Frustrated

[bkztx]

:1: I'm very frustrated right now. I have been diligently working for months to get my site ranked. It is listed in the various engines, but nowhere to be found. I have put keyword related content on my homepage, I have implemented static pages for dynamic, etc. I have a competitor that seems to be everywhere I look. They have not done any of the above and they are always at the top of the rankings. What's up with that? Are they paying for placement or something?

Any ideas? Thanks for letting me rant.

[ihelpyou]

Just to try to help you a little:

You do not need your url in the "title" of the page. Put it at the end if neccessary. Make the title a little longer with more keywords/phrases in it. I saw that one keyword phrase may be "gay book store". Well, that should be in your title. You should have up to 3 phrases in it.

Also, make sure you are putting an image alt tag in all of them which include some keywords in them.

Also, you do not need all those meta tags. All that should be there are

title
description tag
keyword tag
robots tag

that is it.

This is just a brief quick run thru.

[bkztx]

Much appreciated, Doug. Every little bit helps. Still don't know how some companies seem to get listed without the frustration. :kisses: Thanks for the info!

[ihelpyou]

Like I said,... it was very brief. Always remember that your content is most important. Make sure 3-4 keyword phrases are in your content very prominently.

[Advisor]

Hey bkztx!

I don't happen to agree with Doug on the Meta tag thing. It is my opinion that those extra meta tags will have no effect whatsoever on your rankings. They won't help, but they won't hurt either.

I do agree with Doug, regarding the Title tag, however.

What are your most important keyphrase? I'm guessing it's "gay and lesbian books." Is that right? Or is it two different keyphrases, i.e., "gay books" and "lesbian books." I would imagine that those 2 separate phrases may be more searched upon than the former, all-encompassing phrase.

Whatever the main keyphrases are, you need to use them more in your body text copy. You're doing okay with it (and you're at number 20-something in Google for "gay and lesbian books" which is a great start). However, you need to make those keyphrases (or whichever you're targeting) clearly the focus of your page. Plus, make sure they're in the exact order in which you want them to rank well. Currently, it looks like you're trying to target a whole slew of different keyphrases on your main page. If you want to rank high under "lesbian books," for instance, then don't use the phrase "lesbian literature" in the text. Change it accordingly.

As to your competitors, I didn't check, but you can probably chalk it up to Link Popularity. Make sure you get started on a vertical linking campaign to ensure you get lots of other sites linking to yours. I've seen sites that are totally unoptimized, yet they have tons of (relevant) links pointing to them, and therefore they are in the top 10.

I hope this helps clarify some necessary measures which should improve your rankings!

Jill

[bkztx]

WOW! That helps alot, Webwiz. I had the determination that I was going to do it myself and not pay for placement. Sometimes I get discouraged because it is such a sloooowwww process. I know a guy who has a car remote replacement site and paid for placement and BOOM-- big traffic and sales soared.

Thanks again!

[Advisor]

Well, it's definitely going to take you some time. After all, you're just starting to learn stuff, that it took many of us years to get down pat! If you're gonna figure it out yourself, you're gonna have to be really patient! Obviously, read everything (reputable) you can on the subject, and just keep trying different things. I do have a number of past issues of Rank Write where I talked about how to optimize a site from the ground up. You might want to check them out. Let me see if I can find the specific issue I'm thinking of...

Oh yes...found it...hehehe...it was my kinda funny 10 Commandments one. You should enjoy it if you haven't already seen it:

http://www.rankwrite.com/archives/issue049.htm

I think you may benefit even more from reading some of Heather's articles specifically addressing the writing for the search engines issue. Especially "How to Write a Keyword-Rich Home Page the Search Engines Will Love!"
http://www.rankwrite.com/writehomepage.htm

I am positive that if you can get your keyphrases sorted out and apply the correct SEO writing principles, your site can easily get into the top 10.

Jill

[bkztx]

You're the best, Jill! I have been reading Rankwrite, but it will take awhile to get caught up as there are many, many articles. I think I will print them up and read them and highlight text-- then I will feel like I'm back in college. :)

[highman]

On a slightly more technical note, you have a few problems with your new 404 technique http://www.outinprint.com/authors.asp/store_author/6025
do a search at google for xenu linkchecker (free) and point it at your site.

I would also change the title on every page to reflect the content, for example on a book product page I would use one of your db fields to insert gay books or lesbian books into the title, desc and keywords, then use the authors name and book title in your meta tags. All this info is prob in your db just ready to be utilised to the full.

Keep at it and you will knock your competitor over :)

[bkztx]

Highman,

Yep, I know about the author thing and we're working on it. I also know that I've got to make my forms appear static. My tech guy has a new girlfriend, and well, that's all I need to say about that. ;)

The moral support is much appreciated! I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED!!!

[highman]

Just to clarify the above post here is what I typicaly do for db driven sites, obv. Im guessing at your db structure and what desc you prefer.
This will ensure each product page has its proper and unique and relevant meta tags.
Hope this gives you more food for thought.......


<title><catagory> <sub cat> <author> from outinprint.com</title>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="<catagory> <sub cat> <author> <any other fields with keywords that WOULD appear on the page>">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Fantastic range of books including <catagory> <sub cat> <author> <book description.">


btw. well done for getting the 404 thingy up :)

[highman]

Sorry we crossed posts then ~

>I also know that I've got to make my forms appear static

No you dont, as long as there is a clear route to your product pages for the spiders (which you have) then forget the forms

[bkztx]

That is what my tech guy said about the forms, but I didn't believe him.

So do you submit the different pages to the SE's or does it find the various pages with the specialized meta tags on its own?

[highman]

They (google esp.) will find them by themselves, dont forget xenu linkchecker, vital for any 404 nut ;)

[JuniorHarris]

Right, as long as all the pages are well inter-linked. Meaning the pages should each reference additional pages. Just as you would provide hierarchal navigation on static pages, so should/would you with 404 pages. Google and the other great crawlers will follow along these links just fine, reading whatever is returned in the HTML stream regardless if it is generated from static or dynamic (or for that matter non-existent) pages!~

ps: Some great responses highman!~ :thumb:

[bkztx]

:confused: Highman, I was using Xenu and everything was flowing just fine and then it stalled out. Why would it do that? Also, what does it mean when it says that a page is "busy" or "pending"?

Really great tool. Glad you turned me onto it.

[highman]

Xenu sends out 30 threads (read requests to your site) at once, and queues pages up (pending / busy), leave it running, it takes a while but its results save you lost spidering and give you piece of mind.

Plus it writes you a nice sitemap.

glad you found it helpful