A Huge rise for my site

[grungee]

Hi guys I have been reading here for a while and doing little bits and peices that people have suggested here, I have not finished the site I am working on a complete fixed site on a test domain with as many tips included from this forum. Anyway two of my main key words have just jumped from who knows where (I could never find them) to position 11 and 23 and 36 and 43 I am wrapt.
I have only been a member since 22-05-2005, and the website has been live for about a year so in 3 months I have jumped who knows how many places to within the first 4 pages of search on google. I am sure with the new changes I am making I can hopefully jump into the first page of my search results.

On yahoo I am 1 and 4 and then 74 and way down at 106.

so I am half better and half worse than google don't make sense but I am not going to argue seeing as I am getting higher now.

Hmm I am doing real well on msn I have 1 and 2 for 1 search then 9 and 10 for the second search 28 for the 3rd search and 36 for the 4th search

All of these searches I could never find my ranking I would give up before I found the listing. Once again I want to thank everyone here that has given me the time of day and helped me out with hints and tips, I really appreciate it heaps.

Cheers Tony

[ihelpyou]

That's good to hear Tony! Congrats! :cheers:

I am confused about if you are talking about the "test" site or your site that has been online for awhile?

[grungee]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
That's good to hear Tony! Congrats! :cheers:

I am confused about if you are talking about the "test" site or your site that has been online for awhile?

Sorry about that, I am making the next lot of changes on my test site they include the code optimization and other hints I have learned here.

My live site is the one which has gone up the rankings with the help of this forum already, so i am expecting to keep getting higher for my key phrases. I am absolutely wrapt in the results I have gotten from listening/reading to people here that are very wise. I have gone from nowhere I could find my site listed in the search engines to within the first 4 pages of most of the search engines for my preferred keywords, and that only just happened I think because of what I have learnt here. I think for the last 9 months of the website being on the net and being nowhere in the search engines for any decent keywords to jumping up to the first 4 pages is a pretty decent hike, and I still have a lot of stuff to put into place I beleive I will get even better results soon.

I really appreciate the help.

Cheers Tony

[ihelpyou]

Okay, very good stuff! :)

[maninderwalia]

Congrats Tony

[Connie]

Congrats Tony! :cheers:

[WebSavvy]

Hey congrats Tony! :cheers:

[g1smd]

Yet more proof that you can get there with hard work and no "tricks".

[grungee]

Well another 1st for me today on ninemsn which is the aussie version of msn I come first for my wished for keyword "kitchens", I actually never even had hopes of getting in the top 1000 for that word, I know its not google and isn't even msn but it sure made me feel good. I have never even been able to find myself for that keyword on any of the search engines until today woohooo, thanks guys I appreciate all the help you have handed out over the past year.

Have a :cheers: or 2:cheers: on me thanks again.

[grungee]

I really appreciate all the help I have had here over the past year, in the last 7 months my site has grown from a few visitors each day to around 140 each day, now I know that isn't a lot for some of you guys but for me that is absolutely terrific for me, 1000 potential customers and for the grand old sum of $0 (well lots of time and some software and hardware purchases). Those 1000 visitors are pretty targetted to my business module if the keywords from my stats program is correct. The stats also tell me that around 50% stay to view multiple pages and that number is slowly getting more as well.

Now if jagger updates have all finished, I have jumped from not being in the top 1000 results to number 2 in google for my main key phrase, and on several other main keyphrases including various spelling versions of the same words I am in on the first page. And as the message says above I am in position 1 on ninemsn for "kitchens" which just blows me away (on google still not in the top 1000 but who knows what will happen).

So I reckon if I keep listening and learning from this forum I should be able to rule the world by the end of next year :D at least I might be able to afford a nice little peice of the world by then.

The last two weeks has been atrocious personally to my family and myself, but at least this website has shown me a ray of light and a little hope for the future.

I thank you all and wish you all gods grace.

Cheers Tony

[Quadrille]

Originally posted by grungee
I should be able to rule the world by the end of next year :D at least I might be able to afford a nice little peice of the world by then.Go for it - it doesn't clash with my plans for world domination; I have target date of June 2146, and if Adsense continues to smile at me, I may bring that forward to November 2145.

