Yes, the way it's usually set up, screen readers for people with disabilities can still read the hidden H1s, so you won't have that card to play against them.

Then you'll need to go off the data you have. The keyword planner is still a good tool to use, it just can't be 100% trusted. You can also play with the Google auto-suggest (waterfall) that pops up as you type things in. The suggestions are based on search volume.

There are also keyword research tools out there that can help. SEMRush, SpyFu, etc.

Also look at competitor sites that already sell the product. See what they are targeting in their title tags and H1s.

You'll never get a straight answer from Google, but here's what I've witnessed:

• Paid directory links CAN be beneficial if they are human-moderated and/or reputable. Something like BOTW has been a good historical example. There are also niche-specific reputable paid directories.

• Be INSANELY CAREFUL. If you're skeptical about a specific directory site, don't do it. It should be a well-known brand in the niche, for example, Martindale-Hubbell for Law.

• Think of it more as citation building than link building. There is SEO-value, but don't rely on directory link juice.

• If you're careful, rely on the directory site's authority and reputation, and do a little research, you should have no issue having some paid directory links in your link profile with no penalties.

That's pretty strange. There isn't another web person there who might have cleaned things up without telling you? Or maybe your server company?

I don't see how these URLs could be indexed if they never existed, so at some point, someone created those pages and they were around long enough to get indexed. Are there any weird spikes in crawl rates or search queries since the launch of the subdomain?

I've seen this kind of hack before. The hacker just drops some folders full of HTML files into the roots. That's why all those links have a two characters sub directory. That was the folder the HTML files were in before someone likely just saw those folders in the root and deleted them. Maybe they didn't realize what they were doing and thought they were just doing the house cleaning?

Doing a "site:mshowells.com/ci/" or "site:mshowells.com/sp/" can show you what I'm talking about.

When in doubt, the answer is almost always the same as the answer to, "What is best for the user?"

Users can't make sense of all those parameters, and bots aren't likely to either. A site like Amazon.com or Canon.com can get away with it, because they have so many other factors going for them. Also, some systems create these parameters automatically, and can't easily be optimized.

So, to answer your question: It's best not to have those parameters. Users like it without them, and it makes it easier for people to link to you, since URLs are more memorable. On the other side of that, it's not the end of the world if you can't do this in an easy manner and your time might be better spent elsewhere.

I've never tried it, but I don't think that would avoid the temporary dip.

Thanks for the tip, Miriam.