean for a Google+ Local Page, or for Google+ Local Listings?

I'm assuming you actually have multiple brick-and-mortar, IRL store locations. In this case (but only in this case), you should have a  Google+ Local listing (formerly Google Places) for each one.

As for the business pages (the more robust ones that are like Facebook business pages), you should have one for your business as an entity, and you can connect it with one of your store locations. For now. Supposedly, they are working on the functionality with this so that businesses with multiple locations can connect them all to one business page.

Does that make sense?

They've really simplified all this lately, huh?

Re: your first question, you can hire freelance writers through any number of channels (e.g., Craigslist, Guru, etc.) If you are looking for one in a specific industry that requires expert knowledge, this may mean you have to look harder, or post a job offering yourself. Any writer worth his/her salt can do a blog post.

As for your second question, the method with which pages are archived and linked to on a blog depends entirely on the blog. Perhaps one the following points relates to what you read:

1. Older posts may no longer be linked to directly from the homepage/main blog page, and may therefore seem not be getting as much PageRank/Authority/whatever flowing to them. However, a blog with a smart site architecture and internal linking should be relatively well-protected against this (and hopefully the posts have some external links as well!).

2. Some blogs that accept masses of guest posts shuffle them to an archived netherworld, because they simply can't handle the glut of "content" they are posting. If this is the case, the link may not be worth the time and money you are putting into getting it anyway.

A little detective work could tell you how well-linked those older posts are, and whether they are getting any juice from the main site. Focus on blogs that seem like they get some actual traffic (from people other than people looking to guest post) and you should be fine.

So, at best what you've read is a gross over-generalization. While it is important to diversify your link portfolio beyond solely guest blogging for a number of reasons (looks more natural, scalability, diminishing returns, the possible eventuality of Google devaluing byline links), it can still be a worthwhile tactic for link/brand/whatever building.

If you are auto-generating multiple pages with news stories scraped from other sources, you are auto-generating duplicate, or at least "thin" content. I know, because I've been cleaning this up on a few clients' sites.

If you think that your news section adds value to the end user, but are worried about a dupe content issue, add to the head of the news page template, or disallow that folder in robots.txt (I prefer the former, but I'm no expert). This will tell the engines that you don't want them to index these pages. Careful that you only add it to the news pages, though.

Another solution would be to do a brief write up on each story with the link, thereby generating new, quality content for the site that isn't duplicate.

Yet another solution would be to have a single news page that aggregates the links to the stories themselves through an RSS feed, but that doesn't create multiple, thin pages.

If the news pages send you a lot of traffic, you may want to weigh your options. I know that I recently de-indexed a boatload of scraped content and our site's traffic increased sevenfold because of the boost in rankings sitewide, but that's between you and your client. I don't know Django, so I'm sorry I can't help on that front.

Hope that helps?

Do javascript void links to on-page elements (not to a new page) consume PageRank?

I'm paring down links on a client's homepage, and we have javascript void links (wrapped in <a href="">) that load videos, elements of a slider, etc. on the page itself.</a>

<a href="">Basically, if I have a bunch of these, is it going to weaken the power of the other links on the page?</a>

I have spent an inordinate amount of time cleaning up sites with templated pages and duplicate content. I can tell you that the potential gains are real, and the potential risks of inaction are often large.

Some text is better than no text. Google prefers a solid base of text-based content, period. It's their bread and butter and it helps them figure out what your page is about. Some time spent discussing with your team/writers how to best differentiate each page could be time very well spent. I don't know that it needs to be a solid block of prose; categories like manufacturer, machine type, year, etc. could be used in list or paragraph form (perhaps you already do this?)

You could look at other ecommerce sites that are ranking in your niche, and in others, to see what they do.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "The text would have to come before the products for SEO." What I will say is the position of the text on the page should probably be dictated by whatever is best for the user. Test it in different positions on the page (even the left or right sidebar) and see what converts better. I doubt if the text's position on the page will affect your rankings a great deal. As for the "boilerplate-ness," the crawlers can see if its unique or not.