So I have had first page (position 7) rankings for my chosen keyword on MSN for many months and have recently seen my rankings in Yahoo jump from nowhere to position 4. And yet I have virtually no traffic coming from Google and cannot even find my site for my keyword. How much longer does Google take to rank a site? Can i expect a first page ranking on the big G given my performance on the other engines?
It really depends on how competitive your keyword is. Just keep working on building backlinks and adding content. Depending on the age of your site, and how much competition there is for what phrase you are trying to rank for, it could take a few months or longer.
Google is a bit harder if your keywords have a lot of competition. Like glorybeme said, work on getting back links. Try getting them from high PR related sites. You might consider writing a few articles and submitting them to ezinearticles - this will help boost your site in googles eyes but can also bring in a bit of traffic too! Or if you can find a high PR website in your niche, contact them and offer to write an article that they can use for free as long as they keep your links in the resource box.
Hate to break the bad news, but no, Google's algo is much more advanced than MSNs. Looking at the content of the sites in your sig, you'll probably never make the top 10 in google for any good term unless you improve your sites. Sorry.
I think it's wrong to say its his content thats holding him back. The three sites in his sig are all pretty competitive subjects. Even if his content was better than his competition it's still going to take a lot of work to get ranked for those keywords. I'd recommend doing more than just improving content. Not to say adding content isn't important, but he needs links too if he hopes to get anywhere with Google.
Google focus a lot on relevant backlinks, you may want to look into this area to increase your SERP in Google.
For me and my sites, the backlinks are one of the things that can really make or break a site. Go to the sites that are listing high for your keyword on google. Then type in link: (their web address) and do a google search for each one. When a site comes up that links to theirs that you can get your link on...do it. Keep doing that with the top 5 or 6 sites for your keyword and see if that helps.
One of the strategies I use in order to rank well in Google is not worth of bragging but it gives results. You may call it "stubborn idiot" strategy: never care for much but links and targeted content. Write about your subject, write about your subject and when you don't know what to do, well, write about your subject again! Can you think of a way to build links organically? I give away free Christian templates, I know it is a particular situation for me , but maybe you will find a similar situation for you!
Google focuses on a lot of different factors then those that Yahoo and MSN do. You should try experimenting with some SEO techniques. For one MSN and Yahoo might not give relevant backlinks as much credit as Google would. You should also take a look at your keyword density, header and H1 tags on your page. But the main factor with Google, at least for the moment is link building. Not just any link building but links coming in from websites that relate to your content or keywords. Those links also should have the appropriate anchor tags that match the keywords your looking to rank well on. Those are just some of things you should be looking into.
Thanks for all the replies posted here guys, they have been very useful indeed. I realise my content isn't all that but the site I am comparing mine to has rubbish looking content and not much of it and yet it ranks on the first page for my given term. I have checked the backlinks of that site and can't say it's that impressive. One thing though is that the domain for my competitor is 4 years old whereas mine less than a year. I think this could be playing a big part.
In my experience, domain age and the length of time a particular page has been in the Google index do play a part in SERPs. Obviously, there are more important factors, but age does have an affect. Mark
What are you doing to improve the ranking? If the site is established you may want to do a Press Release and make sure you have the right anchor text and keywords set up on your site.
Make as much backlinks for ur sites and keep on going ! U will get a better PR ! Don't stop Backlink creation.Just go on and go on !
It really depends on how competitive your keyword is. Just keep working on building backlinks and adding content. Depending on the age of your site, and how much competition there is for what phrase you are trying to rank for, it could take a few months or longer.