You know the feeling... That competitor who, no matter what you do, always ranks above your site. You've got more links, better links, better optimization, more targeted anchor text, tons of better viral content and yet, somehow, as though blessed by a higher power, your site simply can't outrank that @#$%!
I'd like to do something a little different on the SEOmoz blog today, and ask you to share - share your ranking nightmare. Share the search term and the website that you just can't figure out. If you've been pulling out your hair and screaming at the search engines, today's your chance to offer up your struggle and get some help from your fellow SEOmoz readers (and us mozzers, too).
Obviously, I don't actually hate HouseValues.com - I'm just pandering to a friend (exhibit a).
Over the next few days, we'll hopefully take a more detailed look at some of the sites and SERPs you share and try to puzzle out what's helping them ruin your otherwise blissful existence :)
paisleyseo, you must have missed my SES session last week where I used Zillow as one of my examples. One of my slides said something like, if someone is looking for information on homes for sale or housing estimates, clearly they are going to search for "zestimate" and "zindex". ;) The point of that particular section of my talk was that we come up with lots of shiny new "web 2.0 words" these days, but we need to remember that searchers still use old-fashioned real words, so we should make sure those words are on the page.
That's crayzee tokk.
Beautifully Back to Basics ;)
yes i missed it, good advice.
=)
Hi Rand - I know this sounds really basic but what about putting "house values" somewhere in the body copy of Zillow? I think that'd help a lot - I've seen it in the past where even if you have a large number of links, if you don't mention the exact phrase anywhere you're missing out. By adding even a single mention of the exact phrase you can jump up the rankings.
On a side note however, I think they're at a big disadvantage here since housevalues.com has the keyphrase in their domain name. Google seems to be placing a lot of emphasis on that these days (as if you don't already know this!!!)
The main advantage inmho of having that domain name is that it gets a lot of links with that anchor text naturally.
The reasons why that site outranks zillow imho are:
I don't really care that much about ranking for this term, but it drives me crazy that Google prefers the result that is #1. The term is "montessori blog", and the number 1 result is an outdated post from a guy who blogged ONCE about "Montessori", many years ago and never mentioned it again.
All of us with frequently updated blogs who blog about Montessori day in and day out rank below him...come on, Google, this can't possibly be returning the best results to the users. (I used to be third for this term but I've dropped to fifth - I have no idea why).
Just for those who have no idea what I do - this would be like a blog with one post about SEO from many years ago ranking #1 for "seo blog" over tons of blogs with hundreds of more recent posts about SEO. It's annoying.
We've seen very similar things where another site outranks ours simply due to age (even though it hasn't been updated or changed in years).
The hardest part about this is that 'technically' it isn't spam because the site is relevant... it's just that there are other sites which are equally as relevant that are more up-to-date but the domains aren't quite as old as the top site.
As a side-note, I've found that blogs are a good way of beating aged domains. If the top spot is held by a standard, static website that hasn't been updated in a while, a new blog with good content can often outrank it pretty quickly.
I don't know if this technique would work well for more competitive keywords, but for some smaller niches it's helped a few of our clients.
Unfortunately this doesn't really help you much Lorisa since the site you're trying to outrank is a blog... sorry
Lorisa, you hit this spot-on. I think many share this feeling... it's often less about wanting my or a client to be in the #1 spot, and more about seeing a site hold firm in the #1 spot that you really feel, unbiasedly, doesn't belong there... beating you out is just adding insult to injury.
Yeah, I recently hit Google's top ten for "montessori materials", a highly coveted, highly competitive term that I've been chasing for a year. So I really shouldn't feel too bad about the other less popular terms.
By the way - I can vouch for the fact that if you read SEOmoz, you really do rank better!
Lorisa, That is great news! Congrats, I am really glad to hear that.
Thank you!
Lorisa--Google has you at number three for the term "montessori blog" and, even better, when I clicked on the number one entry I got a notice that says the page can't be found. Hey, what did you do to the guy? Fess up.
I know - I tweaked my blog title tag and planted a link to my blog with the anchor text "montessori blog" a few days ago. Just making sure I climbed back up the rankings.
But I really didn't do anything to Brian-the-onetime-Montessori-blogger. Honest!
On the topic of domain age, SEObook has a good post - Can New Domains Outrank Old Websites in Google?
I think he sums it up well in the last sentence of the post:
If you want to outrank established websites you can't just replicate what they have done, you also have to do unique and linkworthy things that will help you overcome their early market lead and the self-reinforcing effects of search.
One suggestion to put Aaron's advice into action: If the older sites that you're trying to outrank aren't embracing current trends - social media marketing could be something to consider
I think what you're saying is good when there is a clear age difference of a year or more....
But in my case above, we're looking at 10 months difference outweighing every other factor in the rankings.
And that's just from the domain reg date, not the first time the site was found (which in my case above, puts my site ahead)
I just don't get it.
Hi Rand,
Great idea!
Im frustrated by the website efinancialcareers.com
My site is trying to rank for the keyword money markets jobs in Google UK.
Their subdomains almost take up the first 50-70 results!
C'mon Google, Surely this isn't very relevant for users!
I feel sorry for you :). that's some weird serp.
That is psycho! You got a legit reason to report some spam I think, and you might get listened to.
I'd echo that - this is clearly spam. Report it! :-)
Yep - big time spam report...
I would really love to meet their SEO for a job well done just to tell him that he overdid it.
I just managed to do my own little research (just a newbie) and found that..
1) PR-6 which is pretty good
2) Its an authoritative domain so it would be passing on good juice to the sub domains.
3) Also since the sub-domain are related to the same theme, the inner linking is doing an awesome job.
4) They have stuffed in the keywords into their sub-domain +urls.
5) They have lots of other domain like .co.uk, .be etc which would also be linking to these pages.
I think, i 'll let the experts take in from here.
just my 2 clicks!
I've seen too many people getting away with building their links by crosslinking their own domains. I'm surprised they're getting away with it for subdomains, but despite Google's suggestions otherwise, the practice seems to be effective.
Just curious chris, but do you your site hosted on a UK server?
chris100: That is the worst case of serps spamming I have seen. You should report them. I usually don't report anyone but in this case I would.
I know how that happened... lmao..
feel free..
https://www.google.com/contact/spamreport_thanks.html
Wow never seen a spam site get that far in Google thats actually quiet impressive (but annoying at the same time) definitly report it as spam
There is a site dedicated to scraping one of my blogs and putting their ads all over it. Not only are they spammy and stupid, but they also break all the adsense quality rules.
They've ranked above me in the past, and even got good incoming links to MY CONTENT from bloggers who should know better.
So far, my pleas to their host and to the adsense team have gone unheard. It's time to redirect their IP to a feed containing nothing but goatse. :D
ROFLMAO!!
My SERP nightmare is "seattle-based SEO company". There's some hack company that just seems to stay at the top, no matter what I do.
I look forward to hearing how I can knock them down a few pegs. ;)
Rand, it looks like you're specifically dealing with a keyworded domain, which I think is a special issue.
Google have been giving special priority to keyworded domains that match a keyword search for some time - Aaron suggested it was to help mix up the content a little to stop authorities ranking for everything.
Certainly it does mean there's a whole new domain market opened up because of this, and the savvy clients will go for it where possible.
In such instances, though, I'd move on to the other keywords and focus on those.
