Hi, thanks for looking at my post! I really appreciate any and all advice anyone has to offer!

Things were going pretty well for my site, an online clothing boutique, until around February or March of last year, just about when Panda rolled out, I believe. I was getting about 400-500 unique visitors a day which, I felt, was a pretty good start. My plan was to build on that platform and continue to get more and more visitors and sales. How does the saying go...the best laid plans of mice and men? Needless to say, visitor traffic slowly ebbed, then the sales followed, and at that the point now where I need some very drastic help and advice. I'm getting 40 to 50 visitors a day. Yes, you read correctly 40 to 50! I haven't done any SEO recently because I really wasn't sure how or where to start. The SEO landscape seems to have been changing, and I'm unsure how or where to focus my efforts.

In the past, I have taken pride in relying on a DIY SEO strategy that, I feel, has come to pass. This strategy relied on free links from blog comments, forums, and free directories. This served me well, until now. I guess Google feels that these types of links are a dime a dozen and are hardly worthy of attaining anymore. I am also probably guilty of using the same anchor text too much. How much is too much? I don't know. Google does.

So, where does that leave me? That leaves me starting from the beginning, once again, and searching for answers on where and how to continue. If I may be so bold as to say, I'm really hoping to get advice from some of the really knowledgable posters that I know this site has. General advice is needed, but also more specific advice on how to proceed would be great! Also, I'm looking to go the route that will give me the most bang for my efforts. At this point, I don't need to split hairs. I really need to make some headway fast!

For instance,

Before I do anything, do I need to evaluate my site somehow to make sure that I'm not being penalized for anything, and if so, how?
Is there a general strategy that I need to start employing?
What specific type of SEO strategies should I be using?
What else, other than links are important these days.
Keeping in mind the types of links I got in the past, what types of links and anchor text do I need to get in the future, and how do I get them? What ratios of types of links, anchor text, and links to index vs. non-index pages are being used?
In my particular case, what types of onsite SEO do I need to start working on?
Some of my products are the same model and are the same in every way except in color. Since the text on the page is probably 98% the same, could this be considered duplicate content?
Also, many of the products that share the same brand have a paragraph that describes the brand. The two products pages may share 80% of the same content because of this. Could this be considered duplicate content?
Should I start looking into things like Yahoo Directory, or BOTW Directory to give my SEO efforts a quick boost. Or, is this also an SEO technique that has fallen by the wayside? Also, since I have gotten directory links in the past, could I be getting too many directory links?
Is my site so far gone that I should consider hiring a professional SEO to be able to compete in my industry? Honestly, I'm thinking that the effort needed to get this off the ground will dominate most of my time!
One last thing, the most lucrative keyword I had for the last couple of years has since been taken over by a multi-million dollar rival with a new SEO campaign. Again, is it time to call in the professionals?

These are some of the questions I have. I really do appreciate any and all advice that the users of this forum have!

Here's my shortened url:

goo.gl/GvPT5

Thanks,

Jason