Emergency! SEO Experts! My horses lives are depending on me!

[Kristi61]

Please, please help me and my horses! I don't have to tell you what effects this economy has had on expensive, activity related, industries like the Quarter Horse business. I have struggled solo for 3 years, through drought & exorbitant feed prices, with no computer or website training to use an MSO Publisher website (Lacy Quarter Horses) to try to sell the horses I raise and maintain a sustainable business. It has been heartbreaking and this disgraceful economy may prove to be the coup de grace for me and my horses.
I need to get to the first page of Google to be able to command the prices & volume required to break-even and so far I have only gotten to page 5. On my last update I added 9 category pages as well as a nav bar for the new categories on the homepage and all the category pages and I added some webring-type links among the new category pages. I changed my Titles and description on a few key pages to include more keywords and search terms...and my now I'm on page 14.
I am broke and I fear that the horses that I've spent the last 25 years raising will have to be sold at a slaughter auction if I can't turn this around immediately. I've made so many mistakes and these horses will suffer a far worse fate than I will if I can't do a better job for them. I'm begging for some help to do a better job promoting these horses and would be eternally grateful for any advice.

Thank you,
Kristi

[mariner7]

I have some friends involved with horses and am sympathetic to your cause.

What your website URL?

[Steve Diamond]

Kristi, I belong to a couple of link building and content syndication services. I'd be happy to set up some small campaigns for you at no charge.

I just need some written content to feed the systems. If you could PM me one or two 250-word articles about quarter horses (preferably unique material) and let me know what keywords you're trying to rank for, I'll take it from there.

EDIT: I just realized you may not be able to use the PM system here due to low post count. You can email me at steve [at] stevediamondconsulting [dot] com.

BTW, I don't really know horses, though I do some occasional desert trail riding here in Tucson. I guess I'm a sucker for any animal hard-luck story. I'd much rather see your horses go to good homes than to the slaughterhouse.

Steve

[Andrew G Gowans]

As Mariner7 suggested, tell us your website url and I shall also take a look. Perhaps the more helping you, the quicker you will get the results you are looking for.

Best wishes
Andrew G.

[winebuddy]

Quarter Horses for sale:* Gray, Silver Buckskin & Dun Quarter Horses for sale.

[Kristi61]

I am literally sobbing in tears...I am so grateful for your kind offers to help. I can't post my website to you from here because of the restrictions. All I can do is ask you to search for Lacy Quarter Horses and have a look. I'm afraid that I've made such a mess of it and I only have MSO Publisher 2003 to work with.
Steve - I will send you my URL and work on some articles. I have written some horse stories for my contacts list when I send them update notices but they are more that 250 words.

Again, Thank you so much for your kind support. I can't tell you how grateful I am for your input.

Kindest Regards,
Kristi

[Steve Diamond]

Longer than 250 words is okay. I can work with that.

Steve

[Mandy Allen]

I so hope this all helps you, Kirsti. Please let us all know how it goes. If you need someone to proof read/edit your articles give me shout. Sadly SEO isn't my strong point and these guys above seem to have it all wrapped up nicely for you anyway.

Good luck!

Enjoy the journey.

Mandy

[Tom Brite]

Is there not some sort of auction place either online or offline for horses to which you could sell them on? Is much quicker than seo.

Tom Brite

[Voasi]

Kristi -

I assume "Quarter Horse" is the keyword you're trying to rank for in Google? What are a few other keywords you'd like to rank for? I have access to over 350 websites that I could put your link on a few sites. Plus, I could help with doing a little bit better on the keyword optimization (based upon the keywords you send over to me) and title tag implementation.

[rapidscc]

Hi Kristi,

send me an article and I'll create a squidoo lens and a blog entry for you...
It's not much but I hope it'll help.

Also is winebuddy's post the correct URL for your site?

Originally Posted by winebuddy

Quarter Horses for sale:* Gray, Silver Buckskin & Dun Quarter Horses for sale.

Best wishes..

Omar
RaulOmarDiaz[at]Gmail[dot]com

[InternetMarketingIQ]

So they are going to make some glue? Is there a market for glue?

Seriously what makes you different from the millions of other people on this planet who are stuggeling.

Yesterday a lead story on Yahoo was a picture of a skewer full of field mice that someone in Malawi was going to eat!