:cheers: :cheers:

[ihelpyou]

More kudos to you Tony! :cheers:

We are happy this place makes a difference to people. But give yourself some credit as you ask good questions and really are learning, and then you take the advice given. :up:

[grungee]

Over the last week or so I noticed a couple of things in my stats that kind of tweaked my interest.

I think everyone knows that we do kitchens of course the 1st keyword I wanted to attack was "kitchens" after reading a lot and asking many questions I had come to realise that going for targetted keywords that people after our products would type in would be much more worthwhile. So for the past 18months or so I tackled and optimised our site for those keywords. I think I was more than successful we have had to expand the business and are in the middle of growing again. In the meantime I come to realise that "kitchens" being a highly searched for term wouldn't exactly mean a huge growth of our business and my time would be better spent optimising for other phrases.

Well last week I 1st noticed ninemsn had us on there 1st page for "kitchens" this was both for the au and world radio buttons.
Then I noticed on au.yahoo.com we were on the 4th page for the world button and 1st page for the australian button. On yahoo.com we snuck into position 232. Then yesterday I noticed on google.com.au with the australian radio button on we are varying between the 1st 3 pages in the results. I can see that the visiting traffic has grown to a new level, it is too soon to see if that means extra business but I can only hope. Though I am doubtful because I can only wonder what the customers are looking for when they type "kitchens"

Again I really want to thank every one here, I doubt with all the help and answers to my questions I would have had the success I am now getting.

Oh I also noticed on one of the google test data centres that we are in position 65 for the same keyword, I know that is absolutely no indication as to what the future serps hold but it was a nice boost to my ego.

[JohnC]

Way to Go !!! :cheers:

[Irony]

Good job, Tony! Congrats! :cheers:

[Blue]

Congrats on your efforts Tony!!!

It'll be interesting to see if the sales match the visits for that term.

:cheers:

[WebSavvy]

Congrats Tony! :cheers:

[grungee]

Thanks guys, I know I did the modiications to the site but you guys helped me know how to do it that I am very appreciative of. Hopefully I am in the situation soon whereby I will be able to offer something back, probably not to yourselves but to new users or maybe the less fortunate and help them make a living for themselves.

[g1smd]

Optimizing to be a "one word wonder" often doesn't bring the traffic and conversions that you might hope for.


Optimising for many smaller keywords and phrases usually strengthens a site and diversifies the visitors. When some keywords are doing well, others may not be, but you'll still have visitors targetted to your site.

If you put your hopes in one keyword, the moment it does not perform you are sunk. And, by taking care of lots of little keywords, sometimes you get a surprise and the big ones that you weren't specifically going after start to perform well too.

[Irony]

Hey, G1, I meant to tell you earlier - your new avatar is GREAT! :cheers:

[grungee]

Yeah G1 your spot on with that approach, I think when people are new they tend to think of the obvious which usually means the most typed in word.

And yeah I love your new avatar it looks excellent.

[Daminc]

You're number one in Google for :

flatpack kitchens &
flat pack kitchens

also number 5 for :
computerised design kitchens

One thing that I noticed is the number of returns for the term computerised design kitchens is 60,500 whereas

computerized design kitchens has 152,000 returns. You might want to think about that :)

Also, if you have the time and resources you might want to do a bit of research into Googles Adwords to target those more niche phrases.

p.s. 'computer designed kitchens' returns 2,080,000 returns

What about the phrase 'kitchen remodeling'?

[g1smd]

I did a site for an outdoor centre a few years back, and made sure that I used the alternative word center just a couple of times in the entire site just to pick up on the US spelling - just in case.


I don't usually go after mis-spellings of words, but do try for a few legitimate alternative spellings if they are important words.

[grungee]

Daminc and G1 I haven't put a lot of effort into american spelling, purely for the reason at the time we were not in the position to export anything and also not realising how big the internet world was didn't really give it much of a thought.

Daminc the number of returns I didn't think meant much it was the amount of people who type it in?

In australia we don't really remodel anything we renovate it so I put more effort into renovate, also we call them cupboards not cabinets as it is called in the US so again I haven't really optimised it at all for US spellings.

[Daminc]

purely for the reason at the time we were not in the position to export anything

so again I haven't really optimised it at all for US spellings

If you have a legitimate reason for not optimising for word variants then there's no problem

the number of returns I didn't think meant much it was the amount of people who type it in?
It means enough as it is a reflection of the words people use to search for things which is how people find sites :D :D :D

Another area for optimisation (it's probably the most common type of reoptimisation we do where I work when we bring on a client with an existing commercial site) is conversion rate. Very often we find a visitor to a site may have a less than easy time purchasing goods (or even following/understanding the procedure to purchase stuff).

