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If the same article exists on lots of websites google will likely do two things......

1. Filter some copies of that article from being displayed in the SERPs (they don't want the searcher clicking into the same stuff six times from the first SERP.  The ones that are filtered are usually the copies on less powerful domains.   It does not matter if they are the original source, or published first.

2. Some sites that have lots of these duplicate content articles posted on them will be hit by Panda problems.  Rankings across the entire domain will be reduced.

It sounds like you are going to toss up a naked little site with title tags and no content or with title tags and yada yada yada content.... then Google will find it and say... "look at this trash" and give it a Panda demotion.

Spend your 45 days working hard on great content.  That will be a better use of your time.

I think that Roger should auction them off. 

When we were building links we would go straight to websites that are ALREADY linking out to great content in our niche and ask them to consider our content for a link.  When we found sites like that we would build better content than they were already linking to.

We no longer do linkbuilding.  Instead we spend all of our time on content creation and our visitors on their own submit our content to sites like stumbleupon, slashdot and reddit and that exposure creates links with no effort from us.

IF you can create linkable content you can eliminate the work of linkbuilding.  Progress that way is slow at first but after your traffic starts growing it works exceptionally well.

For example, consider a page that ranks well organically and receives (relatively) decent traffic from search. However, this page has poor engagement metrics compared to other pages on the site, does not convert visitors as well as other pages on the site, and doesn't have any external links. Would you consider deleting this page?

I would improve the page.

Beef up the content, add seductive links to get traffic to a more valuable page, add adsense to earn money if the traffic is low quality.

Which metrics do you use when auditing a site and considering a web page from removal (bounce rate, average time on site, pages per visit, linking root domains, visits, revenue per visit, etc.)?

If someone brought me a site that needed help I would do keyword research to determine if they are covering the important queries for their line of business.  If they are not I would have a content plan to get them covered.  If they are covered but performing poorly we would improve those pages.

Looking at the numbers you suggest is like cutting off a foot because you have a blister on your toe.  Decide instead if the foot is valuable.  If yes, cure it.

I can understand why they think two sites would be a good idea.

Let's say you get two powerful sites up and ranking and someone searches for "Dewey Cheatem & Howe" and clicks into the wrong site.  They don't find what they are looking for and leave.  The result is that 50% of their brand name searches bounce.

Would BigAssLaw.com who has a very broad practice be a better website?   Let's say in the future they decide to do DUI or IP law... would they want four sites and have 75% of their visitors bouncing or still be using BigAssLaw.com that is a large firm with broad expertise?

Anyone who is concerned about this should spend the money required to purchase an EMD.    If you think that the EMD makes a difference in the SERPs this will be the easiest and fastest SEO that you will ever do.  Just find the guy who owns it, pay him his price and write a decent page of content.  DONE!

All of my websites are EMDs.  They do have a tiny advantage in the SERPs if you publish decent content on them.  I am willing to pay good money for an EMD when I decide to build a new site (which isn't very often because the cost of a good domain and the content for a good site is quite high).

Up until a couple years ago an EMD was a huge advantage in the SERPs.  Then Google cranked back their impact upon SERPs.  Today in light competition an EMD can rank you above thin competition with the effort of writing decent content for the topic - but at the same time they can be easily defeated by a person who is willing to work.  In heavy competition the EMD is a very small advantage compared to the other work that must be done to win those SERPs.

In my opinion, the conversion rate on an EMD can be higher than on other sites.  That is worth the price in my opinion.  Also, owning the EMD gives me mental energy to work on the site.  That makes all of the difference in competion.  They guy with mental energy beats everyone who is slacking.

Your 1, 2 and 3 are nice.... but if your article isn't one of the best on the web for its topic and about a topic that lots of people are searching for then you are wasting your money. My experience is... you don't find that kind of writer by askin' people. You find that type of writer by getting into the SERPs where you want your rankings to happen and find someone who knows their stuff, is good at explaining and has access to awesome images... because somebody who wrote a kickass article for me about knitting is probably going to suck at writing about hydraulic jacks for you.  If this person is writing for other people then you might be able to talk him or her into writing for you... but if that person is writing for his or her own website then they will probably know the value of their writing and you will really have to pay a obscene price to get them writing for you.

