How long should it take to get listed?

I would love to know

[naitsirhc26]

Hello, I have a site with about 21 pages of content. Its an okay start. I mean, i am only 15 and I have to balance school as well. LOL. With one of my keyword phrases, in yahoo, i think it will come up, on google it hasn't yet. I listed it a couple of days ago. I do get visitors though. I am happy about that. So, if you can help me that would be great. I have also optimized each page for good key phrases, i found a niche market, its just that they aren't listed yet.

[edited by: caveman at 9:03 pm (utc) on April 27, 2006]
[edit reason] Removed specifics, per TOS [/edit]

[ronburk]

Google has traditionally relied heavily on page rank to decide how often to crawl any particular URL. You have no page rank. The link to you from Geocities is broken due to syntactically incorrect HTML; that doesn't help get you crawled, nor does it make real people likely to want to link to you as a useful resource for the topic of HTML coding.

You've chosen an incredibly crowded and competitive topic to try to make money on (contrary to your assessment, this is the exact opposite of what a "niche" is).

Any website that purports to sell website design services has to meet a higher bar of quality than average. Yours is identifiable at a glance as... not professional

None of this matters all that much; it's all a good learning experience. However, I can't see much likelihood of you ranking well for any terms like "HTML tutorial" or that ilk any time in the foreseeable future, though. You might want to look for other ways to attract business, such as word of mouth in your local community.

[naitsirhc26]

where did i go wrong with the syntax error. Where is it?

[naitsirhc26]

what i meant by niche, is that i have found some keyowrds that nobody is using.

[ronburk]

where did i go wrong with the syntax error. Where is it?

If you're hand-writing HTML, then automated HTML validation software is your friend. Google for "w3c validator" to find a popular free one. URLs aren't allowed here, but the error was on the GeoCities page that tries to reference your main site.

what i meant by niche, is that i have found some keyowrds that nobody is using.

Ok, but... if nobody is using them, what good are they to you? I would be pretty surprised if you've uncovered some keywords that offer good traffic that the 99,000 other folks in the website development business haven't already been optimizing for for a half decade. You've chosen the one business on the planet where pretty much all your competitors are already well-versed in SEO!

Again, making your first few websites is a great way to learn. But if you're actually serious about trying to make money doing websites for others, then trying to get your clients via free SE traffic probably is not going to work for you.

You would have a much better shot at local business. Let's say you actually manage to get some inquiries via the web. What are you going to when somebody sends you a contract to sign and discovers you can't legally sign it because you're not 18?

OTOH, doing work for local customers is a lot more viable when you're 15. There's usually no shortage of small businesses who would like a website, but know nothing about it and have little money to spend. In that market, word of mouth like "Hey, Sam's kid makes websites -- he put mine up for $400." can actually give you an edge over professional website developers. Local small businesses may be much more comfortable working with a local teenager than with talking to a high-powered design firm that makes them feel ignorant right from the get-go.

Play to your strengths. Don't go from your first boxing lesson straight to a bout with Mike Tyson. Beat up some little girls first :-).