If you want to rank for "Louisville Homes".   The very first step is to have a page on your website that has razor optimization for that query.  You want it in the title tag, you want it in the

, and you want it on the page.  Not a lot.  Once each and maybe twice on the page.

You currently have two pages about Louisville.  Their title tags are shotgunning... here is one of them.

<title></span><span>Louisville neighborhoods cities nearby counties | Shop for a Louisville house | find Louisville homes | city information on Louisville Ky homes | Louisville Ky house prices | Louisville Kentucky house | homes Louisville Kentucky | Louisville Ky houses for sale | Louisville Ky homes for sale | Homes for sale Louisville real estate |downtown Louisville condos | Highlands | Lake Forest | Polo Fields | Prospect Ky | Oldham County | Hurstbourne | Springhurst | Waterfront Park Place | Anchorage | Middletown | St Matthews| Florence Ky | New Albany Indiana homes for sale | Jeffersonville Indiana homes for sale | Ft Mitchell homes for sale | Fort Thomas homes for sale | Floyds Knobs homes for sale</span><span class="webkit-html-tag"></title>

Let's make that page a finely crafted arrow with a title tag something like..

<title>Louisville Homes from River Valley Group</title> or something similar.

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I would also decide if I need two websites.  Here is another one... http://www.rivervalleyrealtygroup.com/

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There is a lot of duplicate content on the site.  Could be causing a panda problem.  See here.

This is common on real estate sites but it does cause problems.  Google sees lots of duplicates out there and refuses to show all of them in the search results.

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You could have an unnatural links or a Penguin problem.   The southernindianahomes.wordpress.com site is a platform that has tons of links pointing back at your main site.   Looks manipulative.  On the heidi site the left navigation, a huge one, is nothing more than links pointing back at your main site.

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The site has waaaayyy too many pages.  Google suggests 139,000 pages.  These might be a lot of old listings with a lot of them being duplicated from many other websites.  You might need a way to keep them out of the index and focus on original content for the properties that you control.

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Because this site has a lot of opportunities for improvement, my suggestion is to hire an SEO who can do a review of SEO basics.  But who also knows all about panda, penguin, unnatural links, duplicate content problems... and clean up the main site and the satellite sites so that you are not doing things that will cause problems with google.  Google could be holding this site back for numerous reasons.

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I only work on my own sites.  Just letting you know that I am not recommending hiring someone because I am looking for work.  The site has problems from basic basic level on up.  What I saw above is just from a really quick look.  Digging deeper will probably find a lot more.

Probably more valuable than this link is to proof-read your first paragraph.

There are spelling errors, missing punctuation, incorrect punctuation, incorrect verb tense, missing verbs, mixed topic sentences, capitalization problems and more.    I was going to simply post a corrected paragraph here but I ran into a sentence that starts out talking about hearing protection, and then changes channels to keeping water out, then changes again to buying in bulk.  I don't know the product well enough to pitch the different benefits clearly.

I think that putting two hours of work into this opening single paragraph could help you rank better in the search engines because I do believe that Google demotes poor copy.   It might also increase your sales because some of your visitors will start reading the current copy and quickly question the product.

The content below the products is also in need of work.

I have a big website....

If the current titles and descriptions are "close" but not "optimal" then small tweakings will probably not be a problem.

But... my concern is that you have a large website and plan to do this job in one day.

I often spend a bit of time on each title and description.  I want a title that presents the the page for the proper keywords (so I do a bit of KW research).  I also want a title that elicits clicks or presents a value proposition (so I spend more time on that).  Then I want a description that personalizes the article to the search audience, or presents secondary keywords and secondary propositions (again, more time).

These things can take some time, but, if done deliberately and well, they can multiply your traffic potential beyond what you might get from a "slap them on quickly effort".

So, I would spend 1/2 day per week over the next couple of months on this job.  I would do the pages with the highest anticipated value first, then work my way to the less important pages, while keeping an eye on the performance of those most important pages.

This isn't an answer.  Its a rant.  So if you don't like rants, don't read it.

