I've recently invested a few bucks in professional copywriting for my keyword targetted niche site Laguna Beach Stays. To be honest, I thought I was doing everything right....and hence I thought that by now I would be getting traffic of around 100 visitors per day, rather than the 15 visitors per day I am getting according to Google Analytics. I'm using Platinum SEO pack with Wordpress, to make sure all my page content and Titles are up to scratch. I'm regularly publishing articles, every 1-2 days, based upon keyword research, and heck, I've even got a couple of backlinks from local Laguna Beach sites and personalities. Yet still, my stats continue to remain at a steady level of, well let's face it, pretty much nothing. Did I accidently fall asleep during the first class of SEO 101 and miss a fundamental principle, or do I just stick with it (whatever 'it' is) and hope for the best?
Where are you posting your articles? What other means are you using to get backlinks. If you are just posting an article every other day to a single directory this amounts to a link velocity of 0.5 for your whole venture. I would recommend a link velocity of 3 for your home page and 1-3 for half a dozen inner pages. I would also recommend getting backlinks to your articles (which should each be posted on 5 or so main article directories) using social bookmarking.
I don't see you ranking for anything but Laguna Beach Stays. This has very few searches per month. You may want to investigate your keywords and concentrate on the larger search volume ones. Your site is also very young so it will take some time to develop authority.
its all backlinks you need. do a well thought out xrummer campaign to give you nice link juice and follow it up with a link wheel. Go look at your top 10 competitors in google and check out all their links. Which ever links that 2 or more are using focus on building those at the same places and you will gain most of their juice
Fredzog, thanks for your response mate. I post my articles to Laguna Beach Stays every 1-2 days. I've had 2 articles published on ezinearticles, and a 3rd article that is currently under approval. I haven't seen any noticeable impacts from the previous 2 articles, but heck, I may as well keep trying! Can you please explain what you mean by link velocity, and also, what you recommend in order to increase link velocity for certain pages? And I also would love it if you could elaborate on specific methods for getting backlinks to each of my articles.... I use the Onlywire plugin for Wordpress, but again, feel the success of this is limited.
That is the problem, I am not really ranking keywords other than my URL, even though many of my individual articles target different keywords (for example, specific accommodations in Laguna, things to do in Laguna Beach etc etc). I've actually done the investigation on these keywords at great length, I'm just not getting the traffic from Google to these articles, and I'm trying to determine the main reason for this!
Ok, now I feel way out of the loop....what's a xrummer campaign, and a link wheel? And secondly, when you say examine my top 10 competitors in Google and check out their links, I assume you mean inbound links? What tool do you suggest for doing this?
Try my twitter method.. It does wonders for getting you a couple hundred unique hits a day. If you want more information PM me. (And no I am not charging you anything, lol.) I could help coach you if you want though? I got my site up 3 weeks ago and it is already PR1 and will be PR2 next update
Bluntly: Your robot.txt file sucks. "Laguna Beach" is a tad stuffy on the index and by tad, I can't breathe... I'd create a post titled "where to stay in Laguna beach" or "hotels in Laguna Beach" then write a guide on choosing a hotel with different anchored links to your other posts and a few offsite hotel links - the ones that are listed on the first page in a search for "hotels in Laguna beach" or where to stay in Laguna beach"... Consider tweaking the change frequency in your sitemap. Ping. Answer questions on forums related to travel around Laguna Beach with a link to your site SUBTLY added at the end. You can try to sneak a link in a wiki article, but that's not recommended.
Righteo, now this is the kind of blunt feedback I like! Firstly, why does my robots.txt file suck? I had no idea this would have a bearing on the seo, other than disabling certain pages from being crawled...? Secondly, are you suggesting that I replace my current home page with a sticky post, that is directed at choosing a hotel with links both internal and external....I'm not quite following you sorry... Ok, thirdly, the sitemap. When you say the change frequency...do you mean the frequency upon which I submit new posts? Should it be more sporadic? Fourth. Pink. Doesn't wordpress do that for us automatically these days? If not, can you suggest some methods? The forums are something I have been considering over the last week or two, I've just been struggling to find decent travel related forums that will allow me to subtly slip in a link or two.... And finally...wikis....I know it's not recommended, but are you suggesting wikis such as wikitravel.com?
