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Looks like a pretty spammy site. Sometimes a spam site can rank for a time using black hat tactics, but is eventually discovered and taken down. Rankings also can fluctuate naturally for many reasons-- SEOs usually see a "honeymoon period" for new pages, where they rank really highly when they are first published, before dropping in rankings after Google sees how the page performs in the SERPs.
It likely means the page that the link was discovered on is now redirecting to another page. For example, a few of the links in your screenshot are from Google+, which no longer exists (all pages now redirect to a shutdown notice).
Don't see how it would impact rankings one way or the other... the amount of traffic a website gets isn't a ranking factor.
It does sound like a shady service though. People use services like these to increase the views on their ads (CPM) to defraud their advertisers or increase the view count of YouTube videos which can impact YouTube SEO.
Unless you're seeing a high volume of spammy links, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Every site is going to accumulate spammy links over time. It's just when there is a lot of them that they can lead to your site being negatively impacted. Unless you believe you're being penalized, I would leave it alone for now.
Lots of people speculate that website usability impacts search rank, but this hasn't been conclusively been proven. Improving your website experience is great for conversions and something you should definitely work to improve, but if you want to improve search ranking it's still important to focus on content & links.
In my experience, links take precedence over content. Mediocre content on a high domain authority site is going to outrank excellent content on a site with no links or poor links.
This is a completely separate issue than Penguin, which is an algorithm that mainly penalizes sites that are actively trying to manipulate rankings with poor links.
The definition of cloaking according to Google is "the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines." For that reason, there is some risk in showing Google a different page than what is being shown to your users in the test. Displaying different content based on user-agent is a red-flag to Google.
That being said, cloaking penalties are "manual actions", meaning they are manually applied by human reviewers on Google's team, so unless you are purposely trying to be deceptive, the risk of being penalized is low. Additionally, you can request reviews of manual actions via Google Search Console to appeal any penalties.
Another approach could be to use server-side redirects for the test, using 302 redirects and redirecting users bucketed into the test to a separate URL. The 302 redirect indicates to Google that this is a temporary change, and that they should retain the original page in their index. You can further reinforce this by adding a canonical tag to the test page and pointing it to the original version of the page.
Finally, for high priority SEO pages you may also consider using a client-side A/B test. Client-side A/B testing uses Javascript to dynamically change the content on the page, and is typically not indexed by Google.
Very cool analysis! In the past I've found it interesting to see how people have gotten to the top of the leaderboard, whether it's blog posts, thumb ups, or answers in the Q&A section.
I tend to focus my time & effort more on the links that we can obtain, rather than trying to analyze the value of a link a competitor has. It's impossible to tell whether hidden links or other black hat tactics are propping up a competitor's ranking, but historically speaking, sites like that eventually get penalized (even if it takes Google a few months or years to wise up).
I look at competitor backlinks sometimes to see if there are any tactics they are using that might be useful for my own sites, or other link opportunities, but aside from the occasional competitor analysis, it's a better use of my time to develop new link building campaigns for our site.
Thanks Malika! Our site does have high domain authority, and in general we tend to outrank our competitor and show up in the answer box, but for one specific query our competitor's site stubbornly continues to show up in the answer box above us.
I've updated the content quite a bit, but so far haven't seen any results. You mentioned backlinks-- do you have any instances where a page wasn't showing up in the answer box, and you were able to get it to show up solely through backlinking?
Do not nofollow your social media profiles.
Adding nofollows to links does not increase your PR, it just eliminates the link juice that would have gone to those pages. Do not nofollow your own links or links to properties you manage. Only nofollow links if they are low quality sites, you have a commercial relationships with them, or they are competitors.
Linking to your social media profiles will also get them ranking higher in the search results for your brandname, which is a good thing if you maintain good social media profiles.
I've worked with a number of ecommerce sites... my recommendation would start by fixing on-page factors first. Just basic stuff like titles, image alts, URLs, semantic markup, etc. Fix it at the template level, so it's taken care of site-wide.