After all, I don;t think Google's going to keep giving such strong preference for keyword domains in the long term.
Funnily enough, I did notice one of my clients knock a keyword domain competitor off the No.1 spot on Google last week. I had thought it was due to Google turning the knob down on preferences. Unfortunately, it now looks like it was just an incomplete index.
Still, here's looking at the long term gains, not short-term frustrations. :)
I, Brian,
I think you bring out a good point. I have a client who I did a complete site rebuild... went from less than a handful of pages to about 30 or so, added more great, optimized content (though still much opportunity left), built up the backlinks... all of which bumped him into the 3-4 spots typically and strongly consistent.
He's being bumped out by some vertical directory type sites (understandable and hard to beat) and one player who continues to sit in the #1 spot, which by all counts, is not as strong in any on or off-page elements, yet continues to hold out against my client and the big verticals. This site even has keyword stuffed metas... which makes it even harder to tell clients that meta's don't influence ranking.
But what this other site does have is stronger keyword presence in the domain, including a city reference for very location-based searches. I'd be interested in seeing/hearing other thoughts to back this up.
{sorry, would love to share this site as I think it might be a great example and learning exercise, but it's a client's site and not really mine to share publicly}
a. metas do influence ranking..
b. keyword field is not the end all be all tho..
Sorry, have to disagree, at least they don't matter in any engine I know.
With that in mind, keep in mind my focus was on ranking.
Meta Descriptions... in the scheme of things, bigger picture wise, the focus here should be less on using them to influence ranking and more on captivating, call-to-action copy that pulls searchers thru to the site. Technically, hard to say whether descriptions are 0 value in regards to ranking, but far closer to 0 than 100.
Any ranking value they do have, will naturally be captured based on focusing on call-to-action copy anyway. Though even that may not hold true if the search query words don't show up within the visible snippet... appears that at least G is pulling more from the body copy than the meta if those words don't appear within the visible portion.
Meta Keywords... even considerably, far less value. Only 2 of the 4 main engines even acknowledge or at least indicate that they even look at those keywords, and even then, I've yet to see any example that even comes close to show even a slight influence on rankings.
Remember, there is no reason for the engines to consider the keywords. Descriptions may be used for the snippets, but keywords are completely non-visible to users, so they are far more likely to be used negatively, and the algos and spiders have gotten a little more sophisticated to the point of not needing to rely on webmasters telling the engines what the page is about.
Unfortunately, they could actually be somewhat useful, but their ability and likelihood for being abused far outweigh the risk I'm sure in the eyes of the engines.
I see this a lot too Brian.
It started happening when google became 'the new HTTP.'
nowadays alot of people type the search terms straight into their browser address bar, which they default to google for search if they dont put an exact domain in.
So google has to assume that many of their searches are people looking for an exact domain name and place keyworded domains at the top
Its a pain for me and some of the keywords I am working on at the moment now too
edit: doh... pressed submit twice
greatchicagorealestate.com #1 for Chicago Real Estate #2 Chicago homes #1 for Chicago condos in Google
minnesotasrealestate #1 for Minneapolis Real Estate
Nashvilles-real-estate.com #4 for Nashville Real Estate (first page results for relevant keywords in their respective cities for over 100 keywords).
The owner of these sites is also the owner of PCPlanets.com (a music store). He has permission to stream music videos of single songs to other websites through his servers. This free music video costs the webpage owner three links under the media player (one to the singer's page on pcplanets, one to the home page, and one to the real estate website with rotating anchor texts per download. This allows all those sites to gather 10s of thousands of links from authority social sites such as myspace. How do you stop this monster, who has websites in many different industries, pulling the same trick????
Baby Names Garden is my site, and it ranks on page 3 for the term "baby Names." There is a site called MyBaby-Name that is only 6 months old, that has rocketed to the top of page 2, or even page 1, some days. (Baby names is a very competitive term). I can't figure out how they are beating me so quickly. My site has tons of "real" content, such as original articles, original research, guest interviews, etc. But we seem to keep getting pushed down by these new 'start up' type sites that don't have a whole lot of content. Another example would be BabyNamesCountry. How the heck are these guys beating me, when they don't seem to be doing nearly as much?
NS
Hey Wilton - I did a quick search - while MyBaby-Names is spammy - they seem to have a strong link profile with lots of on target links (ie links coming from other baby sites):
https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain:www.mybaby-name.com%20-site:www.mybaby-name.com
https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain:www.babynamesgarden.com%20-site:www.babynamesgarden.com
Wonder how they got such a huge profile of on-target, one-way links in just six months?? Must be really great linkbaiters....
a. take the semi colons out of your descriptoion field on your meta.. third word (i think, doing this from memory), add baby in front of it..
left side navigation... change URL names, i.e. celebrity.apx should be celebrity-baby-names.aspx also when you redo that add an href title tag i.e. [a href=celebrity-baby-names.aspx title="celebrity baby names"]
image names: https://www.babynamesgarden.com/images/banner082106_r1_c1.jpg
instead of bannerxxxx_ri_c1.jpg (etc.)
make this baby-names-banner.jpg
also..
view your source and find that image.. see all that crap.. (javascript)
do some research on .js files.. try and put as much as the MSoft generated crap into a .js file as you can.. that way instead of wasting 100+ characters on javascript that google will read but never use, etc... u get the idea..
Thanks. I'm not the webmaster, but I'll share this stuff with her and give it all a shot. If I move up the SERPs, I owe you a bottle of champagne at Christmas!
NS/WB
Another question for paisley: if I chang urls within the site, won't I need to do 301 redirects for each one changed?
good question and yes... u can use a 404 or 301
or...
do a refresh tag on a per-page-basis
ala - celebrity.aspx refreshes to https://www.yourdomain.com/celebrity-baby-names.aspx
use a refresh value of 2 for exactly 3-5 days, (check your googlebot hits.. u just need one. then change it to 1 for 7 days then after that strip everything out of the old page except the refresh tag and devalue it to zero..
use the URL meta tag as well on original page and after your first run at value of 2, when u drop to a 1 BE SURE and let both pages have the new url (the full url)
r u being honest with yourself about this?I mean...Do you have more names than the competition?More origins?
Or are you just publishing the same US database of names, that about another 1000 sites is publishing?
6 months is well long enough to overtake a site... that is publishing substantially duplicate content.
Mybaby-name.com.... seems to rank at no.7 on google.
But lets look at it compared with babynamesgarden.com
They have tens of thousands more names.
They ahve hundreds more origins.
Many more celebirites and celebirty babies.
Related names are linked.
Long and the short of it?
They have better data, and deserve to rank better. So your site is older. SO what? its not as good.
Your post hits close to home! I'm far from being a SEO expert as my specialty is Real Estate, and your example is perfect. Here is my nemesis I'm trying to conquer. I rank well for the term "Henderson Real Estate" but I can never seem to get to the top, my closest competition is www.lvrealty.net, they have lots of pages with duplicate content and very little true information, I also think their site is very hard to navigate and from a consumer's point of view it seems very confusing. Now I know I'm biased but my site, www.TimMerrell.com, has as much content but I have simplified it to be more user friendly. I guess to rank at the top you have to have tons of useless links and confusing content. Any thought or suggestions?
I get a lot of the same frustration LVRealtor. I have a client with tons of good real estate pages that just can't rank on Google no matter what we do for him. It's still early but frustrating none the less. I've noticed that a lot of useless content and shit design is the way to go for many well ranking sites. I think the age factor is cranked way too high on Google.