Thumbs up, Steve....

I report most link requests as "spam" and if I recognize a second request from the same site I block their email address or better their entire domain from my inbox.  (Gmail allows an unlimited number of blocked addresses.)

Call me on the phone once and I will tell you nicely not to bother me... call a second time and you will not like what I say.

What should be done with these domains?

I'd let them expire and use the savings to buy beer.

I got lots of beer money now that I allowed my domain collection to expire.   I probably could have made more money listing them on Sedo and waiting for dumbos to buy them.

Our SEO has never been better with 65% of our keywords ranking in the top 3 and 86% ranking in the top 10.

Nice work.  Celebrate then get back to work!

However our Domain Authority has dropped again and this time it is in complete isolation, none of our rivals have suffered anything like a 3 point drop.

Im wondering what is causing this rapid drop in Domain Authority and what affect, if any, it was have on our future keyword rankings.

In my opinion, these numbers are highly volatile and are not part of the google algo for determining your rankings.

Use them to chart your long-term progress.   Instead of focusing on them spend your time improving your website and doing great SEO.  Spend your 100% of your mental energy there.

We have over 7,000 articles -many of which are evergreen and can be repurposed when needed.

salivatin'

If these are unique, evergreen articles, I would be attacking that as fast as possible.  I would divert staff with appropriate talent away from other jobs.   They would clean these up, any that are evergreen and could be displayed as content unseen by current readers would be republished and displayed in my normal content stream.   All others would be built into the category and internal linkage format of the website.  The faster you get them up the faster then will be pulling in traffic.   I would do them slowly enough to do a great job but otherwise as quickly as possible.

Why would anyone want to link to your domain?

Do you have engaging content, useful information, an active forum, a great blog or some other attribute that would inspire other webmasters to link to the site?

If you do not have these types of resources then your linkbuilding success will be very small.  However, if you have linkworthy resources on the site then you have the opportunity of great success.

Create great content before you try to build links will use your linkbuilding time for greatest success.

If a site has a Panda problem or the potential of a Panda problem, then time is very important.   The best thing to do is to quickly noindex all of the thin pages to get them out of the index.   That will allow the pages that remain in the index to be as strong as possible, avoid Panda, and recover

After that you want to get the noindexed pages back into action as quickly as possible so that you enjoy the traffic and income that they produce.  If yours is the kind of content that can be outsourced and still retain quality then it might make sense to outsource that work and get those pages back to earning money right away.  The quick return to action of those pages will fund the content development.  If you are the only person who can do that writing and have limited time, then I would write the most valuable ones first, one-at-a-time properly, to avoid thin content on the site.

One of our competitors, who ranked #1 for a good money term (we were #2) had a developer redo their entire site.  He had noindex on every page when the new site went up.

When we saw the new site we sniffed the code, saw the noindex in there and laughed really hard. 

A couple days later they dropped completely from the SERPs and we started getting all of their sales.

It took them a couple weeks to figure out what happened.   But when they fixed it they popped right back into the SERPs at old rankings a couple days later.

We talk to these guys by phone occasionally.  If they would have called us we would have told them how to fix it... but since they hired an expensive developer we didn't want to stick our noses in. 

They know that SEOs obsess over their rankings too much... and if they updated it daily we would spend too much time looking at ranking reports and not enough time on our more important work. 

The most likely negative result is that Google will know that the links are paid and they will pass no value - thus wasted money.

Another potential negative result is that these links will stink up your link profile and your rankings will suffer.  Nobody knows exactly how google detects of measures this.

If you have a great site stay on the white hat path.... if the only way you can get links is by shady methods... guess you are stuck with them.

Would we be better off just building unique copy on the main site and not focus on the 5-10 websites we would need to deal with?

You are right!   This is rubbish.

If you have time to create the 200 to 500 pages of unique content that they are asking for you should put that same effort into your main site.

If they got in touch with me, I would tell them that Google has been killing these hotdog stand websites for at least ten years.

I get a lot of full URLs as keywords.

