Welcome to the Q&A Forum

You aren't alone!  I have a client that just lost all of his 1-5 rankings!  About 20 in all.  Taking ubiquitousinnovation 's direction, and creating a disavow file for the spammy links that were created before our firm started working on the site.

Issue 1
The pages in "on page optimization" are based on your recent crawl report... and will refresh on the next crawl... usually within a week.  Also, don't forget to update your sitemap.xml if you add/delete pages (if it's not done automatically).

Issue 2
Pretty sure that's reporting on organic traffic... which is not to be confused with PPC.

Beyond building a solid website....

Off page - have you considered MOZ local?  For $49 they can kick start a citation campaign for you.  First you will need to make sure the client has a Facebook fanpage or Google Plus account.

The rest is all elbow grease.

Moz custom reports?  You can set them up to run on the first of the month, which should encompass the previous month's history (based on crawl reports).

As for quarterly and other date ranges...nothing but old-fashioned elbow grease into Excel will work.  We download and maintain this data in our own database, so we can run our own date-driven reports.

Would be a good enhancement feature for Moz (hint-hint!).

I've ran into this in the past as well... many times.  I wish our industry had better protections for clients because of this very issue.  Maybe somebody at Moz or Mashable can lead that charge (hint-hint!)

Without FTP access, your options are limited.  You will have to recreate the site completely from scratch, but what I've ran into is that the prior agency also held the design as copyright infringement!  Can you believe that?  There are turkeys out there (maybe that's where turnkey comes from).

We were able to make a PDF back up of the entire site, to ensure everything was captured.  Here's how we did it:

(1) Create OUR own sitemap xml using an external service (ie: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/) to ensure ALL pages are gathered.

(2) Dropped the sitemap.xml into Excel, sorted, and cleaned it up so all you are left with are the URLs.

(3) Open up PDF Pro (the paid version, not the free one, runs about $99).      
     File => Create PDF from Web Page   ... or [ctrl]-[shift]-O
     Copy-paste the entire URL from the excel file into the dialog box

Upon the first time of running this, change the settings on the dialog box - [Page Layout]
     Width: 17 in   Height: 30 in  Margins: 0.25in all  (works for most pages)

Once you get on a roll, you can do a couple of pages a minute... it's tedious, I know... but it's a great way to get all the data and layout for every page.... even the images are embedded into the pdf so you can extract them later, copy-paste the text. The first site we did this on had 258 pages, and took my 17 year old daughter about 1.5 hours to do.

The one thing the prior agency did turn over, was a back up of all the blogs the client had actually written.  That seemed fair enough.

It's a great peace of mind and a working tool.

Which report are you referring to?  Please be more specific.

Like a page that lists every show in your database?  Isn't that what a sitemap is for?  Couldn't find one on your site.

Your search is already fantastic!  I can search for Lion King... and pick a city I want to see it in.  The dates aren't listed, so I don't know if I've missed the one in Boston or not... would be helpful for vacation planning.

The only benefit I see to listing all the shows on one page (with perhaps the city and dates listed) is for prompting ideas to the visitor who knows nothing about theater (like me and only know about the ones I've seen or want to see).

I don't know how it works over in the UK, but here in the States, I can run a PPC campaign with a generalized keyword "web design" and only target specific zip codes, cities or county (through Google PPC), and even more granular based on hobbies (in FB).

So, yes, I would do the generalized, and then if you can, spread it around the several different geo areas that you can target.

Good luck!

We're in the same predicament here on the other end of I-4 (Clearwater).  Technology proficients in our area are slim pickings.  Here's a few things we've done that has worked well in the past:

(1) Documentation - Document your SEO procedures and utilize a system for maintaining all your work (so it's scalable).  We use Access07, for managing implementations, history from Dmoz and citation history and effort - kept on a server and accessed remotely via logmein or vpn.  That way you can manage effort and results on a scalable platform.  We have a solid on-boarding process that can get new folks performing great SEO within a week.

(2) Locally - Hire experienced admins that are really good at researching online, being creative with data and good with Excel.  We generally give a short homework assignment to qualified candidates to test their speed and creativeness.

(3) Remotely - Hire employees from outside the area to telecommute.  We've hired out of Atlanta and NC, which are both relatively cheap airline tickets and short flights for necessary "day trips" to the office.

If you've done #1 well, the rest is teachable.  Besides, you want folks who will SEO your way (which works for you and your clients) and not broken or trained improperly by somebody else.

