Ranking help required - MS SEO matrix included

[Diver Doug]

Hi all,

I've tried another forum to get an answer, but so far I haven't I got anything. I figured that I should come here first to see if anyone knows.

My problem is my ranking for my site. I've done all the recommended things like have the keyword in the domain, get backlinks (including .edu/.gov sites), write articles, etc, but my google ranking has yet to get above 200. However, I am ranked #1 in Yahoo for both broad and phrase...WTF?!?!!

From my experience so far, the more backlinks I get, the LOWER my ranking gets.

I've included a snapshot of my MS SEO matrix. The first three are my created sites (ie the first one is my blog, followed by a hub page, then a squidoo lens).



My site is http://(keyword)info.com (all other top-level sites were taken)

Now here's what I don't get. The #8 site (http://(keyword).net) has NO blacklinks whatsoever. In fact, if you were to go to the site, you'd see that it is only one page, and the key word is mentioned only 3 times!!!

For the other sites, I would have thought that having the keyword in the domain PLUS having .edu/.gov backlinks, creating hubpages/squidoo lenses and writing articles (and socially bookmarking them) would have at least got my site into the top ten, considering that the #8 spot is virtually nothing.

My question is, what the hell am I doing wrong? If anyone has any advice, it would be most appreciated...looking forward to participating more in this forum!

Diver Doug

PS

here's some recent stats for my page

16th of Dec - 222
17th - 230
18th - 237
19th - 241
20th - 230
21st - 535 ...WTF ??? Note:this happened to me yesterday (20th) and the ranking went back to 230 later that day...huh??

[GeorgR.]

I analyzed your keyword, it has 1.7 Million (!) competing pages in google...did you seriously think you have a chance to rank this? That's a LOT of competing sites. For me anything over 150k SEOC is already "not easy" (still worth a try on eza, squidoo etc..) ...otherwise for new sites i shoot even lower, like <50k, often <30.....but 1.7Million? If you get to #1 with this let me know, i'll sure buy that WSO

[Fraggler]

I just had a look at your site and the sites you are competing against and it looks like you are on the right track. How old is the site? If it was created on the 16th of Decemeber then you have not given it anywhere near enough time to judge results. Wait at least 1 month before you start seeing any real indication of how it is improving.

Your anchor text to your links is poor and inconsistent. If you want to rank for the keyword in the screenshot (it isn't hard to know what it is) then you need anchor text with that exact phrase in it with no extra words. Make some links with just the keyword and you will see a pretty quick improvement.

Find a few high PR blogs to comment on. There will be heaps with related subject matter. Ask a couple for a guest article. The subject matter of your site would allow you to join many forums that will let you add a signature with hyperlink.

Sort out the anchor text and wait a month and it will increase.

[Fraggler]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

I analyzed your keyword, it has 1.7 Million (!) competing pages in google...did you seriously think you have a chance to rank this? That's a LOT of competing sites. For me anything over 150k SEOC is already "not easy" (still worth a try on eza, squidoo etc..) ...otherwise for new sites i shoot even lower, like <50k, often <30.....but 1.7Million? If you get to #1 with this let me know, i'll sure buy that WSO

Number of page sin Google is irrelevant. The top 10 lacks on-site SEO, PR, and low backlinks. It will be easy to rank for once everything is sorted out.

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by Fraggler

Number of page sin Google is irrelevant. The top 10 lacks on-site SEO, PR, and low backlinks. It will be easy to rank for once everything is sorted out.

this is interesting, but contradicts all i know, i would have to ask whats the use in filtering for SEOC in the first place then? <-- thats what i filter out first all the time.

But i see what you're saying and you have a point there.

[Diver Doug]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

I analyzed your keyword, it has 1.7 Million (!) competing pages in google...did you seriously think you have a chance to rank this? That's a LOT of competing sites. For me anything over 150k SEOC is already "not easy" (still worth a try on eza, squidoo etc..) ...otherwise for new sites i shoot even lower, like <50k, often <30.....but 1.7Million? If you get to #1 with this let me know, i'll sure buy that WSO

According to my research (ie Market Samurai and Google) and done just 5 mins ago, there are less than 30000 competing sites (29800 to be exact according to Google vs 31800 for MS...a discrepency that's not really worth worrying about) for the keyword (exact, not a broad search).

