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freeflyer
Joined: Aug 06, 2007
# Posts: 207
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Posted: 05/26/2008 06:00 am
Hi all, now i'm not new to SEO and have a lot of clients, who are more than happy with the results i get.
But, what do you do when one site simply refuses to get anywhere? I've got one website which no matter what i do, i cant get listed well apart from a small handful or minority terms. Most terms are nowhere to be seen in the top 100 results of the three major search engines, and i've been working on this for close to a year...
Things i've done along the way...
I've checked for duplicated pages
I've blocked possible duplicated pages.
I've chedk the server responses on pages.
I've rewritten the URL's with a new system just in case, and removed the old ones from googles index so i've got 'new' fresh pages.
The pages are optimised in line with all my other sites.
I've added IBL's to the home page and deeper pages where i can.
I've chedk for bad IBL's.
I've checked for indexing of the pages... all good.
Everything seems okay, but the site refuses to budge. In terms of SEO it is ten times better than it was when i started, but it simply wont be listed. The main terms are competive but nothing i'd normally have a problem with.
I'm on the verge of giving up.. i'm beginning to feel guilty about charging the customer for optimising which just isnt working. I'm toying with the idea of one last ditch attempt and put it under a new domain, as a fresh start. Maybe this was once a bad domain?
Anyone any advice? Theres gotta be a reason for this, but i cant find what it is.
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bhartzer
Staff
Joined: Jun 08, 2000
# Posts: 7036
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Posted: 05/26/2008 06:27 am
How often have you added more content to the site? Have you considered adding on-topic articles to the site and using the social media sites to help promote them?
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Quadrille
Joined: Nov 15, 2000
# Posts: 1064
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Posted: 05/26/2008 06:48 am
How does the site compare to competitors?
Is the content unique and useful?
If it's a niche, does he have listings in relevant quality directories?
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freeflyer
Joined: Aug 06, 2007
# Posts: 207
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Posted: 05/26/2008 08:46 am
"Is the content unique and useful? "
probably not to be honest.. its an e-commerce site and they're pretty bad at stuff like this and is probably a little thin on original content, although i have got them to add some more category descriptions recently.. The owner has a tendency to cut and past product descriptions from their supplier, but the product pages arent really the problem, as its the category pages which need the placings.
Its not a niche market.. they sell security products.
"Have you considered adding on-topic articles to the site and using the social media sites to help promote them? "
Although i could create articles, they are further down the line.. the landing pages need to be the product and category pages ideally.
Also, they're not my products and i dont know about them too much, so the articles need to be created by the owners, and i'm sure you know how difficult is to get site owners to do something you ask them 
PS the site is now in my profile.. excuse one or two little errors that are now there (but arent normally) as i'm fiddling with it at the mo. To be honest you may find a few, as i'm currently fed up with it and cant be bothered anymore.
[ Message was edited by: freeflyer 05/26/2008 09:13 am ]
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beth_lk
Staff
Joined: Jun 23, 2004
# Posts: 1136
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Posted: 05/26/2008 08:52 am
Is it the site listed in your profile?
I can take a look around for you and maybe see something through fresh eyes 
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freeflyer
Joined: Aug 06, 2007
# Posts: 207
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Posted: 05/26/2008 09:16 am
site now in profile.. and looking round it again i see content is thinner than ideal, and some of the category pages may be in the supplemental...
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Quadrille
Joined: Nov 15, 2000
# Posts: 1064
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Posted: 05/26/2008 10:23 am
I suspect you are trying to do the impossible.
I found the site quite slow, and after picking 'safes' it took three more clicks to get any product details, and even then, it was very tightly worded, with more jargon than user friendly terms.
It's not an SEO problem - it's a plain old fashioned marketing one. There are too many far superior sites for him to do well without investing much more time and energy on content.
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freeflyer
Joined: Aug 06, 2007
# Posts: 207
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Posted: 05/26/2008 10:43 am
"I found the site quite slow, and after picking 'safes' it took three more clicks to get any product details"
unfortunately that is nearly always the case with e-commerce as i'm sure you know.. three clickthroughs arent too bad though compared to some, although ideally i'd like to reshuffle the products to get as many as i can down to two. That so much isnt important at this stage though, as its getting visitors to the site in the first place which is the prob.
The site is slow due to the server, which is playing up a bit at the mo.
