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Thanks - the problem is that the remainder of the page is also likely to be somewhat duplicate - it's mostly NAP data, business tagline or coupon offers, which are likely to be extremely repetitive as these businesses often have dozens of listings, all with the same info.  The reviews are really our only differentiating content from all their other listings.

If the reviews popped up on their sites as well (via our widget) would a link back to their profile page (part of the widget) be enough to indicate to Google that we were the original source?  I don't think canonical tags will be an option.

But would I be able to get the canonical tag on the client website via the widget code?  Or I'd need two separate code snippets for installation

Can the canonical tag be applied to only a portion of a page's content?  (basically, everything within the review widget?)

My website has a profile page for each of the home improvement contractors who signs up.  They accumulate reviews on those pages.  I want to build a review widget to display our reviews on our contractors' websites.  How can I avoid duplicate content issues for the reviews?

Example of a profile page with a few reviews:  http://www.thehomefixers.com/members/425/waterheaters-plus-llc.php

How good is Google at detecting the affiliate nature of those links?  How does this rate as a linkbuilding strategy?

I'm just getting started in guest blogging, and had an idea I wanted to run past the SEOmoz community.

I've been told that when guest blogging, it's only worthwhile to post one guest post per domain (if your intention is purely backlinks, which mine is).  But I was wondering if it might be more effective to try and place a series of 4 or 5 related posts, and try to get the blog owner to link from one to the other (Click here for Part II of this series).

Wouldn't all that internal linking give the pages with my bio links on them that much more authority?

I think you just turned what might have been a harmless yet somewhat grey hat idea into a black hat paid link network.

If you look at the kind of crappy sites BMR was putting up, and compare that to 30 legit business websites, you'll realize that no, nowhere near the same amount of risk is involved.

Nakul is right though, just make sure it's part of a wider link building strategy.

That's a little outside of my ability range.  Anything turnkey, as easy to use as YouTube, but with more control over the content?

I'm creating a series of link bait videos.  I want people to link to the pages on my site hosting the videos.  What's the best site to host them on, if my primary concern is to get do-followed links?

I'm worried about putting them on YouTube, as I imagine most of the links will be to the page on youtube.com, or worse, just directly embedded.

Why does buying links still work?  I don't mean approaching an individual webmaster and cutting a deal, that seems to be nearly impossible to detect.  But the huge link brokers, like Text Link Ads, Build my Rank or Linkvine, Google has to be aware of them, right?  Can't they just create accounts to see the whole network, and ban the sites?  Why wouldn't they just do that?

Well then, I guess my question should be what easy SEO steps for a non-SEO person should go on that PDF?

My site is starting to generate natural links (hooray!).  Basically, as part of my client sign-up process, I encourage my clients (home improvement contractors, plumbers, roofers, electricians) to link back to their own profile page on my site from their own site, either manually or using a badge I've created and made available.  I have 2 questions about this.

First of all, the vast majority of these links are from seriously low quality sites with basically no backlink profile whatsoever.  Many of these sites aren't even indexed.  So I'm starting to feel like I'm doing all this hard work for nothing.  Is there anything I can do to increase the value of these incoming links, without spending too much time or money?  I'm thinking directory submission and/or link wheel gigs on fiverr (really crappy SEO, I know, but just to get these sites bumped up a notch, and hopefully not do any damage to my site, as they're a step removed.)

Second question, the profile pages that my clients can create on my site includes a nofollowed link to their site.  Does the nofollow save me from having all of my incoming links tagged as reciprocal?  Is there anything else I should be doing?

I'm in a somewhat similar situation, and have not got this totally figured out either.  But here's my two bits onthe subject.

First of all, you need to make sure that you're optimizing your local pages to their fullest in the 7 states that you do have locations in.  Follow http://getlisted.org's guidlines and use whitespark's citation finder to build citations.  Make sure that each location has its own page on your client's main site, with a complete and consistent NAP.

Second, I think this is a misguided assumption:  "Obviously, it would look foolish, in this day in age, to Title Tag individual pages with local modifiers and have numerous pages covering a similar topic with not much difference than localized modifiers in front of the keyword."  You need to think about what truly differentiates your client's service from state to state, and build on that.  Are licensing requirements slightly different?  I don't know any details about your industry other than financial services, but let's say it's home mortgages for example - the housing market in each state is different, people are moving in or moving away for different reasons, people are in different stages of their lives (Florida homebuyers are retirees, Boston homebuyers are just out of college (I guess?  I don't know.  You should).)  Build landing pages for each state, and possibly for all the main cities.  You shouldn't have trouble differentiating.

Good luck!

How can you use Mechanical Turk here in an ethical way?  Are the writers going to actually use your product?  I doubt it (unless it's an informational product, and you're giving it away to them for free?  You didn't really offer too much information).

I agree with EGOL - if you don't ask for reviews, you wont get them.  In one of my businesses where this is relevant, we specifically ask for a review of the order process at the time of the order, on the thank you page.  We also email 24 hours later to solicit a review, and again 7 days later.  Anyone who actually does leave a review, we again hit them up for a social "share" or the review they just left.  Even with all of that, our review rate is only 1-2% of our customers.  Simply put, if you're not aggressively soliciting reviews, they're not going to happen.

On a more functional level, make sure it's as easy as possible to actually write the review.  Facebook or twitter integration could make it easier, streamlining the login process (or skipping it altogether), or getting rid of captcha (this would obviously go hand in hand with manually deleting junk reviews, or disallowing links of any kind).