Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I have been careful to embed my keyword phrases in the content, my content is relevant, I have some links to my site but not more than 20. I have used Google Sitemaps, I manually submit every month or two, and update my page content.
My site is about a year old. Isn't that long enough?
Does this seem fair? Given this, you have to wonder if Google's ranking algorithms really achieve what they set out to - to bring back the most relevant sites for visitors.
Have I been banned?
No -- you are on page 5, right?
I have some links to my site but not more than 20
There you have it, I'd say. Links and keywords in that link text.
I have exactly the same problem on one of my client websites. I've been doing Google-optimization for a longer time, and I've never met this problem before.
Read on:
My client website is 100% optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. Still, sites that isn't optimized at all or doesn't even have this word in the title tag, gets HIGHER up on the Google-search results. My client page has been on searchresult-page 32 for several months. I just don't understand what has happened with Google lately..
Can anyone tell me why my clients site, which is higly Google optimized and gets #1 on other engines, ends up on searchresult-page 32 on Google itself?
Their are plent of PR 1 to PR4 sites ahead of me.
I have 100 links all from PR4 or PR5 sites which are highly relevent.
The other sites have many thousands of PR0 to PR1 links to non-relevent sites, FFA directories, and just plain spam.
It appears that Google counts the number of links and not your actual PR (or relevancy of links )when determining placement.
I guess I just have to setup a dixie cup email address and submit to the FFA's and spam directories, so I will improve in the Google rankings.
Still, sites that isn't optimized at all or doesn't even have this word in the title tag, gets HIGHER up on the Google-search results.
And there you have your answer! It is imperative that you write naturally as Google is able to detect semantic flow. Over optimized pages will get nailed while those which are written naturally will be rewarded! :)
In many other cases I see sites with barely any links outrank my site in allinanchor, 1 link from one keyword phrase shouldn't outrank 20 links with the same phrase for allinanchor.
I don't know what Google is doing but whatever it is it's time to move on.
Have you looked at the age of the other sites?
That is another, important, factor.
40 - 50+ black hat redirects are listed ahead of it.
The challenge in all of this is not to let our frustration with someone else's tactics derail us from doing productive work on our own sites. If we lose too much focus that can set us back as much as whatever it is some bad guy is doing in the SERPs.
Take a minute to use the "Help Us Improve" link at the bottom of the search page to submit a comment on that particular search. That will make sure Google knows about it.
Then gather your wits and get back to working on something positive that will help your own business to move forward.
Usually you can outrank a site with same age and same or even higher PR and similar amount of quality links by increasing keyword density--but don't over do it. You'll never do it with only 20 links however unless a couple of them are very high PR.
When checking your site for links use Yahoo. If your site ranks #1 for links then you may need more and higher PR links as Yahoo usually lists the higher pr sites first.
I just don't understand what happened...
How many times does Google have to say (and demonstrate) that rankings are based on over a hundred variables before folks stop wondering why their favorite 3 variables haven't put them on top?
my clients site, which is higly Google optimized
So, can you rattle off about a hundred different variables they've optimized for? How did they go about making all the pages more than 5 years old, for example? How did they go about increasing the number of different Class C IP ranges that clicked on them in the SERPs? How did they reduce the # of people who clicked on them in the SERPs and then went right back to Google to click on a different result for the same search term? Got any stats on that?
Does this seem fair?
It is totally unfair. Google should clearly explain how I can rank #1 for my given search term... umm, without helping all the 2,000 other people who also want to be #1 for that search term. I worked really hard, so I should get what I want and the other 2,000 people who worked really hard (though not always on what I think should be important to Google ranking) should not. Unfair, unfair, unfair!
So we can't be ignorant to these sites.
HOWEVER, there are many people (myself included) that are targeting very very narrow and specific things and don't come up high.
WORST yet is that irrelevant sites rank up before yours! That's a flaw in the search engine. I'm sorry, but I personally am beginning to think MSN, Yahoo, Exalead, etc. are better than Google. Beause on a general search term, my site will come up later down in the results..that's fine. On a narrow search term I come up higher. That's GOOD.
Google on the other hand....broad search term remains similar. BUT narrow search term doesn't help any. In fact....you will get completely unrelated sites and sites that just spam keywords (that have been around for years. generally not new sites...guess they are starting to fix this) coming up first.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but Google is starting to slip as a good search engine. It WAS really really good. It gained so much popularity that it's probably the most popular search out there...just I'm beginning to think it's not the best any longer.
Unless you're looking for something that's been around for years.
....maybe google should stop spending time with kitchy satellite imagery programs and more time on what they are known for.
This is *NOT* what this discussion is about!
Google has ended up like this:
A one year old website that is all about bananas (lets call it a banana-production company), where all the content is related to bananas, ends up on searchresultpage 100 when searcing for "bananas".
Meanwhile, another website that have the following sentence included "by the way, i love bananas", is placed on the very first searchresult pages. I know this from several of my client websites.
This is VERY VERY wrong, and Google doesn't make sense any more. Admit it, We are all being forced into Adwords.
I think I have decided to chill out, stop obsessing, and move on to other more important things.
Thanks to all who responded!
I have a site that was PR0'd since jagger which seems (seemed?) to have recovered in the FEB-15 or so update (PR restored too) or whatever it was. It was stable from about FEB-15 to last week, then Google started to feed from an old index for part of the day but SERP's seem to be mainly unaffected.
When Google routes to the old index the SERP's still reflect the "new" PR so my PR0 pages will be top 5 or 10 instead of the 1,000 or so they were prior to FEB-15.
In my other 'day' job I rely heavily on search engines for information on hotels, destinations etc. I cannot rely only on Google because their results simply are not good enough. In non-mainstream destinations, a hotel site is often put up by somebody's brother-in-law with a computer and a template. With new and/or un-optimized sites, these places (and not just hotels but local businesses or tourist offices) are nowhere in Google. Yet they are essential for my work and I find them with MSN. In fact, MSN just saved my butt again this week.
My conclusion is that the travel arena has been spammed heavily and Google is extremely wary of new sites in this area which works to the detriment of their SERPs.
