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Google has been doing this for a while.

Sometimes they add your URL to the end of a title tag.

I have some title tags that are short but have my URL at the end.  Google is adding my URL on top of that.  Looks like this.....

Keywords at Egols.com | egols.com

Sometimes they replace your title tag with words that  match the querry.

I object to this because they have overwritten a title tag that with my marketing message such as "free shipping" or a kickass price that pulls in buyers.

Not knowing your experience level... my guesses are.....

Your search volume estimates are broad match and your rankings are personalized.

If those are both false then this is a very unusual case.

don't put your fate into anyone elses hands

This is my basic philosophy.  I don't like to hand important matters over to other people.

All of the work that is done on my sites is done here in my office by staff.  The only exception is some database and programming work that is done by long-trusted consultants.

Sometimes it is good to use consultants to obtain opinions before doing a big change on the site or getting a periodic review.  I don't always follow their advice but they often give me ideas that I would never have thought of on my own.  These are sometimes very valuable.

But, always making the decisions yourself will keep you on a conservative or aggressive path as you see fit and on a philosophy that you agree with.

I don't know what you are selling, but I would consider writing SuperExpert content about the products that you sell.

• How to select the right one

• How to use it

• How to fix it

• How to get the most out of it

• Information about vintage products

When people write to you about your products a lot of those messages can be the starting point for a great article on your website.

I try to do the above at a level that is far superior to anything that the manufacturer does.

Every time I have needed help with one of my websites I asked a person who posts on a forum where I have been a long time member.  That long membership allowed me to see the responses of many people over time and determine who seems to know what they are doing and has a style that I would want to work with.   I have never been disappointed.

So, consider asking as many questions as you want here and see how people reply to them.  If they give you great answers for free then imagine what you will get when you pay them.  You will learn the answers to your questions, make some friends, and possibly find someone who you trust and will do great work.

Visit the profile page of people who you think might do a good job.  They usually say if they are not available or have a link to their site where you can see if they do consultations.

Sometimes the keyword difficulty report omits some data.  I would try again tomorrow and you might see different results.

It is absolute and has nothing to do with your site.

And, because it is absolute, some sites will be able to achieve top rankings by simply adding a page that is optimized for that keyword and linking to it... but that same page placed on your site might not rank in the top 50 positions.  And that happens because their domain is stronger than yours or even if it has a lot of related content and you do not.

2)  Expecting real ROI?

When you hire an SEO that person or company agrees to make you visible in the search engines and create a flow of traffic from search engines to your website.  That is the deal in very basic terms.

Other parts of getting ROI are up to you.   To achieve ROI you need:  a website that converts, products clearly described, products that are in stock and priced reasonably, shipping charges that are not excessive, a shopping cart that works, phone staff that answer calls and advise on products.  These other parts of ROI are under your control and are your risk.

The SEO should not be expected to assume your risks of doing business.  If he wanted to assume those jobs and risks then he would be a merchant and not an SEO.

3. Can you do SEO yourself with SEOMoz tools?

Anybody can use the tools, but there is a lot more to SEO than pushing buttons and running reports.

Lots of people do SEO for their own business.  That's what I do.  In fact, if you are willing to study diligently, experiment, work hard and smart then you can probably do SEO for your business as well as any SEO would do it for you.

A good way to proceed is to study on your own, experiment on your sites and then hire an SEO for consultation. That way the SEO studies your site, makes a job list for you, and reviews that job list on the phone with you so you know how to do it.  Some SEOs will do this type of consulting and it works well for lots of business owners.

Russ has given you some good leads.   Here are a couple more.....

Look at your competitors.  Have they reduced their prices?  Are they giving free shipping?

Look at new merchandise in the market.  Maybe your stuff is old model now and everyone wants the newest.

What are your thoughts on using Dripable, VitaRank, or similar service to help dilute the link profile by building links with URLs, Click Here, more Info, etc.

I hope that all of my competitors are using this stuff.  I think that it is just like dipping a crappy link profile in really cheap chocolate and telling Google its a Snickers bar.  It will not take them long to find out. 

