Hi All Does anyone know of a good service where I can actively track my rankings for various keywords in various search engines? Also, I rank very highly for a lot of keywords, but I've been having some problems with my main target keyword on google. I come up no 2 worldwide for it in yahoo and no 1 in the UK. Last year I was on the first page for google but have slipped down. What confuses me is that in my webmaster tools the keyword apears to rank highly and as a linked word aswell. I would like to submit to some reputable directories and sites but don't want to be penalised by submitting to the wrong ones. Like I said, nearly all my other target words and phrases are fine it's just this one and only on google. Thanks in advance
If you are talking about http://www.fireworkscrazy.co.uk/ then you are going to have a tougher time ranking in Google.com. Your domain, because it has a .co.uk TLD is assumed by Google to be targeting Google.co.uk and UK visitors. Your site is also hosted in the UK... The .co.uk TLD and being hosted in UK gives you a bit of an advantage in Google.co.uk but puts you at a bit of a disadvantage in Google.com. Additionally, most of your backlinks are from .co.uk domains which helps your rank at Google.co.uk, but doesn't count as much for Google.com. You will need a lot more backlinks than normal from domains that rank at Google.com (non-country specific TLDs) in order for your .co.uk domain to rank well at Google.com. Google Webmaster Tools automatically defaults your Dashboard -> Settings -> Geo Targeting setting to UK because of your TLD. That Geo Targeting setting ONLY applies if you are a non-country specific TLD domain. They assume you are a UK site targeting UK users and therefore want to rank in Google.co.uk. All results shown in Webmaster Tools are likely for Google.co.uk. If you want to rank in Google.com and target visitors around the world, it's best to have a non-country specific TLD (.com, .net, .org, etc) and be hosted in the US.
Hi Canonical We chose the .co.uk and uk hosting after having problems being listed for anything in google. At the time it was the .com domain and unbeknown to me the servers were in germany, within days of switching to the UK domain and UK servers we saw results. Im happy ranking on google uk as the .com will follow. We tend to only be a place or two down on .com worldwide searches. Google will also look at a users ip address and give results based on that. I would just be happy to get back on to the front page. I have applied to dmoz on several occassions over the last 3 years but to no avail although competitors have been placed on the directory. I do believe that this doesnt help. I've also submitted to yahoo directory recently. Can anyone suggest some other good directories? I'm currently talking with several firework related site to link exchange and hopefully this will increase backlinks. I do find it strange how google lists its backlinks when in the WT it lists ALOT more.
There are lot of free and paid directories but according to me that's not the best way to get ranked for competitive keywords. They do work for getting PR or ranking for low competition keywords. Avoid link exchange if you can, value of reciprocal links is much lower than one-way links and you can be penalized for excessive reciprocal linking. You can use seobook's rankchecker plug-in for finding your rank for given set of keywords. Alternatively you can also use free monitor for google.