That extra push.

[ADW]

Hi all,

I have had quite a few pointers from this section of the forum and have seen my site go from page 24 6 weeks ago to now on the 1st page of google for one of my main terms. Only just now scraped onto the first page but I am now getting amongst the bigger established sites. With my site only being 4 months old and limited links etc, how do I now attempt to climb upto the top half? I do add to the blog a couple of times a month and enter the odd link/article here and there but most of the sites around me have 1000's of links and established 5/10 years etc. and decent PR rankings.

Any tricks for that extra push or is it just keeping chipping away at what I have been doing?

Thanks,

Andrew

p.s. site is - mugs and mats. co . uk (no gaps) and the main search term is promotional mugs. I know I need to work on the other generic mug terms as well which I have neglected a bit. Going for glory on the main one.

 

[SEO Positive]

Hello ADW,

Well done on the achievement so far. See this forum does have some uses .

You now need to build up a good link profile. I would recommend gaining links from the below places:-

Directories, Social bookmarks, articles, blogs, forum signatures, maybe a press release too (but do it properly).

On top of gaining some good links, I would recommend you to add a little more content on your homepage. so that you do not have to compromise your design or layout of the site, maybe consider implementing the new content in a scrolling box, or a page fold.

Hope this helps a little.

 

[Galway]

Well Done on your progress,

You got some onpage stuff that you need to improve which could make quite a difference so will PM you.

 

[david64]

As you probably know, improved rankings are mostly about links. There are three types of links:

crap links on crap sites - contrived links on low quality sites/link farms
crap links on good sites - paid links on legit sites
good links on good sites - natural links on legit sites

The better the links you want, the more time and/or money you are going to have to put in.

With the current site, you will largely be limited to:

crap links on crap sites
crap links on good sites

As your site is largely commercial, which in general doesn't warrant or attract good links.

Try looking through your competitors links if you want good links:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain:mugstore.co.uk%20-site:mugstore.co.uk

However, it doesn't seem like they have much. Should be easy to rank for your terms.

 

[Galway]

I have to say that crap links from crap sites are working rather too well at the moment, I not advocating it just sounding out frustration at Google UK being ****e at the moment.

 

[david64]

I have to say that crap links from crap sites are working rather too well at the moment, I not advocating it just sounding out frustration at Google UK being ****e at the moment.

Yeh. The thing is though, crap links on crap sites tends to be a short term solution. I know someone who bilged his site up to the top on SponsoredReviews.com. 16 months later, a lot of the sites that are linking to him have been decimated by Google - bans, PR whacks etc. and others have dropped because the owner couldn't make enogh money from selling links on them to be bothered keeping them.

Crap links on legit sites tends to be a bit of a different story.

I think the thing is, natural links are there because people want them there whereas paid links and crap links are there for reasons of gain in most cases. As soon as the site with the links on deems they have nothing more to gain, they could very well disappear.

 

[ADW]

Thanks all for the comments.

David - I totally agree that I am destined to only ever accumalate crap links. Quality links will be very few and far between due to the competitive and commercial nature. Google don't seem to pick up any of my links at all though whenever I get a report done whilst the other search engines do. They might have picked up all the crap in the past but must have stopped or slowed down recently.

Cheers,

Andrew

As you probably know, improved rankings are mostly about links. There are three types of links:

crap links on crap sites - contrived links on low quality sites/link farms
crap links on good sites - paid links on legit sites
good links on good sites - natural links on legit sites

The better the links you want, the more time and/or money you are going to have to put in.

With the current site, you will largely be limited to:

crap links on crap sites
crap links on good sites

As your site is largely commercial, which in general doesn't warrant or attract good links.

Try looking through your competitors links if you want good links:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain:mugstore.co.uk -site:mugstore.co.uk

However, it doesn't seem like they have much. Should be easy to rank for your terms.

 

[eventdomain]

The better the links you want, the more time and/or money you are going to have to put in.

Wise old owl

But links on the best sites are hard to find. It's too easy for them to shut you out, denying you a link and when that happens there's no option but to pay.

Paid links get you fast results.

 

[david64]

Thanks all for the comments.

David - I totally agree that I am destined to only ever accumalate crap links. Quality links will be very few and far between due to the competitive and commercial nature. Google don't seem to pick up any of my links at all though whenever I get a report done whilst the other search engines do. They might have picked up all the crap in the past but must have stopped or slowed down recently.

If you romp through all your competitors' links you can pick up any crap they have and also any diamonds in the rough. I had a look through one of your competitors and there was a lot of blatant paid links in there, but the top site for "promotional mugs" seemed to have some links you could pick up in there.

There is likely to be some good links for your site somewhere. There usually is; for example you could submit testimonials to your suppliers or just ask for a link on their suppliers or links page. There may also be some decent retail sites you can get on.

http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu9TUy2lKk3sBi2FXNyoA?p=inurl%3Atestimonials+submit&y=Search&fr=linuxmint&fr2=sb-top&sao=1

BTW I like your menu. Looks like you had your site re-designed since you were last here.

 

[ADW]

BTW I like your menu. Looks like you had your site re-designed since you were last here.

We take on board the pointers and improve where we can. Changed the feel of the site a bit in line with some of the past feedback. I quite enjoy trying to improve the site and although it is nowhere near the main part of our business it's a nice challenge.

Eyeryone's hints and tips are appreciated.

Cheers,

Andrew

 

[SEO Positive]

Thanks all for the comments.

David - I totally agree that I am destined to only ever accumalate crap links. Quality links will be very few and far between due to the competitive and commercial nature. Google don't seem to pick up any of my links at all though whenever I get a report done whilst the other search engines do. They might have picked up all the crap in the past but must have stopped or slowed down recently.

