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Put up a page anywhere that you have hosting: your server, a new server, etc. Then, noindex/nofollow that page and iframe it into your tab.

Right now, my favorites are Pagelever, Edgerank Checker, and Blitzmetrics.

Finally a PRO question, I can answer

My org only does marketing for nonprofits and uses this a ton. The impact can be big, but it won't last long, so it's best to start with a bang around a major event, a holiday, etc and then not belabor it for too long.

I can't recall if they have this case study on their site or if you need to have them send it, but check out their World Cup case study. It's for profit of course, but it's kind of cool how twibbon was used to grow their audience.

Look for a local SEO if possible...at least to get started with. Later, when you know more about working without outside SEOs, it might be easier to go with someone remote. Also, I'd probably question hiring an SEO that just says, "Yeah," "We can totally do that," etc, etc, etc to everything and never pushes back on what's realistic, the benefits and drawbacks of certains approaches, and so on. If I'm working with an outside SEO, I want someone that will educate me a bit, be as open as possible, and help me understand when I'm being too conservative (avoiding all risks) or too daring/questionable/etc.

It sounds to me like you might be looking for 2 SEOs as well...depending on how much your budget is. Some people only specialize in local, while others only specialize in LB. Certainly, you can find someone to do both though. It just depends on how much of each, and how much specialty, you want.

Why did you decide to noindex,nofollow the pages instead of canonicalizing them? It seems like that would solve these issues, no?

Check out Tynt, use an auto-linking plugin, or periodically drop manual links within your content. That won't stop people from copying, but it will at least you links from lazy copiers.

The price is really going to fluctuate depending on whom you hire, what you're asking for, the size and complexity of your site or project, and a number of other factors. I totally agree with all of the recommendations about finding someone local. You don't have to stay local, but if you can at least get started with someone local, it'll probably help to expand your (and their) understanding of what is needed and being done. Then, you might have a better basis for deciding on future work whether with a local or not.

I second Alex's & EGOL's recommendations and will add this. It looks like you're in Seattle. It'd probably help to contact some local SEOs and see whom they might recommend if they're not a fit. Ross Hudgens, Click2rank, Ian Lurie, and Distilled all come to mind. They all post a lot of content on SEO, so you can research them that way and have all spoken at some of the bigger, more respectable SEO events/conferences. I'm sure there are plenty more that I'm not thinking of in that area that are good as well, but I'd start there.

Agreed. Paste in the keywords, concatenate it, go to your favorite search engine, and you're ready to rock. You could get fancy and probably have the results pull directly into Excel, but if that is possible, it's over my head.

Visual Economics pretty much explains it all. 97th Floor is the king of infographics if you ask me.

There are a number of different ways in GA, Omniture, etc to track specific link clicks from places like the footer...many of which I'm not extremely well versed in, but the googles certainly know. I would definitely recommend doing that to get a pure numbers look at the situation.

I'd also though recommend you modify Will Critchlow's mturk method of grading content for a look at usability of the footer and/or use something like usertesting.com to get some qualitative feedback on the footer. Guaranteed you will get a look at your design that you've never even thought of, and the cost is so extremely low when you consider what you can get out of it.

replicate-googles-panda-questionnaire-whiteboard-friday

Finally a PRO question, I can answer

My org only does marketing for nonprofits and uses this a ton. The impact can be big, but it won't last long, so it's best to start with a bang around a major event, a holiday, etc and then not belabor it for too long.

I can't recall if they have this case study on their site or if you need to have them send it, but check out their World Cup case study. It's for profit of course, but it's kind of cool how twibbon was used to grow their audience.

I second Alex's & EGOL's recommendations and will add this. It looks like you're in Seattle. It'd probably help to contact some local SEOs and see whom they might recommend if they're not a fit. Ross Hudgens, Click2rank, Ian Lurie, and Distilled all come to mind. They all post a lot of content on SEO, so you can research them that way and have all spoken at some of the bigger, more respectable SEO events/conferences. I'm sure there are plenty more that I'm not thinking of in that area that are good as well, but I'd start there.