"It's not an SEO problem - it's a plain old fashioned marketing one. There are too many far superior sites for him to do well without investing much more time and energy on content"
tell me about it.. unfortunately this is a sideline to their main business, and they cannot commit the time to update the products, with only two people working in the office. I try and do what i can with regards content etc, but its too time consuming.
I'm finding this is the case with a lot of companies i do work for. I find myself creating articles and landing pages with content and information i know nothing about because they never bother to do it themselves, despite constant rib jabbing.
Anyway, all that aside, I think from a technical angle i've tried everything, but i still think that even with the site as thin as it is, i should be getting better results. Its kinda odd...
Take the CCTV page for example.. nothing wrong with the page from a technical point of view, and it has a little bit of content, yet it isnt found anywhere (in the top 500 for any CCTV term) in google, yet its indexed fine. That to me is just odd.
I'll keep taking the money, providing suggestions, and tweaking until they eventually close the site.
[ Message was edited by: freeflyer 05/26/2008 11:07 am ]
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animated3d
Joined: Dec 22, 2005
# Posts: 377
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Posted: 05/26/2008 04:17 pm
could you figure out the reason why the site is not ranking? even if its hard and the competition is high , you would know why you are not ranking maybe,lack of content,links etc... interesting content to make the people wanna click your site on the SERP's
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freeflyer
Joined: Aug 06, 2007
# Posts: 207
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Posted: 05/26/2008 11:48 pm
no thats the prob.. i cant see any reason why its not returned in the serps, apart from one or two product pages which have litttle competition.
For some reason it wont budge, and theres no explanation i can see. To not even be listed in the first few hundred on google etc for CCTV is odd.. the cctv page (for example) isnt packed full of conent but i'd expect some kind of result at least, especially when its listed in the index from a site: command.
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animated3d
Joined: Dec 22, 2005
# Posts: 377
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Posted: 05/27/2008 01:39 am
is it in your orofile? and what keyword u wanna rank for
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Quadrille
Joined: Nov 15, 2000
# Posts: 1064
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Posted: 05/27/2008 01:50 am
Final thought; if there are pages that you really think should rank, but don't, maybe time to investigate their linking patterns; check if you've inherited a few silly reciprocals, or they've been caught linkselling (it's beginning to happen!).
A Google 'part-penalty' may be behind all this.
Run xenu for starters, see what's going on with their links.
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freeflyer
Joined: Aug 06, 2007
# Posts: 207
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Posted: 05/27/2008 04:58 am
this is a site i built for them myself originally, using a heavily modded OSC. I've never added any reciprocals and are very careful about who links to any of my sites, but a backlink checker doesnt throw up much, as normal.
Xenu threw up a couple of errors.. nothing major.
I've been thinking a penalty may be in place for the last couple of months.. i cant think of anything else.
animated.. the site is in my profile.. keywords will be the categories
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animated3d
Joined: Dec 22, 2005
# Posts: 377
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Posted: 05/27/2008 04:30 pm
i had a look at it and i based on it that 'home security' and alarm systems's were some of your main keywords , u dont have enough links and almost all the link texts are 'security express' and not any the keywords almost.
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Prowler
Staff
Joined: Aug 14, 2000
# Posts: 1752
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Posted: 05/27/2008 10:55 pm
Another view from the gallery:
Your primary keyword - it appears - is "Security Express" which ranks about 4th place in Google against a competition of over 22 million pages.
I am interested in CCTV cameras, so I will select your internal page - sid-45c-day-night-camera.html which has the following tags:
Title : SID-45C Day/Night Camera : Security Express
H1 tag: CCTV Camera, SID-45C Day/Night Camera
A casual check shows that there are not many internal links to this page and in the Google index (which has only 468 pages) this page was not found - at least when I checked now.
I think you will need to really take a long and hard look at the internal navigation structure.
One more thing: This page contains typos too. Someone should rewrite things like this: "Integrated DSP chip, which offers a Day&Night" into something like this:
Integrated Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chip which offers good low light capability ... "
Hire a technical writer to revamp the copy.
You have mentioned in another thread that content may not be the King as it is often touted...
In the long run, content is still the King with a change - the right content for the right people.
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freeflyer
Joined: Aug 06, 2007
# Posts: 207
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Posted: 05/28/2008 03:04 am
okay keep them coming and i'll answer each point as we go along... and then we need to recap the problem , which i've done at the bottom.