I think that people copy / paste them into the search box, or just type them because they are simple

egol.com/bananas/

egol.com/baloney/

I have been using SEOmoz PRO tool from last two months but I am not happy with the SEOmoz PRO Ranking Report.The results are very inaccurate and I am not able to understand why there is such a difference in the ranking  results when SEOmoz tracks and when I track?

(This response is copy/pasted from another thread where the same question was asked.)

I can sit at my desk and open different browsers and see different google results...

I can sit at the same desk and remote to a PC on the other side of town and see still more different results searching for the exact same keywords in the exact same browsers...

I can open my iphone and see yet more different results... same if I get out my ipad....

I have not left my chair!

My question to you is... which are the "right results"?

These reports are valuable for  tracking your progress over time.  That is why SEOMoz gives you a history.

Don't worry if you see different things when you search.  There are personalized results, localized results, experimental results (did you know google serves tons of different experimental results every day?  - read "In the Plex" if you want to know more) and much more.

Would it be worth the time to go back and edit the blogs little by little to help with SEO...

Sure, some people pay SEOs to do this very thing!

...and building some links throughout the site to get people where we need them to go?  Basically "sprucing" up the blog posts to make them more readable, more engaging...

This is a great idea... that's the sign of a good webmaster.

....and help some link building efforts within the domain.

Yes, it will help.  Great ideas.  Good luck!

I think that the list of "Top Moz Community Members" shows only those who have been active in the past 30 days or so.

Your will probably be back on the list tomorrow because you made this post today.

Here is what I do... I don't know if it is the "best way"... and I am willing to bet that "best way" for you might be different from "best way" for me.

I operate on the fact that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world... and I also know that YouTube will promote my video as "related" when many other videos are viewed.

So, I upload my videos to YT and write a big, detailed description that contains links to related pages on my website and tell visitors there is LOTS MORE HERE.   (I know that they are nofollow links but you never know what google does with those links

My videos also have EGOLsDomain.com obviously visible in the video window.  So people know where to find my site.

I am not doing this for the links. There is more valuable fruit here.

I also place the video on a page of my website that has what I believe is best-on-the-web content for that topic.  So anybody who lands on my site will see the video plus more.

So, now I have a really rich page of content on my site to pull traffic.  Maybe search engines will rank my page better because it has a video and a big caption under the video and a substantive article below it.  My videos get viewed a lot on youtube by searchers. They also get viewed a lot from related video links.  My videos appear in the Google SERPs.  Some people click the links in my description... some people see the URL in the video window and arrive at my site as "type-in traffic".

If you have read the posts that I make here you know that I am a preacher on "do not give your content away"... however, I think that giving content to youtube is the exception.  And if another webmaster posts my video on his site then his viewers will see my URL in the video window, hear me mention it, have opportunity to click to my channel... decide if my video has good information and maybe that inspires them to visit my site.

Bottom line... if you have good information in a video give it to youtube... if your video sucks then you better not show it to anybody.

Some business areas can easily spend well over $2-3k for just one keyword.  Some can not reach that over all of the profitably relevant keywords combined.  There can be an enormous difference in effort between those situations - both in setting them up and monitoring progress.  Then a person can get into the details of landing page optimization and A/B testing.  Enormous amounts of work can go into that.

So, the bottom line depends upon the difficulty/diversity of your keyword suite and the amount of time that your agency will dedicate to making you money and optimizing.

If I had this situation, I would start experimenting myself (or have a smart employee do it) with PPC and that includes both optimizing the ads and optimizing the landing pages (if you are not doing both you are blowing an awful lot of money).  Then when I knew a little I would attend the two day Adwords seminar of Brad Geddes and run the campaigns myself.

My personal opinion is that a person with inside knowledge of a business, its products and its economics has an enormous advantage over an SEO once he becomes competent with the PPC process and most importantly understands Google's quality score.

There is something called "link rot"... that every site experiences.  You earn some links a long time ago and most of those links will eventually disappear for reasons described by effectdigital.    If your new content production pace is not as fast as in the past, then you can be losing more links than you are earning.   Link rot hits sites that are slacking on their content production.