LVRealtor..
ditch your CMS.. it sucks..
seriously.
What would you recommend?
<opinion>man that's a horrible question.. just because most of them suck.
so far.. i like joomla for seo but don't like all the add ons you have to get to make it work..
we made one from scratch with php and MySQL but if u have a php/sql programmer on hand it's great, we could parse the URL, set title's everything.. page specific desc. everything.. but then programmer got divorced and is now in a band touring the u.s...
so...
hate, hate hate DNN.. but i've pulled some good results with it.
after spending money for prgrammers to fix crap then they upgraded DNN and the programmers had to charge client to fix it all over again.. hence.. i hate hate hate DNN.. because u couldn't really upgrade without destroying all the customization.. ick!~
honestly.. if you can post to myspace or any kind of html.. get dreamweaver and go static pages.. it's much easier..
</opinion>
You really should switch to another CMS because your urls aren't the best. Also your site uses frames which kill SEO. If you could change these two things you probably would rank quite a bit higher. But I don't know which CMS would be best ( there is a free real estate script but I don't know if that would meet all your needs).
I'm frustrated by educationstation.ca because they are always #1 on a search for "Education Station." I cannot now tell you how they cruelly and unfairly got there, because they probably are #1 for the simple reason that their url includes the words "Education Station." Had we known back when we opened the brick and mortar store that someday having a name that was unique not just in our state but in the world would matter, we wouldn't be stuck behind those Canadians. And I am sure that they are very nice people, too. But every now and then I go to marketleap and glare at their links, muttering about how they are just linking to themselves all the time and how come they got a SCHOOL to link to them and stuff like that.
OK... Here's my SERP nightmare...
Term: Beach Wedding I rank #2. (islandbrides.com)
The #1 spot goes to a site with the following details (my site details in brackets after each)
------------
Yahoo Rank: >50 (8)
Pages Indexed: 68 (77500)
Backlinks: 347 (1320)
.edu Links: 0 (3)
Alexa Rank: 1,280,941 (381,393)
And finally, the only place it wins:
Domain Age: April 2002 (Feb 2003)
Though WayBack age shows Sep 03 for #1 and May 03 for my site - go figure)
------------
My professional opinion: Aaaaarrrgggh!
Your answer lies in the Universal search results - the top bar has 3 images in it. You want to do everything in your power to get one of your images to display.
https://www.google.com/search?q=beach+wedding
If I were you i would create a huge photo gallery of beach weddings and create an inceitive for people to link to it. For example, offer to send a free wedding album to any bride who lets you post her beach wedding photos on your site.
also you have a typo on the homepage: "Free Personall Wedding Websites"
First off, I'd ignore Alexa data. And don't fret too much over the archive.org data. And be careful not to read too much into page indexation as that could also identify duplication issues too... the number itself isn't necessarily good or bad, it's the context that is important.
As for domain age, that's still a challenging one to determine how much impact because it is so hard to isolate. Older domains often tend to have more established backlinks, even if the overall quantity is lower, and possibly higher quality (somewhat subjective of course), since after all, low value backlinks often come and go as sites come and go as well.
You might be close though...
- you come up #1 for beach wedding guide
- #1 for beach wedding destination
- #4 for beach weddings, though still falling behind your competitor (I believe)
- #8 for beach wedding directory
- #2 for beach wedding center
- your home page comes in at #7 on beach wedding articles
- #2 for wedding beach (again falling to your competitor though)
what I was trying to get at with some of the last terms was to get a realitive feel for how strong you are on beach weddings... and your site was able to pull in the top 5 and at least the top 10 for beach wedding in conjunction with a few other words on your home page.
This is a good opportunity to focus on some strong, compelling meta descriptions to help pull those searchers. This is also an example where having a better site at the end of the click may be more important than the difference between ranking #1 versus #2.
I might try dumping the Welcome image which you are using as your h1 tag, and try some straight text "Beach Wedding" or "Beach Weddings" or even use your "Beach Wedding Guide" to see if that is enough to push you over the edge.
I might even try changing the logo, making "The Beach Wedding Guide" a text link, setting the graphic as a background image and some creative CSS styling, you could still make the entire "space" hot so anyone mousing over the general area still gets a link action.
I might even try cutting back your title tag on your home page to give greater weight to your target phrase, maybe even just try "Beach Wedding Guide - islandbrides.com" for a few weeks.
If beach wedding is your number one term, then I'd also strive for some rich anchor text on and off your site using that term.
Tap into universal results and create some videos, put out on YouTube and other video sites. Maybe add a blog, issue some press releases... keep hitting the basics for a cumulative impact.
Add a XML sitemap as I don't think you have one, and not that it will have any impact on ranking, but fix your robots.txt file by adding a blank line after the last disallow in each rule group.
Thanks man, some really good stuff there, and I'll definitely try to work on it over the coming weeks.
(I've got the XML map in there going to yahoo and google once a week automatically, so I think that one's covered - I'd best start on the rest!)
Much appreciate the time you put into replying - I love this place!
You're welcome.
I'd add auto-discovery for your sitemap in your robots.txt file. While it may not directly impat ranking, it's certainly can help to make sure that the spiders are able to find deeper content pages, in case there are any crawl issues.
For that you might also try picking off a few of the deeper pages and drop the URL into the search engines to see if it comes up... time consuming, but as a snapshot, it is the most reliable way to determine if your pages are getting indexed.
Identity--What about page length? I noticed that the other site's home page is really long.
It annoys me to no end that hackettstown.com ranks 2nd for the query [hackettstown] when it has no value what so over except age.
It seems to be the bane of our lives, but if you do a google.co.uk (or .com) search for Distilled you get wikipedia at 1 and 2 above us.
I don't care that much.... Ok, I do care that much, it's a pride thing!
All thoughts appreciated!
Tom
heh, see if you can insert a link in wiki discussion saying please can we add a link to your site if people are looking for our company? It might work and if not your link will get picked up out of the discussion.
An open call to bitch about our competitors? Hooray! :)
One of my client's competitors drives me up the wall. We rank very well (1st-3rd) for our primary keyword ("seminars"), but he beats us in a lot of longer tail results. What drives me nuts is his mirror site, findseminars.com (a mirror of findaseminar.com), which is completely made up of links to the main site. The main site may also be one of the most keyword spammy I've ever seen (scroll down, and you'll see what I mean).
This mostly seems to be accomplished through a network of about a dozen sites, all owned by the same guy and cross-linked, including a fake PR firm that only posts press releases about his sites. He's been getting away with this for years.
i hate to do this...but i am.
for the term "dallas web design" the #1 guys won't budge. they have a ton of backlinks, but they're not all that relevant.
back in the day they gave away a free hit counter with their link. so all these sites still using their hit counter have links pointing to them. the hit counter shows as an image with at least 2 links pointing to their site one with "CompanyName Web Design Company - Website Development, Flash & Graphic Designers" as the alt text. as you can imagine these hit counters are not on many sites related to web design.
look though their backlinks and notice that apparently relevancy is not all that important for links. at least not for these guys.
(and don't look at our site. it's horribly outdated and scheduled for redesign to launch very soon.) ;)
LMAO!!
