No.2 to BBC - where do I go from here?

OK so the site is never going earn me any money but it's been a good grounding in SEO. www.bamzooki.org.uk is a little site I put together for my sons team who will be appearing on the next BBC series of Bamzooki. It's probably taken about 3 months in total but I've worked my way up from Page 8 of Google, right up to today being listed at No 2 only behind the BBC site.

How have I done this? - Well forums like this help for sure but if you take a look at the home page it is errr how show we put it - rather targetted at the specific Keyword of Bamzooki - It seems to have worked. I've also just recently listed my Google Sitemap but I have no idea if this helped or not.

Another site I've built www.cavaliermailing.com is listed at No.1 in Google under the keyphrase of "polywrapping mailing" - the two key areas of their business. However their listing for the individual words 'polywrapping' (page 3) or 'mailing' is further down. It's important to focus on as few keywords as possible - you can't be 'all things to all men'

The www.bamzooki.org.uk site visitation doubled when it went from no.3 to No.2 on Google and if I could only knock the BBC off top slot who knows?????

How am I doing on the other search engines for Bamzooki?
MSN - No 2 (although for a couple of weeks I was No1)
Yahoo - No 6
Lycos/Hotbot - website not even listed (makes you think doesn't it?)

Comments welcome

 

Hehe... My sprogs love Bamzooki. Well done on your position in Google.

 

Don't rest it at that because one thing I've learned about Google, Yahoo and MSN is that they change the algo and bang, your top listing is a distant memory.

 

i don't really agree with that statement (i actually recently wrote an article about the topic).. although i will congratulate you on your results. in my opinion, the more keywords you target on your website the better. you mention, "now where do i go from here?" well, the comment quoted above has lead you to this question. if you're only targeting that phrase, there's no where to go but down really.

is there any real reason why you can't be optimizing for more variations of the keyword(s) you are targeting? or other related keywords in general? are you positive that no one else is searching for anything other then the 2 word phrase you have optimized for? one thing i've learned is that different people have different methods of searching for things.. some use the 2 word phrase.. some use the phrase in the form of a question.. some use phrases you would never think in a million years anyone would use.

my advice on your where do i go from here question would be to do the exact opposite of your above statement.. and that is to target more and more related keywords. but that's just me.

 

More bold listings of your keyword in the maintext should rocket you right past bbc.

 

I think the domain name has a lot to do with google ranking....i reckon google place more emphasis on it than other search engines, keep working on link building is what i'd advise.

 

OK for the BAMZOOKi site I'm certain that the phrase 'bamzooki' alone is used to search by about 80-90% of users. I'm not doing too bad for some other related phrases in Google:
Bamzooki zooks - No2
bamzooki third series - No1
Bamzooki zooki kit - No 24
Bamooki downloads - No6 although my bamzooki Forum is No4 and this forum is No2!!!
'www.bamzooki' - Site is listed at 15 but just about every other link (88) points to my site in some fashion or another.

I agree to some extent in what you say about variations on kewords and I'll talk about that for www.cavaliermailing.com other site in a new thread

 

Thanks for your input but I think my PageRank might always hold me back - http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/bamzooki has a PageRank of 7/10. I think I've just about 'Bolded' (Is that a word?) the phrase Bamzooki to death

 

Hey are you from the States? Do they show BAMZOOKi there?

 

Cheers - As the BAMZOOKi site has no commercial gain to me it's more of an ego thing - so I'll definately be keeping a eye on it. I've given presentations to small business owners in the past where I explained that there are only 3 reasons why people have a website:

1. Money
2. The dispensing of information
3. Ego

LOL I'm no. 3

 

OK I kind of agree with this for the www.cavaliermailing.com site. More people will search for the single phrase of 'polywrapping' (explanation here) than 'polywrapping mailing' and there are plenty of other phrases we could be using. I'm focusing the text, page titles, keywords etc on other pages to be more targetted. At the moment (because the site is fairly new - about 6 weeks old) Google hasn't spidered anything under the home page. We've uploaded a Google sitemap but still nothing (it's still listing the old page links which is frustrating).
I'll review the content etc once it gets spidered - I'll come back to this post when that happens. Thanks for your input

 

Results 1 - 100 of about 33,300 for bamzooki

It seems like you dont have much competition there. This always helps.

 

OMG I've slipped down to #5 - nothing has changed - the sites above me certainly haven't ????