If you want to "save" your horses. Forget about them and focus on products and services that you can sell in this economy. Then work on that.

[Steve Diamond]

Originally Posted by Voasi

I assume "Quarter Horse" is the keyword you're trying to rank for in Google?

I think that "quarter horses for sale" is more targeted. Around 30,000 searches per month according to Google. True competition is somewhere between 30,000 and 75,000 based on allintitle or just the phrase in quotes. I predict that it won't be easy to hit page 1, but with several of us on the job it could be possible. Eventually.

But we'll let Kristi tell us her preferred keyword(s).

Steve

[Voasi]

So they are going to make some glue? Is there a market for glue?

Seriously what makes you different from the millions of other people on this planet who are stuggeling.

Yesterday a lead story on Yahoo was a picture of a skewer full of field mice that someone in Malawi was going to eat!

If you want to "save" your horses. Forget about them and focus on products and services that you can sell in this economy. Then work on that.

There's nothing wrong with asking for help. Have you never asked for help in trying to market boobs online? Everyone asks for help, and lucky for Kristi, this forum is one of the rarest forums on the net where people will actually help with no-return benefit.

Some people would call that "making the world turn"...and I'm fine with helping. Go take a $hit on the pot, not using your keyboard.

[Karen Connell]

I bred and raced Arab horses up to few years ago and know how difficult it can be to get a decent price for an animal that you have foaled down and looked after to get to them to the age where they are saleable.

I don't have many IM skills but if you would like me to write a couple of free articles for you I would be happy to.

My email is on site in sig.

Good Luck

Karen

[Steve Diamond]

Originally Posted by InternetMarketingIQ

So they are going to make some glue? Is there a market for glue?

Seriously what makes you different from the millions of other people on this planet who are stuggeling.

Yesterday a lead story on Yahoo was a picture of a skewer full of field mice that someone in Malawi was going to eat!

If you want to "save" your horses. Forget about them and focus on products and services that you can sell in this economy. Then work on that.

Did you even look at Kristi's website? She's been raising quarter horses for 25 years. And your advice is to "forget about them"?

...I was going to add some comment, but I'm actually speechless. If you don't see how wrong-headed that is, there's nothing I can add.

Steve

[thunderbird]

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
--Mahatma Gandhi

[Tom Brite]

Looks like with all these peoples help your site might actually have a negative resulting outcome.

I really would think twice before jumping at everyones help because if your going to be getting this many backlinks so quickly after a certain period of limited if not any activity to your website then google isnt going to like that much at all!

Just be carefull there are many people here and some posting that do not know what they are doing!

Tom Brite

[Kristi61]

Thank You All so much,
Words cannot describe how grateful I am for your generous support. I will respond to each of you as quickly as I can (new to using forums)

I'm still not allowed to post my URL here, but my site is: Lacy Quarter Horses
My primary keywords are:
Horses for sale
Quarter Horses for sale

About the "Glue factory" comment: While you have a perfectly legitimate point concerning the overwhelming and unsatisfied human need in this world being much more important than my small concern...nevertheless it is my concern and I have chosen to appeal to this forum for help. Your efforts might be better spent donating your expertise to some of the worthwhile humanitarian organizations instead of making unproductive comments here.

Many, Many Thanks to those of you who have responded with offers of help and sympathy.
Kristi

[Kathryn Allison]

It's refreshing to see a place where people are willing to help someone that they don't know. I am a complete newbie so I have nothing to offer but best wishes. The best horse I ever had was a Quarter Horse and if I ever buy another horse it will definitely be a QH. If I knew what I was doing I would offer to write articles on showing but I haven't published anything yet and would be afraid to try it for someone else before making mistakes on my own site first.

[WritingMadwoman]

I just sent an email to you Kristi!

Wendy

[Kristi61]

Tom,

I appreciate your thoughts.

Online and reputatable live Quarter Horse auctions are infrequent, expensive and very risky.

You may be the voice of reason here regarding all the generous offers of links but the wolf is at my door and, since I have so little SEO/Website experience and the website is the most cost effective avenue to marketing my horses, I'll just have to trust those who have responded to my plea, be grateful for their gracious contributions and well wishes, and hope for the best.