Since I used to game that term starting in 1995 i may help a little.. bit not much.. i had that term for a while... they really haven't had it that long.. at least from 2002-2003ish..but to answer your question it is because of the large amount of content.
most of it from here... i.e. https://www.leveltendesign.com/blog/
do some reasearch, there is a $#!+ load of content...
and since my interview with brenda a several years ago you guys started trying to do seo.. i'll be no help to how you design your pages and how you could improve.. but good luck.=)
hmmm. well if by "large amount of content" you are referring to the text under "full service offerings" below the fold on the home page that is clearly not written for users, much like your "cool" site, then yeh well i guess so. and uh, their blog? not a whole lot of web design related content there either.
unless we're looking at completely different sites i'm not following you at all.
and we don't try to do seo. we do it. and well. thanks.
ok... i don't have to flame you.... but i do believe you misread.
the FACT is that is why they rank higher than you... yes it's bullshit content.. total bullshit content.. but that is ONE reason.. and ONE reason only.. but a big one. but it's still bullshit content
When I spoke with your Boss (Brenda) about some position, (sales manager, etc?) she said "we are not really offering SEO" this was years ago. and you guys still weren't doing it when she came to my office to bid on a programing project years later.
yet your "SEO website" says 1995.
might wanna fix it.archive.org.. - late 1996.. u guys were a BBS/classifieds..
https://web.archive.org/web/19961109210745/https://masterlink.com/
here's the thing about lying on the internet... almost everyone can find out if you are full of fecal excrement. if i remember right it was about 97 when u started offering marketing services.. back when i was gaming the "dallas web design term.." and if i remember right.. pre-google..
have a nice day anyways.. geesh!
the 1995 thing IS when the company started, that's not a lie. and well i'm sorry that you weren't offered a job with the company. at least we don't put out "fecal excrement" all over the web.
paisly, maybe that’s part of the reason why you didn’t get the job.
The funny thing is your keep talking a lot about the mid to late 90’s like it’s all you know. Last time I checked, we’re in Aug 2007 and the web has changed a little.
Paisly, Do you still wear your lettermen jacket from high school?
You took the words from my mouth Mike. All the so called expert advice from paisly might have worked in the 90s, but heck its 2007 and things are very VERY different.
Paisly, i would suggest you actually read up on the changes in the SEO world, heck read up on the world in general. You need to realise that there are people on this website who are genuinely looking for help, and with you throwing unless in correct advice, you are actively causing them to rank poorly (assuming they even listen to you).
Stop living in the 90s, you might've been big back then, but if you want to continue being "big", u gotta change your attitude and accept reality, ITS 2007.
paisleyseo, I don't know who you are. I don't remember ever speaking with you, but I sure would remember if I ever said "we are not really offering SEO" as I was personally doing SEO since 1995.
You are correct though. People can easily find out if your lying and full of it on the internet. Check the WhoIs info and you will see that the domain was created May 1995. No lie.
Brenda,
u still at the fox sports office? or what was the fox sports building? i think you guys had recently located there at the time or construction going on, etc.?
Anyways.. when we spoke at that time (we have met i think 3 or 4 times, once for an interview, once where i was speaking on SEO at the greater dallas chamber, one other professional/social function and once where u came to my office to be one of our vendors) - you personally really were not that into it (SEO) the first time we met, (full service hosting was i think your big thing at the time), because that was where the money was.. nobody cared about seo when we still had 28.8 modems..which was my strength at the time...
apparently one of your employees on here took that as a criticism of your current SEO efforts which was not intended but could be implied from what i wrote... and for that i apologize.. getting into the minutia of what marketing copy says, etc.. seems like a waste of everyone's time at this point.
have a good day brenda..
=)
hi rand. I'm personally annoyed by www3.sympatico.ca/plasticsurgery/
They take the content from this site plasticsurgery.org/patients_consumers/procedures/Lipoplasty.cfm including the images and they outrank our client's site which has a ton of real content.
The other one is these guys ienhance.com they're just a huge site run by a conglomerate of people and it's just frustrating to have them rank even though a lot of their pages are junk.
nicknick,
man... i know/hate that guy...
like in 98.. that same guy was one of the ODP editors in one of my subcats of health/ (the guy that does his webstuff or his partner, p.a. etc.)
f***in bastard spammed everywhere... the doctor in question's ugly mug i have seen before
thanks for giving me something to take aggression out on for the rest of the day... check your results in a week..
"bombs away"
a. report spam result on every page and term you can find duplication, like..
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGIH_enUS210US210&q=Dr%2e+Jerome+Edelstein
https://ca.geocities.com/[email protected]/about_dr_edelstein.htm
https://www3.sympatico.ca/plasticsurgery/about_dr_edelstein.htm
since you didn't list your site, can't tell ya what's not doing it
Thanks. That explains a lot. I just don't understand how Google and SEOs can talk all this stuff about duplicate content or metta tags when this site is a full on copy of the content but still ranks in the #1 spot for a lot of terms.
As for the DMOZ editors, I'm one also and I can't stand it when people spam there. I don't mind it when someone puts in their own relevant site or two but some of the editors there are messed up and petty. But that's a whole other discussion.
totally.. i decided to get married instead of editing.. not sure which was more stressful.. lmao!
have a good one!
Hmmm. Looks like we're mostly being coy about disclosing. I have a web design site, Scribble Designs which has ranked consistently at No. 2 for the query "web design northern ireland" with a longer established firm at No. 1.
Now, it's been a while since I did any serious comparisons or analysis between the sites, so it might be a useful case study.
Just looking in DMOZ, Front seems to be listed in a better category that's applying the term web design and Northern Ireland.
https://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=designbyfront.com
vs.
https://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=scribbledesigns.co.uk
I'd attempt to get that changed. Also, you don't seem to have a Yahoo Directory result. Front has one:
In these examples, even though the directory category and description aren't the anchor text, they have a ton of strength and should be treated as such.
You also don't seem to rank for "northern ireland web design" The directory tweek should help with that. There's more to look at but it's early and I haven't had my tea.
:D
see above.. good advice
Have you noticed that you rank #1 for the complete phrase "web design in northern ireland"? That suggests to me that the #1/#2 struggle might come down to a bunch of small stuff. One suggestion: could you make "Web Design Northern Ireland" in your header CSS-styled text instead of a graphic (possibly an H1)?
Hi All,
I am a newbie on this site.
Million Dollar Question if anyone can help!!
I have an online wholesale shoes company.
https://www.shoenet.com
In google i come up #1 for the search term wholesale shoes, my most prized keyword.
In yahoo i am on the 3rd page of results, and website that are much worse than mine, have much less history, and a worse PR, are ranked higher!
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yahoo! has a cat. sponsorship for the category you are listed in... monthly fee is usually $50-300 a month for 6 months..
https://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Shopping_and_Services/Apparel/Footwear/Retailers/
based on the fact that there are 3 people already listed as sponsors in that category.. and that there are 175 people listed in that category, my guess basd on previous clients is that it's going to be probably around $150-$200 dollars/month.
Based on traffic montioring and ROI from past and current clients and not knowing your profit margin, if one client can bring you $200 in profit then it would be a good idea.
Of the clients that we have currently sponsoring categories, the cume of the traffic percentages is that 18-28% of all Yahoo! traffic comes from their sponsorship links, of those that are in a highly populated category where they do not show up on the first page of the directory category, 53% of their Yahoo! traffic comes from a sponsored link with the directory category.
if Yahoo! is your issue the directory has been proven to work.
