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I agree with Ryan. I sounds like you are very new to SEO so I am going to recommend that you print this and go grab a cup of coffee: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research (read this one for your answer)

Right there is the challenge Bill. Some site owners are passionate about their products and services. I have one client in England who sells packing boxes. You are probably asking...how can a person be passionate about packing boxes?! Well, this client has run a family business for 30 years. He will go into detail on the differences between a "cardboard box" and a "packing box". When he speaks, you can hear the enthusiasm in his voice. He expects his family will be in the same business 30 years from now. Meanwhile, there are dozens of other similar sites which sell packing boxes, but from examining the competitors I get the impression these companies just throw up sites selling various products and really don't have any commitment to the business. They may sell packing boxes on one site, watches on another, and radio controlled cars on a third site. They don't care and are just in it for the money...and it shows clearly! That's the difference. If you are focused on one site, you commit to that site's success. Your articles are much higher quality, the site's look and feel is better, the customer service is better and so forth. Many of the Google changes over the past two years are helping to separate the authentic businesses from the people who run a dozen websites. It is getting easier and easier to help legitimate businesses rise above their competitors. If you are selling well on eBay, that's great. Selling on your own website puts you in direct competition with the other sites who are doing the same thing as you. It then becomes a pure competition. The more committed site owner wins (assuming they also work smart).

Bill, I agree for the most part if you are saying "free ecommerce templates". FREE ecommerce software is completely different. I just want newbies to know the difference. Also, many people can have a custom design made for $150 to $200 in photoshop. Then go to oDesk.com and have someone in a developing country code and install it for another $150. I have done this many times.

No it isn't, not really. It's still not an open source platform which means you can't make any customisations to the code and you're limited to what the pre-built ecommerce templates they provide have to offer - and looking at a demo of theirs, the way the platform is built, is still far from good. It's similar to 3dCart in this sense. It's self hosted meaning there are various fees for data transfer, limitations on quantity of products etc etc. Our recommendations for both an open source platform and self hosted solution are as follows:- Open Source: Magento - We're worked with pretty much every open source ecommerce platform there is, we've had issues and nightmares with most of them - very few are flexible and bug free however after 6 years of expertise in the ecommerce sector, I would recommend Magento every time (if it fits with your ecommerce requirements). It's free open source, very extendable, anything is possible and can be customised - all you need is a decent developer / agency that knows the software inside out. We generally charge anything from £1200 / $1900 ish for a Magento build depending on specifications (as an idea of costs). Self Hosted: Liquidshop - If you want a solution that is fully looked after for you, managed, hosted, with a support department you can just contact when you require to action anything on your ecommerce website, then by an absolute country mile, I would recommend Liquidshop by Sitemakers (based in the UK). Monthly fees are involved (as with any self hosted solution) and may prove to be a bit steeper than others on the market but you get what you pay for, they are at the forefront of consistent development, well coded, well optimised, clean and correctly coded platform stacked with tons of features. Ultimately, it comes down to budget and requirements, but these recommendations would be based on our experience within ecommerce - and we've worked with most providers.

We are a creative design and development agency as well as a search marketing agency, we can build and develop ecommerce websites and look after all migration, hosting and configuration - we can manage everything basically. We are based in the UK though so unsure if you are looking for someone a bit nearer to you. I also appreciate that it's not really a recommendation if we are pushing our own services to you so if I were to recommend another company that I have no affiliation with, in terms of anything Magento related, Inchoo would be my recommendation.