And, as Mr Whippy said...  "The domain linking to you is clearing out links that point to your content as they feel there is better content to link to now."    Sometimes competitors will see your content, produce something much better, then solicit the linking websites to link to their content that is now much better than yours.   We receive lots of emails suggesting better destinations for links in existing articles.   These email messages can be valuable to a webmaster, but if we look at their suggested content and it is crap, we filter their email address to trash.

Simon has given great advice.

SEOmoz provides information that can give you the knowledge to become a great SEO.  SEOmoz also provides data that can guide you in doing SEO for your website.

However, it is up to YOU to do the learning, up to you to do the analysis and up to you to do the work required to build a great site and market it.

If you are in an easy industry or industry niche you might have success if you study, learn, implement and work hard.  However, there are industries that are very competitive and success there is very difficult.  If you are working alone in these areas and without resources to hire assistance you will have difficulty succeeding unless you are very smart and work very hard.

SEOmoz can give you all of the information and data that you need to succeed.  It is up to you to apply it and decide if you can compete in your niche.

"The organization is a clinic that provides free dental work to veterans."

You are sitting on a link gold mine!

I would get out there asking for links from any organization who might be a beneficiary.  You could get links from a wide variety of ....

.mil domains

.gov domains

.org domains

veterans groups - every legion and amvets group on the planet should jump their webmaster to get a link up for you.

every dentist who has vet patients who would like some help should have a link up to you.

duh... I could go on and on but you get the idea... any group associated with veterans should be linking to you

This is a great question. Thanks for asking.

I don't have BBB affiliation for any of my sites but am considering it for one of them.

The one that I think it would help the most is an ecommerce site that is successful but does not yet have dominance in the SERPs (although in my opinion it has the best and deepest content in its niche).

I think that displaying the trust mark will help with conversion rates.   I also think that the BBB affiliation could influence Google to improve the rankings slightly.  This is a relatively young site that is still climbing the SERPs.

I would not go to the expense of BBB for an information site that is mature in age and has strong rankings.  The conversion rate benefit is not there and the trust benefit with Google would be very small compared to its current strength.

Looking at your list, this is the site that I think has the greatest potential....  *Metropolitan Massage Business - 2 contractors.  100k annual revenue.  1st page for most relevant serps.  But few #1 rankings.

Looking forward to what other people have to share on this topic.

I have been using Adwords since the service was launched.

At first costs went up rapidly as more competitors arrived.

From what I have seen costs are driven more by the number of competitors entering your niche, their level of expertise and the discount at which they can obtain their merchandise.

Then when they introduced quality score the costs for many people actually went down.

If you are not expert, expert at quality score then becoming an expert could decrease your costs next year by making your ads more relevant, blocking negative keywords, etc.  Also, increasing your conversion rate could allow you to increase the amount that you pay per click and allow you to capture more sales.

PDFs can be canonicalized using .htaccess.  Google is usually very slow to discover and obey this but it can be done.  However, if your PDF is not close to being an exact copy of the target page, Google will probably not honor the canonicalization and they will index the PDF and the html page separately.

https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/how-to-canonicalize-images-and-pdfs-with-the-htaccess-file

PDFs can be optimized (given a title tag) by editing the properties of the document.  Most PDF - making software has the ability to do this.

You can insert "buy buttons" and advertising in PDFs.  Just make an image, paste it into the document and link it to your shopping cart or to your target document.

PDFs accumulate linkjuice and pass it to other documents.

Use the same strategies with PDFs as you would with an html page for directing visitors where you want them to go and getting them to do what you want them to do.

Some people will link to your PDF, others will grab your PDF and place it on their website (in that situation, you lose the canonical but still get juice from any embeded links), and benefit from ads and buttons that might be included.  Lock the PFD with your PDF-creating software to prevent people from editing your PDF (but they can always copy/paste to get around it).

Other types of documents such as Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint documents, Google images, etc can have embedded text, embedded links and other features that are close to equivalent to an html document.

When I search my competitors link profiles, I find just hundreds and hundreds of crappy reciprocal links, splogs or the like.

Maybe that is a signal that there is easy money to be made?

