Been running AdWords for quite some time now (over a year). Still dropping $700-$900 a month on ads, yet still sitting in #2 or #3 position in SERPS for our prime keywords, behind sites with LESS content, LESS traffic, LESS backlinks, LESS usefulness... What in the world am I doing wrong? We've put in TONS more work than our competition... my staff is 10x the size of their staff, we're colloectively online WAY more than they are, we're ALWAYS afdding relevant content, we've got multiple articles in Digg and other sites... I've done TONS of SEO, all legit and "whitehat", I've added sitemaps, I've adjusted meta data, I've submitted to good directories, I'm getting great traffic, but we just can't seem to crack that elusive "top spot", despite all our efforts. I suppose I'm just venting, but perhaps it's time to take a step back and let others comment on what we've done and how we can improve. In the past, I've been pretty wary of suggestions - No more. Any expert feedback is appreciated...
I had a simular problem. I was spending too much on adwords and wasn't getting any sales, so i closed the adwords account and used SEO to bring my site to the top ten of google for free. It's much better as well, not only because it was free, users are gunna tend to look at the top ten listings before the ads. Well, that's in my opinon.
Make sure that you keep going at the same pace and don't stop. Google have probably decided to put your top spot on hold for a while just to make sure that you're traffic / directory appearances / digg appearances aren't too artificially generated. Hang in. You'll get there.
i didnt get you ..if what exactly you mean by that statement... i guess google will nt control the sites manually ...its completly automated as we all know .. can you please elaborate your statement ..... cheers
That's why SEO is difficult because of lots of uncertainties. There's no clear rule aside probably having a good content. Does your competitor leads also in other engines? You may focus instead in others. I recommend that you think of well your title tag. I believe that once you're in a first page, a catchy title will bring more clicks than those above you. Ive known this through experience.
adwords has nothing to do with organic results...what kind of SEO are you doing on your site? maybe you are doing too much and it looks obvious.
I don't think it's "too much", our site has always been designed for the user, not the Search Engine. NICOclub[dot]com if you'd like to eyeball it and offer some thoughts.