Thanks everyone here, on the Blogging posts, on the Freebies posts and all other posts in this forum for your help! I just started a website on south Florida Bass Lakes a little over a week ago trying to share information on Fishing Hot Spots and Free Maps. I hope to get revenue from affilliates and Google Adsense. My website is www.floridabasslakes.com. I'm new to SEO and have only created websites in the past for a fishing club I was in and my daughter's softball team with no intentions of building up traffic. However, I wanted to explore how I could make money. Of course I used Google to browse the web and learned about Google Adsense and affiliate programs. I then thought what I have expertise on and what I enjoy and came up with the bass fishing theme providing fishing maps (sketches) with my favorite spots marked on them. I purchased a domain name last week, got a host and started publishing my web pages. I submitted my website to Google, Yahoo and Live very quickly, but was disappointed that my site wasn't listed in Google right away. I tried to find more help on the web and came across this very informative forum. (A note- I was indexed in Live within 48 hours of submission, still not indexed in Yahoo though). Well, I used a free XTML program at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ for my sitemap and uploaded it and used Googles Webmaster Tools to look for it (I lreaned that here). I optimized my site primarily using Brad Allens free ebook- SEO made easy. I looked at keywords and saw how competitive bass fishing was, so I also used Florida, lakes, maps, listed all the lakes that I have on my site, etc. Using this forums suggestions I started working on links. I have asked some bass fishing sites for links and have provided ones on my site, but they haven't responded yet. I went to Link Exchange and traded for one just to get a link. Then went to freerelevant links to get some more (they haven't given me a backlink yet). I created a blog in Googles Blogger with a link to my site. I submitted my Blogs to Zimbio (got a couple of links there). I purchased some links from eBay for social bookmarking (15 of them for 9.99) and have links there. I loaded Stumble and stumbled my pages (got links there). I joined 4 different bass forums and got links from my postings there. I have submitted articles (Just copied and pasted my Blog) but still waiting for approval on them. I loaded my website address and blog on a free link page from a posting in the Freebies section with a PR4 rating cgmwebsmiths.com. Probably some other stuff (can't remember). Anyhow I am on the first page of Google with no PR at #6. Type into Google exactly the following: florida bass lakes Now I need to get alot more advice: 1- How can I retain this spot or move up? 2-When will I get page rank? 3- How do I get good spots like this for the other keywords like a: South Florida Bass Lakes b: Florida fishing lakes c: Bass fishing Florida d: Other iterations? I guess I can't get too greedy, but I'm sure to backslide if I don't keep up with the great advice posted here!
I would create a squidoo and a myspace blog about the terms you were interested in ranking for. I find myspace blogs are helpful for indexing. I would try to get some florida bass lake related video and brand it with your url and submit to youtube
Thanks Self, as you can tell I'm keeping a close eye on the replies because the information here is invaluable! Did you try the search and does it report the same to you? I'm not exactly sure how Google works on "hits" displayed, does it report geographically (in other words does it know where you are querying from somehow)?
I'm brain dead, my eyes are terrible. Just realized I used the thumb down, I Thought it was a question mark...Sorry