If your goal is to "get a message out" then put your content up anywhere that you can.

If your goal is to make money from a website then you need a different plan.  Not saying what that plan should be because I don't know your goals.

Tell your client that they are asking you to fight Mike Tyson with your feet tied together.

Tell them that they should not expect anything better than second rate results and an ass kicking.

Tell them that you think they are wasting 80% of the money that they spend on their site.

Tell them that you don't feel good taking their money when they have no chance of winning.

These will not be happy clients.  Who would be happy pumping money into a losing site.  It will be your fault, not theirs.

You will not be happy doing this work.

"My collegae says don't use www.exactkeyword.org, because we aren't a non-profit organizaton and we can't garantuee we won't lose our rankings over the next 3 to 4 years. He would recommend going with the available www.exact-keyword.info."

IMO exact-keyword.info is the spammiest type of domain.  I would not even click into one from the SERPs.

If you use a .org the more famous you become the more traffic you will lose to the .com (because so many people simply assume that any important site is on a .org.  (maybe where you are - if you are playing for local traffic the .nl would be fine).

You obviously have a few people working on this project and have spent a lot of company time working on this.   I would simply find who owns exactkeyword.com and be willing to pay good money for the domain.   Or, I would find a great dot com without a hyphen.

If you have a great staff working on a great site go get a great domain.

I know a lot more about it than the average person but am not available for this job!   Actually... that should be the $1000 work you were talking about.

No matter what you are buying you should consider your intended use.

If you are buying nails you should know that roofing nails, finishing nails and concrete nails are designed for different uses and can not be substituted for one another.

Even buying a commodity like manure requires one to pay attention.  Some types of manure will produce abundant weeds in your garden, others will burn your plants, a few types have the proper amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to energize your soil.  See here for an author who can write about this fine topic.

If you need someone to write about nails find a person who knows a lot about using a hammer.  If you need someone to wrote about manure find someone who knows his shit.

The average writer will not do a very good job at writing about nails or about manure.  They will have to do a lot of research and even then people who really know their stuff will immediately recognize a noob trying to pretend he is a farmer.

Here is what I do....

For an ecommerce product I decide what words people are going to use when searching for it.  These might be brand names but often they are descriptive generic terms.  I might use wordtracker or a similar service to look at the volume.  I then write an original product description of very generous length describing many features using natural language.

That's it.  I write to what I believe people are looking for and don't allow competitive volumes to scare me away.  Don't fear competition because where there is competition there is also (usually) a lot of traffic and where there is a lot of traffic there is (usually) a nice amount of money changing hands.

I do the direct frontal attack because I know that most of the chickens are outsmarting themselves by attacking tiny money on phrases obscurus.  That's what the expert SEOs tell them to do. 

When writing informative content I do the same thing as described above.  I decide how people are searching for it and write very generous content, attempting to make my document one of the very best on the web for that topic.

If you are a reasonably smart ambitious person don't fear competition - bet on yourself.   If you are lazy or not so smart then I suggest getting a job somewhere else.  You probably will not earn a good living in a highly competitive industry.

It sounds like you don't have the resources or the will to compete.  You are attacking at the last minute.  Most importantly you repeat over and over that this niche is boring.

If you had either resources, will, time or excitement then you might have a chance.

Find where all four are in your favor.  You might win there if you don't flinch.

You might not have enough linkjuice into those pages to assure constant spidering.... and as a result, Google forgets those pages between crawls.

Both

I never use catchy titles.  My goal is to clearly describe the topic of the content with words that people will type into a search box.

I am writing an article right now about how to make something.  I am focusing on where to get the materials and what tools will be used (we sell tools and supplies)... but will also show all of the steps and the finished product.

I planned the project, visited several stores, visited several websites, purchased several items, had my webmaster take photos, have the project underway, will take photos of some key steps featuring tools and supplies, and photos of finished project.