Can that side of things be optimised for your site?

[grungee]

Daminc, you are right we are in the middle of getting an online shop going, I think I have made it simple enough for the user, we have had 200 people join since around december, but we ran into problems with the products which we have just worked out again so we are adding the products now. We have what I call a good retention rate of visitors (this is by my standards) over 60% of visitors stay for more than 1 pages and of that the average page view is of the people that stay is around 12, I am not sure what is good by other peoples standards but we like it, we also get quite a few people contact us using the various forms of contact we placed on there this is around 15 - 30 people a day. But as you mentioned we will need to optimize the conversion rate once we have everything in place.

[Daminc]

we also get quite a few people contact us using the various forms of contact we placed on there this is around 15 - 30 people a day
Do you make a record of the questions?

This might be a call for a site FAQ (and more quality content).

Your stats sound good. When do think the online shop will go live?

I've just been reminded by one of my co-workers the need to optimise images. This is especially important if you decide to have some sort of online catalogue for your eshop. The trouble is, it takes quite a bit of time which is why many leave this stage out. He is in the process of optimising several hundred images of varying sizes so at the moment he's constantly grumpy ;)

[Comeran]

We have had some luck with great image optimizing software. It gets about 80% of it for us, the other 20% don't look right so we manually do them but it is so much nicer doing 400 images and not 2,000 images :thebomb:

[grungee]

Our main problem in the our industry is none of our suppliers are geared fo the net nor are they willing to even contemplate it, we keep asking for images for products and they give us a brochure or a trade book. It is frustrating but we have finally convinced one of the big suppliers to hand over the images they used in the book so hopefully some day soon, I will have the problem of image optimising.

[WebSavvy]

Tony, check your PMs! I just sent you something regarding your web app project. :)

[g1smd]

Make sure that you watermark all those images otherwise all your competitors will be stealing them from your site. That means that they get them for free after you put all the effort in. Avoid that happening.

More importantly you don't want your supplier to be annoyed that you have seemingly "given them out" to other people. Protect your work. Also stop other people directly hotlinking to the images too.

[WebSavvy]

g1's right, Tony. I have some software that I use for watermarking photo's too called SPX Studio by MoodySoft (http://www.moodysoft.com/). It's great software and well worth every penny I paid for it.

[Comeran]

Tony when you have the images and are ready to edit, optomize, and watermark let me know. The software we use does all of that and does a great job.

It doesn't get all of them, about 1 or 2 out of 10 aren't perfect so you have to do them by hand but it really saves time and does a great job. If I remember correctly the license was dirt cheap too, it was 14.99 or 19.99 for the unlimited license with 2 years of upgrades or somthing like that.

You are going in the right direction, clean images sell product.

Comeran-

[WebSavvy]

Hey Comeran, just looking at your site. I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but on your graphic design page the text runs off both sides of the page (left and right sides).

I use AOL and this is what it looks like from here
(screen cap below)

[Comeran]

Savvy,

Thanks!

We are redesigning the whole site, and that is a temporary site. We will have it up soon and I will post it in for everyone to take a look at :)

Comeran-

[WebSavvy]

OK. :)

[Comeran]

You are quick on the posts today :p

The forum is being extra slow for me. Must be a downed router somewhere between me and the forum server. (happens a lot in this isolated town).

Thanks for letting me know and staying on top of things here.

Comeran-

[WebSavvy]

Yes, it is kind of smallish there, isn't it? I've been there many times. My ex-husband's children from his first marriage lived there part time with their Mother and Step-Father. We used to have to drive up there from Las Vegas to get them.

[Comeran]

Las Vegas to here, that is a nice 4 hour drive :p

I don't like Murrieta at all! It is very smallish and internet access bites. It would be great to get a T1 line for 350 like in San Diego, here they are 550-850 each!!!

Comeran-

[WebSavvy]

LOL. We used to drive up there and back in one night. :lol:

I have no idea what T1s are here. I live waaaaay out in the boonies. We don't have cable or broadband or anything remotely FAST. All there is, is dial-up and it s-ucks big time.

I hate AOL and have hated them every single minute of the past 8 years I've been with them.