Google is always telling webmasters to "do this" and "do that".   Sometimes they dictate to webmasters because they want to "kick them up a notch" but sometimes they dictate to webmasters because Google is incompetent at certain things and they want webmasters to make-up for their inadequacies. 

Sometimes they tell webmasters to jump through this hoop or jump through that hoop and snatch the hoop away after you have left the ground.  Sometimes the hoop is invisible.

Google told webmasters not long ago about an "authorship" program that would associate content with specific authors and show your photo in the SERPs.   I never wanted my name on my article and am too old to display my photo in the SERPs but I did this stuff regardless.  You had to connect your articles to your Google Plus page to make all of this work.  After millions of authors did this Google decided that our photos were stinkin' up the SERPs, then they changed their minds and abandoned the idea completely.  I think it was just a ploy to get million of great authors to join Google Plus.

Several years ago Google also told authors that they should "write for Knol" and they would be rewarded with adsense.  I was going to put 1/2 of my time into writing "knols".  Good thing I didn't because Google abandoned that too.

Matt Cutts told me in the comments of a Moz blog post that I could sculpt pagerank with nofollow.  Lots of people started doing that and Google changed their mind about that and changed how it influenced pagerank flow and never told anybody about it until months later.

I could go on and on about Google dumping Reader, ignoring Feedburner and ton's of other stuff...  the bottom line is that if Google says you should do something, it doesn't mean that they actually use it or that it is going to help your rankings or even that it is safe.

I also believe that some things that Google promotes are absolutely dangerous to the health of your websites in the SERPs.  I would bet one month's pay with confidence that Google Consumer Surveys is dangerous for the health of your SERPs, but that is just an opinion and a reason why I am not making buckets of money running it on my websites.

And, in my opinion, Google Consumer Surveys is an excellent example that people on Silo A at Google don't even know that there are people working on something in Silo B that is totally contrary to their goals.    Mobile-friendly is a coding requirement and has nothing to do with your website being friendly to use on mobile.  It could really stink but they will tell everybody on the web that its friendly.

Bottom line, you should be careful about jumpin' through any hoop that Google says to jump.  They have some great stuff at Google but they don't talk to each other and things tend to disappear.

I have gotten many hundreds of solicitations over the past 12 years of running a growing content site. A solicitation is simply a query that asks if you are open to publishing an article written by someone else.  These are a total waste of my time.  Delete.

So, here are my standards.  You might not like them and you might not agree with them.  But, this is what I use because I am done wasting time on spammers who wear suits to work, people who spin rubbish, plagiarists, and people who think that fluff is substantive.

I called them "solicitations" in the first paragraph.  I didn't call them "pitches".   The difference, in my opinion, is that a "pitch" reveals the topics that you are qualified to write good substantive content about.   A sign that you are qualified to write about a topic is that you have access to the places, people, equipment and materials needed to get good photos - which are required for a good article. Another sign is that you can - in one sentence - explain why you have experience to write about the topic.  It could be formal education, substantive work history, or other experience that required you to spend a lot of  hours engaged with this topic.  If you don't do that.  Delete.

If you say that you can write about anything, then I know you are not telling somebody the truth - you are either BSing yourself or trying to BS me.  Delete.  Ban your email from my inbox.

If you are still in the running and tell me you can write about atomic emission spectroscopy we will speak by phone.  In a few sentences I will probably be able to tell if your selection of words and care of speaking reveal a person who knows what they are talking about.  Gossip, prattle and blather are no substitute for factual technical content published for experienced audiences.

So, after about 12 years and hundreds of solicitations, only a couple dozen people have submitted something that I have been willing to publish.  Most of them have work experience or teaching experience about the topics that they wrote about.

A publisher who values his or her audience is able to say "thanks for trying out, but sorry, we can't use this".  If your message was deleted, I didn't waste your time.

I thought that your presentation of the product and writing below the product was entirely appropriate.   I would not change anything about your use of "kiln dried logs".  Those three words describe your product perfectly - perhaps legally - and the description is inadequate without those three words presented in the order in which you employ them.

One should always write in clear natural language regardless of the guidance given by keyword monitoring tools.  The best way to stink up good writing is modify it in homage to a mindless tool or a stupid rule.   It is good that you have the common sense to hold true to your writing skill.