In the past few months, lots of website owners who have enjoyed success from these methods for years are now at much lower traffic levels in response to Google's Penguin update and other actions.  Those who have used keywords repetitively as anchor text seem to have particular problems.

So, although lots of people still use these methods, many are now afraid of them after seeing their business (or their colleague's business) lose website revenue and lay off their fulfillment staff.

Also, during the past year many people believe that these methods have become much less effective, and, many directories, article sites, and press release sites have lost rankings or even indexing.

That is the practical explanation.

To go philosophical, why should google honor these methods?  They do nothing to improve the webmaster's site or provide a service to the visitors.  So, a better and long term investment would be to build assets for the website.

It sounds like you are just getting started.  So the best place to begin is with a basic book.

I would get a copy of Brad Geddes' "Advanced Google Adwords" book and start reading.  There are other books and free info on the web that are also helpful.  At the same time I would open an Adwords account and start experimenting. You probably know a few of the queries.  Write ads for them and get started.

Experience and experiments are a very important part of learning

Calling the real estate agency and asking what words people use when asking about this type of property can be very helpful.  Ask them what they believe are the most valuable search queries to be visible are.   Visit online  listings and competitor websites  to see how they are described.

It is essential for you to learn the language of the business.

Sometimes the person who answers the incoming calls at a business has a better idea about the language customers use than an experienced SEO.  Don't be afraid to ask them.

I am confident that if you write more substantive descriptions on the getpaper product pages you will get more traffic.

I would add some info on how these papers perform, what people print on them, sample printers that they fit.

I would also create a "plotter paper for dummies" section on the website.

It was very serious rather than sarcastic.   If you used some of the typical SEO tricks the damage done to your site could really cut your business and result in you laying off employees.

We have no idea of your level of knowledge.  So it is better to warn you about tricks than to see you return here crying - even if you don't like it.

Those are links to related topics (category pages) on their site that many people probably click.

Looks like a good idea to me.  Might really increase the pageviews.

There has to be more "tricks" to seo besides keywords and link building

I wouldn't be looking for "tricks" these days.

The difference between "top 5" and "top 3" for hundreds of keywords will probably be hundreds to thousands of visitors per DAY (depending upon the keywords)

I always use a 301 redirect.

2K is a lot of pages.  If I can redirect them with a couple lines of htaccess code I would do it.  If I had to code 2K lines and have that huge file scanned for thousands of visitors I might not do it if I am pretty sure that there is very little traffic.

I use lots of folders on my site and that makes these problems easy to solve.

Suppose you are not sure of what keywords you want to rank for but just want to see a list of phrases that have 500-5000 searches a day, low cost and low competition because you are looking for phrases that interest you for which it will be easier to rank close to #1 in google.

I think that most of these "mouse holes" have been discovered and are now occupied. 

You might find one but I think that you will discover... is when competition is easy and the cost is low there is a really good reason for that.

Brad has prepared a very good list.

Yes..  But read the SEOmoz Beginner's guide first.   Don't hesitate to read the basic chapters twice.

I have read many SEObooks.  None of them have been a waste of time as long as they are reasonably current.  Since there have been so many changes in Google over the past year, I would read new editions of any that are published.

Also read "In the Plex".  It's not SEO but will help you understand how google works and appreciate that they always have test algos running.

I find myself spending 4 hours a day on something SEO related. Now granted most of the time its verifying what I just read to make sure it's accurate but I hear you, it's trial and error combined with constant learning and patience mixed in.

This is time well spent.

As you learn more you will be able to back off the time spent on SEO and increase the time spent improving your site.

It is better to get a good foundation on SEO now than spin your wheels for three years and then discover that you wasted your time.

I moved to a hostgator reseller and have had great success but have heard of the situations where even they will kill your sites if they get too much traffic.

Not saying any names but just about any host that offers you Unlimited Bandwidth is going to have some type of tripwire that throttles your traffic.  If I moved a site there that burns terrabytes per day I can guarantee that a lot of these host would either kick you off or you will leave because you lost a ton of money the first day.

Sites that claim to offer unlimited resources.... your success is not in their best interest.  They are not going to give you $700 worth of bandwidth for $4.99/month.