Site architecture is key with a large site, so make sure that your site is laid out properly. Mostly this means making sure your categorization/organization makes sense, making sure all your content is being linked to, and eliminating duplicate content issues.
Once all the on-page stuff has been taken care, I would focus on link building. Building links to an ecommerce site is not easy, but it's doable. Start by taking a look at some of your competitors, to see where they are getting links. As an ecomm site you can also take advantage of things like giveaways and contests to attract links. Leverage your blog to get guest bloggers.
Here's a good list of link building ideas, if you need more:
It likely means the page that the link was discovered on is now redirecting to another page. For example, a few of the links in your screenshot are from Google+, which no longer exists (all pages now redirect to a shutdown notice).
First of all, do not, I repeat DO NOT nofollow your own internal pages. Doing so will not result in your other links getting more link value, but will result in link juice evaporation:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-maybe-changes-how-the-pagerank-algorithm-handles-nofollow
If don't want to divide your link equity, the best solution is to simply remove the link. I would encourage you to install a tool such as CrazyEgg or ClickTale that will show you exactly how your users are using your site. Chances are they are not clicking on many of those footer links. Based on that click data, remove the links that aren't being clicked on.
Also, having a few more links than what SEOMoz recommends is not the end of the world, especially for a high Domain Authority site like yours.
Keyword cannibalization in a nutshell: Google only shows 1 result from your site for any given query (unless it thinks you're REALLY relevant). That means you want the page that shows up to be the one with the greatest relevance and conversion potential. If you have multiple pages that target the same keyword, Google could end up confused and display the non-optimal page over your desired landing page.
Title tag, url, and on-page content all play a role in keyword cannibalization.
It's only a problem if you're finding that the non-optimal page is ranking over your optimal one. For example, if your category page ('wool sweaters') is outranking your product page ('knit wool turtleneck sweater') for the search team "knit wool turtleneck sweater", then you have a problem. In that case, make sure you improve your internal & external linking to the product page, and make sure it has higher quality, targeted content than the category page.
Like I said, rankings are always changing. Always. Accept that no matter what you do, your rankings will fluctuate, whether your site is four months old or four years old.
As for the rankings drop, it's impossible to say without more specifics. The most common reason these days for rankings drops is over-optimized anchor text, but again it's impossible to say without more specifics.
Assuming it's not a penalty, just focus on creating better content or building more links. That's SEO in a nutshell. If you are able to attract lots of high quality links, Google will tend to rank your site higher and keep you there. Likewise, if your site provides a great user experience and great information, Google will want to show the site to more of its users. Great content also tends to attract great links.
Figuring out why one keyword went up or down a position is not possible given how many factors there are, and is typically not a good use of your time. Focus on the big picture: build a quality site and build links.
Nofollowing a link does not cause more link power to flow to your other links, it just causes that link juice that would have gone to that page to "evaporate", resulting in a loss of link equity. In general, you NEVER want to nofollow your own pages.
As far as internal linking for ecommerce sites goes, I generally look to amazon.com & overstock.com for good site architecture and good ecommerce SEO in general.
I don't know of any ultimate guides, but I can answer your questions:
Other factors for image SEO: People linking to the image, the content surrounding the image (should be related to your image), the overall theme of your site (should be related to the image), use large, high quality images.
I think that about covers it.
The Author schema does not do anything in any search engine yet, as far as I know.
In order to take advantage of Google Authorship, you need a Google+ profile. Google+ is Google's identity platform that they are using identify individual authors. Without Google+, your image will not show up in the SERPs. Without Google+, your friends will not see your contact appearing higher in the SERPs. Without Google+, you will not be able to take advantage of any changes that Google makes to their algo with regards to Author Rank.
In short, no you cannot benefit from Google Authorship without a Google+ profile 
Bing is also experimenting with a type of authorship which combines Facebook profiles and Klout scores, but again this has nothing to do with the schema.org markup.
Mozrank is primary a metric of link popularity. So the only way to improve it is to get more high authority links.
More info: