12 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
12 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

SEO They Say It's Simple But It's Driving Me Crazy

by CaptainKirk
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
OK I'm trying to wrap my head around this SEO thing & I feel like I'm getting it all wrong so I need some help and please bear with me if the questions I ask are silly:

My website is St. Lucia Weddings

1) I want to rank for the keyword St. Lucia Weddings. If I spell St. Lucia without the full stop after the t in St is this a different keyword? What if I remove the space between St. & Lucia so that I have St.Lucia Weddings & St. Lucia Weddings. Are these 2 terms different?

2) Do the number of keywords that I use affect my page rank?

3) Do irrelevant keywords reduce pagerank, example if I have Jamaica weddings in my keywords because I know that this term gets a lot of searches even though my site is about St.Lucia weddings?

4) Is there a limit to how many keywords I should use?

5) What about when I tag my photos, should I limit the # of words that I use? I'm posting A Photo A Day For A Year and twittering each post as a way to drive traffic to my site & grow a loyal following. You can see it here St. Lucia Weddings

6) I've installed SEO All in one plugin. Where best to find info on how to configure the info I input?

7) My Permalink Settings look like this:

Common settings

Default Schedule Your FREE HoneyMooners? Delight Consultation | St. Lucia Photographer - Kirk Elliott, Delivers St. Lucia Wedding Photography That Will Take Your Breath Away...GUARANTEED!

Day and name http://stluciaweddingguru.com/2009/03/15/sample-post/

Month and name http://stluciaweddingguru.com/2009/03/sample-post/

Numeric http://stluciaweddingguru.com/archives/123

Custom Structure /%postname%/

With custom structure being the setting that is checked. Is this the best setting and if I change it will it create dead links in my site?

Again, please forgive me if any of these questions appear silly.

It's just that I believe that I have built a good site for brides who plan to travel to St. Lucia for there wedding, however nearly 2 months later I'm not showing up when I search google for many of the keywords that google's keyword research tool bring back & I'm seeing the competition showing up everywhere!

You can therefore imagine my frustration
#crazy #driving #seo #simple
  • Profile picture of the author Suzanne Morrison
    Hi CaptainKirk,

    Here is what I think...

    (1) No - the "." won't make any difference

    (2) Page rank has nothing to do with keywords - page rank is a measure of the quantity and quality of backlinks.

    (3) No, page rank has nothing to do with keywords

    (4) The more keywords that you try to squeeze into your TITLE tags and other important places on your website, the less emphasis that Google will place on these keywords. I usually limit my optimization to no more than 2-3 keyword phrases per page. To increase your traffic add new pages blog posts to your site and optimize each page/post for a different keyword phrase.

    (5) I would keep it short and descriptive and make sure that it is relevant to the photo so that you get picked up in Google Images as well.

    (6) What specific questions do you have about the SEO plugin? I would recommend putting your main keywords in the Home page title box, write a good description containing your keywords in the description box, add a few keywords in the keywords box (not too many) and whenever you make a post make sure that your keywords for that post are in the URL.

    (7) The best setting is the custom structure containing your postname (as long as you are sure to include your keywords for that post in the post name whenever you make a post)


    To get a better ranking the main thing you need to concentrate on now is backlinks.

    If I use the tool at SEO Centro - Link Popularity - Backlinks Checker Tool

    Your site has 74 backlinks

    One of your competitiors (from the first page of Google) - dreamyweddings.com has 2578 backlinks

    Another competitor (also from page 1) stlucia.org has 31,973 backlinks

    A competitior (from page 2 of Google) tropicisleweddings.com has 795 backlinks.

    So you are going to need a few hundred more backlinks to get on to page two of the Google results.


    Cheers,
    Suzanne
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[607163].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author bgmacaw
    As Suzanne pointed out, you're making the common mistake of concentrating on internal SEO rather than external SEO, aka link building. Also, based on the link research she did, you're in a competitive niche that will take some time to crack.
    Signature
    Product Reviews | Earn Online Cash | Free HTML Templates
    Free WordPress Themes: Boring Memo | Dateless Mini-Site | Info Magazine | 100 Twenty-Ten Niche Headers
    Discount Templates, Graphics and Scripts: Templates for Website
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[607233].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author flashgordon
    I agree, at 74 backlinks (or 90 according to Yahoo Sitesearch) you need way more. Focus on off-site SEO: building links with your keywords in the anchor text. There are tons of threads on this forum and others talking about how to do this, but they most boil down to:

    Submitting to directories
    Submitting articles to article directories
    Joining forums and having your link in your signature
    Sending out press releases about your site
    Joining Yahoo and Google groups and putting your site URL in your sig.
    Social bookmarking internal pages of your site
    Using social networks to promote and build links to your site
    Making sure your RSS is working and submitting it to aggregaters/directories
    etc.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[607595].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author CaptainKirk
    Thank you folks for the insight. Gosh I felt like I was flying blind and getting nowhere really fast!

    OK any suggestions on how best to build up quality back links?

    I have used Alltop, all the top stories to find the best page ranked wedding blogs and placed some comments there and I have started placing my blog posts in my Digg account. I guess I should bookmark them in Delicious also.

    I now recall someone mentioning Social bookmarking service. Fast tagging and posting to all major social websites - SocialMarker.com, I'll investigate that also

    Once again,

    Many Thanks,

    Kirk
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[607603].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author SEO.Expert
    Banned
    [DELETED]
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[607815].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author CaptainKirk
      Thanks Bret,

      I'm gonna do a little research and look forward to optimizing my site.

      Cheers,

      Kirk
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[607835].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author parker3773
        And you have to keep at it. I worked hard at it at the beginning and then here came real life and I had to spend much less time at it and my visitor stats suffered.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[607883].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Mickm
    Some link directories are nothing more than link farms, and can actually damage your site -- get link backs from QUALITY sites connected to your niche and choose your directories with care.

    If you're involved in weddings, why not hook up with someone who sells I dunno... wedding hats for example, getting a link from other keyword related sites will do you much more benefit than random link farms.

    The number of links to your site isn't as important as the quality of the links.
    Signature
    SEO Since '97
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[607929].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author bgmacaw
      Originally Posted by Mickm View Post

      Some link directories are nothing more than link farms, and can actually damage your site
      Links to your site can't harm it. Google understands that you have no control over who links to you. If it was possible to do this with simple links it would be very easy to take out competitors by simply linking to them. Truly harmful incoming links are a dicey black hat activity that involve more than just simple linking from a directory.

      Now, if one were to reciprocally link back to these link farm directories that could be a problem or if they used cloaking to hide these links, that could be a problem.
      Signature
      Product Reviews | Earn Online Cash | Free HTML Templates
      Free WordPress Themes: Boring Memo | Dateless Mini-Site | Info Magazine | 100 Twenty-Ten Niche Headers
      Discount Templates, Graphics and Scripts: Templates for Website
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[608196].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Suzanne Morrison
    If you haven't done so already, one very good place to start is by writing and submitting an online press release. This will not only give your site some exposure, but many of the online press release sites are high Page Rank sites so the backlinks you will get from these will be very valuable.

    You have been given lots of other suggestions for backlinks by everyone above, but the main method I use is article writing & distribution, + commenting on relevant blogs (that do no use the nofollow attribute on links).

    Cheers,
    Suzanne
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[609987].message }}

Trending Topics