Questions about SEO???

[kristiamy]

I have my own website but have never been able to place top 10 in the search engines. I have read about SEO and even tried to optimize to achieve better positioning without any results.
Can anyone point me to the right direction? I really don't know what I am doing wrong. I am not a professional developer, I am self taught, but have been writing html for years.

Any help will be greatly appreciated..

 

[Linda Buquet]

Well 1st off, how competitive is the market for your niche? Do you have a niche even or are you targeting a big broad market like "make money online" or insurance?

You don't need to tell us your market, you can just talk in general terms and you can't link to your site in this thread, just so you know.

Do a Google TITLE seach for your primary keywords in "quotes"
like this: allintitle: "key phrase"

That's how many other pages are very focused on ranking for those same keywords. SO here's the deal. Lets say there were only 1,000 and lets say EVERYONE was a pro at SEO. They still can't all be on the 1st page, EVEN if they are good at SEO. Even some of the best SEOs are going to end up on page 100.

Chances are your phrase has 50,000 or more competing pages, so it takes lots of talent and luck to get in the 1st page. It takes a combination of good content, domain age, inbound links and onpage SEO to get high.

Not trying to discourage, just letting you know that if you are in a competitive space, you may never get on page one, but the better job you do at SEO, the higher you should get.

Here are some good resources for learning more about SEO.

Learn. Rank. Dominate. : SEO Book.com
Old but good and some is still valid. bruceclay.com - Search Engine Optimization - SEO Training, Tools and Free Advice on Search Engine Ranking, Submission, and Placement

free SEO training - Google Search

 

[Linda Buquet]

Oh and the best thing you can do is to try to nail some long tail, less competitive keyword combinations. Have you tried that?

If you can get a bunch of page 2 or 3 rankings for some long tail KWs you may get further ahead that way.

 

[bennett]

Hello, I am getting you very well..

There’re so many factors: on page: keyword in title, link text, in bold, link text from back links, size of your site, frequency of updating your site..

The main thing is that seems to work is getting you to top from other sites to help you rank well.
Thanks!!

 

[rossman]

Think of this way.
2 things to do with your website
On the Page Optimization
Off the Page Optimization.

Also Optimizing images need to be done in order to better crawling by bots.
Design of website, placement of navigation bars etc. etc.

For Promotion, Stay away from black hats, link farms etc. etc...

Good luck

 

[Edwin]

Optimizing your images will help Google with crawling?

I don't see how it can help improve crawl depth if you name your images properly.

If you have a good site structure then you're improving the way Google crawls your site. Optimizing your images don't have any influence on that.

Design of website

A site/page doesn't have to be attractive for Google, neither in coding or looks, if you submit your page/site to a search engine spider simulator, and as a result you're being presented with your content...then it's good enough for Google.

 

[Rob_TID]

What's the competition like?

 

[Reynolds]

Are you getting website visitors? Look at your stats and see where your website visitors are coming from. What words they are typing into the search engines or what link they came from. This can help you discover what keywords you should optimize your site for.

 

[MrCat]

You may also want to consider to vie for longtail keywords for the meantime as you have mentioned you are just a newbie in the whole SEO thing. This should be easier than the popular keywords to rank for.

Just a tip: When building backlinks to your site, vary on the anchor texts. remeber to always include your major keywords. This will help you in ranking also for longer tail keywords

 

[jcorkern]

The advice here so far is great. Now i would like to tell you why you need to target the long tail keywords first.

The first reason is that they are easy to attain. This will give you some traffic, better quality traffic and will show you that it can be done. When you are learning, small steps are important. If you go out and try to target the harder words and phrases you will likely become discouraged and give up.

The next part is that you are building the strenght of your site, so the next step is easier, kinda like climbing a ladder. None of the work hitting the first step is in vain on your way to the more popular terms.

There are phrases that takes professionals 2 to 4 years to attain. So the chances of a beginner giving up are great if the top keywords are targeted by beginners.

Now let's get into the long tails. Long tails are phrases that usualy hint of a buyer. Which would you think would be easier to convert, "Bathtubs" or "where to buy bathtubs"?

Another example would be "t-shirts" or "Britney Spears T-Shirts"? sounds to me like someone is looking for a specific item with the second term. (these are just examples)

The longtail gives the best conversion rates overall because they are more specific to the searcher and may hit of a buyer looking to buy right now.

Everyone who buys online goes through a buying cycle. Try to catch the one's at the end of the cycle.

understanding your potential client will also help you find the right keywords that are easy to hit and make sales at the same time.

Keep it simple, get one way links, simple onpage and the rest will come togather.