Cheers,

Andrew

ADW,

How about some forum links? Pay the small fee on here and get yourself some signature links. They are not the best links you can get, but a link is a link.

Also get yourself registered on some free article sites, and write some good content.

These techniques will not get you to the top of page 1 overnight, but think of it as a long term investment, and these links would be permanent rather than a sponsored link for a few months.

 

[ADW]

ADW,

How about some forum links? Pay the small fee on here and get yourself some signature links. They are not the best links you can get, but a link is a link.

Also get yourself registered on some free article sites, and write some good content.

These techniques will not get you to the top of page 1 overnight, but think of it as a long term investment, and these links would be permanent rather than a sponsored link for a few months.

Thanks for the advice. I don't like links on forums where I post about various stuff hence why I try not to mention the domain name etc. Just personal choice I guess. If I was on here purely promoting the domain it would be a different case though.

I have been doing the article and pr submission which I have had pointers on over the past coupleof months. I'll keep on plodding away on these as they have obviously had some impact. I have noticed the blog seemed to help very quickly although haven't done lots of posts yet. All very time consuming.

Cheers

 

[david64]

I have noticed the blog seemed to help very quickly although haven't done lots of posts yet. All very time consuming.

Cheers

I noticed your blog. Would be a good idea to get out and post some legit comments. About 5% of blogs have their comment links followed by Google.

A blog is something that will take a lot of time to come to fruition. If you are only doing it for SERPs I'd say you could spend that time better doing other things.

 

[ADW]

I was doing the blog mainly for seo. The fresh content approach which I thought would keep the bots taking a regular peek at my site. Is this not right what I am doing? I have posted similar stuff elsewhere as well. Always happy to be steered in the right direction if I am going a bit wayward.

Cheers,

Andrew

I noticed your blog. Would be a good idea to get out and post some legit comments. About 5% of blogs have their comment links followed by Google.

A blog is something that will take a lot of time to come to fruition. If you are only doing it for SERPs I'd say you could spend that time better doing other things.

 

[david64]

I was doing the blog mainly for seo. The fresh content approach which I thought would keep the bots taking a regular peek at my site. Is this not right what I am doing? I have posted similar stuff elsewhere as well. Always happy to be steered in the right direction if I am going a bit wayward.

Cheers,

Andrew

A blog is excellent for SEO if done properly over time. However, you need to be able to put in a large amount of time on an on-going basis, i.e. its something you never stop doing. A friend of mine runs a blog called Golf Blogger. I think it has been going for about 2+ years, is getting about 4,500 uniques a day at the moment, get traffic for over 1,000 different search terms a day, brings in more than some people earn a month in advertising and has great potential for expansion; which is being re-invested to make the site bigger and better.

What has made the blog a success:

- It's about a topic a lot of people are instested in
- One of the owners was a professional golfer
- The other is a web developer with SEO knowlege
- Regular content over 2+ years
- Lots of time

Those are the sort of ingredients you will need to make a beast.

 

[ADW]

A blog is excellent for SEO if done properly over time. However, you need to be able to put in a large amount of time on an on-going basis, i.e. its something you never stop doing. A friend of mine runs a blog called Golf Blogger. I think it has been going for about 2+ years, is getting about 4,500 uniques a day at the moment, get traffic for over 1,000 different search terms a day, brings in more than some people earn a month in advertising and has great potential for expansion; which is being re-invested to make the site bigger and better.

What has made the blog a success:

- It's about a topic a lot of people are instested in
- One of the owners was a professional golfer
- The other is a web developer with SEO knowlege
- Regular content over 2+ years
- Lots of time

Those are the sort of ingredients you will need to make a beast.

That's where my problem lies. I've got to write about ceramic mugs. I get bored writing it so why anyone would want to read stuff like that is beyond me:redface:

 

[david64]

That's where my problem lies. I've got to write about ceramic mugs. I get bored writing it so why anyone would want to read stuff like that is beyond me:redface:

If your going to do content it may be better to go for some very high quality articles, .e.g. The History of Ceramic Mugs. However, you'd then have to go and find people who might want to link to those articles + links to those pages aren't going to do a great deal to boost your SERPs.

 

[natashacs]

Andrew I am in the same place as you (not for ceramic mugs) but trying to do the final push up google. I have done loads of changes and gone from page 4 to bottom of page 1 like you.
All I can say is it is addictive trying to work out why everyone elses site is better/ranking higher, and doing changes to your own site, and also extremely time consuming!
Anyway, good luck. And if I ever need a mug, I know where to go.

ps - I think an article on the history of ceramic mugs sounds interesting!!!! You could also do one on the types of mug. ie, handled mug, mug without handle, erm, not sure what else. it is extremely time consuming though.

 

[eventdomain]

ADW - I have given you a link on www.eventdomain.co.uk under
Advertising gifts.

Good luck with your business

 

A couple of thoughts

To rank for "promotional mugs" then create a page called "promotional-mugs.htm" (rather than mugs.htm) - with title AND <h1>tags as "promotional mugs" - finally - NONE of your links so far contains the anchor text "promtional mugs" - which they must

It is a very weak term... so you should get there fairly easily.

What I am saying is - focus pages at specific targets.
And use a couple of hundred words that contain the phrase , and some LSI derivatives.

 

[ADW]

Thans again for all the help and advice.

Eventdomain - much appreciated.

AdMagic - I am now looking into the page headers etc. and will be targetting them toward the keywords.

I am glad there is plenty of room for improvement which means I should continue to rise. I need to start doing some more work on my conversion rates as well now. No point having increased traffic without being able to make the most of it.