Testing different titles to see if you can improve your rankings for specific keywords or to focus on different keywords may be worthwhile but changing them for the sake of making a change is pointless.

Hi Jury

If you haven't already i would recommend raising the issue through the help email address help@seomoz.org

On the Q&A forum we can pass thoughts or suggestions but the support team at seomoz will be best placed to answer this.

Hi Atul

If users are searching on a term, for example Amy Winehouse the results prior to her death would have probably been Youtube videos, Lyrics, her official site (if she has one) etc

Immediately after her death users will be wanting to find out what happened, the latest update. As such the CTR for the existing SERP would probably be lower as the user doesn't want the Youtube video or lyrics etc. They want the QDF results to kick in and show the latest news item(s) at the top.

Hope that explains it.

Hi Artience Girl

The Google Webmaster guidelines covers topics like these but a key point is that geotargetting using IP address is fine as long as you are not showing Google a separate Google only version of the site. This would be considered cloaking.

You will therefore need to decide which regional variation you want Google to end up at when it tries to visit/crawl the www.example.com URL

But before you do that check the Google Webmaster guidelines in and around this area as if you follow them you are less likely to end up on the wrong side of them.

Hope this helps.

Hi Stephen

Below are some URL's I happened across today when looking for something related.

http://www.cto20.com/post/Tips-Tricks-3-URL-Rewriting-Rules-Everyone-Should-Use.aspx
http://searchengineland.com/url-rewrites-and-redirects-part1-16574
http://searchengineland.com/url-rewrites-and-redirects-part2-16575

Not 100% sure they will help but thought I would pass them on in case they did.

If there is something in the contract that will affect the client negatively or if the old firm is suspected of being likely to cause problems then it may be that the clients best interest is suited by employing a reputable SEO firm to work on link building to strengthen the link profile before cutting ties with the old firm.

There will obviosuly be additional cost by following this approach however this would need to be weighed up against the possible rankings fall / traffic fall that might occur if the contract doesn't protect the client from the sort of situation described.

Cons:

May lose some of the link juice from the 301 redirect from the old URL's (between 1 and 10% is the usual quoted figure)

Initial (usually short term) drop in rankings and potentially traffic of weaker site pages

www.weakersite.com is a "nicer" looking URL for offline marketing than www.strongersite.com/weakersite

Pro's:-

If on Subfolder rather than sub directory pages will benefit from domain authority and links to domain of stronger site.

Can focus future link building and on-page SEO efforts on one site rather than 2, potentially doubling the amount you can get done

If building from scratch and choice of 2 sites or 1 I would say go for one. As two already exist there is more of a call to be made.