So, if you have a site that is starting to be successful, move it to a host who will charge you for all that you use.  That host wants you to succeed because when you succeed they make more money... and when you call them for help they will do it gladly because they are helping you make more money.

As Ben says... start by reading the Beginner's Guide to SEO.

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Then start working on a website, or a couple of websites.

Experiment with them by changing the title tag, adding more content to some of the pages, reoptimizing.

As you work on them, keep an SEO Log and write down the changes that you make and the dates that you make them.  Watch how it influences rankings.  If you do this diligently you will learn more from this than any reading.

If you are learning you should discover that your website now sucks because your knowledge has grown.  That is a great thing.  Rebuild the site.  You will probably be amazed with the results.

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Install google analytics on these websites and become a student of the sources of traffic and the queries that people type in.   When you improve a 200 word page to a 500 word page watch for the explosion of new long tail keywords that flood in.  Watch how great content holds visitors and crap content bounces them.  ( I spend a few hours a week on this - even after ten years watching the same sites.)

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Pick a subject that you are very familiar with and enjoy.  Then create the best content on the web for that topic and post it on your site.  Watch where it ranks right away (you will probably be disappointed).  Check the rankings about once a week and watch what happens.  You will be impressed with what happens to quality. But, be patient as this type of content rises very slowly in the SERPs -- but in 6 to 12 to 24 months you will be surprised where it ranks.

Be careful that you don't deceive yourself into thinking that your content is the best when it is merely pedestrian.  Be prepared to keep it up-to-date and to improve it when someone else trumps it.

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Pick a good SEO forum and visit once a day.   Watch for people who come there posting titles like... "Wah!  My site lost tons of traffic."   Read all of those for a while and you will quickly start to see patterns.  You will generally find that they have committed some type of sin, usually with links or shortcuts.  Do not repeat their sins no matter how tempting.  Then after each google update read the post of the people who are cryin' and you will soon learn that google is smacking down a different type of shortcut and that google rarely smacks down quality that is difficult to produce.

While you are on these forums never listen closely to all of the advice, because lots of the advice in SEO forums is really bad advice - even when it comes from gurus and oracles.  Nobody understands google perfectly and most advice given is shooting from the hip with fragmentary data - especially if the advisor has not spend a lot of time on your website and studied your analytics carefully over time.

Spend a couple hours a week poking into busy forums.  You will learn a lot, find strong allies and trusted people who will be worth hiring for jobs where you lack expertise.

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After you think you have learn an awful lot, go back and reread the Beginner's Guide to SEO with a great desire to improve.  You will probably discover again that you website sucks.  This is a good thing.  Don't hesitate to rebuild properly because you will most likely receive a great reward.

I really like Paul's advice.  Deserves more than a "thumbs up".

Determine what management will respect.  Will they respect traffic?  Sales?   Leads?

Then do a kickass job of that in your business area.  Be sure that it is impressive.  Then say that the same results can probably be achieved in other biz areas.  Be specific on what it will take (if you  are not specific they might do a halfhearted job and claim that it didn't work.

Three things come to my mind about your situation...

1. links posted on mass press release sites are worth very little

2. if you submit one you might get a tiny tiny amount of credit, if you submit two the second one gets even less credit and if you submit twenty the most recent 10 combined might get less credit than the first.

3. if I want to beat my competitor I will try to do something superior rather than mimicking his methods

What can you do that is superior?

Honestly... I hope that all of my competitors are working their asses off doing press releases.

I see NASA.gov being beaten for quotes from their own content - sometimes even a quote of their title tag.  So many people scrape their content or republish it verbatim.

A city newspaper near me had a lot of pages of crappy content.  They simply posted a page for every business around with biz name, phone address and couple other pieces of info.  These were really skinny pages.  Their rankings have been in the dumps and I think these skinny pages are the reason.

Lots of people use Yoast or similar methods and think that they got all of the bases cover. Thereby they forget using their brain.

Often adding a couple extra words to category pages such as "news" or "information" or  "facts" can pull in 10x more traffic.  Similar results can often be obtained on other parts of the site.

So, do kW research, think about what people are searching for and that hour or two spent might earn the highest amount of money per hour that you ever make in a lifetime.