The question that I always ask when a local service or retail site is involved is.... have you gotten all of the local and industry links that are available?

These include:

-- chamber of commerce and local service organizations (membership in these can be valuable for business reasons but their website often has a link to their members)

-- local business listings

-- your landlord's website

-- websites of your suppliers and service providers (do a testimonial for them)

-- trade associations for your industry (write an article for them)

-- med schools, law schools etc. often links to websites successful graduates

-- local charities often link to companies who support them (friends of the library, habitat, religious groups, little league boosters)

-- local business initiatives (tourism association, "buy local", downtown merchant association)

-- local online newspaper (advertise, write an article or column)

-- trade association publications (advertise, write an article or column)

-- local and state license boards

Go out searching for local  websites.  Although they might not be "dental" sites they are often very relevant for the name of your community.  You can also draw up a charitable organization budget that will support your business in other ways.

Lots of people are amazed when they learn how many local links are possible.

First, I am surprised that the CTR is so low because of your top ranking.  My goal with that would be to change the title tag and description tag to match the query as closely as possible and to elicit clicks.

If this was my site I would change the title tag to match the query.... and to elicit clicks.

I don't know your business so I am going to guess.

<title>Granite Countertops: Prompt Installation in St. Louis area</title>

They will see the name of your business in your domain.

Then I would change the description tag.   Study the adwords guys.  They have great descriptions...

Over 100 colors,  Fast, expert installation, Affordable countertops and replacements.  Tell them what they are looking for that you can deliver.

I get calls from lots of networks, both wanting me to advertise and get into our ad space.   I can't tell you how much time and employee labor I have wasted on these people and their offers.  Most of them are crap but occasionally there is a good one.

What I do now is say....   "Tell me the names of three websites where I can see your ads in the most prominent positions.  I need to see your ads on websites that get millions of visitors per month before I can spend time talking to you."

Most can not produce  this type of evidence that they are successful.   Most will send you the URLs of three crap sites that display crap ads.   Not worth your time.

I read a few different SEO forums and see lots of people have a problem with their website then run around posting the same question in 20 different forums to see what advice they can get without payin'.  Then they never reply to any threads anywhere.

A few weeks later they are back at all 20 forums, this time registering under a Joe Schmoe, askin' same question.  Just query Google with a copy/paste of their question and you will see it posted everywhere.

I know quite a few SEO forum posters, sometimes including me, who often don't answer questions posted by noobs.  I'll gladly spend time answering a question for someone who replies even a couple times.  So, often when a noob asks a question, I ask for more details or poke at them, then if I get a reply I'll spend time to compose an answer.  Some answers can take 30 minutes or more to compose and I don't want to give that to a Joe Schmoe who ain't readin'.

Something that lots of other forums have that I think is handy is a link to see a member's recent questions and replies.  A quick look there can tell if this person is a mooch or if they participate in the threads that they start.  I am not doing that because I want to be stingy with my time, but 10 seconds to check saves me 30 minutes trying to help a phantom.

I really liked... "The Power of Words"... a YouTube video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzgzim5m7oU

Keep in mind that PA and DA correlate poorly with Google SERPs.  They measure very different things.   If you use them you can be scared off by poorly optimized pages competing for your terms and you can attack positions thinking that they are easy when they are not.   These tools are useful for getting a general lay of the land.

1. Are Page Authority & Domain Authority closely related?  Yes and no.  If you have a domain with enormous authority it tends to pass some of that down to individual pages.  In the Google SERPs, I believe that domain authority (as assessed by Google) is much more important.  Brand new pages on Amazon.com or Ebay.com or About.com can be very competitive in the SERPs because google highly values authoritative and trusted domains.

2. What PA is considered surpass-able?  That depends upon which site you are using for the attack.   If you are attacking with a site that has a domain authority of 80, new pages on that site can kick down doors.  If you are attacking with a site that has a domain authority of 20 then you have a heap of work to do.

3. What difficulty percent would you consider competing for?  This again depends upon the site that you are using, the business model involved.  Some people have the skill and resources to make big money on elephant hunts, others have access to labor or programs/data that enable them to make a lot of money hunting toads.  It's like comparing finest diamonds to costume jewelry - smart people can make a lot of money at them or loose their shirt.