=)
It seems that some of the problems here are related to not including the exact keyword in your site copy. Remember, that a search engine is first and foremost a textual information retrieval system. The first pass at choosing results is the text algo. Then the link algo, age of page, etc, come into play to order those results.
So the interplay between text algo and link algo decide your final position. It makes sense that the text algo has some trumpability over other ranking factors since it's really one of the only true markers for page relevancy. Anchor text comes into play with the text algo also.
So the advice given here of using the exact phrase in the site copy, preferably as H1 or H2 is spot on I think.
The site that's beating me doesn't have a single H1 or H2 tag on the page.
Not one.
There goes that theory!
Another possibility could be click-through rates - I'd imagine that the top results would be clicked on more often than the second, third, fourth.. etc... results.
Proof Google is Using Behavioral Data in Rankings
Then there's no way to ever rank higher.
My original post shows that I outrank them for everything else. My site is built well with semnatic markup, h1's, h2s etc...
None of those seem to matter, and if what you say is true the only way I can get to number 1 is to get more clicks than them...
and to do that I need to be, erm... number 1.
Catch 22.
Your lacking the right type of links benj, you may have more but you have the wrong ones.
You don't have any of the right ones spare do you? Cos I'm ****** if I can find them
: (
Ot pointers on what sort would be preferrable.... only sites that seem possibilities are ones I'm competing with... add to that limited time (the design/development/content creation/seo team consists of... erm.. one... who has a day job as well as this) and I seem to be somewhat screwed.
Try less optimization and see what happens. I had to do this once where a competitor's site was thwarting mine. I dropped some of the OP stuff and got past them. Could be coinsedence or the mythical OOP.
i rarely use H1s... it's only one tool..
Hey Benj - text algo will also take into account word density. I took a look at your title, it's long! I see two competitors above you, and both seem to have a better keyword density in their title for your given search term.
You have 2 instances of "beach wedding" amongst 12 words in your title = 33% density.
mybeachfavours.com has 2 instance in 5 words = 80% density
barefootweddings.net has 4 instances in 15 words ~ 50% density
Perhaps try removing some of the less useful keywords in that page title?
I've previously found some a few benefits in increasing keyword density in page titles, without going too spammy, and short sweet titles with good densities seem to work well for me.
Daniel, What is the url of your site? is it the rank #2 a1limobus.com? Not sure if your site is in the yahoo directory but miamilimo.net isn't so there is a small opening there...
Let us know your URL...!
housevalues.com domain is 5 years older than Zillow.com , good luck overcoming that.
I remain convinced that its *mostly* about backlinks if everything else is... well... done, and with new personal pagerank kicking in - that should start getting more interesting :)
I agree, structure and everything else is the last 5%. Links are 95
The validation thing was mostly silly mistakes on the front page, but the only thing I'm not sure about
www.efox-shop.com
Ok everyone I have a real head scratcher. I've been trying to rank one of my clients for the term "Miami Limousine" and the site occupying the top spot seriously does not belong there. It has a few things going for it, but not anywhere near enough to assume the first position, at least in my opinion. The site is www.miamilimo.net. The biggest thing going for it is the keyword in its url. The homepage is nearly 100% flash. The site also isnt very popular linkwise, registering under 400 inbound links in Yahoo site explorer, most of which come from a single spammy site. Guys, if anyone could offer some insight into this I would love to hear it. Could having the keyword in the URL really be that important? This one is a mystery to me.
Looks like the Flash homepage is at least somewhat recent, last 3-4 months, so might be interesting to see if that has any impact going forward.
There's some odd action with the Flash though, not saying there is anything BH going on, but try reloading the page, but don't mouse over anything, in fact, move it off your browser... you'll see what I assume are all the "pages" fly by and then it goes to a white screen.
Ironically, sometimes I think pages with little content at all, super minimal, rank high because the search phrase carries so much prominence when used in the title tag and other key areas, and there isn't else on the page to compete with it.
Now what's really ironic is that they come up number 2 in Google though for "miami limo", which is also why I wonder if they are getting some carry over on the phrase from their old home page, or if the other pages of the site are influencing.
Surprising how a holding page, with just a page title, a keyword URL and no links, can rank these days...
Daniel, What is the url of your site? is it the rank #2 a1limobus.com? Not sure if your site is in the yahoo directory but miamilimo.net isn't so there is a small opening there...
Let us know your URL...!
The validation thing was mostly silly mistakes on the front page, but the only thing I'm not sure about www.efox-shop.com
My major competitor is a 10 years old website. I noticed it has a lot paid sitewise links. So I tried to do the same within short time. As results, google put my home page in sandbox and only give me SERP #166 on www.mydoain.com/news.html for major targeted keyword. I stopped paid links right now and hopefully come back to the position I used to.
My seach term is pimby, it's not searched for much but it's inthe long tail of terms I want to hit. What really annoys more more than anything else is the fact that I wan't showing up on Ask, Yahoo, and MSN a couple months ago, yet now I'm at the top of the search term for all of them. Still Google has me set as the fourth term.
The most irritating thing is that Wikipedia has once again owned the top spot. Why oh why does Google give them so high a ranking!?!?!? (14 inlinks to my 233) It just really gets under my skin.
What wikipedia is great at, besides internal linking, is semantic relvance, and Google is a leader in SERPs for that category. That being the case, it expects a site that's about PIMBY to have the expansion of the acronym, some of the other related topics, and an ever present definition all as static content.
Since your site is a blog, I'd mess with the header to add something simlar to the entry at Wikipedia (make it different enough so that it's unique) as well as adding some outbound links to Government authorities. (These can be in the right-hand navigation or footer). The main point is, have something about PIMBY that's a constant on the page whenever Google comes by.
None of your rankings will likely be hurt by expanding on your title tag. I'd try something like: PIMBY - Why I say, "Please in My Back Yard." It's engaging, contains another variable of PIMBY, causes people to expect dialogue, and lowers your keyword density for that term. Yes, LOWERS. Having a KW density that's too high can bump you down, and currently, everyone ahead of you is of the lower density variety.
You want to maintain prominence though, so keep PIMBY as the first word.
Finally, I know I've been harping on the directory thing, but when it comes to Google you should really try to get listed in DMOZ. Knowing how painfully slow they are, you probably have tried already, but just keep at it. This area is pretty close to where you should submit: https://www.dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Environment/Sustainable_Development/
Even wihtout the directory listing, I think if you get some static content up for PIMBY, its synonms, and antonyms you should get the top Google spot.
I have already tried DMOZ, but submitting again can't really hurt my chances, I'm sure. Thanks for the advice. I'll attempt to include your suggestions in the future.
OK, so I will start off by saying I know the site needs a remodel. But as far as SEO goes, they have always done pretty well for the terms we want. The one that is killing me right now is:
Recipe Software
the site is www.dvo.com
They have been number 2 for months. I recently added some good anchored one-ways from a few directories.
Within a few days they overtook mealmaster.com for the number one spot.
every other week it bounces us back down to number two then number one. I can't figure out why. Its driving me nuts. Can anyone tell me how to drive a steak through this once and for all?
Ah the infamous "google dance". This phenomena is often attributed to you moving up in some of the data clusters of Google, but not all. So sometimes you get a SERP with you at #2 and sometimes with you at #1. The best bet is to keep doing what you've been doing at a steady pace until you don't see yourself in the #2 spot anymore.