I agree. On my sites I use "buy buttons" on html pages instead of using the product pages that the cart can generate.  This gives me total control over the look of the pages, the URLs and the SEO.

Moving an ecommerce site to a new platform can be a TON of work.  It can also change how your site performs in the search engines.

You have decided that you can improve your SEO by moving to a new platform.

You want to maximize this by picking a platform that will perform well, optimizing it expertly and moving your pages in a way that retains all of their links and rankings.

Instead of fearing loss you should be aggressively looking for gain.

If I was in your situation I would hire an experienced SEO who knows a lot about ecommerce platforms and have him/her advise on a platform, plan the move, determine how to best optimize, and do parts of the execution that you don't feel qualified doing yourself.

This is an opportunity for you to make huge gains. A website gets very few of these opportunities.  Maximize them.

From what I am seeing there is enormous instability in the SERPs.  This has been going on for about the past month but it is especially bad the past week.

I can open three different browsers on my machine and get very different results from each of them.... then remote to a computer at another location and get completely different results on three browsers there.

This reminds me of the old google dance.

Thanks for the details.

It sounds like doing both  might be a good move.

Perhaps you should have two blogs... the original to share information and expertise with customers and another for people in the SEO industry.  If you are a thought leader you might get a lot of links.

I am answering this as someone who currently owns a business but who previously worked a long time as an employee in a "Yes Sir" and "Yes Ma'am" environment.

The owner of the business recently approached me about the blog posts I'd been writing and said they were too technical and aimed at the wrong people.

The owner of this business pays you guaranteed money to do your job and she is the one who defines your job.  Unlike you, the owner of this business does not earn guaranteed money.  She is instead paid strictly on the basis of performance.  She gets the big bucks if the business is successful and loses her investment if the business tanks.

She was motivated to tell you to change direction.   That means she believes that the posts you are making a threat to her income or worse her investment.

You are the noob, she is the most senior person who has all of the skin in the game and who has watched lots of previous efforts to make money succeed and fail.

Now, if what I have said so far has not made you angry then I think you are a person with enormous potential.

If I was in your situation, I would visit the owner to discuss the blog.  Your goal in this visit is to listen.  What you need to hear are.....

-- who the intended audience is

-- what the intended message is (sample topics)

-- what result is hoped for

After hearing this the goals of the owner should be very clear to you.

After hearing this if you think that your idea targets a different goal then you can explain that goal to the owner.  It is possible that the owner will agree and want to do both - if that is the case you might need two blogs or a way to attack your goal on a different part of the website.  It is also possible to get agreement but the owner thinks that your time is most profitably spent working towards her goal.

My employees sometimes disagree with me.  Sometimes they have an idea that is better than mine.  Sometimes they have an idea that just as good.  I want to hear these ideas because if they are good and successful then I am the one who will benefit the most.

How you play this depends a lot on the personality of the owner.  If the owner is "always right" then it might be best for you to suck it up and do things her way.  In that situation I would not try to change this person's mind unless I was really confident about my idea and could make a rock-solid case for it.

However, if the owner values input then you have an opportunity to make a valuable contribution to her business.  And, your willingness to discuss the topic to learn and provide input will be valued.

I used to have a site with a huge beautiful image in the banner.  It looked great.  But it dominated the above-the-fold real estate.  My content was pushed way down, so were the ads that bring revenue.

So, I made a small, sleek banner that is simply the domain name, search box and social share buttons.

After that was remove my pages had a big article title shouting at the top of the browser window and a beautiful relevant image at the top of the article.

Instantly.....

• people were staying longer on the site

• average pageviews per visitor went up

• my bandwidth was cut by gigabytes per day

• revenue went up

Should you do this?    I would make a quick test that does not require a lot of work, toss it up for  a couple of days and let your analytics tell you if it is a good thing.

You can get a quick answer with two hours of work and two days of statistics.

Try it.  Then use data to make your decision.  The actions of your visits will instruct you.

Also consider this.... After you remove the banner will  you have anything that is beautiful above the fold?  Almost every page of my site has a big juicy colorful image at the top of the article.  This eye candy pulls people in.   I don't think that my results would be the same if I had a big page of boring text and no images.