Thanks,
Kristi

[rapidscc]

Hi Kristi,

I finished the lens for you it's at : A Quarter Horse Story

It's my first time to make something about horses but I've always sensed that some connection between horse and master somehow existed. As I was doing your lens I came upon this:

Kindred Spirits - A Therapeutic Riding Center

Kindred Spirits is a therapeutic riding center in Franklin, TN that reaches special needs, terminally ill, and battered children through horse interaction.

After reading this I realized that horses are a bit special.

Now to get back to the topic. I've already made minor promotion with the lens I created for you (pingoat)

If you have a squidoo account tell me and I'll transfer the lens to you.

Also, I haven't added an Amazon module to the lens yet. I'll just teach you how when I transferred the lens already..

Hope this helps..

Best wishes

Omar

[Andrew G Gowans]

Kristi, I have sent you a private message.

Ignore the banal comments that lesser warriors have a habit of posting and know whatever can be done to help, will be done.

Best wishes
Andrew G.

[stma]

Can't help it - got to jump in and just say it. Normally I stay out of threads like these because they turn into a train wreck when someone isn't positive.

Sounds like your totally desperate and any SEO you don't won't be fast enough to "save" things.

While your site needs some major work, doing things piece meal might not be in your best interests. This guy doing a lens for you, this guy doing this, etc...

It's also going to take more than a few days to move up to the front of the results even if you get the links and onsite seo you need it could take 6 months.

Got a back up plan? I hope so - because thinking that if you get on page one with the same site you have now and commanding different prices isn't a good one.

Don't you have some "off line" avenues you could approach? If you never got a website visitor again would you be able to sell a horse? What did they do before the internet? Don't they have horse auctions that don't involve the slaughter houses? I went to one a few months ago.

Lot's of folks with horses hate the internet because they are on a slow connection out on the farm. At least that's my experience since half my family still lives on farms. They have to use it for various things, but it sure isn't to source out livestock.

On-line though - there are some ways you could get more exposure. I'm sure you could write some creative press releases in regards to the horses. Maybe one about the tough time breeders are having right now and all the ways you and other breeders are combating it. It would be picked up somewhere if you wrote it well... and hopefully should include your contact info.


I know it's tough. I've got a family full of dirt farmers and I know how much of a struggle it is. Just don't want this struggle to reach page one make you think it will change things. It might not. You might not get there to find out.

[Evita]

I could place a couple of links with PR to your site, but not totally sure it would be a good idea considering all the activity on your site. (It may look fishy to mother Google and could end up being detrimental) Someone who knows more can maybe let me know, OK?

How do you usually find your buyers? or, how do they find you, rather. Where are they from?

Sorry to hear about your desperate situation. But, I truly believe there is a solution to all problems.

Let's brainstorm!!

Would be helpful to know about bit more about your situation. (If that is OK with you.)

Best,
Evita

[Joe118]

Kirsti, I sent a PM.

I agree with everyone who cautions that this might not be enough to save Kirsti's business and life passion. However, we must try.

[Lucid]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned using PPC yet. I know you said you don't have much money but it doesn't have to be expensive. If you wait for SEO to kick in to where you want it to be, it might be too late. You need exposure now so I recommend putting some money, maybe $50-100, on an Adwords campaign.

[Kristi61]

To all of you who have donated your help & well wishes,

If you don't hear from me it's because my computer is acting up. My post from last night isn't here so I hope this one makes it...

Thank you from the bottom of my heart! You have reaffirmed my faith in mankind! I suddenly have a lot to learn and absorb! I may be a slow learner where computers and the internet are concerned but I'm determined to learn and apply all that you have given me, both literally and spiritually. I'm going to do my best not to let you and these horses down. It is such a relief to know that I'm not alone...you are out there and willing to help!

PeachesNCream,

What a sweet girl you are! Your offer is both generous and appreciated but it wouldn't be right for me to accept as tempting as it is. Donate it to a horse rescue. They are bursting at the seams with unwanted and unfit horses and are desperate for funding.

Many, Many, Thanks
Kristi

[AllAboutAction]

Originally Posted by PeachesNCream

Too bad we got chased out of town. Back in 74, just after Vietnam, all the navy boys started to prefer the donkeys. We haven't been back to Tijuana in ages.

Does this really belong in this forum?

[itcoll]

Originally Posted by Tom Brite

Looks like with all these peoples help your site might actually have a negative resulting outcome.

I really would think twice before jumping at everyones help because if your going to be getting this many backlinks so quickly after a certain period of limited if not any activity to your website then google isnt going to like that much at all!

Just be carefull there are many people here and some posting that do not know what they are doing!

Tom Brite

ya.i feel the same way.if everybody starts working on link building unexpected can happen.It is better to plan and then do everything.

[Kristi61]

Ed,

You make some valid points. I wish I had found this forum sooner as I do believe that a Google page 1 ranking would be a big help. The high rankers in my industry agree with me. The horse industry has been in decline for a number of years due mostly to widespread drought and outrageous feed and fuel prices. It's absurd to assume that the internet is my only sales pursuit - I've been raising and selling Registered Quarter Horses for 25 years. However, the website it is by far the most cost effective marketing tool I've used in recent years.
I created the website in August 2007 on a borrowed laptop with very little computer training & no online publishing experience, to try and stem the tide and broaden my exposure. Since then, in spite of very little search engine position, the bulk of my sales have been largely due to the website. Things were improving. Now, we have this disgraceful economy to deal with! Most people in the horse business are suffering along with a lot of horses.

Things sure haven't gone the way I had planned in my world. My crystal ball is broken. How about you?

Auctions: What sale did you attend? Did you buy or sell a horse? As I stated before, most online or reputable live horse auctions are infrequent, expensive & risky. Especially with weanlings and yearlings. I've heard of horses not bringing enough to cover the commission. The bulk of the monthly or bi-monthly small horse sales in this region are "killer sales" where most of the horses are sold to slaughter buyers, a few to horse traders. As far as the livestock industry goes - online cattle auctions account for an bi g chunk of all feeder & stocker cattle sales right now and that figure is growing daily. I've been in the livestock industry my entire life and currently work with both Live cattle and Video cattle auction representatives and they say the internet video livestock auctions will likely dominate livestock sales in the near future.

I'm very new and inexperienced at the website/internet marketing game. You're right, it may be too late. Have I made a lot of mistakes - YOU BET. Should I cut my losses and move on - probably. Can I wrestle this bus out of the ditch & back onto the road - maybe. It may kill me, but for a lifetime of blood, sweat, tears and horses, I have to keep trying...

Thanks,
Kristi

[Joe118]

Kristi someone made a very important observation here about how you can get quick traffic w/o waiting for SEO to do its thing. PPC, buying traffic from Google.

That is definitely the way to go but DO NOT DO THIS without expert help and constant guidance. If you aren't an expert you *will* lose your shirt and house and horses that way. With expert help it's a very good bet, without such help it's a burn-your-last-dollar proposition.

[AverageGuy]

one possible way to sell is posting ads on craigslist.org.

good luck


david

[stma]

Originally Posted by Kristi61

Ed,

You make some valid points. I wish I had found this forum sooner as I do believe that a Google page 1 ranking would be a big help. The high rankers in my industry agree with me. The horse industry has been in decline for a number of years due mostly to widespread drought and outrageous feed and fuel prices. It's absurd to assume that the internet is my only sales pursuit - I've been raising and selling Registered Quarter Horses for 25 years. However, the website it is by far the most cost effective marketing tool I've used in recent years.
I created the website in August 2007 on a borrowed laptop with very little computer training & no online publishing experience, to try and stem the tide and broaden my exposure. Since then, in spite of very little search engine position, the bulk of my sales have been largely due to the website. Things were improving. Now, we have this disgraceful economy to deal with! Most people in the horse business are suffering along with a lot of horses.

Things sure haven't gone the way I had planned in my world. My crystal ball is broken. How about you?

Auctions: What sale did you attend? Did you buy or sell a horse? As I stated before, most online or reputable live horse auctions are infrequent, expensive & risky. Especially with weanlings and yearlings. I've heard of horses not bringing enough to cover the commission. The bulk of the monthly or bi-monthly small horse sales in this region are "killer sales" where most of the horses are sold to slaughter buyers, a few to horse traders. As far as the livestock industry goes - online cattle auctions account for an bi g chunk of all feeder & stocker cattle sales right now and that figure is growing daily. I've been in the livestock industry my entire life and currently work with both Live cattle and Video cattle auction representatives and they say the internet video livestock auctions will likely dominate livestock sales in the near future.

I'm very new and inexperienced at the website/internet marketing game. You're right, it may be too late. Have I made a lot of mistakes - YOU BET. Should I cut my losses and move on - probably. Can I wrestle this bus out of the ditch & back onto the road - maybe. It may kill me, but for a lifetime of blood, sweat, tears and horses, I have to keep trying...

Thanks,
Kristi

Kristi - I wasn't attacking you so I hope you don't take it that way. Remember - we know nothing about you than a single post and I was thinking out loud.

I make a huge portion of my living doing SEO work for clients. The entire point of my post was I hoped you were doing whatever you can off-line to compensate for the amount of time it's going to take for your rankings to improve - it doesn't happen overnight.

The worst part is with a huge influx of links from here (if it's really that big) can have a NEGATIVE impact on your sites rankings.

That means instead of going forward you go backwards.... not good when your in trouble.

Again - not trying to deflate any hopes. Just sometimes you shouldn't expect miracles with website rankings. NEVER goes the way you hope it will fast enough with out a rock solid plan and enough time.

If you were a client of mine there would be a number of things we would do -- and I'll list them. Some of them are going to be beyond your skill set since your new to all this.

Clean up the website
1.) Redesign your website using valid html/css code. In your case I would have some kind of 'WYSIWYG' admin area so you could add and remove horses and post new content.

Why? Your current sites code is a nightmare. It's from using ms 2003 - and it's fixable. However, it would just be cheaper and easier in the long run to redo it with a proper content management system.

How you can do it cheaper: There are a lot of CMS systems you can use for free since you aren't a technical wizard. You might want to check out joomla. It's open source, has a number of "plugins" that help with seo.

Deal with the "new structure of your site:

2.) Redirect all your existing pages using .htaccess and 301 redirects to the new pages you've made with your CMS. This way you don't lose out on your link juice for any links you have out there.

Huh? Redirecting existing pages to go to a new site is how you tell the search engines there is a 'new' version of this page out there.

This is pretty technical, and your probably better of paying someone a few bucks to do it for you. Most CMS's already have a .htaccess file so your going to be hacking into something existing.

The alternative is to pick up another 9 dollar domain and some hosting and "start over" keeping both sites up and running.

Smart Linking Strategy

3.) Set up a series of sites around specific keywords related to your quarter horses. Selling tack? Make a blog about it. Something special about one of your horses. Make a video blog about it.

Why? All of these sites should link back up to your "main" site pages. You can build links to these extra sites in a random crazy fashion like is going on now and still get link juice pushed towards your main site with out risking anything.

Long Term Link Building: For your main site you want a slow steady stream of new links. Not thousands at a time - but smart structured links.
Target X links for "quarter horses" over 6 months to a year.
Target X Links for "selling quarter horses" over 6 months to a year.
Target X Links for "quarter horses for sale in CITY, STATE" over 6 months to a year.

Why? Slow steady growth on your "main site" is a smart thing. You want Google to find you - but you don't want Google to find 1000000 new links overnight.

Press Release: Not all websites should do press releases. In fact most shouldn't. You however are in a rough industry that is getting news coverage. A few "press releases" from you will probably get picked up. Your site being not perfect might even be a benefit since it makes you look like a real person.

I'm sure one of your horses are special - or you've rescued one that needs a home, or you have one that needs a home. That's a press release.

"Maybe" you could hold some kind of benefit for a horse related rescue organization by selling a horse and donating it all. The extra exposure could sell other horses, etc..

Just thinking out loud here - I had a pony when I was a kid and we had a couple of horses, but other than the small number of sheep on the farm we haven't had any 'real' horses in many years. I'm 34, and I think "tony the pony" died when I was 8 or 9.

The Delaware state fair seemed to have a lot going on when we went to watch one of our friends kids compete in the horse shows. There were lot's of livestock and horses there - being shown, bought and sold. Might have been a small amount - dirt farmer family, not horses and cows

[homebse]

Kristi,
I would like to help in some way. I agree that too many backlinks too quickly might not be good in Google's eyes. That said, I have several websites and am willing to provide some backlinks for you. Maybe you could moderate and let us all know when to post our backlink so that we are not all doing it at one time.

I agree with the person who suggested Craigslist and you might also try USFreeAds.

Let me know about the links. Those are some beautiful horses.

Jackie

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by stma

The worst part is with a huge influx of links from here (if it's really that big) can have a NEGATIVE impact on your sites rankings.

There, I Fixed It.: 82K links, PR5 in about 2 months. Yep, boy did they get penalized for getting too many links from a diverse collection of sites and IP addresses. In other words, large scale, clearly organic, non-reciprocal, diverse links won't hurt a site even in a short period of time.

I agree that the site is a mess from the coding perspective but that's not a major problem in that industry. If they were a tech website, sure, they need to use the latest and greatest but the livestock industry isn't quite as tech savvy. Perhaps the most important thing to do would be to make sure the site is dial-up friendly because many people who live out where you can keep horses don't have high speed Internet yet.

I agree that video could be a big help although, once again, rural dial-up users may not be able to view it.

As for a link wheel, this might be difficult for them to do in the short term. They would probably be better off socializing in horse specific forums and blogs for now. Long term, building feeder wheel sites is a good idea.

Press releases, another good idea, as well as contacting the local media to see if they can feed it to the big news feeds.

[Joe118]

Completely agree with this. No penalty for fast link building, as long as it looks natural. Kristi you might make it look natural by refreshing your front page with some new items, so that there's a good reason for the link influx.

And I have a piece of software that I'm using today to build at least one linkwheel for Kristi's main page; I'll be handing her the "keys" to these linkwheel properties so that they can serve Kristi long term.

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

There, I Fixed It.: 82K links, PR5 in about 2 months. Yep, boy did they get penalized for getting too many links from a diverse collection of sites and IP addresses. In other words, large scale, clearly organic, non-reciprocal, diverse links won't hurt a site even in a short period of time.

I agree that the site is a mess from the coding perspective but that's not a major problem in that industry. If they were a tech website, sure, they need to use the latest and greatest but the livestock industry isn't quite as tech savvy. Perhaps the most important thing to do would be to make sure the site is dial-up friendly because many people who live out where you can keep horses don't have high speed Internet yet.

I agree that video could be a big help although, once again, rural dial-up users may not be able to view it.

As for a link wheel, this might be difficult for them to do in the short term. They would probably be better off socializing in horse specific forums and blogs for now. Long term, building feeder wheel sites is a good idea.

Press releases, another good idea, as well as contacting the local media to see if they can feed it to the big news feeds.

[stma]

Your forgetting that she has no control over where these links are coming from -- some well wishing but ignorant person trying to "help" could hurt her.

It certainly could have a negative short term affect on her rankings even if in a month or two things leveled out for the better. Sounds like a 2 month drop could actually hurt her.

My advice was long term - as it should be for a business site. Plenty of short term things she could do to 'help' off line and on-line. She's been selling horses for many years, she knows the business. She just has to be creative.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by stma

Your forgetting that she has no control over where these links are coming from -- some well wishing but ignorant person trying to "help" could hurt her.

If that was the case people could 'help' their competitors this way.

[Joe118]

Originally Posted by stma

Your forgetting that she has no control over where these links are coming from -- some well wishing but ignorant person trying to "help" could hurt her.

It certainly could have a negative short term affect on her rankings even if in a month or two things leveled out for the better. Sounds like a 2 month drop could actually hurt her.

My advice was long term - as it should be for a business site. Plenty of short term things she could do to 'help' off line and on-line. She's been selling horses for many years, she knows the business. She just has to be creative.

I've given up fighting this urban folklore myth long ago; it's not worth my energy. Please go read Matt Cutts' blog. He states very clearly that NO MATTER WHO LINKS TO YOU you're never ever ever going to get penalized.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

[Kay King]

You don't control who links to you so it won't hurt you.
But if you are the one posting the links to your own site, it might.

Same story - different verse.

[metafever]

Originally Posted by Tom Brite

Looks like with all these peoples help your site might actually have a negative resulting outcome.

Yea, i am going with Tom on this one.

This has the making of a fiasco . . . and fast!

[mikewebb]

What geographic area are you trying to target?

[sevenish]

I do remedial SEO, but I'm not familiar yet with "emergency SEO".

I appreciate Ed Charktow's comments here.

Edit: I can contribute a total SEO audit.

[Kristi61]

Your are all Angels!!!

Sorry I've been absent - lightning storms here yesterday till early this morning - had to unplug my computer.

