SEO and timing

[Silky]

We've been so busy with the logistics of our business that SEO has been sorely neglected and it's been quite a shock to realise that a year has gone by and we still haven't had a chance to tackle it. The gaps have been filled in in the meantime with PPC on google, but we're now putting SEO to the top of the To-do list and there's an awful lot to do on it. :(

Are there any rules of thumb on the time it takes to climb the charts from when the SEO is brought up to scratch? I guess this depends on the competitiveness of the sector?. Our site has been live a year, and although yahoo have recognised us, we're nowhere to be seen on google....

Silky

[admagic]

Too right!

Competitiveness is the key....

For low competitive expressions (ie where there are only say 10000 pages competing on phrase match, competing sites for an expression have PR 2 or less, 100 lowish rank or not well anchored links or less, preferably not DMOZ, Not Yahoo..) you can get in the top couple in the space of less than2 weeks, If the competitors are PR5 2000 relevant backlinks, 10 year domain...1000000 competitors) it could take you a year or more...if ever!!

But theres the thing. In most markets you can find a few weak expressions.

[UKSEOAgency]

Hi Silky,

Your just round the corner from me, Im over in hyde.

Do you want me to do a free SEO Analysis on your website?

Thanks

Nathan

[That Guy]

If you are not in google I would make sure you have a sitemap. Then you can submit it to google here:

www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/)

Google will then learn what pages you have and should eventually index them.

Also add to: http://www.dmoz.org/

Im not an SEO Buff so im sure they will be along shortly and tell you better/other ways of doing it.

[irishguru]

A little tip that I always love to take advantage of is to write articles based on the keywords of your product. It's an amzing way to boost any business but it seems that so little companies really take the time to use them..

[thebookiesoffers]

A little tip that I always love to take advantage of is to write articles based on the keywords of your product. It's an amzing way to boost any business but it seems that so little companies really take the time to use them..

why you trying to advertise an affiliate link in your sig though? try building people confidence first eh?

[HighQualityLeads]

Silky

The fist step in SEO is a detailed keyword research. You certainly can dominate some of the low competition keywords in few weeks. This will encourage you to continue and then you ll be able to dominate for high traffic and higher competition keywords.

[Rusty]

Silky

Having done a quick search on Google I can see at least 229 pages which Google have indexed. With the site being a year old you have gained a slight advantage over a brand new site.

As Admagic has said, you could probably gain long tail (less competitive) keyphrases quite quickly, however the harder keyphrases will take longer.

Often it is possible to get the same amount of traffic from a number of long tail phrases as you would for one competitive one and they are often more targetted and much more likely to convert than the one competitive phrase.

Kerry

[Silky]

Hi Silky,

Your just round the corner from me, Im over in hyde.

Do you want me to do a free SEO Analysis on your website?

Thanks

Nathan

Hi Nathan,
Thanks for the offer......far be it for me to offer a gift horse in the mouth ! What info would you need from me to do this?
Silky

[fisicx]

Silky,

Sure I've mentioned this before but it's the whole design of your site that is preventing you from ranking well with Google.

For starters you have over 800 lines of code Google has to wade through before it gets to the actual content. All you page titles are identical which means Google has no means of differentiating between the pages so will only ever chose on to display in the index. You also use a complex and unnecessary navigation system that again is giving Google a headache.

Doing a bit of tweaking won't help that much, you need to dig a little deeper and get rid of about 600 lines of code from every page that you don't need.

[brandmantra]

it not only depends on competition. the result varies on the effort you put to get it. work hard and keep patience the result will come soon.

[Richard68]

Hi Nathan,
Thanks for the offer......far be it for me to offer a gift horse in the mouth ! What info would you need from me to do this?
Silky

Hi Nathan,

I'm Silky's partner and for some reason she's completely forgotten that I'll be carrying the SEO work. The two of us really must talk more about who's doing what in the business and I guess she's just forgotten with all the late nights we put in!!! Thanks for your offer of help and all the comments from everyone - it's very much appreciated. Sorry to waste your time!

Richard

[admagic]

it not only depends on competition. the result varies on the effort you put to get it. work hard and keep patience the result will come soon.

If you read silkys original post you will see she already has allocated the effort to do this.... but was wanting to know the potential speed of success.

Of course the effort needs devoting in the right places!!

SILKY....I have PMd a brief SEO analysis of two main phrases - "single parent holidays" is straight forward

[UKSBD]

Is the navigation system broken or is someone trying to hide anchor text links?

[quikshop]

A little tip that I always love to take advantage of is to write articles based on the keywords of your product. It's an amzing way to boost any business but it seems that so little companies really take the time to use them..

Agreed, informative articles or 'white papers' on the purpose of the website and related topics drive a great deal of traffic to our websites and if written well helps build confidence in your website.

I think your website looks great, have you identified what keywords and phrases you want your website to appear for on Google? Do you use Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/en-GB/) to provide information about your website's visitors?

Once you have your target keywords in mind and a means of measuring progress you can start putting your SEO into practice.