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Guidelines for optimizing YouTube videos for SEO? (In: Other Online Marketing - Communities, Blogs & Press, etc)
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cluecase
Joined: Jan 31, 2002
# Posts: 98
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Posted: 2006-Jul-13 16:19
Hi there. I've been a member for few years, and work with three sites. One site is starting to do well with Yahoo for the term "women's shoes store", in the top 10, sometimes number 11. My title read "women's dress shoes store" and I optimized for that. However, I decided not many people searched for "women's dress shoes store" and took out the word dress. Now "women's shoes store" is in the title and I think well optimized.
But my rankings are not getting better, seems like they're dropping. Just a bit. I also used to be in the top 5 for "women's handbags", which is also in my title and well optimized.
Can someone help? And let me know what I am doing wrong? Am I hurting my own site?
My url is in my profile. Thank you very much,
--Don
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SportsGuy
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Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3600
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Posted: 2006-Jul-13 16:25
Hey Don - making the changes and seeing the final results - where you actually settle to can take some time.
The engines may update the info to show the new title fairly quickly, but how you rank will take longer to settle.
next I'll remind you that you went form optimizing for a 4-word search phrase to a 3-word search phrase.
Shorter phrases generally are less targeted and get more traffic - so it's obvious why you'd want to be found for them. 
Trouble is, so does everyone one of your competitors. It might not be that you've done anything wrong - it might simply be that the sites listed under that new, 3-word phrase you're chasing are simply doing things a bit better than you.
You'll want to spend some time "reverse-engineering" what's getting them to the top and apply those ideas to your own site. Might be internal linking, might be inbound links, might be actual content on pages, etc.
Now, I'm going to suggest that you do some actual keyword research using a tool like Trellian's Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker.
I noticed above you said, "However, I decided not many people searched for "women's dress shoes store" and took out the word dress". That's a pretty big decision to base on "I decided". now, this point may be moot, as you may simply have typed the post that way, but in fact actually did the keyword research to back up this decision.
My point it that any decisions like this should be made based on actual keyword research, not hunches or guesses. Doing the research will also show you other phrases, which you might not have thought of, that are worth chasing.
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cluecase
Joined: Jan 31, 2002
# Posts: 98
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Posted: 2006-Jul-14 05:13
Sports Guy,
Thanks for your response! I did, however, do some research with the keyword "women's dress shoes store". The difference was amazing without the word "dress". Now, I was already getting listings for "women's shoes store", but it wasn't in the top ten and now it still hasn't changed. I thought that re-optimizing for "women's shoes store" would improve my ranking with one or two spots--not keep it the same.
Also--my other pages are NOT turning up on Yahoo. It's just my index page. I did submit a site map with proper .txt format to Yahoo in the correct way, it was only a week ago though. So maybe it just needs a bit more time. As you said, the title did change, it shows in the cached version the new page, but maybe a few more weeks will tell if it made a difference.
What I don't understand is that some higher ranking sites don't even have this keyword phrase in their title. What does Yahoo prefer with title format and header tags? Does it prefer to break up the phrase and not have the three words together? Maybe adding another word before, or changing the phrase to the back of the title as opposed to the front??
This is frustrating at times--I've been working at this for years and sometimes I feel like I still don't know anything.
--Don
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3600
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Posted: 2006-Jul-14 12:57
Thanks for your response!
NP - we like to help around here. 
I did, however, do some research with the keyword "women's dress shoes store". The difference was amazing without the word "dress". Now, I was already getting listings for "women's shoes store", but it wasn't in the top ten and now it still hasn't changed. I thought that re-optimizing for "women's shoes store" would improve my ranking with one or two spots--not keep it the same.
What might really help your quest for rankings in this new phrase is if your inboun dlinks are using anchor text which support it. if your inbound links are suggesting something a bit different ot the engines, you're not as optimized for the phrase as you could be.
Also--my other pages are NOT turning up on Yahoo. It's just my index page. I did submit a site map with proper .txt format to Yahoo in the correct way, it was only a week ago though. So maybe it just needs a bit more time. As you said, the title did change, it shows in the cached version the new page, but maybe a few more weeks will tell if it made a difference.
Could very well be a time thing - the engines are remarkably quick with changes at some times, while seemingly they take forever at other times.
What I don't understand is that some higher ranking sites don't even have this keyword phrase in their title.
That's fine - if every inbound link they have uses anchor text which supports them being associated with the pareticular phrase, they can rank well with a crap title.
What does Yahoo prefer with title format and header tags? Does it prefer to break up the phrase and not have the three words together? Maybe adding another word before, or changing the phrase to the back of the title as opposed to the front??
Don't sweat this - writing your titles is a balance between what three main engines might want. Since we don't know exactly what they want, it's open to discussion. I prefer to write titles liek this:
<title>Jeep, Land Rover and Range Rover news and information.</title>
Gets a small mix of targeted keywords in there that directly focus on the topic on the page.
That said, I'm also happy to keep them short, simple and laser-targeted liek this:
<title>Jeep Tech Tips</title>
This is frustrating at times--I've been working at this for years and sometimes I feel like I still don't know anything.
I hear ya brother - we all feel that way at time. It helps to turn around the look at how far you've come.
Last week I told my wife we'd be getting a cheque for just over $300 from Google from one of your sites running Adsense. She was tickled - I said let's shoot for $400 a month soon. She then said, "Remember when seeing $30 a month was exciting?". Point being, when you're frustrated, remember how far you've come and realize you can overcome this hurdle, too - just like you did all those in the past.
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cluecase
Joined: Jan 31, 2002
# Posts: 98
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Posted: 2006-Jul-16 01:08
Sports Guy,
Big Change: Checked Friday, site was number two for "women's shoes store" and number five for "women's handbag", EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED.
BUT, just as I was about to congratulate myself, the next day, Saturday, today, listing are back to before Fridays, number ten, or nineteen, or whatever it has been before I re-optimized.
Could Yahoo still be updating? Maybe it was just a flash of what the regular listing will be. I can't see why this change is happening in the past 48 hours??
Alltheweb, and other sites that carry the same results as Yahoo still show me with the better listing, though.
What do you think is happening??
--Thanks again,
Don
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cluecase
Joined: Jan 31, 2002
# Posts: 98
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Posted: 2006-Jul-19 22:42
Sports Guy,
checked back the next day, the listings are back up, everything is fine.
Except, that "women's handbags" and "women's shoes store" doesn't get as much traffic as I had anticipated.
Is there a tool that I can see keywords suggestions that go further than a month. Overture only goes from last month. If my keywords don't look promising in the further months then I can optimize from different keywords.
Thanks,
Don
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