I'll bring you all up to date as best I can now:

The following are VERY SPECIAL PEOPLE!

Steve Diamond has started a Social Bookmarking campaign for me. Over the next week he's working on getting my horse story, "Another Unsung Hero", 150 bookmarks on places like Delicious, Diigo, Folkd, jumptags, ect. He also sent me an in-depth SEO analysis of my website so I can start to make some changes. It is a very well organized analysis of how my website compares to the top ten Google competitors under a specific search term (Quarter Horses for sale) & shows you specifically what areas in your site need improvement based on the comparison. A Very helpful tool !!

Wendy is submitting a collection of my horse stories for me over the next few days using ArticleBot to submit to more than 400 directories.

Joe 118 set me up with a link wheel on Xanga, Wordpress & Squidoo using the copy from my home page.

Omar set me up with Squidoo and put up a lens using one of my horse stories, "A God Blessed Filly", with her pictures.

Thunderbird is working on using a collection of photos of my horses and some copy to formulate a Youtube video with music for me. - I can't wait to see it!

Matt offered to make a new website for me for free - I probably should have taken him up on it now that I know how messed up my MSO Publisher code is. But... I referred him to the horse rescue organizations out there that are in a crisis right now dealing with a huge influx of unwanted and unfit horses. Should I have accepted his kind offer?

PeachesNCream graciously offered 10% of the profits from her upcoming WSO! Tempting but...Again, I referred her to the horse rescue organizations.

Mandy is proof-reading my horse stories and sent me a wonderful motivational ebook she has written " Power Up Your Potential "

Suzanne has written some 1st draft Quarter Horse articles for me to proof-read and edit.

Andrew Gowan gave me some needed instruction on how to better use my keyword meta tag words.

Ed Charktow gave me his professional analysis of my website including: issues in my site's code and some in depth advice on how to improve it, along with some long term link building techniques and traffic building ideas.

Wow!!! Let me say that again, WOW !!! You guys really know how to get things done in a hurry!!! I don't know how I can ever repay you but if I can ever help you I'll do my best! Again, Thank You from the bottom of my heart! You can't possibly know how much this means to me! Even if I never get to page 1 Google, I'll never forget how you've rallied around me to help me & my horses. I hope someday to be able to use the instruction that's been given to me here to "Pay it Forward".

I suddenly have a LOT to learn and absorb! Again, I'm so grateful to all of you who have donated your time and expertise to aide me in resolving my crisis.

To respond to a few other comments:

I've always had photo ads on mutiple free classified horse sites as well as Craigslist and they have helped somewhat driving traffic to my site but in most cases my ads are buried amongst 100,000 other horse ads & they only offer subscription paid feature ads & links - horsefeed takes $ priority.

I do have posters and business cards posted regionally where I can. If you attended the American Quarter Horse World Show in Oklahoma City you would have seen my posters and business cards everywhere...along with thousands of others.

I have been updating the website 2-3 times a year adding new photos/pages as the new ones are born and the unsold horses mature as well as mark some of them sold. Since I'm on a back-country SLOW Netzero dial-up connection ( all I can afford ) I have had to send a CD copy of my website to a 3rd party to upload for me. I recently was given permission by my husbands boss to use their wireless Hughsnet connection so I'll be learning to do this myself.

I've got a very basic grasp of how PPC works and can see how someone like me could get into real trouble.

About the horse business:
I am a very very small fish in an ocean of well established, competitive Quarter Horse outfits. The economic recession has had a disastrous effect on all pleasure activity/hobby related industries, among them, the horse industry. It can be a very expensive activity/hobby and in economic times like these many horse breeders, trainers, contestants, owners/enthusiasts cannot afford to buy/own and maintain horses anymore. The market is flooded with horses people are trying to sell because of this. If you've been to my website you know what our goal is...To produce and sell quality, affordable, young Registered Quarter Horses!!! The increased expenses due to high feed and fuel costs have made it impossible to turn a profit at the prices we normally set. Delema - how much can the market bear price-wise?? Our current prices reflect a loss. In this economy I have to increase my exposure to capture the interest of those who can still afford/buy a Quarter Horse, hopefully creating enough demand that I can inch up the prices to a profitable level. Thus, page 1-2 Google is an extemely important goal of survival. It may be too late but I have to keep trying...to the bitter end if neccessary.
Where do our customers come from? All over the USA, Canada & Mexico. We even had a near sale to a wonderful lady in Whales who still keeps in touch every time I send an update notice with one of my horse stories - she thinks I should write a book! Sales within our region are also a very important element but Oklahoma has the highest per capita ownership of horses in the USA and the impact of the disgraceful economy are flooding the market with a huge volume of horses in a region where the competition is historically fierce. In addition, we moved our operation from SW Kansas to this area in NE Oklahoma 5 years ago at the beginning of the decline in the horse market as well as the beginning of the widespread drought. We sunk every dime we had into building a bare bones operation with plans of further development of the property. In retrospect a huge mistake! We lost our former customer base due to the unexpected high cost of travel and have had a hard time making progress locally due to all the cheap horses available here.

