Help with SEO for my site please?

[danjames20]

Hi warriors, as you can see i'm new here and so looking for the wisdom of fellow warriors to help me try and get higher in Google for my site please?

I've joined Angelas backlinks programme to get my backlinks a bit higher to hopefully help out but still not seeing a lot of activity.

I'm moving a bit up google but can't seem to get above my main rival (portrait4u.co.uk)for the terms 'stourbridge portrait' or on the first page for 'photographer stourbridge' has anyone got any suggestions since i've managed to rank in at PR 3 for my home page.

I've done what I thought best for meta tags, titles etc but still can't get above them?

any help is hugely appreciated, thank you

[dvduval]

I looked at the yahoo inlinks and I only see 3. Whatever you are doing now is not working all that well as far as gaining links. Maybe besides enrolling in a program you should do some things on your own. Here are a few ideas.
1. Go to Info Vilesilencer: The Original SEO Friendly Free Directory List and submit to some directories. Do a handful each day for a week or two
2. Add a link to your site in your signature on this forum, and maybe some others too.
3. I'm not as familiar with this, but submit to some social bookmarking sites.

[danjames20]

thanks i've submitted to many directories but not getting a lot back :/

[Adrian Cooper]

SEO is a long-term strategy.

Google provisionally ranks new sites before the main algorithm places the site in its appropriate position in the SERPS.

Google favors mature sites - i.e. been online a few years,and also domains that have been registered for many years because it shows commitment.

Beyond that Google looks closely for natural linking. For example, links gradually appearing over time, linking to inside pages, appropriate anchor text. Google also looks at where the links are coming from. For example, a link pointing to your photography site from a page about baseball will not impress them too much.

And that is just the start.

Believe me, over the years I and many others have looked at ways to short-circuit the ranking process in every which way. There is no real way it can be done using WH methods.

It is also best to see Google as a friend, not an adversary.

Definitely continue for the long-term, but only if you know what you are doing, otherwise you can do much more harm than good as many have discovered.

[danjames20]

if i just work through the list of directories submitting to the hundreds on there will it help that much?

also should i vary descriptions of the site in each one and also the url? i.e. instead of the home page, link to the weddings or portraits sections?

thanks for your help

[Adrian Cooper]

Originally Posted by danjames20

if i just work through the list of directories submitting to the hundreds on there will it help that much?

also should i vary descriptions of the site in each one and also the url? i.e. instead of the home page, link to the weddings or portraits sections?

thanks for your help

No - it will do much more harm than good - perhaps in the long-term.

To succeed in Google you must think like Google - think natural, organic linking.

Much better to link from half a dozen PR 6 or 7 sites over 6 months, than a gazillion low PR sites over any time scale.

[danjames20]

so I should go through that directory list and look at the PR and only submit to the high ones? i've got quite a few links on the links area of my site to relevant sites (photographer directories etc)

[whseo99]

double post sorry

[danjames20]

hmmmmm, I have a lot to learn I feel :/

[whseo99]

Originally Posted by dvduval

1. Go to Info Vilesilencer: The Original SEO Friendly Free Directory List and submit to some directories. Do a handful each day for a week or two

shameless plug? seeing as every directory listed in the top 100 is using the script listed in your sig?? lol

great resource anyway, thank you will be using this service myself

[Adrian Cooper]

I haven't checked out Angela's links yet but we have communicated and I am impressed.

I expect to be impressed when I buy as well.

Even so, adding such links effectively, without having the opposite effect, still takes time and experience. If you slam all the links at your home page you will damage your site and the integrity of the link sources as well.

[debtfreehispanic]

Yes, be careful not to add links to your site that are paid for as well, I lost my pagerank because of that. So all your hard work can be taken away overnight.

[debra]

Originally Posted by danjames20

Hi warriors, as you can see i'm new here and so looking for the wisdom of fellow warriors to help me try and get higher in Google for my site please?

I've joined Angelas backlinks programme to get my backlinks a bit higher to hopefully help out but still not seeing a lot of activity.

I'm moving a bit up google but can't seem to get above my main rival (portrait4u.co.uk)for the terms 'stourbridge portrait' or on the first page for 'photographer stourbridge' has anyone got any suggestions since i've managed to rank in at PR 3 for my home page.

I've done what I thought best for meta tags, titles etc but still can't get above them?

any help is hugely appreciated, thank you

What's your url so that we(I) can get at the heart of the situation?