Jim

 

[tata]

Good knowladge on LSO LSI LSA will help

I have my own website but have never been able to place top 10 in the search engines. I have read about SEO and even tried to optimize to achieve better positioning without any results.
Can anyone point me to the right direction? I really don't know what I am doing wrong. I am not a professional developer, I am self taught, but have been writing html for years.

Any help will be greatly appreciated..

i have read a paper on latent semantics and believe it will serve you right please try Latent Semantic Optimization

 

[Peter Lee44]

I also think that your homepage should be optimized with the relevant keywords in which you are targeting. Google and other search engines will look for your relevant keywords in your articles which have anchor text keywords pointing to your webpage. Different people have different views on keyword density with some recommending between 3-5%, but most people do not follow any strict density.

Peter Lee

 

[Edwin]

My opinion is that keyword density is a useless metric, there is no magic keyword density percentage, or an ideal keyword percentage of between 3 - 5%.

The people that are telling this want it to be the perfect percentage because that's probably what they are doing, the fact is that keyword percentages for pages/sites that rank are all over the place.

Trying to calibrate your keyword density on your pages to 3 - 5% or any kind of percentage is a waste of time and useless.

My 2 cents: Just write your content and drop your desired keywords naturally and don't worry about keyword density, when you combine that with a well crafted page title and some good inbound links, good internal linking, then you're well on your way getting good rankings.

 

[jcorkern]

Edwin is 100 % right. That was the whole purpose of LSI being implimented. to stop the keyword stuffing wars with marketers and to make a wedpage more natural for the surfer.

Write for the visitor and you will be ok, make sure your titles are on target and get some quality links.

Remember, 20 % onpage and 80% links. So, if this is the general rule, what small percentage could density account for anyway? We know that the title carries the most weight with onpage, then h tags, so how much could keyword density count for?

The fact of the matter is that you can have all of your onpage wrong and still get top placements with proper anchor text and quality link. I know i sound like a broken record with this, but "click here" in not on the adobe site anywhere and it ranks # 1 for it in Google.

G.W.Bush used to rank # 1 for "miserable failure" and many claim that Google stopped this but the fact is that the whitehouse changed the filename of G.W.'s profile page.

This was the origional URL to the bio that ranked for "miserable failure"
https://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

Now his bio is located on this page. President of the United States - George W. Bush


Remember, 80 % links.

 

[lovekissing]

you must keywords which are top searches...

 

[mccain]

Off-Page Optimization

Hi,

I think you have good website but should do with the SEO now. Try with some seo techniques like the directory submission, social bookmarking, Forums, blogs and the like.
Because, in addition to good on page optimization, off page factors are also important.

mcCain.

 

[marketingmama]

Hooray for the long tail!!!

Seriously, don't try ranking for something like "weight loss" or "Internet marketing" it's a waste of time.

DIG DEEPER. Always always dig deeper.

I ended up claiming a "brand name" out of sheer timing and luck, for sure, but be creative and try to come up with a niche phrase all you to use when it's time.

For now, 3-4 word phrases. Do your research, do not slack on this step of all steps. I usually make a big list and then narrow it down by visiting the sites in the results. It's a way to see where you "fit in" to the big picture.

But definitely focus more on offpage optimization before thinking that on page changes will help much.

Blogs are immediately more SEO friendly, by the way. My friend was just telling me how her blog got right in there fast no problem while her SBI site is nowhere to be found in the results. The blog is new the SBI is almost a year old.

Oh, and with blogs, be free with the "link love" and eventually you'll be linked back to by some people somewhere that are connected either directly or indirectly. Comment back right away too. And don't make people "join" to post comments. They won't usually.

Plus, comment a lot to other blogs and use the website space to be your friend. If you have more than 1, mix it up, just keep commenting on stuff you want to discuss. Real comments, of course.

Oh and so many people forget to put links in their social media profiles and blog posts. Good traffic sorce when done with style and integrity (not selling and pitching).

Sheree

Sheree

 

[mccain]

On-Page Optimization

Hi,

In addition to Search engine optimization, website optimization is also important in gaining rank in the search engines. Have a good keyword rich title for your directory. This is very important for Search Engine rankings as they place relevance on titles tags. Try to use the keywords first on your title tag, then your directory name. Also Good Keywords in your categories and subcategories which will produce meaningful URLs which again helps in ranking for these terms.

McCain.

 

[Peter Lee44]

Thanks for all your valuable intput and suggestions. I've also learned that its good to get new high quality relevant links point to your internal pages. I've also read from good SEO tutorials that these are why a website ranks high:

40% because of old BL(backlinks)
25% because of new BLs
15% because of updates
10% because it offers a useful service or resource
10% (other SEO work like check broken links, ensure site fast loading etc)


Peter Lee

 

[Rob_TID]

Age of your website is also a big one.