These tools particularly fail when writing long articles.  If you allow them to throttle your use of the most important words of your page the reader will forget what you are talking about.

I have pages ranking at the top of Google for very difficult queries that if I ran them thorough that tool it would probably catch afire.  If you expand that article and include some graphs, a photo of a kiln, and more information about the kiln-drying process, it would be a fine article that could stand alone on a separate page.

btw...  I know quite a bit about many types of fuel other than wood.  I thought that the article below the products was informative and worth reading.   You did a fine job of explaining the importance of moisture content and why kiln drying is an important preparation method.  If you take that article, rewrite, and include moisture content comparison graphs of green, air-dried and kiln-dried wood, along with photos of a kiln and more details about the kiln-drying process, the article would be informative enough and interesting enough to stand on its own.   Nice work.

I would not attack "content marketing" with repeated posts.  It is a difficult topic to rank for and the sites that you will be competing against are very strong.   There are tons of sites competing.

I would not attack "content marketing" with a big comprehensive page but for other less competitive subjects I would attack with a big comprehensive page if I can beat the other content that is already out there.  Don't waste your time with the big comprehensive page if you can't beat the quality of the content that already exists.

....  Now... about KW cannibalization....

Saturating a market niche with content works well in tiny niches with naive competitors.  You can have three pages from one domain on the first page of the SERPs - each presenting different content to read or different products for sale.  Saturating a market niche doesn't work well if multiple big brands are your competitors.  It's too hard to produce two or three pages on the same topic that are good enough to earn the first page of the SERPs.  (Lots of people think that KW cannibalization is bad because you are "eating your own"... but in my view you are "eating your competitors" with same-keyword content.  :|)  <-- that pipe is a bone in the nose.   Kick them out of profitable SERPs by loading the top three positions with your own pages.

So, making the decision to produce multiple pages of content for the same keyword or keyword niche should not be guided by generic advice.  You must consider the niche, the strength of sites in the niche, the amount of content already out there in that niche, your ability to compete with the quality of the content already in the niche.  Being able to make money from the traffic that you do get is the crux move that determines profitability and the only reason to do this other than vanity or proselytization.  The people giving generic advice about this topic (or just about any topic) are blathering.

(My post above discusses keyword cannibalization on a single domain that you control.  See Rand's Whiteboard Friday from last week and on August 28. He does not mention "keyword cannibalization" in those videos (putting up multiple pages about the same topic), but, in my view, it  is doing it through the use of multiple domains that other people control.  Often they are very strong or very popular domains that earn your content visibility or authority.)

Other recommended activities for cannibals between early May and late October.

I believe that you can get rid of tags and archives in most situations.  However, good use can often be made of categories, author and pagination.

Let's imagine that you have a website or a blog (there is no difference) about "Widgets".  Every time you find a new widget you photograph it and write a post with substantive content about it.  You are a widget expert and know an awful lot about them.  Widgets are a popular collectable and lots of people are interested in them.  So you start your blog (or website) and publish posts (or pages) about two or three different widgets every week.

You realize that there are different types of widgets based upon what they are made from and everybody knows about this.  Lots of people search for wooden widgets, brass widgets, copper widgets, plastic widgets,etc.  So you make these the categories of your blog (or website) and all of the post about wooden widgets are posted to the "wooden widgets" category page.  Same for "copper widgets" and "brass widgets" etc.

Your post pages display the full size photo and everything that you had to say about that widget.  Your category pages display a small photo of the widget and the first paragraph of your article.  Soon, you have posts about 10 brass widgets, 12 wooden widgets, and 22 plastic widgets and those category pages are starting to look healthy.  They might start ranking for in the SERPs for keywords like "plastic widgets" and "brass widgets" and pull in more traffic than all of your posts combined.

After you have about 20 post showing on a category page you might start using pagination to keep that category page from being enormous.  Then when people read to the bottom they see a link for "earlier posts" and click it.  That takes them to the older posts for this topic and you get more ad impressions.  Now the pagination pages have become valuable.

