Ok, I know a bit about seo but I'm struggling with this one. This is an example and I guess it is a coding issue but if there are any really experienced seo's out there who can help with my little problem, I would be greatful. In google.co.uk, I type in 'chocolate fountains cornwall', first on the list is the following page: http://www.weddingservices4u.co.uk/asp_cornwall2/CornwallWeddingChocFountains.asp This is pr2, but my page ranks number 10: www.chocolate-fountain-directory.com/chocolatefountaincornwall.htm and this is pr3. Both have only inlinks from the same site and I have optimised my internal pages including this one. Is this page being over optimised, are there any glaring errors. Obviously this is a lot to ask but I would be greatful if anyone can help, please pm me if required. Regards
I would not stuff keywords in the description, it needs to briefly state what your site is about. Max about 150 your is 145 which should be good.. It may not be having any effect but Google seems to like this better.
I'm no expert but the one at nr1 spot is 6 years older than yours, has 2 dmoz listings and is just as relevant. so it could be due to the age. I also noticed their description tag is shorter giving more strength to the words within it.
Remember... the more you change the page, you can trigger a sandbox effect for the term and you can be stuck where you are for 6 to 8 months. Try getting links that have ONLY the kw's you want to optimize for.
Cheers guys, will have a quick look at the description, I guess some decent inbound links are required to the internal pages but if anyone else has any suggestions, they would be appreciated!
I would have to politely disagree. The domain is ranking in the top 10 for the keyword and is over a year old so I believe it has earnt its keep. I personally have never seen this happen - feel free to prove me wrong. regencytimberbuildings is right - the top site has about 8 years on you and will have a lot of aged links from other aged sites. Google favors old domains, which in my opinion, sucks. It is still possible to out rank all the sites above you, taking on older domains just means you have to work harder.
Snoob: I appreciate that you politely disagree. Good Form! The reason that I point this out is that it has happened to us. We originally dropped in May. I tinkered with the KW. As soon as the site was re-crawled, I tweaked some more. I did that so many times that after a while, I noticed that no matter what I did, the site would move up for a day and drop right down to where I started. You could almost feel that there was either a G hand job or an invisible anchor. we finally gave up tweaking the site and left the KW alone. we bought 1 Adword and made up the difference until we could figure it out. Then .... we saw this article: http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter154.htm#facts Meanwhile - we have done nothing to optimize for the KW with the "invisible anchor" and it has moved up 2 positions on it's own. The moral of the story: Built in algo that looks for frequent word-smithing and applies a MILD spam filter.
PR by itself is in no way an indication of rankings so don't use it to judge the ranking of the site. The age of the domain seems to play a major role here. Your competing site is 6 years older. If you want to get to the top spot, you're going to have to make up for lost time by perfecting your on-page optimization (title tags, h1 tags, page content) and building a lot more links with your desired keywords in the anchor text.
ok...i checked both your site...and can easily notice what mistakes you made in webpages. Before I explain in detail i would like to introduce myself. I'm seo expert and optimize websites for corporates and personal sites. To get your site on top 10 listings in uk or any other part of the world is the most difficult job. Forget about the pr you see, there are lot of things to consider on to get a high ranking. 1. title 2. meta tag keywords 3. meta tag description 4. h1 and h2 tags 5. content text 6. text in bold letters 7. first sentence of your site 8. selection of best keywords and no. of times it repeats in your site. remember don't think that putting more keywords will give you better ranking.. its totally wrong. google search works on algorithm, hypertext, page rank, inlinks, outbound links, alt tags and many more. 9. every word of your side should depict what u sell and for what ur visitor wants. 10. url of the site: also plays important role 11. directories and sub-directories too. So kindly work on the above things. If you want any help from us plz mail me to 12. We always give a prompt and better service to customers. Never go for any software which optimize your pages. Its all should be done manually. Our team work on each page for 7 days continously and keep tracks of every changes for 3 months. 13. Whenever you change any content of optimization of your site, it won't show you in search instantly, you will see results atleast after 2 weeks only when google crawls ur pages. 14. If you are interested in our service and having a quote for you site plz mail us. regards zia
Ok, it seems that I'm being scuppered by an older domain. actually, my site ranks number 1 in google.co.uk for 'chocolate fountains' and is in the top 3 for google.com so the home page is performaing very well, it is the inner pages that need working on. Thanks for all of your help though guys, any more thoughts would be welcome, I'm going to try building a few links to specific internal pages and tweeking the code to see if that helps! More comments analysis are welcome!
gnarlysurfer.. I sent you an email with full report on optimization.. let me know if this helps you any.. if you need link report let me know... I can send you a html of report or txt if you cannot read the email...
After taking a second look I have thought of something that I think would help your ranking. Content. I think you do not have much content on the page I clicked on. If you had more keyword rich content with lots of words that relate to your main keywords I'm sure that would help. If you would like me to direct you to a free tool that gives suggestions of related words to include send me a PM. Its not a basic keyword tool its more a related keyword tool.