Hello Prof,
First thing:
SEO does not require invalid coding practices. You dont have to ruin your code. In fact while some way crappy code doesnt matter, I know that if I were a spider looking for text porridge and came accross a clean site ...
Second: The best advice Ive heard said so far is to put some analysis into all that Adsense traffic that hasnt been helping.
Third: You can't really get any sense as to where your going, and what you need to do to get there without some serious investigation into the competitors (those ahead of you in the SERPs).
Fourth: How are your IBL's? How many and what quality.
Fifth: Let the
SEO begin. You can work with the
SEO expert she has, or one you find. They can do research on or keywords, title and heading and context, they may see things you may not (for example does that perfect mark-up use a javascript nav? If so, a css nav with keywords will help).
No matter what the changes are the
SEO expert finds, no doubt alot has to change. That should mean some design work for you, unless you prefer the
SEO expert do it, which you could oversee to make sure its done right.