well from what i had found online, hits definitely help. If a number of keywords are found, the one with the more hits will be higher on the page from what i've found.
and yes, website is lame.. glad we got that out of the table... if peeps hate the website so much, then why are they helping getting the hit count to 19,000 in one day? This is just a small home repair company that didn't get in the phone book this year, so wanted a way for people to know what they do.
I am googling how to get it higher up on google's search bot. working on figuring out what a sitemap is right now.. seeing if that will help...