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I agree with Ressler.... publish something that is so fantastically popular that it is tweeted, liked, blogged, emailed and talked about by everyone on the web.

I think that you will need to do this multiple times to rank at the top of google for some of your keywords.

If you go to google and do searches for these variations you will quickly see how optimized pages are treated in the SERPs.

It varies.

In the early 2000's you could grab the GNIS database, make a site like this, toss it up and make a lot of money as long as you had enough links to get it indexed and hold it there.... but by about 2005, sites like this would not stick in the SERPs if they were nothing but....

yada yada yada Bugtussle, West Virginia yada yada yada yada yada yada

yada yada yada Burgoo, West Virginia yada yada yada yada yada yada

Today, you need unique and substantive content on every page of the site to have it stick in the SERPs (assuming that you have enough pagerank to get it indexed and respidered on a regular basis).

I've thought about making sites like this but didn't have a $X00,000 budget to scratch the surface of the content requirement.

You also have a duplicate content problem...

Rewrite original and much more substantive product descriptions.

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Your title tag is a keyword dump...

Mobility Scooter | Scooters | Scooter | Power Scooter | American Scooter | Mobility

Pick one or two keywords that are very important to you and  write a title tag that will elicit clicks.

What are all of those links at the bottom of your page?  Google will not be smiling when they see a load of footer links going out to trashy sites on every  page of your website.

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I would yank them down right away.

Sounds like a winner right?

Yes, Sir!

But what if we sold jars and our blog rarely talked about jars because jars are Boring?

You need to find a new line of business.  If you sell jars you should be able to sing loudly about them with enthusiasm and verve.

In webmaster tools, our keyword significance for the word organic is ranked 1st but for the word jars we're ranked 41st .

Most people who have a highly focused site see their primary keywords at or near the top of the list.

Should i be placing our blog on a subdomain to make sure Google starts placing more emphasis on our jars? ie content on our site rather than content on our blog?

If you are selling jars, your blog should be in a folder on your primary domain.  Placing it in a subdomain is ineffective and blogging about other stuff is farting around.

Instead of building links I am building content assets - even for retail sites... http://www.seomoz.org/blog/throwing-out-the-book-on-seo

I don't know the frequency because I am only checking SERPs about once per day... but I do see a lot of shuffle in product and product category SERPs - especially in positions #4 through #20.

Perhaps we are seeing "experimental SERPs".... google runs lots of experiments.

.... or, maybe twitter or FB mentions are hitting these SERPs?

I am seeing a lot of shuffle too - for the past couple of weeks.

Nope.... google will display as many as you earn.

Lots of people say that the first link on a page is what google counts.... but really.... which do you think Google would consider more relevant... a link in the first paragraph of an article or a link in the bottom of the left navigation column.  The nav link would be normally higher in the code, but the paragraph link would be higher on the page.  However, don't you think that the paragraph link would be higher in relevance but the nav link would indicate it might be  higher in the heirarchy of the site.

I am going to spend all of my time working on content and let the links appear where they naturally fall.  What people talk about and what google does could be two different things and what google does tomorrow could be entirely different from what they are doing today.... (and we know a few instances of what google says they are doing being entirely different from what they really are doing).

To close the rant.... I am betting all of my money on links being rapidly depreciating assets.

The reason that I suggested 50 tips per paint guy was to give every participate a unique set of tips that would survive any duplicate content problems.

Any real paint guy should be able to come up easily with 50 tips.

We are working on ranking towards some hyper competitive keywords...

I do not believe that the work that they propose will be effective for your "hyper competitive" keywords.

I think that it will have very little effect.... and guarantee that it will have zero effect if the products do not appear in spiderable text.

... I'd rather just list my kickass products on the homepage.

This is BS... do not do it.

... if you want reviews then ask your customers....

Any time a customer tells you that they like a product or that you did a great job is an excellent time to ask for a review.  Tell them how much it would help you.

Also, lots of the review systems automatically send an email message to the customer a few days after the purchase (about the time it would arrive by mail).

If you do not ask for reviews they will not happen.

I would listen to DrPete. It's conservative advice.

How do you know what is junk information vs what is truly good SEO advice?  Is it just simply trial and error?  It seems to me that if people find truly good SEO information, they aren't going to be sharing it so easily.