Ditch the .ca - makes me just as nervous as the .us here in the States.  Even though .biz and .info and .net get some traction - the country specific ones seem to be harder to rank for - and quite honestly very confusing.

Better off being unique or finding an expired .com domain with some Alexa rank.

What has worked for my clients in the past, is to have two domains:

(1) the main domain for SEO purposes, controlled in Google Webmaster tools as the primary domain
(2) a shorter marketing domain, that forwards (with masking) to the main domain.. and passes the juice.

This way the marketing domain can be shorter, advertised in newspapers,business cards, etc... and can be easily remembered.... and main SEO domain still gets the value of the direct hit traffic.

Thanks!  I downloaded the paid version of JoomSEF... the free version includes a link in the footer... kinda tacky for a client's website.  The paid version was only $35.57 USD.  So... crossing fingers.. here goes nothing!

According to CodeCanyon... the Smart SEO plugin is only valid up to Joomla version 2.5 (as of 1 month ago).  Looks like JCH Optimize is for only for speed optimization.

Still looking for a good SEO plugin for Joomla.  My client does not want to convert to Wordpress (even though they aren't selling any products, just service based org).

To simply answer your question, perform a Google Search for "Google's Amit Singhal keyword density".  Amit's research paper may prove useful to you on your quest.

Because your are in my client's competitive geo area, I do look at your site from time to time.  To guide your question, take a look at your boat accident page:

http://www.kempruge.com/personal-injury/boating-accidents/

This really does read as keyword stuffing.  You have way too many variations of "boat accident" on a page with very little content.  Which may partly explain why your page is buried on page 3 for "Tampa Boat Accident Attorney".    Your page is NOT written for the reader, it's obviously written for the search engine.  BIG MISTAKE.

You are looking for a tool to tell you yes or no, and the best tool for this is the Moz on-grade checker.  If you aren't getting the score you want there.... then I'd question your content.  You probably won't get much assistance in this forum if you are looking for advice on how to effectively keyword stuff under the radar.  The SEO professionals here probably won't engage to help you.

When you use the OnPage Grader, scroll down under the scores.  It will give you green checks and red x's and will indicate what is critical or optional.  You want as many as the critical items completed as possible.  Really, you want as many green checks as possible, but in some cases it's not always possible (like the URL).  If you are spamming on a page, it will tell you that too.

KeriMorget,

Thanks for that!  Realized that AFTER I posted it... but hey - I ran across this... the answer may help somebody else out too!

PPC landing pages and SEO landing pages ARE NOT THE SAME!  Nor should they be treated the same.  Sure, every page on a website that is exercising SEO should be treated liked a "landing page" - but not in the same way.  Let me explain.

SEO Landing Pages When you have rolled up your sleeves, written your content, worked it to a Flesch-Kinkaid grade level and optimized it, it would be a total bummer if your visitor couldn't convert.  Conversion could be, reading the next blog page, next blog article, signing up for newsletter, signing up for trial offer, or actually buying x. In other words, on an SEO page, there are lots of options for conversions or browsing beyond the actual page itself, including bookmarking for later reference.

PPC Landing Pages Now, let's take the visitor who you paid to visit your website. Those visitors, you don't want them to browse or look around, you want them to buy or convert RIGHT THEN AND THERE!   That conversion should be there only option.  There should be no other leaks out of the page to keep browsing and tire kicking... either sign up, enter email to download, start the trial or buy RIGHT NOW, or back out.  Those pages should have the on-page meta done OK.  They clicked on your ad, if written properly, because they wanted to buy/try/sign up right now.  The page needs to have enough content on there to help them make the conversion and actually convert.  But not so much that it deters the conversion.These are the pages you can roll up your sleeves on and have fun testing with A/B conversions, customizing meta, etc...  One well written landing page can serve the purpose for several, if not a handful of keyword ads. They key is that the content (message) needs to match the intention (ad).  So, if your ad promises a free trial for white apples - then your LP better offer a free trial for white apples.  However, if you ad promises super cheap white apples with free delivery, don't take them to a landing page that offers a free trial for white apples.  Capisce?

I hope that makes sense.  Good luck to you!

Flat rate, and charge an hourly rate for setting up additional ad groups and tie in the reporting.  We try to keep the client's money in their pocket and just charge for a reasonable amount of effort.  That seems to work well for both clients who spend $10,000/month and those that spend $1,000/mo on PPC.

I wouldn't.  But the advice in the MiriamEllis's link is great advice!