I was starting to get burnt out on SEO. Making less and less progress... in fact seeing my ranking for certain terms drop. I've seen SEO work very well, and lately I've been seeing the opposite.
Then suddenly I found out that one of my corporate pages is ranked #1 in Google for my name... haha. It's because I blog on a few different sites and each post comes up with "Posted by my name" and it's linked to that page.... LOL.
OK, so SEO still works in Google. I just need to really focus. My competition is laying a whoopin' on me. Unfortunatly blog links have a nofollow tag in them. Still interesting though. Maybe you could change your name in the blogs to a keyword and see what happens??? Of course there isn't any keyword compition using your name. Also, yes SEO still woks on Google...just differently now since BigDaddy. blog comment links have no follows, I'm an author. Dustin as soon as I added my name as an author credit on my blog I started ranking for it. I've even been found on occasion when someone types vangogh, which I find amazing.
Don't give up on the efforts. Sometimes fluctuations in rank are temporary. Search engines trying something new to see how it works. it could be a more permanent algorithm change or it could be less trust is seen in some of your backlinks or simply your competition putting in more effort.
How far have you dropped for the terms? If it's just a few places there isn't really anything to worry about. You can get that back with some more work. If you've disappeared completely for the terms then first give it a little time to see if you come back and if not it might be there's something wrong with the site that can be fixed.
As long as you haven't been practicing manipulative seo the drops are likely fixed. If you have been manipulating things you can still fix it, but it's probably going to take longer. Quote: How far have you dropped for the terms? LOL, depends on the term, but in many cases the answer is... a lot. I made some major changes back in October though, new site design, and forwarded all urls to http://www.domain.com
The number one site, that spot was easily achieved, no market research or anything at all went into it. Just a few links that aren't even there anymore. I believe in a hands on inbound link gainage style SEO, rather than a load of research bull and tweaking tiny things getting you nowhere. And I haven't seen an increase or decline in progress at all. Of course the SEO still works. It's always been the same. If you want to keep up to date with the latest line of code in the search engine algorithms, you're wasting your time, it works perfectly well doing what I do to stay number 1 - nothing. Quote: You say visitors are up. Is that visitors from search engines? Even if not it seems like you're doing something right.
I wouldn't focus too much on KEI. I think it's much less useful than it would seem. A lot of high KEI terms simply aren't going to convert.
One good way to find keywords to target is by looking at your own server logs. If you find keyprhases that have led to conversions in your own stats you may want to optimize more for those phrases and phrases that are similar. thanks for the suggestion Steve. I didn't really think to work on those terms more. I have so many different products that we offer I was focusing more on high-profit items that I thought I could invest in. Of course, 10,000 of my competitors have the same idea.
I just did a check on my past keyword searches that have been resulting in orders, and I'm seeing some similarities between MSN/Yahoo/Google. Not items I've been focusing on, but perhaps I should so I can shoot for that higher conversion.
thanks for the suggestion
Glad to help Dustin.
Stephen no offense intended, but the keyword you're targeting in that search isn't nearly as competitive as you might think. That search is displaying results that contain either the term 'psp' or the term 'forum.' If we dig far enough in the results v7n will be there someplace, but given this forum isn't a psp forum it's really not competing with you.
Try searching with quotes around "psp forum" and you'll see the results drop significantly. Then try searches like:
intitle:"psp forum"
inanchor:"psp forum"
Any site that has done even the most basic of seo for your keyword will have 'psp forum' in the page title. And any that know what they are doing will have used it somewhere in anchor text. The inanchor: search shows 570 results at the moment, meaning there's a lot less sites than you think competing for the term.
You should also know that Google seems to place an added emphasis on exact match domain searches. Given your domain is psp-forum which would be seen as psp forum by search engines it's understandable it would rank #1.
What other phrases does the site rank well for?
Then suddenly I found out that one of my corporate pages is ranked #1 in Google for my name... haha. It's because I blog on a few different sites and each post comes up with "Posted by my name" and it's linked to that page.... LOL.
OK, so SEO still works in Google. I just need to really focus. My competition is laying a whoopin' on me. Unfortunatly blog links have a nofollow tag in them. Still interesting though. Maybe you could change your name in the blogs to a keyword and see what happens??? Of course there isn't any keyword compition using your name. Also, yes SEO still woks on Google...just differently now since BigDaddy. blog comment links have no follows, I'm an author. Dustin as soon as I added my name as an author credit on my blog I started ranking for it. I've even been found on occasion when someone types vangogh, which I find amazing.
Don't give up on the efforts. Sometimes fluctuations in rank are temporary. Search engines trying something new to see how it works. it could be a more permanent algorithm change or it could be less trust is seen in some of your backlinks or simply your competition putting in more effort.
How far have you dropped for the terms? If it's just a few places there isn't really anything to worry about. You can get that back with some more work. If you've disappeared completely for the terms then first give it a little time to see if you come back and if not it might be there's something wrong with the site that can be fixed.
As long as you haven't been practicing manipulative seo the drops are likely fixed. If you have been manipulating things you can still fix it, but it's probably going to take longer. Quote: How far have you dropped for the terms? LOL, depends on the term, but in many cases the answer is... a lot. I made some major changes back in October though, new site design, and forwarded all urls to http://www.domain.com
The number one site, that spot was easily achieved, no market research or anything at all went into it. Just a few links that aren't even there anymore. I believe in a hands on inbound link gainage style SEO, rather than a load of research bull and tweaking tiny things getting you nowhere. And I haven't seen an increase or decline in progress at all. Of course the SEO still works. It's always been the same. If you want to keep up to date with the latest line of code in the search engine algorithms, you're wasting your time, it works perfectly well doing what I do to stay number 1 - nothing. Quote: You say visitors are up. Is that visitors from search engines? Even if not it seems like you're doing something right.
I wouldn't focus too much on KEI. I think it's much less useful than it would seem. A lot of high KEI terms simply aren't going to convert.
One good way to find keywords to target is by looking at your own server logs. If you find keyprhases that have led to conversions in your own stats you may want to optimize more for those phrases and phrases that are similar. thanks for the suggestion Steve. I didn't really think to work on those terms more. I have so many different products that we offer I was focusing more on high-profit items that I thought I could invest in. Of course, 10,000 of my competitors have the same idea.
I just did a check on my past keyword searches that have been resulting in orders, and I'm seeing some similarities between MSN/Yahoo/Google. Not items I've been focusing on, but perhaps I should so I can shoot for that higher conversion.
thanks for the suggestion
Stephen no offense intended, but the keyword you're targeting in that search isn't nearly as competitive as you might think. That search is displaying results that contain either the term 'psp' or the term 'forum.' If we dig far enough in the results v7n will be there someplace, but given this forum isn't a psp forum it's really not competing with you.
Try searching with quotes around "psp forum" and you'll see the results drop significantly. Then try searches like:
intitle:"psp forum"
inanchor:"psp forum"
Any site that has done even the most basic of seo for your keyword will have 'psp forum' in the page title. And any that know what they are doing will have used it somewhere in anchor text. The inanchor: search shows 570 results at the moment, meaning there's a lot less sites than you think competing for the term.
You should also know that Google seems to place an added emphasis on exact match domain searches. Given your domain is psp-forum which would be seen as psp forum by search engines it's understandable it would rank #1.
What other phrases does the site rank well for?