Truly good horses are still worth something and, according to most of my customers, my horses are really exceptional for the money. I've just got to get more people to see them!

I have a lot of hats to wear and I'm doing my best to juggle them all to improve what I can.

This is a just a basic overview of my story. I hope that adequately answers some of your questions.

Many, Many Thanks,
Kristi

[stma]

Originally Posted by Joe118

I've given up fighting this urban folklore myth long ago; it's not worth my energy. Please go read Matt Cutts' blog. He states very clearly that NO MATTER WHO LINKS TO YOU you're never ever ever going to get penalized.

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO

Hmmm so all those sites spamming with xrumer that get de-indexed must agree with Cutts huh? A white hat site with original content I can get de-indexed in about an hours worth of work.

It's a fact that enough links from the enough wrong places CAN hurt your websites.

How many sites do you operate for yourself or for clients? How many times have you been hired to "fix" a site that is plummeting in rankings because of what amounts to links? Do you have any ideas how many times I've heard something along these lines:

I hired xyz company to build links for my site to improve my keyword rankings. Instead of improving I'm totally off of the first 30 pages of results.

A lot of the links that some of these folks are 'giving' her look like paid links, some will be sitewide, some might be spamming message boards for her, etc...

What Cutts says isn't always what really happens. Do you realize that people actually pay folks to get other sites de-indexed? It's very common, and it's something a lot of seo firms do that they don't advertise.

I'll make you a deal. You give me a website urls of yours. I'll get you some links - let's compare your "rankings" in a month after I'm done. Even though you have a lot of new links, you won't be showing up as high as you are right now. If I go overboard I'll have you de-indexed.

Cutt's says it can't be done - yet it happens to webmasters all the time.

Not turning this into an argument with you - this is just what I do for a living, not a hobby. I see the results of what haphazard or irresponsible link building can do to a sites "value" over time. There are immediate repercussions and long term ones.

I gave the OP here some solid advice for long term promotion of her business. It's good advice - even when it's nothing to do with seo. TO MANY HANDS IN THE POT SPOILS THE SOUP.

[Joe118]

Thanks Ed. I'm not going to argue either. I agree that too many cooks spoil the stew.

[Kristi61]

Ed,

Please read my latest post to the thread showing all the activities that I know about and let me know if you think we've gone too far with links.

Many, Many Thanks

[Kristi61]

I've been taking notes and printing out your advice.

I have a few questions about what I can do with no money, my skills & software in the short term. They're probably dumb questions but...

Has the new addition of the extra category pages w/webring-type linking between them and the associated nav bar insulted Google? My MSN and Yahoo rankings are steady page 1 and 2. (last time I checked)

Are the category pages, nav bar, interlinking, useful to either visitors or SEO? Should I remove them?

What is the concensus about keyword density? I've been trying follow the instructions in Dan Thies SEO Fast Start ebook - recommends a lot of keywords unless I have misinterpreted...but I may have too many in my title and description as well as my homepage copy and text links in my for sale page. I'm just scared to change things and make it worse. My site is much more recent (created in Aug 2007) than my top ten competitors(next newest is 2005)

My site has browser compatibility issues due to my MSO PUlisher 2003 program. I think I have researched the fix for that but - are browser compatibility issues noted by search engines?

Also:

If I get to where I can buy new inexpensive website designer software, what do you recommend for a beginner? I looked at XSite Pro 2 (197.00) and Coffecup Visual Site Designer (50.00). Any opinions?

Thanks Again,
Kristi