Your author page might have some bio information about you, noting that you are the president of the Ohio Widget Collecting Society and are a professor of design at a college, where you teach a course on the History of Widgets in America.   You can construct the author page to display your bio and credentials information at the top, your most recent ten posts below that, and your most popular posts below that.  Author pages are valuable because people want to know about you.  Google wants to know about you too because they want to determine if you are a credible author for "widgets".

From experience I can say that category pages can pull in a LOT of traffic, and a REALLY LOT of traffic if you rank well and the topic of your page is heavily searched.  Your author page can help people to decide to link to you, invite you to speak at a convention, ask you to teach a course at a local university, Google might use information from your author page to decide that you deserve better rankings than other authors who post prattle about widgets.  And, your pagination pages can make a lot of extra ad impressions.

So, carefully consider the potential category pages that fit your blog, try to find keywords that are logical fits, optimize those pages to rank for heavily searched queries.  Wordpress gave you lots of options.  Decide how you can use them in a planned way for visitors, searchers, and your own goals.

Good luck.

Just my opinion, and others might disagree.... I believe that page anchors are second behind the title tag for onpage optimization.  I believe that Google likes them and if you have a page that is long enough to justify them that some visitors will see them and click them instead of leaving and be taken down the page to the information that they want.

I have lots of pages with onpage anchors.  These pages pull in tons of longtail traffic.  I have been adding them to more pages because I think that they are kickass.

If I was searching for brass widgets and landed on a page and didn't see them in my first view I might leave.  But if I saw a bold obvious link to BRASS WIDGETS I would click it.

I think that a lot of people are looking for "easy" and when an article or a Q&A response explains that you gotta do hard work, a few people will give it the thumbs down.  Some people might also think that some articles are not as good as others that have appeared on the moz blog or that an article is irrelevant to me and I assume to most other people.

Some people might have constructive critique or negative comments that they don't want to post in public.   These could be very valuable to moz and to authors.  So, a link somewhere on the article where private feedback could be submitted could be a way to collect them.  If this is implemented it should be clear to the communicator that this is not an avenue for private consultations - just a way for you to share something with the author or with moz that might not receive a reply.

So I would like to know what kind of results I really should be seeing with a site that is not even a month old, but like I said it does and has ranked on the first page for that whole time.

You are on the first page of google in a month?  Nice work!

You made a sale in the first month?  Nice work!

Questions:

Those monthly searches.... are they "exact match" for your specific keyword or broad match?  If broad match then 3600/month is nothing.

You say you are on the first page of google... if you are at position #6 or lower you will get very very few visitors from your 3600 monthly searches.  You still have work to rank higher.

How many visitors did you get in the last month?  If less than a few hundred then one sale is probably great conversion rate for an Amazon stuffed animal product - especially after Christmas.

Are you using Adsense?  It often produces a LOT better than Amazon.

If you share your URL here you might get competitors because everybody is looking for SERPs where they can get on the first page of Google in a month for 3600 searches.   But if you don't share your URL you will not get actionable advice.  If it was me I would not share the URL but hire someone to consult in private.

I would not say anything.

You never know what google will be targeting next week.... or where errant arrows will hit.

Let's say that you gain a tiny advantage by changing... and.... Let's say you give up a tiny advantage by redirecting (lots of people believe that the links into a redirected page to not pass all of their ranking benefit to the new URL).

Based upon that you cancelled out some of the benefit - maybe the loss was greater than the gain?

So, if it was my site I would stick with what I have and use hyphens for all future pages.

why not take the no follow off?

That will put you on every spammer's "dofollow blog" list.  And the bigger problem is when your site gets on the blogspamming program database.

Here are two people who asked this question before....

http://www.seomoz.org/q/convince-me-to-stay-how-should-i-best-use-seomoz-tools

http://www.seomoz.org/q/why-should-i-stay-with-seomoz

After reading your question... I came to the conclusion that you are the type of person who should bet on himself.  You know your biz, know your audience, embrace numbers, know how to calculate and enjoy it, maybe you enjoy a little competition.

If that is the case and if you can spare a few days up front for learning and a few hours per month at first (which may decrease over time), then I encourage you to consider doing the PPC yourself.