I may be a newbie, but at least one of my brain cells would have told me that trying to rank #1 against 1.7 million competing sites is pretty much impossible. I don't think you analysed the right keyword, as even if I did a Google broad search for my keyword (done while composing this post), it comes up with about 97000 competing sites.



According to MS, there are almost 3000 searches daily for my keyword, so assuming there are around 30000 competing sites, I figure there's some good potential.


Thanks for the reply nonetheless....

Diver Doug

[Fraggler]

At most it can be used as an initial filter like you say but you may run the risk of removing terms that are easy to rank wll for but has a lot of pages indexed in Google. allintitle is a bit better but there is a chance that even with a high allintitle the top 10 might not even have the keywords in the title.

Your competition is always the people in the place you want to rank at. To get a higher position you need to be a better page than the page in that position. Anyone can make a site that includes keywords in the title but only a small percentage of those will be search engine optimised. This also removes the Title as a hoop you have to jump through because it is simple to achieve. This goes for H1, URL, Description and Keyword density as well.

You are left competing based on PR, Backlinks (authority, relevancy etc), and domain age. If you can match these then you can also be in that position (page 1). If you can match these and the top 10 sites also lack the basic on-site SEO then you are cool bananas and it will just be a matter of time before you are on page 1.

Diver Doug - don't worry about "number of competing sites".

[Fraggler]

Your keyword has 1088 exact searches a day which is still very very nice

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fraggler

Number of page sin Google is irrelevant. The top 10 lacks on-site SEO, PR, and low backlinks. It will be easy to rank for once everything is sorted out.

Gentleman what site are we talking about? The one in his signature link. Trying to figure out where 1.7 million comes in. Fraggle quite right. I don't know why this search results number keeps perpetuating itself . I can come up for search terms in serps I am not even remotely competing for.. Thats just a count of how many sites have the word that google has indexed not of which sites are competing for it. Unless something else is meant.

[Fraggler]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I don't know why this search results number keeps perpetuating itself . I can come up for search terms in serps I am not even remotely competing for...

It keeps coming up because people who should know better use that number to falsely promote that their WSO method boosts their latest article to #1 for a super duper competitive term...the term is actually simple to get to #1 for and gets 3 or 4 searches a day.

[Diver Doug]

Originally Posted by Fraggler

I just had a look at your site and the sites you are competing against and it looks like you are on the right track. How old is the site? If it was created on the 16th of Decemeber then you have not given it anywhere near enough time to judge results. Wait at least 1 month before you start seeing any real indication of how it is improving.

Your anchor text to your links is poor and inconsistent. If you want to rank for the keyword in the screenshot (it isn't hard to know what it is) then you need anchor text with that exact phrase in it with no extra words. Make some links with just the keyword and you will see a pretty quick improvement.

Find a few high PR blogs to comment on. There will be heaps with related subject matter. Ask a couple for a guest article. The subject matter of your site would allow you to join many forums that will let you add a signature with hyperlink.

Sort out the anchor text and wait a month and it will increase.

thanks for being the first person to give me a reply that WASN'T condescending (ie on other forums!)

You mentioned in the post that my anchor text was poor and inconsistent. Can you elaborate? As far as I'm aware, my keyword was placed properly and I've made links (ie written articles etc.) with just the keyword in it. If you could have a quick look at my blog and tell me what you think, it would be most appreciated! (send me a PM

I've joined numerous topic related forums and placed a hyperlink in my signature as well. One of them even let me put a direct affiliate link on it as a product review! Got heaps of hops out of that one!

I figure my next bet would be to wait until Google updates the page rank. Does anyone know when this would be done?

Oh ya, the site is about 3-4 weeks old, so I guess it's still quite young. I thought things would have happened by now, so am I just being impatient?


anyway, thanks again for your criticisms.

Best regards,

Diver Doug

PS

On an unrelated topic, are you a Lions fan or a Broncos fan ? (I live in Brisbane too...Capalaba to be exact)

[GeorgR.]

