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

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

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.

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?


Best wishes..

Omar
RaulOmarDiaz[at]Gmail[dot]com

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

Steve

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

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

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.

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.

Yea, i am going with Tom on this one.

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

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

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

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/

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

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

Kristi,
I know where you're at. I've got 11 horses (both quarters & paints), and I've got 150 bales of hay stacked to last me. My regular supplier has run out of both rounds and squares and all the other suppliers around want at least double for the price of hay. I've been doing my due diligence in building up my backlinks to my main site...but the results won't be immediate. I'm now looking for a little on site SEO help...just to make sure I've got my T's crossed and my I's dotted!

Of course it's terribly hard to sell a horse in this market...even here in Canada...so I sold my best broodmare for $1000 less than I paid for her...her now yearling filly, well no one has even come to look at her....and I've got a beautiful young gelding I can't get any action on either.

I'm very concerned as we are so early in the season...and there won't be any new hay until the end of May here. I've got our tiny farm up for sale...so we can go up country and buy a bigger farm so the hay problem won't be an issue (not to mention it will free up some much needed CASH!)

So I sympathize with your plight. I really do....now go on your favorite horse forums....and make sure you're link is showing up in your signature! AND don't come across as this desperate on those posts....you know how horse people get!

Take care...this too shall pass.

Your stud is beautiful.