It is going to be a nice article that will motivate people to buy from us.  I expect it to attract traffic and convert visitors into buyers every month.

Making best-on-the-web content requires exertion, expenditure and acquiring the cooperation of others.

When I write an article, I don't hesitate to spend several days researching, purchase reference material, call people, email experts, collect data, go to a university, make a video (and reshoot to improve), attend a trade show to speak with people, spend hundreds (sometimes more) on photo props, have a photographer take photos (and retake them to please me), hire an artist to create an illustration (and tweak it several times), use Excel to graph data, contact people to license images.....

The goal is to create something awesome that people who see it will immediately be motivated to share.

You don't sit down and type something.

You think, you plan, you exert yourself.  You go after the materials and information that you need to make it great.

It takes time.  It's not cheap.   Begin with that in mind.

How are your rankings?

If you are kickingAss then don't worry about it.

================

lol... visited one of your video pages....you are flirting with Panda... how about some content on all of those pages?

So, you are going to blow all of your domain authority by dividing it into twenty pieces?

If you are doing this to get keywords in your domain or manufacture links from one site to another then this is a very bad idea.

I would be grinning if one of my competitors was doing this.

After listening to people here at seomoz, we're making five 5000-10000 word articles on topics that

This word count is awfully high.  I suggest that you stop thinking about big numbers and again focus on quality.

The articles should be long enough to cover the topic in enough detail that it is "best on the web".

the thing that is most linked to that I've found are articles about the problems that the products solve. An article on that wouldn't be as useful to our customers.

This sounds like a lost opportunity.  The most linked to is a great target.

Again, focus on quality and create content that blows the competition's feeble attempt out of the water.

Hire someone with expertise in their business area to write for the blog on their domain.

You can make "how to use" articles without videos.  Most of ours don't have a video - but great photos are really important, IMO.

We upload the files to a folder titled /tips/.   Each article gets a very obvious link from product pages.  The are also linked to from a "you might like these" box on related article pages.

We also have an FAQ page that  is a huge list of links to  "how to use" articles.

How many?   I write a couple "how to use" articles every week and have a huge list of ones that are needed.

The topics are often driven by customer questions that we get by email.  We write the article, post it, and send the customer a link.

I have "how to use" articles for many of the products that I sell.  These often have a video, several photos, sometimes a chart.

I don't go out looking for links to these articles.  I simply post them on the site and people link to them from blogs, forums, facebook, etc.  Recent links from marthastewart, dremel, cracked, and other sites appeared with no work from us.

I spend zero time linkbuilding and 100% of my time content building.

Every page of content that I add to the site pulls in more traffic from search and accumulates links, likes, etc slowly.

It's all progress if you do a great job on the article.

If you have a popular product and you make the best-on-the-web guide to using it you have a great chance of earning links with zero work.

P3ConsultingSoultions.com

Nice work!

I would focus on very small numbers.

I would identify the five most important articles that will educate the clients potential customers.  These articles will demonstrate how to utilize, select, enjoy, repair, obtain value from the client's current products.

Then I would have the client create those articles instead of sending them out to people who know nothing about his business or his customers or his products.  If he can't write these I would go straight to an expert in his product niche.

These should be best-on-the-web articles for their respective subjects.

ONE great article can attract hundreds of links.  Five hundred crappy articles will make his competitors laugh.

oh... those pages with the hidden text on Google properties....

I hate those pages.  Hate them.  Hate them.

They usually have trivial content too.  A whole page with a few sentences and you have to view 15 pages to get the information that you need.

They should be smacked by panda.

Did I say that I really dislike those pages.

Luke, here is the story....

I had a big FAQ page that was really long.  I wanted to organize it with an accordion page.   When people landed on the page they were instrucuted to "click a topic" and the accordion would open - when it opened all of the questions about a single topic were displayed.

When I installed the accordion page the words on the page changed very little but traffic into that page from google dropped by 80%.