You can check this (sorta) at SEOchat's Google Dance Tool:
https://www.seochat.com/googledance/
Where you seem to still be #2 in all their listings. Bummer. I'd say keep hunting for those quality one-way links. Also, cooking lends itself great to contests. You could score some great blogger link bait with a blogged on cook off...
Great info, ThanX! It is driving me nuts. But that makes sense, slow and steady is the pace.
This one has been KILLING me for nearly 2 years now, THANK YOU for finally addressing it!
For keywords "Nissan Forum" and "Nissan Forums", we can't seem to get ahead.
Nevermind that the top slots are occupied by sites seeing 75-180 posts per day, with no new content for months at a time... We enjoy over 3,000 posts per day. We're getting 125,000 unique visits daily, 3.6M page views monthly, and adding content (standalone and revisions) daily.
I know the presence of the KW's in the URL can't be THAT valuable as to overpower traffic, content, and frequent updates.
I've done META, AdWords, links, blogging, more content, "recent threads" scripts, more META, checked title tags, etc...
It's immensely frustrating to be the best on the web at what we provide, yet Google still doesn't credit us as such.
I can't seem to budge above #3/4 for Fort Lauderdale Real Estate (www.johnsabia.com). Andyweiser.com consistantly ranks higher for this and many other terms. (If my site looks familiar, it is the site Rand wrote about what a google penaly looks like). Before being penalized, I did move up to #2 for a short time only, but since coming back, I have not been able to budge above the #3 spot, usually ending up at #4. Andy's site is older than mine. Is there a residual from the penalty, or is there something I could be doing better (or both)?
Well the SEO gods have heard me... I just moved up one above andyweiser for my main keyword! hopefully, it will last this time.
I am trying to get listed for the terms:
Office Supplies
Online Office Supplies
for the site:
https://www.shoplet.com
Any good ideas?
No takers? Anybody?
we are trying to come up for the following serps:
office supplies
online office supplies
for www.shoplet.com
I think the post was more about looking at tough competition and seeing why they rank, rather than providing tactics to get ranked for phrases. That might be why you're not getting much of a response. If you do want some good advice, I'd suggest popping over to www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums.
I am having a problem with this myself. I am trying to rank for the keyword term "metal roofing", but I can't seem to get very far. My metal roofing site Best Buy Metals is on page 17 for Google, which is even worse than it was before. I am not very experienced with this type thing, and just don't know what to do.
How long have you had your optimised page indexed by google..? i take it your site is bestbuymetals.com.
From what i can see you done an ok job optimizing your pages, but i did notice that none of your backlinks have any anchor text that have your keywords in them, plus most of your backlinks don't come from metal relevant web sites.
In 1 day you have actually moved onto page 14, so at least you have some progress and in the right direction...
The reason i asked how long you've had this site indexed is because the first few months of your SEO strategy you normally have a settling period where you'll fluctuate up and down the search engines until they find you a suitable position..!
Drummer boy, Because i'm a nice guy here are a few authority websites which you should highly consider. If you can get links to your site from these then your a step further to strengthening your strategy:
www.metalroofing.com / www.arcat.com /directory.metalroofingmag.com /products.construction.com / metalconstruction.org / eco-structure.com / www.themetalinitiative.com / metalroofingsource.com / directory.framebuildingnews.com
from this you should get an idea of other sources. Just try your best to get your keywords in the anchor text (the actual text that links to your site)
I am new to SEO and all. I am doing the basic to get traffic from website, not from Google ior any search engine.
I will worry about that later, for now, it's about getting more traffic.
Hatch Media,
Thank you for these tips! My page has been indexed in Google for about 3 years now, but it was only a one page deal with no good content. I just redesigned the site about 6 weeks ago or so, adding content and optimising the pages. Also I will definately try to get included in those pages you linked to. Thank you again.
Give it a few more weeks and you'll see your site settling... hopefully on the 1st page. When i optimised my website when i first started doing SEO my site shot to pg4 then it went down, came back up again then totally disappeared off google all together, then i got positioned on the first page after that. So it is quite a scary thing at first but your hard work will pay off soon. Doesn't look like your doing anything wrong so far so you'll just have to be patient i guess!
Hatch,
I'm at page 7 and rising! Thanks for the tips. I'm definately going to try to get some better links as well. It seems not every metal roofing place is very easy to get a link to.
Excellent progress...! I'm pretty confident if you get the right links that you'll appear on page 1 soon.
Have a look at some blogs and articles on link requesting as they have some great templates to use in your emails when contacting other sites asking for a backlink. Sometimes you can offer to reciprocate their link which will possibly interest them in linking to you.
Just remember not to stuff your website with a chunk of reciprocal links as google will mark you down for it. The best way to link outwards to other sites if necessary is to place the links within different sentences so as to space the links out in your web page. If you have a bunch of outward links at the footer of your webpage then google will more than likely realise that them links are purely reciprocal which could cost you a few positions
You could also look at linkbaiting, giving other metal related websites a reason to link to you. For example you could write an article on the different types of metasl roofing and their pros and cons. Then post on your website and let people know about it.
There are many different strategies out there so just use your imagination and be unique.
Have you uploaded a robots.txt file and sitemap to google and yahoo..? This will help the search engines index you so hopefully they will come back and index more often
Take it easy and again GOOD LUCK!
Just had a quick look at your html... and got a few pointers for you.
The above is not necessary but may have a slight advantage in the long run. Below are a few more important factors which you should definately change.
God i should be on some consultancy fees here ha ha. Only joking, just for some reason really want you to do well. Let us know how you get on!
Thanks Hatch. I changed this now. I realized that I already had it bolded in the css, but did it again in the code. I have uploaded a robots.txt and sitemap.
The validation thing was mostly silly mistakes on the front page, but the only thing I'm not sure about is:
On much of the site I have links with new windows popping up. This doesn't validate with XHTML 1.0 STRICT. Should I change it to XHTML Transitional, or what?
Excellent glad to see you have changed these things and hopefully you'll see the results very soon.
Now you have uploaded your sitemap check in google to see if all your pages are indexed. If your not sure how just type SITE:WWW.BESTBUYMETALS.COM into the search box and it will list what it has indexed.
In regards to validation i would change to transitional as new windows will not validate with strict. The only way around that is to use javascript but this will affect your SEO as the search engines can't interpret javascript.
Good luck and hopefully it won't be too long till we see your site on page 1..
Can i just point out that the meta keywords tag hasn't much impression on SE's as they used to but its just good practice. (statement before i get slated by other SEO guys and girls)
1 more before i go and do some actual work of my own..
Some people say that HTML that validates is praised by SE's and others say it doens't matter. But as always its good practice and it doesn't hurt to make sure it validates. Unfortunately your HTML doesn't validate.
https://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestbuymetals.com%2F
Change the few errors detailed by W3 and upload again just so they are satisfied...
Hatch, I'm validated!After changing my website to Transistional I'm 99% validated.
The only things that don't validate are the Rand Mcnally Directions form and the FAQ tabindex div tag (a Dreamweaver AJAX code)
Are these something to worry about, or are they minor unimportant things?
Also I'm considering adding a search bar at the top. Is this a good idea, or would it crowd it up and confuse people?