Ok i stand corrected:

I did indeed analyse the wrong one, got the right one now. Looks VERY good to me.
You should not have any problems ranking this, i'd say just keep building links.

SEOC SEOTC is very low, and looking at the matrix the competition is indeed weak.
I would not know why you wouldnt be able to rank this? Maybe you're just impatient. This looks like a guaranteed #1 - #3 spot to me looking at the stats.

Edit: You have open, uncloaked clickbank links on there...it SHOULD not matter...but you never know..Google becomes weirder every day.

[Fraggler]

I very rarely miss a Broncos game =P Don't get into the AFL much though.

Your anchor text isn't terrible, it just isn't being used the best for your site. Your main page (the .com) is trying to rank for the keyword phrase in the original post, correct? If so then you should build a few using just that phrase.

Through my quick analysis (SEO Spyglass):

• I didn't find one link with your anchor text being the desired keyword phrase.
• 56.5% (44 Links) no longer exist.
• 16.5%(14 Links) are using your website.
• The rest are your username, long sentances, click here,read full story etc.

If you have built other links they might not be showing up yet. If you can update these links then change them to your keyword phrase and it will help quite a bit.

For your site, I would change the link structure over to something more SEO friendly. In Wordpress Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks > change it to a custom structure /%category%/%postname%/ This will let you get more keywords into your URLS.

[GeorgR.]

Interesting to mention that i just read a related blog Does the Google Sandbox Still Exist? | SEO.com

i think your site might be simply in the sandbox....respective you should give this WAY more time to even start evaluate ranks.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

Ok i stand corrected:

I did indeed analyse the wrong one, got the right one now. Looks VERY good to me.
You should not have any problems ranking this, i'd say just keep building links.

Oh. I wasn't sure if maybe he had Pmed you some keywords on another site. I thought I had the wrong site looking at.

[Diver Doug]

Originally Posted by Fraggler

I very rarely miss a Broncos game =P Don't get into the AFL much though.

Your anchor text isn't terrible, it just isn't being used the best for your site. Your main page (the .com) is trying to rank for the keyword phrase in the original post, correct? If so then you should build a few using just that phrase.

Through my quick analysis (SEO Spyglass):

• I didn't find one link with your anchor text being the desired keyword phrase.
• 56.5% (44 Links) no longer exist.
• 16.5%(14 Links) are using your website.
• The rest are your username, long sentances, click here,read full story etc.

If you have built other links they might not be showing up yet. If you can update these links then change them to your keyword phrase and it will help quite a bit.

For your site, I would change the link structure over to something more SEO friendly. In Wordpress Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks > change it to a custom structure /%category%/%postname%/ This will let you get more keywords into your URLS.

New Macquarie Dictionary entry I'm going to submit :

Fraggler = Legend!

Thanks again for that little tip (including the one about the sig !) Of course, I'll have to go ahead and resubmit the links to SocialMarker, but if it's a step in the right direction, I'll take as much time as it takes!.

(and hey, if it does work out, I think I'll have to shout you a ticket to Game three of the State of Origin to watch Queensland make it 5 in a row!)

And to everyone else, thanks so much for your input ! I'll look forward to any more advice..

Best regards,

Diver Doug

[ladyqueen1988]

Wait for your domain to get older. Site with 5 to 6 yrs has chances of getting higher authorized from google.

[Diver Doug]

Originally Posted by ladyqueen1988

Wait for your domain to get older. Site with 5 to 6 yrs has chances of getting higher authorized from google.

But in waiting for it to get older, doesn't that imply that the competing websites get older too? I know that older sites get more preference from Google, but isn't it like i'm in a line, with the older sites in front?

Generally speaking, how old should a site be before you start wondering whether it's worth putting more effort into it? My site is only about a month old, but I would have thought that that would have been long enough to at least notice SOMETHING. The puzzling thing is that my backlinks are ranking higher than my actual site !

Oh well, I'll keep waiting..

Diver D.

[automoversny]

#8 has the the keyword in his domain and from what I can tell about my keywords , they are usually top 10 due to this. Your backlink count is super low