I have a site that uses the keywords, CAD Design Engineering. http://www.cad-design-engineering.com For over 7 months, there is not even a hint of this site in the top 1000 on Google. I've worked tediously, building links, striving to add and improve content, and have at no time, ever attempted to "cheat" the system. I am 100% legit, and am in this for the long haul. I'm sorry to raise this spectre - I know it hits a nerve center, but I'm not sure what to think about this whole "sandbox" argument. I don't want to believe it, but on the other hand, I'm getting my tail kicked by crappy, or irrelevant websites. Can someone please have a look at my site, and tell me why I'm doing so badly? I'd value the feedback. Please don't get me wrong - I would love to hire someone, but I already got ripped off by an "SEO" earlier this year, and I don't have any budget left this year for anything that isn't directly tangible. (please forgive my honesty, but understand my intent) We're a fledgling company. Thank you.
Your problem is that you do not have enough backlinks. Google loves banklinks and while google only shows a percentage of backlinks, you only have 2 backlinks from sites other than your own and a regional yahoo listing. Your backlinks don't even contain the anchor text you want to rank for. You need to work on getting more backlinks from relevant sites. The links need to look like this CAD Design Engineering CAD Design Engineering offers (insert description about site here). There are 4.1 million results for your keyword. It is going to take some time and effort to rank well with google- but you can do it. Start doing a search for Cad Design Engineering (or whatever word you want to rank well for) and try to get a link from the sites that already rank well for the work. Google considers those sites "authority sites" so they will assume your site is "important" if they link to you. Good luck.
Thank you for yoru reply. I must tell you, I have many more backlinks than 2... And I have entered them all using the keywords as you have listed. My description basically mirrors my description meta tag. I am continually building links. I submit an average of about 30 per day. Only about 8-10 get approved within a weeks' time, so I'm pretty slow and consistent, but I'm up to about 400 links right now. Is there something "on page" that might be hindering me? In the meantime, I continue to build links... Can someone please weigh in on the "Link Vault?" Thank you.
I understand that google only shows a percentage, but it is still a good indicator of how you compare to other sites ranked well in google (since only a percentage of theirs show too). The number #2 site for your keyword is showing over 800 backlinks and is a PR7 site. The #1 site seems to be down. It's not about volume of backlinks, it is about the quality of links. I have sites with 30 backlinks that outrank sites with a thousand backlinks which aren't targeted and from the coop. I sure doing things like the free directory route has some benefit, but you really need to get backlinks from targeted sites. I don't use link manager or link vault, but there is really nothing that beats manually searching and taking the time to target good links. Of course this is much more time consuming so a lot of people don't take the time to do it. While nothing is set in stone, focus of relevant links from sites that have a good PR - and try to get links on a page that doesn't have a hundred outgoing links. The PR you see on the page is divided among the number of outgoing links- so a page with one outgoing link is 100X better than a page with 100 outgoing links. Forget about links on some PR0 page that has nothing to do with CAD Design. Exchanging links with those sites will only dilute the value of your own page and make it harder to find quality link exchange partners. Savvy webmasters would rather exchange links with on a page with 15 out going links than 100. I'll bet you could see very good results with as little as 10 to 30 quality link exchanges.
I hate to suggest this but my feeling is that your site may have been tagged by the Google algo as an affiliate type site and is being penalized. Apparently, in a recent update (cant remember the coined term) G adjusted the algo so that sites where the domains are precise matches to the keywords, are penalized. Also penalized, are sites that have lots of links from other affiliate type sites, with the exact keywords in the anchor. Seen as much of the spam in recent times stems from some unscrupulous affiliate marketers (AM's) doing their thing, combined with the fact that aggressive AM's often employ aggressive SEO technicques, such as putting the main keyword into the domain, just like you have done, it would make sense for G to penalize sites that do this. For G, it would be a nice easy way to cut through much of the affiliate junk and tidy up their results. I just ran a few searches and couldnt find any sites in the results where the 3 phrase terms that i used where also in the domain. I don't think they are trying to kill the affiliate industry or anything. Otherwise what would be the use of Adsense where (quality) sites become affiliates of theirs?? Dont get me wrong I am not implying your site is spammy in anyway at all. From the quick look I had, it seemed fine. This seems like a valid explanation for the problems you are experiencing. I ran a search for "CAD design engineering services for numerous reasons" and your site came up on the second page. Aside from what I've just said, you need more, more, and more backlinks from decent and related sites / pages. You may just be in the sandbox which does exist. But of course if it is what I have said, then all of your efforts could be in vain, so it's worth looking into. Good luck.
