It's a bad idea to monkey with your URLs, a really bad idea... but if you can't help yourself, do it immediately, because the longer you wait the more you will probably lose as that page accumulates authority.

I would step away from the idea of blogs and blog posts and 3k articles.

Instead decide how you can build a website designed to help the visitor learn about the product, decide what to buy, learn how to use the product, learn how to fix the product, and how to enjoy.  This requires authors who have deep product knowledge and experience, and who also understand the customer.   Targeting keywords is natural if you have the knowledge and experience to do the above.

I would not use an image as a replacement for a title line on any of my websites.

I want the

at the top in text rather than in the alt attribute of an image.

If I had a designer who insisted on this, that designer would not be working for me for another minute.  In my opinion, the

text is that important.

This is simply an opinion, based upon observations and interpretation.  I don't know for sure how google views this.  I don't think that anyone outside of Google knows the real answer.   If anyone has their own opinion, I would like to hear it.

If you go to Amazon.com (not the Amazon.com Business site), you will see that they have site-wide links to dozens of their other retail and service properties in the footer.  These go to Zappos, Diapers.com, Casa.com, Goodreads, Woot and lots more.  In my opinion, I believe that these are simply viewed by google as Amazon parent company linking out to their other properties.   If you go to these other properties you will note that none of them have this huge collection of links in the footer.  I see other large companies linking out to their other properties in a similar way.  But these are always going from the parent company out to their smaller web properties.

On the other hand, Hayneedle (a large muti-site retailer who runs over 200 retail domains) had severe ranking problems a couple years ago.  This problem occurred when most of their retail sites had a huge navigation on many of their websites that contained links from lots of their retail sites to lots of their other retails sites.  Hayneedle's rankings recovered somewhat a short time later, when these huge interlinking navigations were removed from their websites.   In my opinion, this was viewed by Google as a manipulative linking scheme because you had sitewide links on lots of domains, each directed to lots of other domains.  This was a huge number of links totaling in the millions.

In my own practice, I own multiple sites, but I don't place site-wide footer links on any of them because I think that it looks irrelevant and dumb.  I also do not believe that it would have much ranking benefit at all.   I believe that Google knows who owns the sites, and I believe that they have enough information to dampen your ability to promote your own sites to higher rankings with a  heavy amount of "manufactured links".  (All of my sites are connected to my personal google account through webmaster tools, so Google knows who owns all of them.  They all also have my adsense codes on them and display ads on every page.)

I don't have fear or hesitate to link from one of my properties to another of my properties if I have relevant content there that exceeds what is available on the linking page. Does that have ranking benefit?  Maybe a little.  But I don't believe that site-wides between your sites are a good idea because there is a lack of relevance.  And I don't believe that your visitors are going to investigate a dropdown menu in the footer to see where it goes.  So, I don't think that there is any reason to do it.

If I see code in a title tag, I will know that a dumb programmer worked on that site.  It tells me that there could be other surprises waiting inside.

So, I will not click into that site.  I will skip over it.

If
was in the titel tags of one of my sites we would do whatever is needed to get it out of there.  We would work for an entire week to get rid of it because we don't want to be in the SERPs with our pants down.

You came here asking how to beat a directory and you got good answers and an action plan.

Unfortunately you look at metrics that google does not use, metrics that are based upon a domain, metrics that have nothing to do with the methods of winning a SERP.  Don't allow  rubbish metrics to frighten you away.

These are directory sites that you are trying to defeat. Directories.

They are not the Library of Congress or the Pope.   Pages on these sites are defeated by small businesses every day.  Pages on Amazon are defeated by small businesses every day.  These small businesses didn't run because they faced competition.  They got to work.

If you are willing to work hard you should not fear competition. Because where there is competition there is usually a lot of search volume on a lot of diverse keywords.  And, where  there is competition there is usually a lot of money changing hands.   Attack there with long content with diverse keywords and excellent quality.  There is a good chance that you will earn traffic.  Attack that keyword with multiple pages, each of excellent quality and targeting the long tail.  One of more of those pages might eventually gain rankings for the short tail keyword.

Maybe you will not win if you fight.  But you will never win if you run.

The English are too many.