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.

[marina_meggy]

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