SEO: Where To Start

[JGalt]

This post is deleted!

[JamesNorquay]

a few things to work on:

1. Make sure content is unique

2. Make sure your internal link structure is working well.

3. Make sure you have relevant links.

4. Make sure you have social media buttons connecting up your website.

5. Make sure on page SEO is all good ie. titles, Descriptions, footer ect.

6. Keep connected with competitor movements.

[RyanKent]

You described your site as "offering the best information in my niche, I researched and wrote all the content myself." Generally sites like that are not negatively impacted by Panda.

Can you share your site's URL along with a few examples of keywords you had previously ranked on the first page for but have since dropped in rankings?

Have you made any changes to your site?

There are a ton of factors involved. James touched on some of them. Also, new web pages receive what is referred to as a QDF boost from Google. After a period of time, that boost wears off and your rankings will naturally drop. That could be a factor as well.

The best place to begin learning SEO and applying it to your site is the Beginner's Guide to SEO. It's a very short and solid guide.

[JGalt]

Thanks James,

1. Yes, the content is unique.  I think it could be improved in places.  I started this website nearly 5 years ago and my writing and webmastering skills were not what they are today.  I chased keywords a lot more back then.... trying to shoehorn content into places it didn't belong.

2. Internal linking is good, all content pages are indexed and there are no reported issues in google's WMT

3. I have quality links, but much fewer total links than my competition. Generally the anchor text to my site matches the keywords I'm trying to rank for.

4. I'm building out my social media presence. I have a Facebook Page that is #5 for my main keyword, that happened after this last version of Panda.

5. I will go back though and check these.  I have no warnings from SEOmoz for short descriptions except on "no-indexed" pages.

6. When Panda was released this last time there were several sites I'd never seen before on page 1 for keywords they really have no business ranking for.  When I check them out in open site explorer, I'm seeing that they have a lot of links, far more than I have, but the quality of the links is bad, spammy directories, spam wordpress blogs with some page authority but no relevance to the subject.  My site is far behind in the # of links and link domains.

Ryan thanks,

I am rebuilding the site as we speak the look had gone very stale and it looked tired and old, I will post the address when it's complete as I am far too much of a perfectionist/control freak to have people criticize what it looks like right now.

Truthfully, I chose a poor domain name 5 years ago, in the last month I've bought several exact domains in the niche and have them ranking in the top 6 pages on google already, on free Tumblr and Blogger blogs.  This is probably simply a result  of the QDF boost you mentioned.  What is the value of building up these domains and pointing them to my main site? Is this a good practice?

I had large adsense ads above the fold throughout a majority of the site, as per adsense recommendations. I've heard this can negatively impact a site in the SERPs.  I'm in the process of cutting those ads and dropping their position on the page.

[axzm]

To answer your question about how to start building up your link profile from scratch I would start by looking into guest-blogging on a website geared around your niche. It shouldn't be that hard if you have written all your content yourself just simply put your links on your post. Make sure that your links will not have a no-follow attribute when its published. Granted I don't know your niche or how unique it is maybe but that's a good way to start.

[RyanKent]

** What is the value of building up these domains and pointing them to my main site? Is this a good practice?**

No, definitely not. Pick a single domain and put 100% of your focus in your primary choice.

Offering ads on your site is a ranking detractor. People don't like ads. People have less trust in sites with ads as well. Some credible sites are able to tastefully offer a couple select ads. If you want to offer advertisements, you want to fall into this latter category.

[JGalt]

Okay, thanks to you all for the help.

@Ryan I've been reading your responses on many questions on this forum and I really appreciate how active and helpful you are.

Fact is SEO is difficult for me to wrap my brain around:

Here's the competitive domain analysis, I just did.  I have not done any "SEO" on my site at this point.  I rank #14 on google for my main keyword, I used to be at #2.

Obviously I have some work cut out for me.  I'm willing to do it.

The #1 site is in the second column, and before 2 weeks ago I hadn't seen it at all.  It looks like the domain was registered in August.  I've been searching through my competitor's Link Profiles on open site explorer, trying to pick out the quality sites that have naturally linked to them so I can approach them and start developing relationships.

I will report back....

EgG2m.jpg

[RyanKent]

If I could offer two pieces of advice to someone learning SEO they would be:

#1 - Learn from the most authentic sources. Read sites like Google Webmaster Central, watch videos from Matt Cutts (Youtube.com search Matt Cutts) and read or ask questions on SEOmoz. There are a few other great sites out there but for every good site there seems to be many bad ones. If you aren't sure, just ask!

#2 - Proper SEO should feel good and, for the most part, make sense. You are looking to build authentic, long term value for your business. If you wind up performing actions which feel fake, stop and question those actions. Ask here in the Q&A. Steps such as submitting to free link directories, looking for chinese blogs who don't nofollow links and similar forms of obtaining links aren't likely to add an value at all to your site, and may actually harm your site.