Google Getting Harder to SEO For?

[protozoider]

I've been working with some sites and placement on Google for the past 3 years. I've seen it get gradually harder to get placed on Google anymore. Especially if you want the front page. I've done quite a few experiments to get my sites higher. About a year ago all our sites were #1. Now most of them aren't on the first page and they are constantly updated. I've emailed Google constantly about problems with searching and finding irrelavant results. I look for one thing and find junk instead. The problem is, Google leads us to believe that PR is the big issue. Having quality links. Well our sites have quality links and a rating of 4 on each of them. They have all the proper key words and words in the page. I've done all the research to know exactly what needs to be in the page and where to get it high on search engines. Yahoo has most of our sites rated very high, as does alltheweb and msn. Google however does not work the way they tell us. If you search for one of my key words on one of my sites, you will find a site with a PR of 3 over mine with PR 4. Same keyword on both sites, ours has more content though. Every time I wrote Google they told me PR PR PR. Obviously that's not it. Sure it might help but it's done nothing for me on 4 of my sites. Not to mention that our sites have exactly the content you look for with the keywords and more products with those keywords involved but sites that have unrelated products or small amounts of the same products get higher results. Can Google be bought off? Is that how it works?

To totally prove the PR myth here. We have a site rated 4 that is on Google but we have not found it under any search term. I don't understand why they would penalize it if it even is. I think Google has been feeding us lines about how to get good listings because I don't think THEY even know how their spider indexes sites.

[osfp]

"But still how many times are you gonna search for the same thing again and again?"
anytime i want to make a check at my page i rather type the 2 word key worw i am #1 and go to my page cause i am lasy to write my url i do the same to go to several search engines i just type www

[stretch_dog]

Wow.... 16 pages, some of it good, but man.... I gave up chasing Google awhile ago!

[Quote]: "From what I can recall, public statements made by Google, or those connected, seem more to indicate that rather than webmasters chasing PR, what they're encouraging and recommending is that webmasters create sites that are of benefit to users."[End Quote]

Best thing I read outta the works... that is the answer IMHO, build quality site with lots of quality content, user friendly navigation and functionality, se friendly design and technical elements (intelligent seo), submit to every worth while directory service you can find, include a well structured directory service of your own (hub for the user se's), add new content on a regular basis, and search out the best backlinks and link exchanges you can find...

Somethin' like that...

Oh ya, and be patient... Stretch Dog!
ogl's (when appropriate) to high quality on topic authority sites,

[jkruit]

I have been checking out our competitors site (I'll call him XYZ) on Google because they recently redesigned their site and went wild on advertising. We are both part of a small industry and on most search engines we still have the number one spot for most keywords. But since the advertising started, XYZ is in the sponsered site above or on the side of the page. Well, that makes sense so I don't have a problem there.

But on Google, where they are spending lots of money, our pages are falling down the ladder. And not only is our major competitor rising above us, but so are lots of sites that haven't been any competition before. I'm wondering if spending money with Google has an additional bonus's:

Name your competitors and if they aren't spending money here they get penalized

I know it sounds farfetched but it sure feels like that. I'm sure the increased traffic on XYZ is raising the relevancy of the the XYZ Site, their PR jumped from PR4 to PR6. But how come all these other sites are climbing above us? It seems odd that for the last 2 years I had a good SEO site for Google and all of a sudden it isn't good anymore. I keep it updated. And if it matters, rank is PR4. But like I said, on the other search engines we aren't falling in position.

I'm just sharing this as my experience on Google and agreeing with others. Google is hard to figure.

Thanks
Janine

[MikeNoLastName]

Everyone claims there is no connection between paying for Google listings and rank. But, how about this indirect, perhaps unintentional, effect? If I'm paying for adwords, and my link (fed from Google) is showing up on hundreds of ad word affiliate websites, is the Googlebot smart enough, in EVERY possible configuration of webpages using adwords (including, maybe, meta redirects), NOT to follow those links and count them as backlinks for me? Just a thought.

[Voyteck]

Regarding lot's of websites showing Google Adwords as content targetting ads. They cannot be followed because they are displayed in an iframe which is displayed from a different source.

Regarding rise of other websites, do you think that a big advertising campaign is correlated with SEO investment. Big advertising campign is noticed in the industry, but some players prefer to invest more in the SEO than PPC. They are more successful and I belive that after two years having a website has a PR of 4 is not something hard to beat no matter what is the market. It is better than nothing but I belive following Bret Tabke 26 steps you can easyly achive PR 6.

Jkruit If you need you can ask for a performance based service on improving your ranks or traffic and Page Rank. The last one I would treat only as an indicator. If you are interested sticky me for some details or go for the commercial exchange forum and ask the question there.

[Mr_Roberto]

jkruit - part of your competitors advertising strategy is probably the purchase of text links from other sites - this would give them traffic and also raise their pagerank. Adwords alone can only give you traffic, not pagerank.

[jkruit]

Thanks for the input about the links. I checked the links for XYZ vs. my site. On all the other search engines we have 2x - 3x more links. But on Google/AOL, they have 25% more than we do. Looks like your theory could be correct.

Thanks for helping me figure this out. You guys at Webmaster World are always THE BEST.

Regards
Janine

[techrealm]

Regarding lot's of websites showing Google Adwords as content targetting ads. They cannot be followed because they are displayed in an iframe which is displayed from a different source.

I have found that my google, overture and findwhat ads have been indexed by google in niche directories and ironically due to the key word ratios they often show up before my site does in the organic results sometimes. The funny thing is that the result links rarely reflect the cache contents when I follow them as the sites are most often dynamic almost spammy directories. Good thing I have our phone number in half those ads... :-)

<edited for proper quotes>