First, I think that most of the content posted on SEO forums is either incorrect or dangerous (ducks!)... so rather than deciding WHAT to listen to I decide WHO to listen to.

At the top of my list of WHO to listen to would be Bill Slawski (seobythesea), Rand Fishkin (seomoz founder), DazzlinDonna (dazzlindonna), Alan Bleiweiss (seomoz member), iamlost (cre8asiteforums).  Listen to people who you think are successful and who you have followed for a while.

Free information can be really really good (if you are careful)... but the most dangerous information is cheap information.

Just opinion... If you want content hire a genuine content writer.... if you want reviews then ask your customers instead of getting "pot luck" from MT.... your customers are smarter than you think... they will be able to smell the phony Turker BS.

I have a couple of retail sites and of the time that I spend working on them.... 90% of it goes to content about how to use, features, benefits, how it works, how to repair, comparisions..... 10% goes to standard product writing and none of my time is spent on link acquisition.   none... the content generates links on its own.

It is really hard to get links when your site is nothing but a sales platform.

I suggest creating some great content about your products.

What are their benefits?  Get up on the roof with a video camera and show what they look like installed.  Get video of snow melting around them and show how they work.  Explain all of this in a great article with photos and diagrams.

How are they installed?  Do the same as above.

How do different products compare? Do the same again.

Make your site the best on the web for these snowguards.  The best - not second.

These videos should not be chest-thumping promotion of yourself, your company or your products.  They should simply be unbiased informative content that anybody anywhere can learn from without feeling that you are trying to get into their wallet.

Now you have something linkable, likeable, tweetable, emailable.  Promote it to people who install your product, encourage them to use your video and include it in a blog post, promote to manufacturers because you have made better content than they have.  Ask them to post on their blog about your site or on their FB site.

In addition to improving your site these videos / articles will improve your credibility and make your site the go-to place for  snowguards.  That will increase your sales.

I have had success meeting with the clent and asking how they think potential clients will find them in search.... we brainstormed some keywords and I showed them the adwords keyword tool which they greatly enjoyed and played with for nearly an hour.

After that I told them that if they wanted traffic for any of those keywords that I would need a page of substantive content for each one.  I told them that substantive content would be needed to inform Google that they are seriously in that line of business.  That got the attention of the owner and he assigned shares of the content development to members of his staff.

Playing with the keyword tool opened their eyes to how search engines recognize what a website is about.  I received lots of content as Word documents in about two weeks.

As the in-house SEO... my jobs are....

-- know the website... know where traffic is coming from and what they do on our site, identify new keyword niches where we can compete, know where sales are taking place, work to improve conversions, use title tags not only for SEO purposes but also to pull visitors into the site instead of our competitors, develop a text and video content plan that will increase our exposure on google and youtube

-- know the products that we sell and how well they are selling, develop new traffic sources for them, identify new product lines that we can strongly compete for or that can be sold to our current traffic, understand profit margins in a way that allows me to prioritize their promotion in search and on-site

-- develop a text and video content plan that will increase our exposure on google and youtube for relevant keywords and for relevant audiences

-- continuously review different parts of our site and product lines looking for changes that might increase our rankings, increase our conversions or increase our popularity with visitors... it is easier to double your income from current traffic than it is to double you income with new traffic

The above isn't all SEO.  Much of it is "webmastering" and "product marketing."   But, I don't think that a person should have anything against wearing multiple hats, sitting in multiple chairs and sticking his nose into anything related to the company web.

To answer this question you should look back at the goals of the site.  Was it built to....

-- sell something - then ask how many units did you move

-- solicit leads - then ask how many people called you

-- educate - then ask how many people spent more than a minute on your site

-- save souls - see how many people know you after entering the Pearly Gates

Those are the ultimate goals and the true measure of success.  However, there are small wins that you can count.  Others might include....

-- are your rankings moving up?

-- are your traffic numbers rising?

Now the real measures...

-- is the size of your average shopping cart rising

-- is the average visitor staying longer

-- are people tweating, liking, linking, etc without any effort from you?

-- are you still energized

...can we safely assume that we will rank well organically for close variations of that keyword such as "Hamilton Islands", "Hamiltonisland", "Hamilton Island Hotel" due to the fact that "Hamilton Island" is in those keywords?

