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Google the hidden text.

It dosen't have any backlinks but I'm stumped as to why it isn't ranking higher than what it is, I'm not expecting 1st position but outside of the top 50 is something else.

No backlinks and a recent domain registration date are big answers to your question.  This isn't an especially difficult SERP, but a person can't walk right in and expect to displace sites that were on the web and working to gain visibility ten, even twenty years before your first upload.  That's the situation when you arrive late to the battle.

Just as a comparison.  If I upload an article on a twenty-year old domain with a DA of about 78 and a keyword of similar difficulty, that article might not rank in the top 100 for months, and might not rise to the first page for a year or more.  The people on the first page for your keyword are making money and will fight to hold it.

I get the best rankings when I have category pages that organize and link to a number of different product pages, each with generous amounts of unique, substantive text content and images.

If I am selling brass widgets, I will first build many different pages for the different types of brass widgets that I sell.  Each of those product pages will contain substantive content about that product, at least one photo - usually more, a buy button, and links to similar items (each with a photo, short description).

Then I will build a category page that has a photo of each item, a paragraph of text about it that is substantive enough to stand as a product description, a buy button, and a link to the full page description.

I believe that the above shows google that you have a large mass of diverse content about brass widgets, that consists of several substantive pages and a single page that summarizes your brass widget offerings.

I use this approach on info sites and on product sites.  The category pages are my most effective at rankings and pulling in traffic.

Logan is right.

Adding a little...... On-page optimization can make a big difference in your rankings.  However, as the level of competition increases other factors such as the strength of your domain and the links to the competing page become just as, if not more, important than the precision of optimization.

Learn which of these posts pull traffic or are consumed by on-site visitors.  Find out which pull entry traffic that processes through the cart.  Make more similar posts.

After that you will be left with some duds.  These can be improved or deleted.

Nobody outside of Google, knows this type of information with certainty.   My guess is that Google is only concerned with what is within the article portion of the page.

My honest opinion is that Google is not concerned with keyword density unless it is outrageous.   If I am writing an article with the hope of ranking for a one-word query, my use of that word on the page has a density of about five percent.  I have that density because my writing is very precise and explicit.

I never even think about how many instances of a keyword is on the page.  My only concern is if the article is easy to read, easy to understand, and contains value for the reader.  Over and over, Google has told webmasters to write as though search engines did not exist.  I believe that is what I should do.

I am still betting money on them when used to highlight internal links - because they attract a lot of clicks.

It often works best to develop the breadcrumbs and navigational structure of your website first.  After you have that use it as a template for your URLs.

This article explains "search visibility" and has a section on how it is calculated...

https://moz.com/blog/mobile-rankings-search-visibility-moz-analytics

what is making you think it is so bad?

I agree.  And, what do you think is so bad about it?

• Is it simply lots of errors in grammar and punctuation?
• Is it errors in the basic content?
• Is it that the structure needs changed to make the points better?
• Is it badly presented for conversions?
• Is it lacking in SEO elements?

Each one of these requires a different expertise to repair.... proofreader/grammarian, content expert, editor, conversion rate optimizer, SEO.

Lots of people really really hate to write and when they are told your writing sucks they don't like it.  They are offended or they don't want to invest more.  If they are an industry expert with a lot of experience selling in their business niche then you are really putting your nose into it.

So, before you can do a good job of improving their work you must identify the types of problems present and realize that each type of problem (and there may be more than one) requires a different approach to solve - some of which might be more palatable to your client.

If you think that "conversions" is the main work that needs to be done then you can tell them that the current copy is great for this and that... but we think that a few changes will help it convert better.  Give some examples.

If the site has lots of traffic you might be able to see an obvious lift or if you have the ability to do A/B test, measure any conversion change that occurs.   If the site doesn't have a lot of traffic or you don't have the ability to do A/B testing will be a little harder to prove, but you might compare conversions per hundred visits this month vs. last month.

Lots of people are in the market for content.  Some are really picky about quality.  Some are not that picky.  Some do not recognize quality.  Some don't care.

I have a really hard time finding content that I will publish.  It has to meet a "content expert" criteria and an "quality of writing" criteria.   The best content that I have obtained from others has been from people who are already writing good content in my topic area. They have an active blog, have written books, or are professionals in the content area of the content.  So, I go out looking for proven authors in the niche instead of people who offer themselves as writers.  Me looking for them takes a lot less time than them coming to me or me giving people a chance to submit something.

Google has considered hidden text to be spammy almost since it served its first SERP.

There is nothing wrong about optimizing your homepage for a subcategory of your website.   The homepage is usually the strongest page of a website and should be used to your best advantage.  Some businesses change the optimization of their homepage from season to season, targeting the merchandise that is most profitable for that month.

Nobody knows exactly how google counts and values links in the navigation vs links in the body content.

If I was going to place my bets, google will consider both of them and consider them separately.  Links in the navigation define the structure of your website.  Links in the body content map connections to related pages of your website.

In a recent recoding of my website,  I am reviewing the articles and making sure that I have done a good job of linking to relevant pages in every article.  Also, we changed the CSS to make those links have a stronger font to attract reader attention.  Giving readers a better opportunity to engage your site and visit multiple pages is an important thing to do.

Why?  Google values visitor engagement as much, maybe more than the internal links that appear on your page.  I personally think that engagement is more important than either internal links or external links.  I am sure that some people disagree, but that is where my work and money is placed.

I totally agree with Adriaan's comments.

I'll add a few thoughts about publishing philosophy....

Keep in mind the amount of time that you spent on creating content that you give away AND the value that the content can bring if it is unique to your website and not available anywhere else on the web.

If your goal is to "get your message out" then by all means get it published in as many places as you can.  If your goal is to "build value for your business" then you have to think about things carefully.

If you can write an article in a short amount of time and give it to HP and in return get a link and a brand mention then it might be worth letting them use it.  If I was going to do this, I would publish it first on my own site and make sure that it is indexed and then give it to HP for publication there.

Pay attention to where you copy of the article ranks in the search engines.  If HP is always outranking you for your own content that makes them a much less attractive place to publish your content.  If that is happening and they will not give you rel=canonical, then I would probably stop giving them my content.  Giving them my content under those conditions is not "building value for my business".

Try to get them to give you rel=canonical.  If they will do that then publishing on their site is building value for your business.  If they will not do that then it tells you something important about them.  They are 100% for themselves and are all about having other people carry them around in a sedan chair.

All of the above was written about content that you can generate easily and with minimal cost.  In situations where you have a real masterpiece, then there is a stronger case for keeping it only on your own site and spending your efforts on "promoting" it in other locations but not giving the content away.

So, before you give away content, think about the many options that you have and choose the one that "gets your word out" or "builds your business" to a maximum degree.  There is no "one size fits all".

Yes.  Everyone should work to improve load time.

We are always doing things to improve load time.

Dynamic links....  I think that this means that you have menus, recommended readings, suggested products that change multiple times per day or less.   We have all of those features on our site with dynamic links that change hourly, sometimes several times per hour - on all of the article pages of the website.  This has never been an issue after using the system for a couple of years.

Many pages with duplicate content - other than the Title H1 and URL is a huge issue.  The site will probably receive a Panda problem for being low quality.  The client needs kicked to do a better job.

Does this change your answer at all?

Oh, YES!

dymanic URLs

If this was my site we would go to static URLs immediately and use rel=canonical.

That is quite a bit of blogging.  They should have a couple hundred blog posts at that rate.   Are these blog posts of high enough quality to attract links from other law firms, law schools, legal sites, etc.?   If not, then I would suggest posting less often and with higher qualilty.