Hi everyone,

 

I was wondering if someone could help me please.

 

I've been managing a large collection of SEO clients for about 8 months now and I'm still learning as I go with effective SEO strategies. But I would say I have a good understanding of SEO and the results for many of my clients reflects this.

 

However, I have one client who simply isn't appearing anywhere for their desired keywords in Google! The web site has been live for over a month and they've had next to no traffic via search engines!

 

They are an online shop and have a lot of competition for the general keywords they are aiming for. I have applied in-depth SEO to the web site and I have also added them to a link network that we manage. They are currently receiving 51 incoming links, which I would say is reasonable for a new web site.

 

My initial thought is that the home page is lacking slightly on body text. But the design works well and does not really accommodate for extra body text insertion. I suspect this could be contributing to the lack of success in SEO.

 

Can anyone advise what they would do in a situation - what, if you like - "emergency methods" or additional strategies, would you apply if a particular SEO campaign was just not working?

 

Any input/advice would be very much appreciated.

 

Many thanks,

 

Christian

However, I have one client who simply isn't appearing anywhere for their desired keywords in Google! The web site has been live for over a month and they've had next to no traffic via search engines!

Presumably you're aware that it can take weeks or months to get pages indexed? Have any search engine bots visited the site yet (check your logs)? Have you submitted sitemaps etc? Is the sites content all original or is any text copy copied/pasted from other sources?

 

They are an online shop and have a lot of competition for the general keywords they are aiming for. I have applied in-depth SEO to the web site and I have also added them to a link network that we manage. They are currently receiving 51 incoming links, which I would say is reasonable for a new web site.

Competing for popular search terms can be like climbing Everest so I'd recommend aiming for less popular search terms as well, this might only be small potatoes but once you get traffic flowing from these type of searches you can begin to monitor how effective sales are and so on.

 

But the design works well and does not really accommodate for extra body text insertion. I suspect this could be contributing to the lack of success in SEO.

So by the sound of it you're trying to fit the content into a design, rather than having a design that flexes with the content? This isn't SEO related but more to do with usability and accessibility and can have a negative effect on site performance. Build for your customers - not search engines, is the motto of the day here!

 

Can anyone advise what they would do in a situation - what, if you like - "emergency methods" or additional strategies, would you apply if a particular SEO campaign was just not working?

The normal marketing rules probably apply:

 

1. Submit a sitemap to Google, Yahoo, and Bing (if they allow it)

2. Link to the site from a site where you know the bots visit regularly - normally a portfolio or clients type page on your own site

3. Review the text copy/content on site, is it aimed at humans or search engines?

 

have you got a link?

Add a news section to the site which is regularly updated with good articles about the product, rich in keywords but NOT spammy & which automatically submit a new XML sitemap to google every time a new post is created.

 

The constant updates will tell Google your site is active and you will get indexed faster.

 

Just my 2p

Hi

 

Can you post the site, maybe use a URL shortener so the client doesnt see this post, and tell us what keywords your targeting. Its hard to give adivce if we dont even know the niche.

Hi everyone,

 

Thank you for all the advice. I've had some time to have a good look through the SEO and I've decided to go for less competitive terms. So I'm going to start off small and hopefully build it up over a period of time.

 

Many thanks,

 

Christian

Just an idea.... Check the internal linking structure of the site. Make sure these links can be followed (ie not in images) and use anchor text. I would also run it through a spider check programme to see if the pages are being crawled etc. www.spidertest.com is good or IBP spider simulator.

And keep the content coming regularly, even if you have a burst and do four or five bits at once, publish them one at a time a few days apart. If content is regularly updated then Google will generally adapt its crawl frequency to something around that interval. If you don't update at all for ages then it can be a real pain waiting for Google to properly index a big batch of changes.

I have also added them to a link network that we manage

Dangerous strategy. Link networks are usually doomed by definition. You need Google to notice the links in the network. Too many sites and Google will notice. A lesser risk is a peeved competitor for any one of the sites benefiting from the network shopping you, but this risk grows with the network.

Natural linking is much better and you won't get that from link exchanges. Try writing and submitting quality articles.

Great, thanks for all the suggestions

I really do not think your client's website could have any good search engine traffic within the first three months of launching over the net. The older sites are regularly being promoted by their webmasters as well.

Every keyword of your site should land on their target page. Each page must have a unique and relevant content. This is the most important factor in on-page optimization. Search Engines tend to rank sites based on the relevancy of its content based on the users query. If you do find difficult in ranking your major keywords try to use long tailed keywords so that you could stay on the competition without being drown on search result.

Every keyword of your site should land on their target page. Each page must have a unique and relevant content. This is the most important factor in on-page optimization. Search Engines tend to rank sites based on the relevancy of its content based on the users query. If you do find difficult in ranking your major keywords try to use long tailed keywords so that you could stay on the competition without being drown on search result.

 

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "long tailed keywords" please.

Researching keywords related to their site can give them enough traffic. Don't focus on the main keywords or the business name itself. Give emphasis to the (as been said) long tail keywords.

 

This can be done by finding keywords that are have 3 or more words like "effective dog training techniques" which possibly have only hundreds of competitions rather than "dog training" which probably would yield millions of competing sites.