BTW- Market Reach is much more important than random linking. For some reason very few are grasping the concept.

And...the problem your addressing doesn't seem to be at the fault of linking.

[danjames20]

my site is danieljamesphotography .net thanks to everyone for the helpful posts

[crystyignat]

Hey,

Here's a couple of suggestions from me:
1/ The title looks TOO spammy. It contains way to much phrases.
2/ You don't have any h1 tag
3/ [Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.portrait4u.co.uk/ - W3C Markup Validator your site contains a lot of errors. I'm sure many seo *experts* will say this is not a must but think about that Google loves technology and since XHML is a standard Google uses it to understand your site easier
4/ You don't have any text on your home page. Since you have abused by the title, your text is here and there. You don't have a couple of pharagraph put together to describe what your website is about.
5/ wwwportrait4u.co.uk/People.htm your url structure is not good enough. Also wwwportrait4u.co.uk/Digital-Sessions.htm your title is missing there. Don't use that long title on all the pages. Create a website title from max 6 keywords that target what you do, then for each page add it's own page before the website title. like Page Title | Website Title This will help ranking an internal page of the website.

USABILITY
You have the contact on the bottom of the page? Try moving that on the top right. Make the phone number more bolded to come in front of the visitors. Remove the wwwportrait4u.co.uk from under the phone number, since the people are already on the site, I'm not sure it makes sense it worths to fill that precious space with the url. I doubt many will keep in mind the domain name if that's your aim.

That's it from me. I hope it helps.

Cristian

[danjames20]

Originally Posted by crystyignat

That's it from me. I hope it helps.

Cristian

that's great but ermmmmm portrait4u is my comeptition for the google top spot not my site, danieljamesphotography .net is my site any chance you could look over that instead please? thanks

[crystyignat]

lol. funny, I read wrong ... try to inspire from your competitor mistakes please, took me at least one hour to do that analysis.

sorry. pm me if you don't understand something ...

Cristian

[Mickm]

Also to add to the advice already given, make sure your site structure is in good order. For example all pages are linked to with the correct anchor text or alt tags, and all pages point back to your home page.

Ideally all pages should be accessed from the home page too and make sure you've got both a sitemap and a site map in place. The difference being one is for search engines and the other is for humans.. but search engines benefit from these aswell.

[crystyignat]

yeah, forgot to tell you to use webmaster tools to submit your sitemap if you haven't done that already.

[Jimerson Farveez]

Yes, If you try to get links from irrelevant site, that is little risky, That would rank you top in Google for keyword search at the same time, that will lead you to loose your PR too. So, If you can get links from related niche forums/blogs/directories that would be helpful. However, if you need to get TOP on google for keyword search, try to get 50% links from releated niche as well as 50% links from OFF niche sources, that looks smart......

[danjames20]

thanks for all the suggestions the site map is a good idea, i'll be doing that later, i've got a sitemap already. Hoping the backlinks will start kicking in and i've gone back over the meta tags on each page to check they're relevant etc so that should help

[Mickm]

I don't think you can go wrong with Angela's backlinks from what I gather, should be a walk in the park.

Good luck

[CaseWhitney]

Hi James,

Did a quick analysis of your on page seo factors in relation to the two keywords, where the competition stands and your url.

This is a short 4 minute video on the steps where you can improve for each of the keywords to increase your rankings.

screencast. com/t/p9nnG0DU7U

Hope this helps get your organic rankings move higher.

[danjames20]

*bows to you* thank you so much that's HUGELY helpful and really straight forward!!! one question, you suggest setting up a specific page for .../stourbridge-photographer.html would you suggest that I could simply makes this the same as the portrait page so that backlinks are going there but its the same as the portrait page basically? I also need to get higher for dudley photographer, would it be a bad idea to do another page for this? .../dudley-photographer or am I pushing it and mayb be penalised by google?

[CaseWhitney]

I'm glad the video was helpful to you. its the fastest way I know to get information out about making suggestions or changes.

re: makes this the same as the portrait page so that backlinks are going there but its the same as the portrait page basically?