I really appreciate all the help you've given me.
It won't matter tto much to be fair, but there isn't really any need for you to place a tabindex in the div.
The main thing is that your homepage validates and thats the important one.. Godd Job!
To be honest i see no need for a search bar unless you have streams of content or a blog etc. This would be pointless to be honest and something els for peoples browsers to load.
No problem i'm glad to have been of help.
Page 5!
Yeah!
Excellent...!
You'll be on the climbing ladder now... Don't forget to keep on link building. I do a few hours a week but thats because of the industry i'm in and all my competitors are frequently performing SEO.
Page 4. Was on page 3, then went back down - can't seem to break free of that area. :(
Sounds like your website needs further optimisation and you need some stronger links coming in. Are you listed in DMOZ or yahoo directory?
Send your reply to [email protected] and we can liase via email rather than on this forum.
I think one thing a lot of people are overlooking in a case like this is the longevity of the website. I am sure you have seen some sites that have that late 90s look abou them. Gray MS background with bright blue genereic text.....
A bad very old site will always outrank a good new site in my opionon. When I say old I mean a site that was made pre Y2K
You probably can't say, but which site is yours Rand? My site ranks in the top three for "house values" and #1 for the higher volume "home values" query :-)
I'd be surprised if it's Zillow since Vanessa Fox is now leading up product for them. If so, Mark Eamer wasn't cutting it on the SEO front? ;-)
I have one site that is a fansite to a kid's book series, called Artemis Fowl.
My site (Artemis Fowl FanGathering) is result number 9 when you google for "Artemis Fowl." Nomatter what I do, there is always a tripod site ahead of me, which hasn't been updated in 3-4 years, has had no optimisation done to it and is full of broken links. It drives me nuts! xD
When I just searched Google your site was at #7 with the tripod site right behind: https://www.google.com/search?q=artemis+fowl&hl=en&pws=0
Only Amazon and keyword domains in front of you now.
Personalised or regional search making a difference then? For me, I'm still one behind Tripod, but it's great to hear that it might not be that way for everyone!
Thanks for checking it out.
I hate SeoMoz because it ranks better than my site for SEO search results.. :)
Just kidding, I do not have an SEO Website and any SEO jargon on my Websites I would like to get rid off..and go back to Travel..
So Rand, what do you recommend to get those pesty competetors with junk pages to rank properly bellow a real Website?
Not link exchange I hope? Thowing links at it is not such a good policy anymore.
1. Getting relevent links is hard to do.
2. And tones of blogs are rel="nofollow"
3. Besides a few industry directories there is not much out there.
It is a tooth and nail fight in the loosing battle to be ranked as one is deserved...so I gav up on the endaviour long time ago..and create content that makes me feel good...but for a small business it is a bummer!!!
>>1. Getting relevent links is hard to do.
No, it isn't. It's work, but it's not particularly harder now than it was. People have just got lazy because of social media linkbait and circle jerking.
>>2. And tones of blogs are rel="nofollow"
Amazingly enough, blogs aren't the only type of website that exist (although it would sometimes seem that way over here).
>>3. Besides a few industry directories there is not much out there.
Directories? Directories??!
Why is it a bummer?
You are in travel, so you say. That means that you have outstanding possiblities to provide content that no-one else is able to (or is competent enough to). Content that is valuable not only from a search engine point of view but epecially and mainly for visitors. Content that none of your generic travel competition using affiliate links is able to. Content that will get you links that others can only dream of.
You can valuably, easily and uniquely offer:
as well as content covering:historyreligiongeography/geologyarchitecturerecipessportreviewscommunity(and if some of those don't get you salivating about high-trust links, then I give up)
Here is one for you. The keyword "cosmetology ce" - Our site Cosmetology Campus is ranked like 9. Given, the specified keyword on the homepage is "cosmetology continuing education" -- and we rank ok for that -- there are a few things irking me about the "cosmetology ce" SERP:
Am I missing something? I just changed the title text on the about us page to focus on "Cosmetology CE" - and it seems to be getting up there. But still -- is there anything else I can do here?
The first question here is how important is the search phrase? Looking in Keyword Discovery, even the free tool, comes up with fairly small numbers compared to searches for "cosmetology continuing education" or "cosmetology education".
Now that said, KD is of course just a mere sampling of online searches, and with the recent changes they've made to where the data is coming from, I'm not sure I'm as comfortable with the data as I used to be. But likewise, using Wordtrackers free tool shows a similar query footprint.
So your first goal is to determine whether this is a phrase that you even want or need to put a lot into targeting. The best way to really determine that may be to use PPC as a metrics tool. Likewise, look at your traffic logs to see how much traffic the different terms are already bringing to your site. If you are ranking lower on the ce term, then lower click-thrus may also be seen in your stats, but if you look back over several months and see little to any click-thru and you've at least been in page-1 results, I'd again be more skeptical, especially if the other terms are already driving considerably more traffic.
I wouldn't get hung up on PR either... remember, it doesn't necessarily factor into ranking... you can find sites for any search that outrank other sites with higher PR. But yes, higher PR may be an indicator of more quality backlinks, good PR flow through the site, etc.
Otherwise, be sure to shore-up basics like driving to the canonical URL (either www or non-), making sure that spiders are able to crawl through the site, make sure that you aren't canibalizing and having pages compete for the same terms, determine how important location-based queries are... either city or state and drive toward them accordingly, etc.
I'm having a similar issue with our site www.AbsorbentPrinting.com. We're trying to rank for the very competetive terms Promotional Products and Promotional Items. We have been on the first and second pages for quite some time. About a week ago a new company www.blossompromotions.com has popped up and since moved into the top two or three positions for both of these keywords. It's obvious that they are focusing on density on their front page. They are only seven months old and we've been around for several years. We also have more links.
I love Seomoz, it has helped me learn what I know about this crazy business.
Well, I have a music technology blog that I'm trying to rank for the term 'music technology'...
there isn't much competition for this, as it's not particularly lucrative, but it's something i'm interested in so I thought it would be a good way to begin my SEO learning process.
I have managed to rank well in google for 'music technology blog', but yahoo doesn't rank me at all. is there really such a difference in the way the two algos operate?
perhaps its a bit ambitious to target such a 'short tail' phrase, but most of the pages ranking for this term are not particularly useful, and not optimised, so i reckon i have a chance - even if a lot of them are .edu type domains.
if anyone has any tips for advancing my cause on this I would be most grateful to hear them!
get a swicki... zwicki.. whatever the "tag cloud" thing is called..
also list your recent posts so you have a link list of your recent posts on the side..
Heh, here is a hard one...
"reseller hosting"
Ultra competitive term, our site is #6
https://www.resellerguide.com
Slowly moving through natural organic growth, but its hard to dislodge some of the hosting companies that have so many links, nice thing is all our content is spot on, we have very little ads, and no competition as we are the only site. Just facing difficulty building links its so niche and hosting companies have broad appeal.
Well Rand, I think you already know about my stress against search engines. I can't seem to outrank this myspaceeditor.org which has much less links than I do and a very 'bad' content.
(btw, have you had a chance to talk to googlers?)
what's the url?
Can you also ask why there are about a 1000 sites in front of you when there are really only 4 or 5 actual results possible?
If so, I'd like to present to you the search term 'wiki travel guide' and this page www.travellerspoint.com/guide/
Note: Google only. Really keen to get your thoughts on that!