Oh well, maybe once I move from IL we'll have other Internet options. That'd be GREAT!

[Comeran]

Wow, I wouldn't be able to make it out there :p

We have broadband at home and in the office or I would just jump out the window ;)

Where do you host your server if you don't have t1's out there?

Comeran-

[WebSavvy]

Oh, it's at LiquidWeb. :)

[Comeran]

Ahhh.

That would explain it.

Are you happy with them?

Comeran-

[WebSavvy]

Yep. Very. I used to have the servers at ThePlanet but there was a lot of downtime there so we moved to LiquidWeb about 18 months ago and it's been great.

I just noticed you're right around my ex-step-daughter's age. She's 3 years older than you are, so I'd bet you probably knew her. It's a real small town there.

[Comeran]

That is funny! Yeah PM me her name I probably do know her.

Comeran-

[WebSavvy]

Sent it.

[grungee]

Well another fairly substantial though pretty clickless raise in my site. I have noticed that for the keyword "kitchens" which is fairly well searched for according to yahoo overture thing is searched for around 100,000 times a month. In google I am on page 9 or 10 depending on the data centre, while I know this is pretty useless for clicks I think it is pretty substantial in the scheme of things as its the 1st time I have been listed for that keyword in google.

Now I have a slight plan of attack for reaching even higher and wanted a few thoughts before I messed with things. This of course isn't comprehensive and I am sure there are many other things I could do (add more content/diy guides/make a new site without session id's)

1. Pay for a link in Yahoo.com Directory this will cost around $300 US dollars a year.


2. Pay for a link in Joeant.com directory, the cost is $40 US once off fee.


3. Pay for a link in Goguides.org directory, the cost is $70 US once off fee.


4. Pay for a link in Gympsy.com directory, the cost is $40 US once off fee.


5. Pay for a link in Skaffe.com directory, the cost is $40 US once off fee.


6. Set up a second site for our PVC blinds, the content in the pages has nothing to do with kitchens. (May or may not help rankings?)


7. Set up a DIY/Kitchens forum.
7a. Set the forum up on the existing site. (Could help rankings)
7b. Set the forum up on its own domain. (Won't help rankings)


8. Build 1 or more new sites using a completely new name with completely new content not a duplicate of existing site. (This one is last resort kind of thing I don't have that much time to do two or more sites. This also wouldn't build the ranking of my site now.)

Any thoughts would be greatfully received.

[ihelpyou]

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is good. You can always drop the yahoo after one year.

6. Don't link to and fro with them.

7 and 7a. yes and yes. Do it on existing site.

8. NO WAY. Don't even think about it.

:)

[grungee]

Not sure if its just temporary but for the last week we have been on page 5 for the keyword kitchens, which I think is pretty impressive, but today I woke up to see we had crept onto the 4 page. I still haven't done any of the above which I plan to do but I am pretty stoked to think I made it to the top 40. Many thanks to everyone who helped with answer to my questions and hints and tips I have picked up over the couple of years I have been a member here.

[Dave Hawley]

grungee, I would bet an additional "Kitchen" in your Title somewhere would boost you up even more. Same goes for a H1 heading on the page containing the word "Kitchen".

[Connie]

I'm in the same industry and have no intrest in ranking for the term kitchen or kitchens.

I wish you luck if it is important to you.

[grungee]

Thanks dave will look into that.

Connie kitchen doesn't worry me other keywords bring far more customers to us. I just think it is pretty cool, kitchens is a highly searched for term (no idea what they are looking for though) I think its just an ego boost to me is all hahah

[Connie]

I think its just an ego boost to me is all hahah
Thats what I figured. I'm guess I'm to old to go to all that effort just to boost my ego. :D

[grungee]

Ah but it wasn't an effort connie, I just listened to you and the other guys and it just come naturally, I know with more time and effort on my site it could be better but at the moment its working so why fix something that isn't broke. It seems like we have hit that age where google thinks we can play with the old guys now :cheers:

[danmayna]

also some one way links to your site with the keyword "kitchens" would help.

[grungee]

Might be a bit contraversial but my personal experience has been that links don't matter if the site has great content.

Links will come naturally anyway but I have seen some sites rank with none to just a few links all because there has been great content.

[lovekissing]

right... rock on!!!

[WebSavvy]

This thread is more than a year old.