I have been working on optimizing my site for two years with only slight results. I read and read and read and read (then read some more). Its always one thing after another. Focus on your title. No, focus on your keywrods. No, description. No, links. No, its keyword densitiy!! It never ends. And they never work. I would like to correct myself I guess. Its not that I have seen slight results I am just not pulling up good in the keywords that I want. I pull up good in the small ones but not the real good ones. I will use an example; "online trading" in google you will see several big brokers. This is a keyword I want to pull up under. For my example please take a look at etrade.com. If you review their site you will see that they don't have keywords or a description. Everywhere I read tells me your meta keywords and description is "vital". So how are they top 10? What are they doing that I am not? Any help or pointers would be very much so appreciated.
Different search engines treat on-site (title, description, keyword, h1, etc) and off-site (mainly back links) factors differently. For example, Yahoo puts more weight on on-site factor than Google. It means it's harder to fool Google because off-site factors are out of your control and require a lot more work to do. So as magda said, 8000 back links is a huge advantage in SEO game. Back links are what you need to rank better, specially on Google (or Bing).
First of all, you've selected a very, Very, VERY difficult key phrase to rank well on. You're not gong to ever rank well on that search engine results page unless you have an absolute TON of very strong backlinks. The people have probably spent thousands, if not tens of thousands to acquire enough popularity to rank well on the SERP. Second, the things you've heard previously are correct. You DO need good titles, you DO need a good description, and you DO need good keyword density. But that's not ALL you need. There's not just ONE thing you need. Google considers over 200 different factors. So far, you've mentioned 4. There's 2 main things you're missing here. 1.) Key phrase analysis. Unless you've got a fortune 500 type budget, you're not going to be able to rank well on key phrases that have as much competition as the key prhase you mentioned above. You need to go after key phrases that are more realistic, that have less competition, so that you can compete on them. For example, go after something a little more niche than just 'online trading'. 2.) Backlinks. If you select a keyphrase wiht any competition at all, you're going to need backlinks........alot of backlinks. You need one way, do follow backlinskfrom high quality, relevant webpages with strong PR. And you're going to need lots of them. The more you have, and the better quality they are, the better your SERPs.
Dude you need to target KW that are within reach. One of the biggest things ppl overlook in SEO is kw research. It doesn't matter how good you are at SEO or building backlinks/tite tags/ meta descp etc. some site just are authorities that cant (or arent worth) beating. Try to target kw with less competition and build yourself up from there.
90% of SEO advice online is conjecture and/or purposely misleading. There are a few ways to do this: 1. Have a site with amazing content that will create buzz and tons of backlinks 2. Use blackhat methods and hold high ranking for as long as you can get away with it. 3. Hire a 'real' SEO and stop wasting your time on something you obviously are having trouble with, spend your time on something you do well - sales, managing, customer service.... 4. Try and rank for an unpopular keyword so you won't have much competition.
Build more backlinks is always the key. I know that content and keyword is important, but no matter how cool is your site, people wont see it if they dont even know that your site is exist. Build a lot of backlinks and reach the best rank in google for your keywords
Wow I appericate all of the advice. It has really shed some light on the most important factor being backlinks. Couple questions on that. First: How do I tell how many links my site has to it. I have always used "link:" search in google however magda had commented saying etrade has over 8000 links where i only show 786. Second: How do I build backlinks? I have done the classic link exchanges with little to know results. My site only shows 23 backlinks.
1. Use yahoo site explorer or backlink watch 2. Seriously dude do a google search... there are many ways, profile links/article marketing/blog commenting The whole idea is to get a one way link from an authority site to your own site that is it.