Yes you can use most of the same content that you have on your portrait page except you'll want to make it slightly unique content. (have over 30% uniqueness to the original portrait page)

re: dudley photographer
That's not as high competition.

easiest things to work on:
getting a page with that keyword in it built, so /dudly-photographer will work.

screencast. com/t/iLBEwmecK
get your on-page optimized for that keyword (in url, title, meta desc, h1-h6s)
build backlinks to that page at least 5 with a max of 75

You'd be the only on-page optimized site for that keyword with respectable backlinks to page. :-)

much easier to rank for this keyword than for photographer stourbridge.

re: pushing it and getting penalized by G
as long as you're not building an excessive amount of backlinks a day like 50 or 100 using the exact same anchor text and url, you'll be okay. since your domain is not new you most likely won't be subject to any sandboxing while building up your rankings.

Be sure that while your optimizing for search engines the visitor who gets to your site is met with your unique value prop.

[danjames20]

Hmmmm I haven't had to do anything to the site other than change the Title tag and i've leapt up Google!!!

No need for the /stourbridge-photographer seemingly as i'm now number 2 which is great!!! thanks to all the help now to work on dudley photographer

[danjames20]

If I do sites like this:

Stourbridge Photographer | Wedding Photography | Portrait Photographer | by Daniel James

varying the 'proximity to shop' 'local beauty spots' and obviously title tag, meta and description for say 5 or six pages, to try and rank high on ones such as birmingham photographer, wolverhampton photographer and worcester photographer will this work and will it be unique enough do you think?

[absolute20]

Search Engine Optimization is Long term strategy. It can't be done in a day or two. It requires lots of effors and strategic techniques to be followed by professionals. AbsoluteSeo.net is a best seo company. They are providing best Seo Services to increase traffic volume as well as Search Engine Ranking.

[CaseWhitney]

Look at you go moving up in the rankings! Congrats.

varying the 'proximity to shop' 'local beauty spots' and obviously title tag, meta and description for say 5 or six pages, to try and rank high on ones such as birmingham photographer, wolverhampton photographer and worcester photographer will this work and will it be unique enough do you think?

You'll want to do a bit more with the content to make each page around 30% unique to avoid a duplicate content penalty from Google. the distance and local shops is good but you'll also need to add a little something unique for your features and benefits.

Here's an example of a company that does well in locally optimizing for city based ranking:

sunstatemovers .com/location/virginia-beach-movers.php
and
sunstatemovers .com/location/alexandria-movers.php

[danjames20]

<a href="http://www.danieljamesphotography.net/wedding_photography.html">Birmingham Wedding Photographer</a>

<a href="http://www.danieljamesphotography.net/wedding_photography.html">Stourbridge Wedding Photographer</a>

<a href="http://www.danieljamesphotography.net/portrait_photography_packages.html">Stourbridge Portrait Photographer</a>

<a href="http://www.danieljamesphotography.net/wedding_photography.html">Dudley Wedding Photographer</a>

<a href="http://www.danieljamesphotography.net/portrait_photography_packages.html">Dudley Portrait Photographer</a>

right well for now im using the above ^^^^^ anchor text and links to try and boost me up above my competition, working so far so fingers crossed, im using Pauls Backlinks now, a few days after Angelas looks like im google dancing a bit for a few as I changed the title tag and the old ones still showing up, my guess is it'll update and then i'll boost up

thanks for the info about unique content, I have a feeling that'll be something for when its quiet at work as i'd love top spot or page 1 at least for around 10 keywords (I can but try?)

stourbridge portrait photographer / stourbridge portrait
stourbridge wedding photographer

birmingham portrait photographer / birmingham portrait
birmingham wedding photographer - VERY tough I would guess (HUGE area)

dudley wedding photographer
dudley portrait photographer / dudley portrait

wolverhampton portrait photographer / wolverhampton portrait
wolverhampton wedding photographer

worcester portrait photographer / worcester portrait
worcester wedding photographer

not easy I know but I think the separate pages combined with careful backlinking to them month by month from the high PR sites supplied by Paul & Angela should do the trick????

along with meta, title, description etc of course

[gannaaz334]

Now a days this is hot subject on internet.. hundreds of thousands of people looking for online money making ****. its not a child play to get rank in google..the one thing I have relized here that there is no magic formula you should have a lot patience without becoming annoyed or upset.
all the best

[danjames20]

question; how come my competition is doing so well if they have the same page for all 'stourbridge-photographer' style links? shouldn't google have penalised them by now???

[basmin]

hi all, i have one question.
how about propeller ? Is this a good place to get a backlink?

[danjames20]

i've updated stourbridge-photographter

Stourbridge Photographer | Wedding Photography | Portrait Photographer | by Daniel James

is this any better content wise?

If i change the alt tags of the images will this help too?

thanks