Single Search Term - No ranking

[bobbarnes]

Hi all,

I've been trying to get my head round this problem for a while and thought I'd air it on here to try and gather some opinions.

I have a travel website which is a guide to a small European City.

The URL is:

www."city""country".net

For the two term search phrase "city" "country" I rank No. 1 in Google and indeed on all major search engines.

However for the search term "city" I don't rank anywhere in Google ( Live.com - 9th, Yahoo - 30th ).

I thought I'd be ranked on the 3rd or 4th page in Google but didn't expect to be nowhere. Some of the sites at this level of results pages are much less relevant than mine ( "city" is my highest density single term on the main page ).

Anyway, I've decided to get in-bound links where the anchor text is the single term "city". Any thoughts on this as a strategy or other obervations?

Thanks.

[pbaddock]

At the risk of stating the obvious, is the page content optimised for, and relevant to "city"? (density, position of keyword terms, 'themed' around said "city" and related themes) Is the term contained in any pre-existing anchor text on links pointing to your site? I think you'd want to have ticked a few of these boxes before relying on just the url & title.

[bobbarnes]

Yes the content is very optimised to "city".

"city" is present in title and description and is the highest ranking single term on the landing page and in fact entire site - it is also spread naturally through the landing page in the way you might expect an introduction to a "city" to appear.

So far I've established in-bound links with mainly "city" "country" as the anchor text but mixing that up with stuff like "city" "guide" , "city "tour" "guide" , "city" "information"

It had never occured to me to go for the big one and just have "city". I assumed that the double terms "city" "term2" would help towards ranking for just "city".

Also I wasn't sure if G would see single term achor text as dodgy even though it is the most relevant term for the site.

[pbaddock]

I think mixing it up is deemed best practice (so the - guide, - tours stuff sounds sensible), but it couldn't hurt to try building a few quality / trusted inbound links with just "city". I'd definately give it a shot. Anyway - hope it works out.

[malachite]

I'd also try to rank well for as many keyphrases as you can that contain the word "city", so people find you for city widgets, blue city widgets, red widget city etc.

If you can't beat 'em, seek alternatives :)

[Robert Charlton]

bobbarnes - Welcome to WebmasterWorld. How old is the site and how old are your inbound links? On Google, it can take a while.

Anyway, I've decided to get in-bound links where the anchor text is the single term "city". Any thoughts on this as a strategy or other obervations?

I wouldn't overdo this one. It sounds like what you're doing so far is OK, but it takes time.

However for the search term "city" I don't rank anywhere in Google ( Live.com - 9th, Yahoo - 30th ).

If not the age, it could well be the quality of your inbound links. Google is much fussier about these than is MSN Live or Yahoo.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 3:21 am (utc) on Mar. 31, 2007]

[bobbarnes]

I put the site up in Nov 06 and even though my aim was to rank #1 for "city" "country" I was surprised it happened so quickly. I also rank #2 for "city" "tour", #7 for "city" "guide" and #8 for "city" "country" "guide".

I think it was helped by the fact that I quickly got a handful of links from other websites related to this city and although none of them had amazing PR ( mainly 3-4 ) they are highly relevant.

Also, maybe G ranking is more skewed to keywords in the domain name these days .. It's really the success of the "city" "term" searches that has made me scratch my head and wonder about the complete absense of "city" in the results.

I've now established around 10-15 links with just the "city" anchor so I'll see what happens. However, some of these sites do make me a bit nervous. Most of the travel sites that offer link exchange have tons of links pages with most at PR0.

Even though these sites have a theme and are not solely link directories it still looks sort of spammy to have too many such pages. I've always assumed that a link from a travel page PR0 was still better than nothing but I guess I'll find out in due course.