So, I removed the accordion and placed topic links in large font at the top of the page.  when people enter they were still instructed to "click a topic".  The visitor was then moved down the page where questions about that topic were presented.

After changing that traffic from google search jumped back up.   Visitor engagement remained about the same - pageviews and time on site is about the same.

"Embedding text in graphic headers and applying

to the graphics to get the SEO value"

I want as much text as possible on the page.  Every diverse word pulls in longtail traffic.

And... applying

to a graphic for SEO value?   Why do you think that will work?  Just use text.

"Reducing view-able text on a page for design reasons and by using JavaScript to hide text in accordions or tabs."

Any time I have done this the SEO value of the text is lost.  That's what my analytics tells me from lost long tail traffic.

If a designer told me that he needed to hide text for design purposes.  I would challenge him to find a way to put the text on the page and make it look great.  If he was not up to that challenge I would have a new designer.

Others might disagree.  That's OK.

I believe that most people who have a blog should stop thinking about it as a blog and instead use the blog as a content management system for posting short (or very long) articles.

The method of posting remains the same.  However, the format of presenting to the visitor has an additional type of category page that allows you to move away from the chronological list and towards presenting in a format that prioritizes on the basis of popularity, profitability, usefulness or whatever you think is important.

Those pages might look like this...  http://www.nytimes.com/pages/movies/index.html

Use your imagination and present your content with style.

Before you make a big move like this with a money site you need to know what you are doing.  There are many ways that website moves can go wrong because the person doing the move lacks knowledge.

When a website is moved your goal should be to have a huge increase in sales.....  you are worried about being hit with a huge loss.  That tells me that you should hire an expert to assist you and teach you how this is done.

Websites should be moved by a person who has the knowledge and care to do it properly.

"Every week, I write a new article and put it in my 'Blog' page. In the articles, I like to cover some problem that I've encountered throughout the week, if, for example, I write about a Hard Drive I replaced in Sheffield, I write about that and link it to my 'PC Repair Sheffield' page."

This is approximately what I do for two sites that I focus on.

I identify informative content that people are searching for, write an article that is among the best-on-the-web for that topic,  supplement the article with great photos, graphics, perhaps a video (that we prepare ourselves), and post them on the site.

We have been doing this every week, every week, every week, for several years.  We don't do any linkbuilding or other site promotion - our visitors share our content and link to it without any work done by us.  Rankings climb steadily and traffic climbs steadily as we add more content and the site becomes more visible.

This works in niches with low competition and also in niches where the competition is very very high.  The key to success is content that defeats what is already out there.

what is a Realistic Expectation for my DA ranking within a three months?

We can't tell.... it depends if you are the Mike Tyson or the Nobody Jones in your niche.

... and the more time you spend thinking and writing about the topic of your site instead of thinking about DA the greater your level of success will be.

I measure popularity by number of visitors.  I look at the number who view the page and the number who enter the page from search, social media and links on other websites.

===========================

I pay more attention to the value of  content using these metrics.....

-- visitors referred from Google search (this is evidence that the content is productive - and this can increase over time as links arrive and rankings mature - although most of my traffic is pulled from long tail keywords)

-- the ability of an article to attract links (these send traffic and drive rankings)

-- social media activity (getting slashdotted can start a traffic avalanche that can bring 100,000 visitors in a few days - stumble can send a few dozen to a few hundred per day for years)

-- brand queries such as.... "manure article on egol.com"

-- adsense revenue of the page

-- retail conversions that enter the site through this page

Would it not be better to transfer the webshop to the brand domain because of the domain authority?

Yes.  This is what I would do.

I would place the store in a folder such as /shop/ or /store/ and then do a page-by-page 301 redirect of the old store into the folder, preserving the page URLs and optimization.

That is true. If you nofollow a link, nobody gets the PR.

IMO, you can do everything including prayer and not get Google+ action.  Most people have no idea what it is.

SEOs and Google employees are the only people who care about Google+

They will abandon it soon.  Spend your valuable time on other work.

