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I have a website that i have tried to optimise for the search term "widgets". The 2 higest ranking site only have a PR of 6, my site currently has a PR of 4.
I have no money to spend on the site but i was wondering what is the best way to to get a decent (like somwhere on the first page) ranking?
I have already gone through and built my meta tags and matched the keywords with the body text and i have also checked out some sites that check over your page for to let you know it it is any good. Every time i go to these sites it says that my page is looking very good but when i take a look at some PR prediction tools it says that my PR will remain the same?
Im not sure if i can post my URL here so i wont do that just yet but if asked i can post it so that someone could take a look for me?
Any advice?
Many thanks,
Neal
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 2:55 pm (utc) on Nov. 20, 2004]
[edit reason] widgetized [/edit]
>get a decent (like somwhere on the first page) ranking
depending on the size of the keyword, links are your best offense. Go find as many inbound links as you can. This will raise your PR and consequently raise your rankings.
The second big important step for a newer site, is to focus deeper on longer keywords. Go for 4 keyword phrases instead of 3keyword (leave those big money keywords for the big players and focus on the longer more targeted keyword phrases where it is easier to get good rankings).
For example, if someone wants to find a miserable failure, she might miss the space bar and accidentally search for "George WBush". There are only about 500 results for this term, so the competition is essentialy nill.
On the other hand, there are about 12,000,000 results for "George W Bush" and 157,000 for "miserable failure".
You can fiddle aound with the Overture search term suggestion tool for inspiration.
You can fiddle aound with the Overture search term suggestion tool for inspiration.
Be careful with that one as the keywords/phrases it shows you aren't always what users are actually typing in. Overture has a large plural/synonym/stop word database to work from and shows what IT considers to be the searched for phrase rather than what it actually was.
It gives a reason for people to come back, like the forums at webmasterworld, and it creates source of free content for search engine spiders, as well as increases the possiblity that people will find your site useful an link to it.
Also, incoming links are very important, so keep adding incoming links and writing new content.
If you're targeting the phrase "blue widgets", you want your anchor text (the hyperlinked part) to read "blue widgets" and not your anchor to read "our company" with a description that says "we make blue widgets. In otherwords you want links like this:
Blue Widgets - quality widgets from our company
Widgets - Made in the USA
Quality Blue Widgets - from our company
... where the part before the "-" is the anchor. Mix them up so they're not all the same.
--Mark
2. Everytime you visit other sites that do well look at their source ,,learn from other webmasters. Its all good , everything helps.
3. Sticky me with the site ill have a look and see what i can offer by the way of advice.
4. Buy a big coffee pot.
With a budget of zero, go out and submit to as many free directories as possible (search around for some good lists). Use your keyword in the title if possible.
You can also write a press release and how-to article, and submit those to appropriate sites (make sure your link is embedded in the articles and also in your author bio).
That's my link building game plan when I have a budget of zero. It works every time. Only cost is time (and lots of it).
Not a boast, just some encouragement. How did I get there? Read Brett's post!
Suggy
My site is about 20% business and 80% info and a lot of my traffic comes from the info that I have posted on my site (graphic tutorials, etc.) and I utilize that to direct people to the money making part of my site (there is just so much you can do when your top keyword phrase is very popular and you don't pay for advertising, but there are other ways around that).
