Is it possible for the CMS to include the canonical tags ? I would suggest you look into it and have www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html contain the canonical tag to www.mydomain.com which should also take care of this issue for the homepage. That way Google will deindex www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html and only index www.mydomain.com

Sounds like your client clearly needs the SEO / Webmaster Best Practices cleared out and taken care of. Help the Search Engines Rank your website. Provide them enough information that they can rank you. Too little or Too much, both can lead to "no benefits".

So yes, I would optimize those page titles to both SEO and User Friendly. If nobody is able to see those 210 characters, why have them. Also work on a SEO and User Friendly Description as well as H tags if and as needed.

If it's a sitemap for the users and the page appears under 2 different categories, it's okay. Think usability here.

However, if/when it's the XML sitemap, it should only be there once.

As for the intermediary pages, If I were you, if they offer a good purpose (the reason you have those pages in the 1st place), they should then be listed in both the XML and HTML sitemaps if they help the users.

So to answer your question more directly, if your question is:

Is it bad to have same page listed twice in XML sitemap? Yes, it will generate an error/warning in webmaster console.

Is it bad to have same page listed twice in HTML sitemap? No, if that's what is needed for users, it's okay.

I hope that helps.

I have been attending Pubcon in Las Vegas every year since 2003. I have only missed 1 or 2. Also, Pubcon is the only conference I have attended.

What I'd say about Pubcon is that I look forward to it every year, year after year. It's a busy 3-4 days conference. Usually 6-10 sessions running concurrently and the topics vary from On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, Paid Search, Affiliate, Conversion Optimization, Social Media and so on. There are usually around 100+ sessions in total to choose from.

Overall a great event to attend.

What will you learn ? Well, that's a tough one to answer. Usually I don't go to conferences and expect something to learn other then meet a lot of nice people in different industries. Sometimes you talk to people, hear out speakers and see them talk about specific strategies they use or specially the tools. I love the tools part. There's always something new to learn in the SEO Tools area. Other then that, talking with people and attending sessions kind of gives you a very broad/but in-depth overview of where the industry is moving, whats going on in the world of search.

I also have Mozcon/Distilled/SMX Advanced/SES to the list of conferences I would consider attending based on timing and budget.

I hope this helps.

I just responded to this exact question. Here's my answer and a link to that question:

Honestly, my advice would be to grab a list of your backlinks using both Google Webmaster Console as well as the OpenSiteExplorer and merge them into a spreadsheet and get rid of all the duplicates.

Next step would be to identify which of those links are spammy and you'd be better of having them removed. This is in my opinion the hardest part depending upon the volume of sites/links.

Then hire somebody to find email addresses of the websites where you want links removed. Finding something on the page and if nothing else, using whois. I would then send an email to each one of those contacts and in a quick short email, tell me the URL where the link is located and your site URL. Tell them to remove the link right away since you have received a Google Warning. I would imagine this taking care of a good portion of those links. I would send another email in a week and then again for a total of 2-4 times to see if you get a response and get the link removed. When nothing else worked, offer then $10 for the link removal and that should gain their attention. If that does not work either, I would suggest you move on.

I hope this helps. You could get somebody on odesk.com or a similar site to get all the labor intensive work done.