Not trying to bash the PPC pros... but for doing the PPC for your business, I would put my money on you.  You have the analytical skills and the biz knowledge plus you are the one with skin in the game.

I suggest that you do what I did....

First, start practicing a bit with PPC..... then read Advanced Google AdWords by Brad Geddes... then attend one of his Adwords Seminars. http://certifiedknowledge.org/adwords-seminars/

If you do that your competitors will be in trouble.

All of my important domains are EMDs.

I think that the hyphen stinks up the value.

I had a key-word.com, acquired the keyword.com, redirected the key-word.com to the keyword.com, and rankings immediately went up.   Immediately.  As soon as the 301 took hold.

And..... Yes, you rank them just like you would any other website.  Duh.

They are not secret bullets.  You can have an EMD and still get your ass kicked.

They are most valuable in low competition.   When you enter moderate to high competition SERPs their value is not much more than any other domain.  This tells me that the value of an EMD is something like +10 instead of the 10X that most people think.

Also, if you have a site with a strong history and lots of domain queries, redirecting it to an EMD could result in a rankings drop.  Why? The strong history and the domain queries could be worth more than the small EMD bonus.

Allows high ranking sites to show users who the provider is, potentially creating a new client, and a followed incoming link on anchor text you can choose.

My answer on this has nothing to do with SEO.

It has to do with where I believe the role of a service provider is supposed to begin and end.

I personally think that SEOs linking back to their own sites from a client site is low form.  The SEO is supposed to be helping the client not siphoning his power.   You could accomplish that visibility by simply having your name on the site in unlinked text.  Adding a link is unnecessary and greedy.

When I see those links on other sites, I do find it to be useful information.  I know who I would not hire.

Honestly, if an SEO or designer or hosting provider wanted to put a link on my site I would tell him "no" nicely.  If they  argued or pressed for it my consideration of his company would be concluded.  The link is not necessary for attribution.

If an SEO or hosting company wanted to have their name at the bottom of my site without the link I would tell them how much it would cost to advertise there.  The value of that advertising would probably exceed the value of the service that they provided.

If you go to a big brand site such as CNN, WSJ, Today, ESPN, you don't see links to SEOs, hosting or designers.  They are not being billboards for their service providers.

My displeasure on this is extremely strong against SEOs  and hosting providers.   For designers I can understand why they ask.  For a designer, if I am exceedingly pleased with what they have done I might list them on the "about us" page, where I mention a few people who have contributed to the content of the site.  Why the designer?  Because they improved what people see and that includes matching the design to my content or complimenting it.

I have different views when it comes to photographs, graphics, videos.  I always name the creator of those content assets and often link to their website in the caption.   Why?  Because they are a content source and my visitors might want to see more of their work.  It is similar to a reference link on a Wikipedia article.  Those links are useful to the visitors.   Even if I paid them a license fee, I  mention them and usually link to them (the only exception is with a thumbnail, but that thumbnail always links to an article where their photo is prominent and with attribution and usually a link).   I give them attribution because I want to help them.  They usually have sites that are less visible than mine.  And I want them to feel that the got back more than they gave.

My site is not about SEO or about hosting or design.  So a link to those sites is not useful to my visitor, so it really should not be there.

I believe that this issue is so important that I would be willing to change designers or hosts or whatever is needed to get the blog in a folder. I am out to win, not fart around.

Should I use one of the decent domains for a blog and build up the rankings, traffic, and link to the main site?  Or is this lots of work for little payout?

In my opinion, you are correct... lots of work for little payout.

If this company can contribute good content to a blog it would be best located in a folder on their primary domain.  That way, any links that are given to the blog by other webmasters will increase the power and authority of the primary domain.  It will also be a place to display the expertise of their company right on the main site.

Look at what SEOMoz has done... their blog is in a folder  seomoz.org/blog   and this forum is also in a folder   seomoz.org/q    this was  deliberate to concentrate links to their main site.

Some of the domain names are related to their name, others are keyword or geo-targeted. Would it be wise to setup 301 redirects going to their website?

This would be beneficial if you think those domains will receive type-in traffic.  If no type-in traffic occurs then there is zero value.