Check your PM for some "special" tips. ;D Wordpress creates duplicate content, you don't want that (PM 1) I need a reply to the second PM before I can help you with Pinging and Sitemaps. What I was trying to get at that you are overusing the keywords "Laguna Beach." I got tired of counting at 25. Suggestions: 1. Take the "read more" away and just let the entirety of all the posts flow on the front page to try and balance some of that stuffing out with more content. 2. Stop using "Laguna Beach" so dang much. 3. Remove every "Laguna Beach" under the main menu sidebar area or hack your template so that the main menu sidebar navigation isn't shown at all on single posts. 4. It's kinda late to rename categories that use "Laguna Beach", but it is an option to consider. 5. Or something you can think of. Regardless, SOMETHING has to be done to balance that out...anything. Forums ( PM 3) Wikipedia. Time. 3 days. Research the Crystal Cove State Park like it was going out of style. Write a DETAILED post on Crystal Cove State Park. Like a ridiculous amount of info on it. Name it simply "Crystal Cove State Park" then backdate it and post it on your site. Head over to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laguna_Beach,_California Find the connection. If you found it, you're planning on creating a new well written wiki page with in wiki format NOT COPY AND PASTE from your ridiculously long post. On the new page, site your reference FIRST along with other major players as: http://lagunabeachstays.com/crystal-cove-state-park Ta-da.
Laguna beach stays does not have a good stats on adwords keyword tool. Maybe, you can try to concentrate on more keywords to be anchored with your website and try to rank well on these new keywords laguna beach accommodations laguna beach apartment laguna beach apartments laguna beach hotels laguna beach house laguna beach rent There are tons of 3 keyword average level competition you can target with 4k - 10k average monthly searches. You got a great domain name and your frequent contents will help you further. Plus, if your article submission gets you anchored backlink with nofollow, it won't help you rank well in google SERP ranking. So, I suggest you to concentrate more on dofollow backlinks.
To get more traffic, try twitter, facebook and other ways as well as get more backlinks and secure top # 3 on google for your keywords search, Then you will get massive traffic
Thanks for your message. I hear suggestions to try Twitter and Facebook frequently....but sometimes, I feel that this suggestion is just as vague as saying "try the internet". What specific tactics do you suggest for Twitter? Do I set up an account especially for Laguna Beach Stays? Do I just friend request a whole bunch of Laguna Beach hotels and tourism operators in California? If so, how would this increase my traffic? The same goes for Facebook. I know there's plenty of potential traffic there. The question is, how do I tap into it?
Thanks for your response - what do you mean by having more keywords 'anchored' in my posts? Also, optimising my site for the phrase "Laguna Beach Stays" was never actually my intention. Rather, my main keyword phrase to target is actually "Laguna Beach hotels", as well as all of the actual hotels in the Laguna area. Finally, how do you recommend I find dofollow backlinks?
Hey mate - as always, thanks so much for your tips! I have tried to 'unstuff' my homepage a little, by adopting most of the suggestions you have made above. I even renamed some categories, because the site has only been live for a month, and to be honest I think I am far better off making these changes now and sacrificing a small amount of PR, rather than having my site penalised for many years to come... If you have a chance, could you please have a quick look at my home page now, and tell me if you think my homepage is less stuffy ? The link is in my signature if you've forgotten it!
If your only source of BL's comes from article directories...you won't have too much success. Also, as far as finding out how many people actually come to your site- check your server logs. If JS isn't executed by the users browser then you will never know they were there. In my logs, I have 40% more visitors to http://www.HighRankingSEO.net then it shows in my Analytics. GA shows about 3k a month, my logs show about 5k UV's a month. Also, watch out for canonical issues if your posts can be found on multiple URL's....be sure to include the canonical tag to the orig. source