Savynacion

Savynacion -
Thanks for the advice. My website redirects to the www. version, and that's the one I've given Google Analytics/webmaster tools. It is definitely being crawled, too.

I'm not really promoting the site in any way yet - no social media or blogs. Do you think that might be all the problem is, then? It just seems odd that it doesn't appear in the search results at all, as I wouldn't say the West Midlands is highly competitive in regards to web design - though maybe it would help to narrow down the area a bit...

Hi Savynacion
 
I'm impressed with your assistance and tips... I would be happy to submit my website to you for a review on SEO front to be honest.
 
Cheers
 
Daniel

Have you applied any promotion tactics with your website?
 
See, it happens most of times that you don't get your website link in search results especially when the site category have lot of competition and when site have some issues. As you are saying, you have better used your keyword on Title tag & body section and used proper sitemap, so, let's start with few other points:
 
a. Check your website redirection, if any. Check if your website opens with or without www. For ex: If your site name is abc and its opening with both http://www.abc.com & without www i.e., http://abc.com. That simply means your website have redirection issue and it need to be solved by your server panel.
 
b. Check your website cache. See, is it crawling or not. check this: cache:http://www.abc.com . If crawled, when was the last time. Accordingly, you need to do some promotion work on that.
 
c. Do some promotion work on your website fot that particular keyword such as: starting with promoting on few bookmarking websites like: Pinterest, tumblr and more. (Search on Google)
 
d. If you write blogs related to your website category then start to use your keyword on your blog (don't use so much as there are some rules by Google guidelines) and put link of that webpage which you want to focus on.
 
e. Generally, if you start with off page promotion techniques, it'll show your keyword in 5-8 search results pages within 1-2 months.
 
 
Regards,
Savy Nacion

@@Arvi - I know page rank is important so people find the sites, but do you think that the amount of visitors our site gets, say 500 a month vs. 5,000 a month, will increase our page rank significantly? Or like Dr. Iggy said, while visitors numbers are important, so is bounce rate, and even if the visitor amount is lower, if they stay on the site longer, Google will see the site as more relevant.
 
I was unaware that Google even factored bounce rate into their rankings.

Traffic on the website is one of factors for ranking, but bigger factor is Bounce rate.
Increased traffic won't help you if users don't find content on your site relevant to their needs, they will leave site soon as they enter the site and bounce rate will be increased so Google will consider your site as irrelevant .
So, I think it is better to stay on 7 different domains and improve user experience, and in that way reduce bounce rate on your site which will surely reflect in better ranking in search resoults page.

The company I work for is debating whether or not to combine a group of 7 sites, all with different domain names, into one website/domain with different directories for each site. They say the reasoning behind this is so we get a lot of traffic on one domain instead of spreading it out across all 7, increasing our search engine ranking.
 
My question is how important is amount of traffic to a site when determining page rank? Especially when comparing that to other SEO techniques, such as quality back links, good on-page content/keywords, etc. I know it has some sort of effect with Google "trusting" your site if a lot of people visit it, but how much does that really matter?
 
I'm advocating against the change, simply for keeping our similar content grouped under separate domains and keeping a good user experience. Plus, I feel like we could just increase our efforts on other SEO stuff to boost traffic and rankings on all the domains instead of doing the big migration to one domain.
 
I'd like to hear thoughts for and against. Thanks!
Steve

My website - about a year old - doesn't rank for the search terms I wanted. At all. I went through 15 pages of search results on Google, and then found a website that checks for you along with other search engines - and my website literally doesn't come up. I'm hoping that searches for 'west midlands web designer' or something similar will find it - these words are in my site title and homepage description, which I thought were the most important?
 
I tried putting in different terms (my name + web design) and the website appears quite early on, so I don't think my website is being penalised in any way. I currently basically don't get visitors, and nobody has linked to the website yet, but surely that can't explain why my site isn't coming up at all for these terms?
 
In case it's relevant, I did only change my site title to include these search terms, and add a site map, a week or two ago. Maybe that's it?
 
I know it takes a long time to get to the first few pages, that's not the issue - it's that apparently the website doesn't rank at all for any terms unless they include my name. What am I doing wrong?

For promoting your blog yes you can choose youtube, But for promotion purpose it is very important for you to keep your profile update because your youtube page is your representation that reinforce your business and provide relevant information about your product and business. Another important thing is to improve your video size and quality.

I aggree with this,but what i thought was you need to attract someone to view with feedback

Hmm... well if that's the case then once you've restored everything in theory your site should be back to normal.
 
In regards to this happening every time you update, it could be a possibility, if the original developer bolted on new features rather than using plugins then you may have issues when updating WordPress, however without looking at the site and it's code I couldn't say for sure.

Hi guys, I have experience with C# and Java, but none with web development and CMSs for now, I have enough time to learn what is needed however. I would like to inquire your opinion on what free CMS would be best to use for the following 2 sites, separately of course. My only requirement for the CMSs is that there are good video tutorials for them, as I find this to be fastest way for me to learn something new.

1.An online library where anyone can publish his works - books, stories, comics or any other form of written content. They will be free to download, but authors can receive donations for them, from which the site will take a small commission. So basically something like a book store but with no shopping cart, with donations, users can upload books and receive money. Users can also invite others to publish their works and receive 1% of their donation - something like a very basic referral system.
This one will probably require a lot of custom work too, but still which CMS would give me the best start to work with?

2.A combined news and deck sharing site for a digital trading card game. Something like Hearthpwn, but simpler.

The affiliate link belongs to Ben, this site's owner, and any income helps to pay for the sites running costs
 
As to your question about using commercial CMS's the main point should always be to use the CMS that is most suitable for the project - whether the software is free or costs £1,000 is irrelevant to any professional.
 
With the one vs thousands of module developers both approaches have pros and cons, but I don't think that argument really stands up since the "right CMS for the job" shouldn't need many (if any) addons since functionality will already be built in.
 
It might be great to have 1000's of addons available for XYZ free software but that raises several possible issues;
 
1. Multiple addons that do the same thing
2. Poor quality control
3. Weak security
4. Abandoned projects
5. Infrequent updates
6. No developer support when you're stuck
 
Conversely, commercial software offers a different set of rules;
 
1. Most functionality is part of the core CMS negating the need for oodles of addons
2. Stricter quality control (if it's a crap product the developer will go out of business very quickly)
3. Fewer abandoned products since they provide a living for the developer
4. Updates to co-incide with core CMS updates or add new features
5. Developer support provided

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