Google doesn't reveal exactly how this works.  However there are more than one benefit from a link.

First you have anchor text value.  That would be noted and credited to the page.

Next you have PageRank.  That would flow into a page but most of that PageRank (about 85% according to the original pagerank theory) would flow out through links in that page.  Those receiving pages would pass PageRank on to the pages that they link to... and this process would continue over and over and over.  Some of those pages downstream would link back to the original page that received the link and strength of that page would build by small amounts as the calculation for each linkage step is done.  It is very unlikely that all of these calculations are done immediately.

Other variables might also count.  Such as a "trust" value for the linking domain or a value for topical relevance.

Most of us have seen a page that received a nice link move up in the SERPs a few days later.  But I highly doubt that all of the benefit is immediately received.  There are too many calculations involved and Google might do some of them quickly but others might be done in batch jobs at some future time.

Flood and Dilute:  I would add more images that are optimized for the query.  Flickr, client's own sites, wikimedia, any other site where you can upload images that will appear on a relevant page that is optimized for the query.  These must be a diversity of extremely relevant, high-quality images that will draw clicks.

**Purchase Exclusive Rights to the Provocative: ** And have them taken down, then submit DMCA against any infringers.

It used to get a fair amount of organic traffic a few years ago to generate around 30 leads a day, and back then that was from just one keyword.

A lot of people are seeing a strong decline of the amount of traffic that they get from the organic SERPs over the past few years.

In that time Google started adding image results and news results in informational SERPs.  In the transactional SERPs they now place up to four paid ads at the top of the SERPs and often have shopping results within, above, or beside the SERPs.  And in local results they now have maps and local listings.

Google is becoming a better webmaster and is trying to make more money from their SERPs.  Shareholders want growth and the folks at Google know that the best way to do that is to make more money from current traffic.  So they go heavier on the ads, in stronger positions and push the organic rankings down the page.

Google isn't the only ones working. Most of our competitors have become experts and writing more effective Adwords ads and more effective at converting visitors into customers.  That is also taking the sales from above the organic rankings.  Over that time, if a webmaster has not upped his game in earning clicks and converting visitors and becoming a much more competitive and aggressive seller then his sales have fallen dramatically.

Plenty of webmasters have worked really hard the past ten years and have not made massive big gains in their sales.  That's because their competitors are spending billions, google is skimming the best traffic, and everyone on the web has become a lot smarter.  So if those hard-working webmasters have held even in their revenue and profits that is the equivalent of being an awesomeasskicker of the past.

As Keri suggests, I think that it would be great to add an update to the original question.

We would like to hear if you tried anything and how it worked.  That type of sharing is a way for everyone to learn - especially if you tried something that we suggested and it didn't work out. 

I am glad that you are interested in doing this.  So many people ask a question, we spend time to reply and they never even return to the post to disagree with us.  

Just noticed that lots of SEO sites were blasted by Panda...

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=webmasterworld.com&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=seomoz.org&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=digitalpoint.com&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=forums.seochat.com&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0

2)  Expecting real ROI?

When you hire an SEO that person or company agrees to make you visible in the search engines and create a flow of traffic from search engines to your website.  That is the deal in very basic terms.

Other parts of getting ROI are up to you.   To achieve ROI you need:  a website that converts, products clearly described, products that are in stock and priced reasonably, shipping charges that are not excessive, a shopping cart that works, phone staff that answer calls and advise on products.  These other parts of ROI are under your control and are your risk.

The SEO should not be expected to assume your risks of doing business.  If he wanted to assume those jobs and risks then he would be a merchant and not an SEO.

3. Can you do SEO yourself with SEOMoz tools?

Anybody can use the tools, but there is a lot more to SEO than pushing buttons and running reports.

Lots of people do SEO for their own business.  That's what I do.  In fact, if you are willing to study diligently, experiment, work hard and smart then you can probably do SEO for your business as well as any SEO would do it for you.