2 Sam I Ams in a row.... what a coincidence! :)
I have the same problem. If you type in "Web Design Glasgow" you get -- Toucher Web Design - at No.1. I'm currently at No.3 = 360innovate and can I get past it? Can I heck!
This Toucher site has been there for nearly a few years now - its pages are keyword spammed to death.
I'm trying my heart out here although the offshoot of my good work has seen us propelled to No23 for "web design" in Google UK ahead of Toucher. It just doesn't add up.
Hi mate, how about adding the exact phrase into the copy of your homepage somewhere? Ideally it would be in a H1 or H2.
Currently you mention Glasgow and web design but never "web design glasgow".
Also - how about a few internal anchor text rich links? I haven't done a comprehensive review but at a quick glance I couldn't see any. A prime candidate for this would be a footer text link from your blog page.
I have went through some pages on the site and added the anchor text -- "web design Glasgow" -- about 15 in total - the internal linking was set-up to read "web design - Home"
I have tried to single out the pages where there are not a lot of links to see if this helps.
Thanks for the advice.
My answers are pretty much te same as I gave to G. McGarry (I'm going to start soundng like a Yahoo Dir. Employee) The nice thing here though is that neither you or toucher is in DMOZ or Yahoo. Since your PRs are the same, getting those two listings in a category that touches on Glaslow and web design should put you up there. Good luck with DMOZ :P
My reply to G.:https://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-competition-that-just-wont-budge#jtc33353
try adding "web designer" and "web company" and "web firm" i've had the top google result for "texas web design" "flash web design" and "dallas web design" and once i changed those to designer i got a lot more qualified leads... not sure if "web design shop" might also work better on that side of the pond.
This is one of my sites, www.textkit.com - Don't go there unless you want to learn Ancient Greek or Latin.
I'm seeing aged domains as a common theme here and I have the same challenges. Competing against well aged domains is very difficult and frustrating for me. I have sites that compete against .edu's and while the keyword difficulty is only moderate the competition is fierce.
My take on why aged sites are so difficult to overcome is that the culture of linking has changed. My competition went online in the late 90s back when everyone had 'Link' pages and the practice of both editorial linking and replying (happily and without suspicion) to link requests were common.
So not only does the competition have backlinks, but quality on-theme backlinks from equally aged and authoritative .edu's. Fortunately for me, - if you can't beat them - join them. Since my site is educational, I can get links too but it's so much manual work to contact site owners and request a link. Links that in the past would have come much more freely if my site were online 5 years earlier.
But getting to #1 for certain terms just isn't going to happen in my case.
Benj - So because their site is older it is essentially taking the #1 position? I know that it had some, but I didn't realize domain age had this much weight.
It certainly appears that way, but I didn't know a few months could outweigh all the other factors by so much....
Seems wrong to me..... but then it would, 'cos its stopping me getting to the top!
when i used to look for spam sites for a certain search engine who shall remain nameless. we used domain creation as a huge thing, since you can get that easy from a whois API.. it's always going to carry weight..
Rand-
Ahhh, the rewards and frustrations of SEO. The search query in the domain name is a strong element to housevalues.com being # 1.
One specific example I have been working on is for our own company. We are an "interactive agency" but who the hell searches for that? Well, they have started to but not in enough bunches. So we have try to optimize for "seattle web design" which, unfortunately has been a waste of time.
I have since re-focused our efforts to "interactive agency seattle" and "web agency seattle" to place our firm strongly in those queries as they pick up steam.
By the way, can't wait for the SEO Moz seminar at U-Dub!
-agrinaker
Rand, you know which SERP makes me want to tear out my hair... :P
Thanks Rand! This is the post I've been waiting for!
keyword: screen protector
url: shieldzone.com
OK. I know screen protector isn't in the url and it isn't in an h1 tag, but I've got more backlinks, more authoritative links, anchor text in the those backlinks, keyword in title tag and on the page.... are the url and the h1 tag all I need to change to get to number one?
By the way, thanks for your response to Scoble's video. It's nice to know that there are people out there calling out others on their bogus information.
OOOPs! I misunderstood you... I am changing my answer :)
I look forward to seeing some examples. Sorry about that!
I looked at your site before you changed your answer. All you need is some good solid natural incoming links to this page with the right anchor text and you will be on page one in no time.
If you can't think of a way to do this then create a seperate page about something similar, linkbait to that one and then 301 in a few weeks.
hey blog, thanks for the advice.
I'd echo a lot of the recent complaints here about domain age seeming to skew results unnecessarily. It's just darn hard to beat a site that's been around for 6-7 years, especially if it's got a match for several/all of the keywords in the domain itself.
I think the comments about internal anchor text have been particularly helpful -- it really seems to work better than anything else as long as you have a critical mass of incoming links (whatever that # is in your industry).
Hi Rand, If you go to rankpulse.com they have 30 competitive keywords where the 1st SERP has not changed since Jan 2004. Now that is a challenge:-)
My main competitor is our IT dept. We are affiliated with AAA/CAA- An authority site, good to pretty good IBL's BUT my efforts are continually hampered by our IT boys who have no concept of SEO, Usability and common sense.
Slightly off topic but they are my competition.
I've never really had any problem out ranking my competitors and I'm ranking for keywords such as website design and etc. Which granted my rankings are gone momentarily due to a 301 redirect I had to establish. I always come up with some idea to get my keywords ranking and generally its a viral link bait or some kind of return people give me for links. Not money, or anything like that just free give aways :).
I think rankings are quite easy to get once people figure the search engines out, but if you ask me I think the sites that really rank with no links are old domains such as 1996 domains and stuff like that. Ones that have hardly any links, but old links.
I figured now I need to get my blog going and start expanding :).
Rand,
1. zillow.com missing KW term "house values"
2. is this a trick question? (i figured out how it could be)
3. Who is Vanessa Fox and why would we want to see her nude?(yes i am a smart ass)
Paisely - Vanessa lead the effort at Google to create webmaster relations, webmaster central, the sitemaps protocol and lots of other nice services. She's left Google and now manages ads for Zillow, but still participates heavily in the SEO world :)
thanks =)
HouseValues is actually missing the term "house values" as well. Now, in this case I think it may be safe to assume that:
- the engines are able to figure out housevalues to be a concatenation of those two words. Google is at least bolding the URL, so safe bet.
- house and value are both used with greater prominence on HV than Zillow... in fact, "house" may not be used at all in the Zillow home page-- certainly not in the cache (once I finally got past the "you look like an automated request hurdle") nor on the actual page... the "Cool Homes" is actually served up in an iframe. Although, even "values" isn't used on HV, but value is and with high prominence and the engines can also figure this out, as is the word valuation, which Google may or may not be associating as well. Still, values and valuations on Zillow have lower prominence.
- HV may not be as strong though for this ranking as they appear as they are actully holding the #1 and #4 spot in the SERPs, with the indented listing falling in at #4 technically.
- Zillow also bumps up to #2 and HV drops to #4 and a single listing for "home values", again indicating that the hold isn't universally as strong.
- obviously HV is also pulling more backlinks with the terms, even though their link popularity is considerably smaller... this of course is just a quantity measurement, not a quality measurement
So while frustrating, maybe not entirely surprising.
As for your number 3... well, Rand beautifully answered the first part, and as for the second part........ well some questions defy answers.