That is not a safe assumption.. in fact, since "Hamilton Island Hotel" is a commercial query it could have more competition than "Hamilton Island".

Everybody starts as a beginner.

If you work hard five years from now you will be in a powerful position if you work smart.

I find it infuriating that spammers are still able to get their hands on exact match domain names

I've bought a few of these domains and had to pay a freeking fortune to get them.  The fact is, however, I decided that I wanted them in 2005, 2008, 2011 and the people who I bought them from had owned them for a long time collecting ad revenue from the type-in traffic.  Their price was waaay waaay more then the appraisal but if you want the domain and know how to use it you can make a freeking fortune back.

Should google give them a ranking advantage?  I think the answer is yes, a small advantage and anyone who wants that advantage can obtain it simply by paying the price to get them.  If you are willing to pay or was smart enough to register the domain early then that advantage is your reward.

In addition to the suggestions already given... if this was my site I would change the URL of the search results page.  Someone might have a robot that is tossing crap queries into your search box.

lol... I agree.

One of my competitors recently had a redesign done and the designer uploaded the new site with that tag on every page... BAM... they fell out of Google in 24 hours and we took their sales.

It took them a couple of weeks to figure it out.  Fortunately for them, when they removed the line of code they were back at previous rank in another 24 hours.

I own several exact match domains.  I can say with confidence that they used to be very powerful in ranking a website.  However, google has turned down that benefit significantly as recently as this year.  I do think that they still give some value - but only for exact match queries.

I like them for reasons beyond that....

1. in my opinion they have extra good conversion rates because people who land on them think... "Oh... this is widgets.com... they must know their stuff about widgets."

2. this implied credibility - even if undeserved - makes them a better target for likes, links, tweets, mentions and they can easily become the "go to place" for their product or topic if you are willing to put work into them

3. finally, they give me mental energy.... If I owned baloney.com I would become the world's expert on baloney and build a fantastic site... if you own a domain like that you owe it to the domain to do a good job.

So, I would be willing to pay a good amount of dough for an exact match domain ... but only if I am the right person to control it.  I would not want knitting.com or even wine.com because I don't know anything about these subjects.

Dude... you got the best idea that I have ever posted on this forum.  So what if it didn't answer your question? 

Create something even more valuable....  A huge list of painting tips.

You write fifty tips for paint prep, application and clean up.

Find fifty other paint guys who will do the same.

Then trade tips and publish a huge list of tips on your site, each attributing back to the contributor.

Everybody gets a great page of unique content and more.

Do not fear these websites if you compete in a local niche.

First get your site into Google Places for business... read some of their success stories such as the one about Lil' Piddlers

http://www.google.com/placesforbusiness/success_lilpiddlers.html

That will get you on the places map. Here is an example.

Then broadcast to google that you are located in YourTown, FL by placing your address in the footer of your site and mentioning your physical address and local phone number generously where it fits into your site.

Then seek links from websites that are located in your community such as your landlord, chamber of commerce, community directories, business associations, tourism groups, local bloggers, local directory sites, newspaper, your Mom's blog, charities where you donate, clubs where you are a member.

Then seek links from websites in your industry such as dental associations, your dental school, professional associations, dental directories.

Now you have local link assets and industry assets that are out of reach for YellowPages and these other database sites. These should give you strength in the "yourindustry yourcity" organic SERPs.

When you get good advice it is generally best just to say "thanks".... and sometimes abrasive advice is a little more motivating - at least that is the effect that it has on me.

lol.... Brand Stacking... I have not heard that term used before.  Thanks.

In my SERPs I am seeing Wikipedia and .gov stacking.

I believe that a small percentage of linkjuice is lost through a redirect and that anchor text is lost.  So, I would ask webmasters that have a relationship with me to edit the link.  I would not ask everyone, just the ones who I know and who would gladly do this very easy job.... they know that I would do it for them if they asked... and they know that I would offer to do it without being asked if I knew that they changed their brand to a new domain.

Yo!  When you have content you are sitting on money.... put it to work as soon as you can!

1. Going slowly leaves room for better keyword optimization etc.

huh?  Just do it!

2. Google seems to favor aged domains/content, so 100 good articles now certainly isn't as advantageous as 100 articles 2 years from now.

What?  We are not talking about aging cheese... get it out in public view right away!