A good way to proceed is to study on your own, experiment on your sites and then hire an SEO for consultation. That way the SEO studies your site, makes a job list for you, and reviews that job list on the phone with you so you know how to do it.  Some SEOs will do this type of consulting and it works well for lots of business owners.

Consider posting detailed article pages that enthusiastically show how to use your products with lots of photos, graphics and maybe video. Create some showing the benefits of using your products.  These should not be chest-thumping content, instead friendly and generously informative.

Promote them across the site with "Learn How To Use This Product" links or images.

These detailed pages might attract links.  They can boost your credibility.  People will use them as reference documents.  Make them easily printable for use offline.

I vote for the one big site.

Which will rank better?  One big site with 300 links or three little sites with 100 links each?  My money is on the big site.

Which will be more linkable?  One big site with a cluster of products or three hotdog stands with one product each?

Which will give you the opportunity of cross-selling and larger, more profitable sales?  A big site with multiple products or three tiny sites with one product each?

Which will be more work and expense to run?

I used to have a cluster of little sites and then combined them into one big site... and that big site beat all of the smaller sites and all of their competitors.

This company might believe that the work that they do is proprietary.  They don't want you to sniff it because they worry that you will discover valuable information that will enable you to leave them and benefit from their work.

If you sell products or services that are common and leave them, there is a good chance that they will take what they learned from you and offer similar service to another business, or set up their own business - if they are not doing it already.  This depends upon them being prevented to doing that by confidentiality language in your contract.  Otherwise it might be considered as their proprietary data.

If I was in your situation, I would examine my contract with this company and see if there is anything in there that prevents me  from visiting the account to verify that they are spending what they say they are spending and that I am the beneficiary of the entire spend.

I am not an attorney but I am pretty sure that there is nothing criminal about their arrangement with you.  But, you have no way of knowing what's happening deep down without full access to the account and all of its historical record.   You probably don't have any civil claim against them unless you can prove that they are violating a contract that both of you have signed.  This is certainly where an attorney would be helpful, if the service provider is located where enforcement is possible.  Otherwise, you will probably have to wait until your contract is up for renewal or negotiate a termination.

Based upon my own use of Adwords, I believe that things work best when bidding strategies are informed by pricing, costs of good sold, profit margins, and lifetime customer values..... and pricing strategies at the item level can't be wisely set if you only have aggregated data.  That would be my argument to get access to the account.  Bidding and selling are best done with shared data rather than things being held secret... but some people have a poor understanding of that or simply want to work behind a curtain without knowing if they are delivering best possible performance.  That's personal opinion.

When you search, you are going to see Google bolding related and relevant keywords from their proprietary database, which could be influenced by what they know about you specifically or what they are guessing based upon any odors that they can sense when your query arrives.

When I publish a new page, I often go do Google to do a number of searches and relevant searches to see who is competing, what they have published and what Google is showing in bold in the page titles and descriptions.  I often see keywords there that research at SEMrush does not surface.

These types of estimates are baloney in my opinion.

If you are asking these questions here at last minute....  then you are giving the client a wild guess.

I think it is safer and  more honorable to go without estimates.

You mention a 4% conversion rate.  In many industries that can only be attained by an extremely experienced webmaster who is selling the product at the lowest price on the web on a trusted site that is  widely known for that product.

1.  Other than exact match domains or the age of a domain what would be other reasons why competition would outrank you?

Google thinks that they have a better website.

2.  Can anyone suggest other ways to help increase a sites domain/page authority besides creating more indexed pages, link building, etc..?

You have probably decided for yourself that these metrics do not translate into google rankings... so placing your focus on making a better website in the eyes of google would give you a better return.

You might have a very smart competitor.

If that competitor has a website that is more powerful than yours then it is probable that they will rank higher in the SERPs than the original document on your website.  Also, it is very possible that the article on your website will be filtered from the SERPs because of duplicate content.

How will you feel when your great articles start earning links that power your competitor's website?  How will you feel when they outrank you?

I don't give content away.  It feeds existing competitors and creates new ones.  However, some people are so hungry or so desperate for a link that they will give their content away.

Also, content is my offensive weapon.  It competes in the SERPs, it competes for links, and those account for most of my traffic.