Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey, Kyu.

I don't personally think those pages should hurt your site's ranking unless, of course, the content is found on another site.

You could seed them and see how they rank, then add more decent content to them if they prove worthy.

1. A unique IP is always a plus, that's true. It's like you travelling with your passport vs. you travelling along with ten other people using the same passport.

Besides, on a shared IP address you risk having your site associated with the other sites on the same IP -- which may or may not have questionable content.

2. The template's design doesn't make any difference because there are 1,000 sites using the same template from Themeforest, for example, each from totally different business areas.

Host your sites on different hosting accounts and have a second look at the domains' whois data, for starters.

How about adding a cta (call to action) next to your embedded video and then doing A/B split testing in Google Analytics Experiments?

Serve 2-3 versions of the same URL to your visitors, track everything in GA Experiments and then you'll get an idea which solution is better for your site.

Well, you can start with authenticating your site in Google and Bing, then going to brightlocal.com / whitespark.ca , tw/g+/fb/li and social bookmarking sites (5-10 tops).

Web directories take a lot of time to get into but do try odp/joeant/botw and then aim for local directories + links from your customers' connections.

Do you need a list of sites or just some pointers?

Well, you can start with authenticating your site in Google and Bing, then going to brightlocal.com / whitespark.ca , tw/g+/fb/li and social bookmarking sites (5-10 tops).

Web directories take a lot of time to get into but do try odp/joeant/botw and then aim for local directories + links from your customers' connections.

Do you need a list of sites or just some pointers?

How about adding a cta (call to action) next to your embedded video and then doing A/B split testing in Google Analytics Experiments?

Serve 2-3 versions of the same URL to your visitors, track everything in GA Experiments and then you'll get an idea which solution is better for your site.