I link out to dozens of websites every week and every one of those links are followed.

One great question answered in Q&A can be worth an entire year of subscriptions.... but it is up to you to ask the right questions.

On one hand this traps all the link equity/Pagerank.

This is not true.

If you nofollow a link the PR evaporates.

And... if you link only to good, trusted sites then why nofollow anything?  It tells google that you link only to untrusted sites.

Does Google know that we own both of them?

Google is a domain registrar and can probably see the registrants.  How much they use this is unknown.

I would do the quiz at http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/

**Will having the brand in the URL make much of a difference? **

The brand?   Yes, if people know you.

Really, I would not change domains for the tiny advantage that you think a keyword in the domain might bring.  It is very possible that you will lose more linkjuice in the redirect than you will gain from the keyword in the domain.

Do you think that small step would even help to beat the crappy but old site out?

heh... That crappy old site is beating you because they are beating you. 

It is easier to beat an old crappy site with "work" than it is to beat them with "tricks'.

It's setting off your BS meter.

Go with your gut.

Robert,

If you go to ebay and amazon you will see them running adsense (or equivalent) on their product pages.

I agree with keeping them on the site if they are coming from paid search!

Sending them to FB from the "thank you" page is a GREAT idea.

I think that it all depends upon what you are offering and where they are going.

If you offer best product around at lowest price they can find then you should not mind them going out to tell people about it or ask if it is a good deal.  They might return with six friends.

Now, if you are sending them to a totally unrelated site with nobody to tell about your products/prices then that could be a bad move.

In a similar but different way.... I don't mind running adsense ads on my product pages if I have the lowest price, best product, great deal.  That way, I can show my product, take a piece of my competitors advertising budget and still have the visitor return to my site to make the purchase.

I might buy or register the domain if it is one that I would like to use.

However, if the agent's current site has really good rankings and is accomplishing goals then I would be very hesitant about changing.

The agent's name as a domain can be a powerful brand.  If he uses a different domain for his business it splits his brand.

I really like keyword domains but they are not silver bullets.  For your example the loss of effectiveness causesd by redirecting all of the links from an established domain could be a greater loss than the gain offered by the EMD.  That means your rankings could DROP!

Also, EMDs usually provide ranking advantage for exact match queries - and little if any advantage for every other query.

Switching makes the most sense for poorly established domains.... much much less sense as the domain is more established.

Tell them to learn how to do it in a folder.

Millions of websites have wordpress blogs installed in a folder.

It is not difficult.

Hire someone to do it for you or hire someone to train someone in the IT department.

If inherited these sites I would probably make unique location pages on the primary domain and do a 301 redirect of the microsites to their respective pages on the main domain.

Before I did this I would first look at current rankings and if these sites are all showing kickass rankings, conversions and performing superbly then I would allow them to run "as is" until performance changed.  In that case I would improve the duplicate pages, making them unique and focused on services offered in their respective community.

Instead of using a subdomain, I would use a folder on the root domain.

If you do that the blog will benefit from the domain's authority and the domain will benefit from links given to the blog.

Lots of domains have blogs in subdomains and these are often owned by various people.  Google is unlikely to distribute authority to the subdomains for this reason.

I would place them in folders rather than subdomains.    This is because subdomains are not treated as well in the SERPs as folders.

Average video plays on their site are 15,000-20,000

That's all????

In that case... I would place the video on my own site and build out a youtube channel.  I'd let them make their own videos.

whispering

IMO these on-page anchor links are almost as powerful in optimization as a title tag.

sites.google.com is full of spam.

Someday google will be embarrassed enough about hosting all of that crap that they will take it down.

IMO their whole domain should be pandaed for hosting that crap.

So, if I had a website of any value on there, I would be moving it to a real domain.

We've got an opportunity to create video content for one of the highest authority news sites in our region.

So, tell us the full details of the deal?   They payin'?   Linkin'?   Other promotion?