Many factors actually affect that sort of rankings: First, that domain have been there for years, so that is a big factor nowadays, the domain age AGe of backlinks AGe of sites from where the backlinks are there What is the nature of freshness of content in those sites How much fresh content the site is updated with It can just go on and on...number of backlinks is just another factor, not the main factor
To start off with, I may be new to the forum however I am an SEO consultant for a large web design firm. So for the most part I know what I’m talking about. But nobody knows everything, I will be the first to say that. The most important thing you must keep in mind with Google or any search engine is that it is an extremely complex process for how they do their rankings. Top Googlers probably don’t even fully understand it. Plus there are no set ‘rules’. There is no silver bullet. You will see this more with my post. At my firm we get a lot of real estate sites and it is a great example to use here. From small brokers to big ones, we have done it all. The small brokers are particularly notorious for planning on building a website with us and being number 1 for the term ‘real estate’. They do not understand that when users type in ‘real estate’ on google they are not looking for ‘real esatate in smallvile new york’ which is all your firm handles. Most of the posters above mentioned “authority†which is very very very important. And the reason is, Google looks at things and says “ok well it appears that the term ‘Real Estate’ is very broad in nature because there are thousands and thousands (millions probably) of sites and pages that have content on this term/keywords on this term/descriptions on this term etc etc etcâ€. Whereas Google will look at the term ‘Real Estate in Smallville New York’ and consider that to be a specific term because there are maybe only a handful to a thousand or so sites that have content/titles/keywords etc on that specific term. That being said you should easily be able to pull up under ‘Real Estate in Smallville New York’ by just having the title keywords and description mention the term. Since I am on the subject of keywords/descriptions/titles I will talk about that a little. What you need to keep in mind is that (Google itself will tell you this) your meta tags need to be written about what your site is about. Not be written for Google. That is something very important to remember, do not build your site for the search engines. Of course you want to be search engine friendly but not built FOR the search engines. This is highly important in the long run. Look at it this way; meta tags are there to help Google understand what your page is about. But having ‘optimized meta tags’ will do you nothing if your page is not of value or importance to term you want to pull up in.. Back to authority. Which is more important for the bigger keywords (like with my example ‘real estate’). With authority your site doesn’t sometimes even need to have the word on the site to pull up under the term. The reason is; Google considers back links (QUAILTIY back links) to be pretty much more important than anything else. Pretty simple why; theres not much you can do to get them other than be good at what you are doing. So if your site is linked to from thousands of other quality sites that mention the word ‘real estate’ Google will consider that, chances are, your site must be pretty damn important for the term ‘real estate’. Authority is obtained by having quality back links. How to obtain them? The best is the natural way whereas bloggers/review sites what have you write about your site or simply mention it, Google will often consider this creating “buzz†about your site. They say that word all the time. Buzz is done by creating a cool or interesting site/article/you name it. So as if you want to rank well with ‘real estate’ create something that people searching ‘real estate’ would be interested in. Don’t expect to right an SEO friendly article or two on your site about ‘real estate’ and expect to be on top. I always ask my self when doing by SEO work; will user think this is cool/worthwhile/worthy of me posted it on my twitter? If you see things like 100 backlinks for $100 or 1000 directory links for $50; ignore it. As I said it’s about QUAILTY back links. Google will sometimes even punish you if you have a ton of shitty back links. Link exchanges are another thing I wouldn’t waste your time on. For smaller sites it can help but if you want to come up under big big terms, don’t waster your time - its worthless. The second best way to obtain back links is to write content/reviews/what have you on the topics that you want come up under and try to get them on major sites. For my example of ‘real estate’, find sites that discuss real estate and do some sort of content syndication. Each industry is different. The main thing is to get your site mentioned on those sites. I would like to finish with a comparison that I picked up over the years of doing seo work. Impressing Google is a lot like impressing girls. You want to be clean, good looking with quality attributes (clean coding, nice site, good meta tags etc). But, if you try to hard (seo schemes, spaming etc) girls will pick up on that and turn you down. And it is typically the funny guy (site with the most buzz) that takes home the prize. Even though he might not be the bets looking or have the best attributes. I wish you the best of luck. Also... on the member that mentioned domain age is a big factor: http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp#p/search/1/Y1_1NQWQJ2Q ^^^ suggest you take a look at those videos as well
so rigorous should we simply not focus on SEO if we are going fully after those big keywords? meaning should I just work on getting backlinks? as an example one of our competitor sites doesn't even have the term in its keywords/description. what about buying backlinks. i have seen that. not the 100 for $100 deal but good looking sites where you do pay a premium $100 for 1 as an example.
I'm not saying don't focus at all on seo. It is just like one of the previous posters said, you need to do keyword research and then decide how you would like to go after things. For research take a look at the top 10 for that keyword. Does it seem to be that the top 10 tends to be secondary pages for sites (not the home page)? If so chances are its an easy keyword. I will use my real estate example once more. Lets say that you are hard set on going with 'real estate', you want to be top 10 for that huge keyword. But at the same time you want to be top 10 for 'real estate smallville new york'. Well I know that 'real estate' is big. So right there you know that you will need to create a site with the “buzzâ€. Focus on that and have your keywords be maybe: real estate, real estate in new york, real estate in smallville new york If you can get the back links and authority to be top 10 under 'real estate' you don't even need to have smallville on your page to be number one for that word. Typically (contrary to popular belief) content is not what will get you up in the big big keywords. If it was all about content google wouldn't know who to put number one. So yes they do look at content but if you tell google your page is simply about 'real estate' authority will out weigh all. Look at it this way; when you type in 'real estate in smallvile new york' google browses the internet looking for that phrase, but very little sites have it. So authority and back links have nothing to do with that term because nobody that has that term has the authority or back links to really give a damn. So then google starts to look at content, title/keyword/description etc etc. When you look at terms like 'real estate' google searches through millions of pages. It searches these pages and starts to put things in order. Well millions of pages have 'real estate' so then they turn to authority. Don't waste your time or money buying back links. It may work short term but eventually google will figure things out and get pissed. The best thing long term if you are going for big keywords is to focus on the two things I had mentioned in my previous post; organic backlinks and content cooperation with other sites.