I believe that the Yahoo Directory can be valuable for a new site that is struggling to get its first few highly trusted links.

Do a google search like this for a site that is already in the directory:

site:dir.yahoo.com  "somesite.com"

You might see that the site is getting links from a few yahoo pages, maybe they are in au.dir.yahoo.com and dir.yahoo.com and others.

So, I use the Yahoo Directory for sites that are a few years old or sites that are  in very close competition.

I would not pay $300/year for a mature site because once the site is established with a good link profile or dominant in its niche  the value of the Yahoo Directory is tiny in comparison to other site assets.

It's been about a year since my post and they have changed the page.  Now, if you want to see trust symbols you must go to individual sites.

Look near "buy buttons" and in highly visible parts of the page such as upper right.

I am not trying to be a wise guy... just saying what I would tell a friend or an employee... and the opinion that I hold for myself.

I think that you have discovered that the trust and authority numbers are not what google is using to rank websites.  In fact google in the past couple of months has dramatically altered the way that they consider links.

Panda, nofollow, and google information never yet revealed make the link metric waters really muddy.  There is a really good chance that lots of links have been made worthless... and others are depreciating assets.

I am betting my money elsewhere.

So, the most reliable way to advance the success of your website is to focus your efforts on increasing the  appreciation of your website by your visitors.

Name the most successful sites on the web.  This is what they do first and foremost leaving SEO as a five minute job for each page of content.

That sounds great and will help you target potential webmasters.

Did you know that for the typical keyword that less than 200 domains are all that can be found in the first 1000 results?

That's right.  The typical domain has six to ten pages displayed in the first 1000.

What these guys have figured out how to do is saturate the top 30... and if you can apply a little force you can dominate the top 20 or even get the top 4.

... but you can't do that if you fear keyword cannibalization.   Don't settle for one position.

There is more than one "google".

Google runs lots of experimental algos at the same time.  You could be in on one and out on the other.

Also, if your site has duplicate content that is on another site, google will sometimes display one site with that content and then another.

So keep working on linkprofile and check for duplicate content.

Why should they link to YOU?

heh....

All of the people who think that keyword cannibalization is a sin....  take a lesson from this.

Forums that are visited by lots of noobs, people who use SEO as a ranking tool instead of content, and "SEOs" who have shallow understanding of  ranking factors usually get really busy right after an algo change.

They explode with lots of reactionary post titles like... "Wah!  My rankings disappeared!"........   "Google hates me!".... etc.  These begin within an hour of the the algo's roll-out, peak over the next 48 hours and drag on for a few weeks.  Many of these visitors are first-time posters in the forum and arrive in a panic because they don't understand what happened to their site.

If you watch these forums and follow a few of the threads where intelligent people describe their problem and knowledgeable people respond, you can frequently get a sense of what and who is getting whacked.  If you know the difference between "intelligent" and "knowledgeable" (very different human qualities) you can get the most out of this reading.

The SEOmoz Q&A has a bit of this but not as much as forums such as SEOChat, DigitalPoint and the Google Support forums.

I would go after it.

None of the domains that I am using were domains that I was the original registrant.

I don't know.

My problem is that I have a mental disorder that makes it very difficult to remember things.

I think that it will be hard for some people to remember the middle initial.  As a result some will type the domain without the initial and your traffic will go to someone else.

I could remember AJSolomon easily if you like that.

andymisiu is kind of hard to remember and spell

...This isn't advice... just what I think.

I am writing articles that focus on the use of individual products.  They are about 500 to 1500 words and usually have 3 to 8 photos.  Some have a video.   I started working on them in November and now some of those articles rank in the top three positions of google for the product and my product page ranks immediately below or above them.

When a visitor lands on one of the article pages there are links in the article to the sales page and also some "house ads" on the article page for related products.

Some of the videos are now ranking in the top three positions of  youtube search for the product or a related query.  Some of these also appear in the google search results.

I don't do linkbuilding but these articles have gotten some natural links from dremel and other how-to-do-it sites.

These articles are all on dreamweaver pages or in a /blog/ folder (wordpress).  I use "buy buttons" on dreamweaver pages rather than an ecommerce platform.