Here's the only concern that I have about what you have posted.... it seems like you have a factory that can crank out  100 articles quickly.....    I would rather have one fantastic article than 50 that have been spun or written quickly by people who are not expert expert on the topic.

Client is "in the business" so should not be tapping his toe for holiday customers.

However, it will take you a while to get this campaign set up, experiment with bidding, get multiple ads working, discover negative keywords...  I would attack.  Some people looking to move soon will be doing research.

References are a good idea.

Amazon astore will display products and pay you a commission.... very easy to set up.. and they can make good money...  http://astore.amazon.com/

I am occasionally contacted by people who want to rent or revshare a subdomain on my site.

These requests always come from people who are unknown in my niche.  The few times that I asked them for more information (they wanted to talk on phone but I told them to send email with samples of their other web properties and an explanation of how things would work).

One hundred percent of the time these are people who simply want to mooch on the popularity of your good domain and expect you to give generous links to the subdomain from every page of your site.

You don't need to settle for a share of the revenue.  Just open an astore at amazon or get a couple feeds from ebay... slap that on a subdomain and you can collect 100% of the revenue yourself.

If you write the content for these pages, get busy writing more.

If the featured businesses write the content you will need to find carrots, sticks or pink slips.

OK... I understand now.  Thank you for repeating.

Yes, if someone removes articles from your site and copies them to another site the same problem will occur.  However, if they steal from you and you are motivated to do something about it you can file DMCA actions against them or sue them for copyright infringement.

It is much more likely that your work will be copied if you offer it for syndication.

what if others copy my articles, post them to their site and even change the links.

There is a very good chance that they will rank higher than your site in the search results.

I only post articles on my own site.

I believe that posting articles on other websites creates new competitors and fuels existing competitors.

If you give an article related to your business keywords to another website and that site is more powerful than yours they will outrank you in your own SERPs.  Do that a few times and you really damaged your business.

When I have a great article I post it on my own site and submit a two sentence description of the content to places like slashdot and reddit.  These sites refer visitors to you - and when they see that you have great content they will like, tweet, link and bookmark YOUR site instead of your competitor's.

Lots of people are going to disagree with me but that's OK.  They are going after short term goals of getting links and ignoring the impact of new competitors and duplicate content.  (don't believe them when they say if they post it on their own site first that google will know it belongs to them.... that is BS....  PURE BS)

If one of my competitors would give me a great article and I post it on my site tonight it is a pretty safe bet that I will be above them in their own SERPs taking their traffic and making their money by 8:00 AM tomorrow morning.

...but no matter what we do we just can't bump them out of the top position.

What are  you doing?  Maybe your methods are ineffective?

Recently we discovered that they have 7 or so .org sites set up claiming to be run by volunteers and their opinions are un-biased that "highly recommend" products from the main site's company.

If this was my competitor I would be thankful that the volunteers are not being put to better use.

Anyone know any other way to report things like this to Google?

What rule of Google have they broken?  KW's in the URL and getting volunteers to work on .org sites are not against any google rule.   So, reporting them will  not accomplish anything.   Maybe your client can purchase a new KW domain and get enthusiastic volunteers to write awesome blog posts, become active posters in a kickass forum or produce other great content that is all hosted on his/her primary domain?

Tell us more about your site and the methods you are using.  Maybe you will get some great ideas for strengthening your site.

In fact, NOT linking out and hoarding your PR/link juice could actually hurt you instead.

I don't have any proof that this is true but this is what I believe.... I believe that if you do lose linkjuice by linking out you receive instead an optimization bonus for linking out that is proportional to the value that would be delivered by a link from the target site back to yours.  This is why I regularly link out to sites that are much better than mine.

I would be jumping to a new host right away!

When crap links to crap the position of the link does not matter.

When quality links to quality the position of the link does not matter.

That is an oversimplification but think of it like this.... when a quality website gives a meritorious link to another website, they usually don't put it in their footer or in their header or in their side navigation.  Instead they link to it within a blog post or within an article or within a list of great resources.  All of these are in the content window of the site.

Yikes!  I would reupload the old site!

Did you change the URLs of the pages?  If you did that then 301 redirects will be needed.

Or, did you change the page optimization?

Really.... you have provided almost no information so all that anyone can do is guess.