Remember that some things you be seeing which arent 100% correct may be work in progress, or simply experimental due to the poor performance.
"i had a look at it and i based on it that 'home security' and alarm systems's were some of your main keywords , u dont have enough links and almost all the link texts are 'security express' and not any the keywords almost. "
no, thats just the terms the front page is themed for (and to be honest, isnt important at this stage). Its not the front page thats the problem.
The link text you refer to which contain 'security express' is just in the breadcrumb, and nowhere else. There has to be a link to the home page in the breadcrumbs, so at the moment the text is the name of the store, as to have 'Security Alarms, CCTV and' etc etc is too long to put in there, and at least the current title does contain the word security. Again, the home page currently is not the problem. Its the category pages.
"One more thing: This page contains typos too. Someone should rewrite things like this: "Integrated DSP chip, which offers a Day&Night" into something like this:
Integrated Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chip which offers good low light capability ... "
i dont write the content though, they do and the products. I cant mother them too much, well not unless they want to pay me to, which they dont.
"Your primary keyword - it appears - is "Security Express" which ranks about 4th place in Google against a competition of over 22 million pages. "
This is probably answer above re the breadcrumbs thing, and again, the home page is not the problem.
"A casual check shows that there are not many internal links to this page and in the Google index (which has only 468 pages) this page was not found - at least when I checked now.
I think you will need to really take a long and hard look at the internal navigation structure."
I think this is a new product, hence why its not listed. If you do a search for another product in that category..
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:www.securityexpress.co.uk+%2BDay&hl=en&filter=0
you'll see that the product pages are indexed fine.
Navigation is fine, the menu is spiderable and each category page links to each other category page, and on to the products, which also contain links back to categories..
THE PROBLEM.
The home page is not the problem !! Category pages are. They are not being returned in the serps at all !! despite being indexed and themed.
Take CCTV for example. hers the site index for cctv..
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.securityexpress.co.uk+%2Bcctv&meta=
Yes, a fairly competive term, but not to be listed even in the top 500 is odd, considering the pages themselves are indexed, themed, and have content.
Theres a reason why 95% of the pages arent being returned in the serps .... i just cant find out what it is.
[ Message was edited by: freeflyer 05/28/2008 03:15 am ]
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freeflyer
Joined: Aug 06, 2007
# Posts: 207
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Posted: 05/28/2008 09:59 am
hmm just removed 26 duplicated pages of the index page, which were arising from an old URL system which utilised index.php?cName=keyword.
I'd previously asked for removal of these, and used a wildcard in robots.txt to block them.. it obviously didnt work. I've now amended it. Maybe one of the reasons the site is struggling.
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freeflyer
Joined: Aug 06, 2007
# Posts: 207
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Posted: 08/01/2008 09:29 am
okay.. for those that remember this thread... i think i found the problem... a slow server.
Running a xenu produces a lot of timeout errors on nearly 300 pages. Now, when i first saw this i didnt think much of it, perhaps just an off day or something, or perhaps a backup was going on.
I've come to the conclusion its like this all the time, with an average page request taking up to eight seconds to display, and timeouts on all nearly all websites when ran through xenu. Its been traced down to a slow mysql response.
Obviously, for the last year bots have been visiting the site, hitting timeouts, and leaving before pages were properly parsed. Looking into it more, some of the cache for listed pages is completely empty.
For comparison i copied the site onto my own VPS, and it fan fine with no timeouts whatsoever, and pages displayed within a second.
So, that was it all along, and its been affecting other sites i optimise for too. Unfortunately, its not my server but my old bosses, who is now aware of the problem, and no doubt will get a new server as donhost (who he's with) is now an appalling hosting company.
so, there you go.. mystery solved..
[ Message was edited by: freeflyer 08/01/2008 09:45 am ]
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10280
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Posted: 08/01/2008 11:10 am
Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and check out the Crawl Stats in there.
They will tell you exactly how long the pages actually took to serve to Google.
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beth_lk
Staff
Joined: Jun 23, 2004
# Posts: 1136
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Posted: 08/01/2008 05:03 pm
Oh Boy ! Don't you just want to pull your hair out? ! Thinking it was a problem YOU did and after all this time and work, finding out it was a hosting/server issue -- oh my !
Happy you now know though - sorry it took so long to figure out...
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