Thanks for the advice... I recently inquired with Google, and they assured me that I was not currently being penalized for any reason. Does that mean anything? I have no clue... Wow. I'm really going to be in for a hard time, trying to get relevant links with this set of keywords... If anyone would like to PM me with advice, I'd love to have it. I'm pretty much a newbie, and I'm really hurting for some good advice. Thanks again...
I have a site that is almost three months old and in the sandbox. The ONLY traffic google sends to the site (which is in a highly competitive sector) are exact search matches for the three word domain name. It has ranked #1 in google for this term since the site was about 10 days old. It's #2 in yahoo and #1 on MSN. It is not in the top 1000 for any other competitive keyword on google (but top ten for several on yahoo and msn). Google obviously still give a good amount of weight to exact matches in urls. I don't have any urls with hyphens, but I don't think he is getting a penalty for two hyphens. I think google is going after sites-that-use-excessive-hyphens-to-rank-well.html
You can try this program someone posted about today. http://webconfs.com/backlink-builder.php I ran it for your keyword, and this was one of the sites that came up. It's a PR6 site and does link exchanges. www.manufacturingsoftwarehq dot com
I can't get any results on Google even for an exact match. From what I've historically found, there are less than 5 sites that actually even use my exact keyword phrase, and when they do, it's usually in reference to me! I did find, however, that my keywords are sought after, though not commonly used. I'm baffled. This stuff is starting to seriously depress me.
Weird. Your PR is decent too. Anyway, as people suggested, work on relevant backlinks from other sites in your niche. Perhaps make page titles a bit longer. I'd also vary meta keywords and desc from page to page and include more internal links within the content (make sure to use targeted anchors). I'd also submit the site to respected directories even if you have to pay some.
I have paid several of the "big" directories. It hasn't gotten me anything... I'm not able to pay for any more right now. Here's where I'm so confused... Check out the #1 result for "CAD design engineering" on Google. This site clearly illustrates that content doesn't count for much... I just don't understand why I can't pull ranking, when I have 100% relevant content for the keyphrase, I have page rank, and over 115 confirmed backlinks, with the keywords as the title. If I could only get my ODP listing approved... Even so, I push on with my link building. (although with an air of disappointment) Can you please educate me a bit more on the internal links? What should I be linking to? All of my keywords linked to the homepage? (and bolded ?) Should I add another navigation bar? Thank you for your reply.
The #1 ranking has "CAD Design Engineering" as its anchor text for DMOZ- which is why they are ranking #1. Make sure your page content sounds natural. You can get a penalty for using too many keywords - it makes it look like you are trying too hard to get ranked. There is no standard percentage as it varies among sectors. If it doesn't sound right when you read it, then you might want to change it. As you can tell, the incoming links are getting sites to rank well - not their on page content. You may have links from sites google ignores - or doesn't consider important. These are generally "easy to get" or "non-relevant" links. I also saw that some of your page names are using an underscore instead of a hyphen. Google does not see the underscore as a space. You should consider renaming the pages and then doing a 301 redirect to keep the pages indexed - if you want google to use the page name for SERPS. Getting your yahoo listing anchor text changed to your keyword would also help.
I'm working on the re-direct right now. Does this look correct? (one example) RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.cad-design-engineering\.com\Catia_V5.php RewriteRule (.*) http://www.cad-design-engineering.com/Catia-V5.php/$1 [R=301,L] Thank you!
Please forgive my lack of acknowledgement - I agree, it was a very useful link. It gave me a few highly relevant directories today. Thank you.