Website not appearing in top 100

[ukss1984]

A few months ago, we launched the website www.gunnersdirect.com. The main keyword target for this website was "arsenal shirts", which you can see is at the very start of the page title.

In fairness, limited work has been done to the link building, etc due to time constaints so I would not expect it to rank at the top.

However, it does not appear to rank even in the top 100. This gives me major cause for concern, as surely Google should at least recognise the website, albeit in a lowly position?

Does this point to some underlying coding issue or penalty?  What would you recommend we do to turn round it's fortunes?

[kdaly100]

Hi Simon

As a Man City fan I had to be brave and open the site but it looks like a nicely built Zen Cart site and he calls to action are good (wont be buying one by the way).

You say main keyword target in your question and this is often asked here and my first advice is not to focus on a narrow keyword set.  I would look at a list of keywords in the 3-4 word range and at least have list of 15-20 word sets and direct your pages in this direction.

The football / soccer shirt space is really busy and I would spread my wings in the keyword space a bit to try and capture some of the other keywords (I was prompted Arsenal Shirts for kids when I typed in a quick Google search)

I would also spend some serious time on your product descriptions and try and make them unique and richer for people and for search.  For instance at random I picked

_emulate the skills of star players like Aaron Ramsey, Marouane Chamakh and Thomas Vermaelen. _

and there were at least 4-5 sites with this identical text (and yours wasn't even there).  This does not help.

I would also look at making your URLs more search friendly.  Zen Cart has some plugins to accomplish this for you and wouldn't hurt either.

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&cPath=40_47&products_id=231

[ukss1984]

Hi Kieran,

Thanks for your email, I will look into the product descriptions as I agree that could help. However, would you not expect Google to at least acknowledge the site for "arsenal shirts", even on page 10?

Simon

[Aran_Smithson]

As Kieran pointed out you have quite a bit of duplicate cotent, thus I expect you have been pushed right back in the SERPs.

Also the lack of links to your site could be an issue as your site currently carries very little authority, especially when compared to your competitors. But this is a good thing (better to work with no links than hudnreds of bad links!).

I like the site, its nice a clean., but one thing i did notice was the lack of social integration. I recommend you incorporate some kind of social sharing (i did recently and its definitley helped my SERPs).

You could also create some social accounts on twitter/facebook etc (don't know if you already have) and start talking to your potential customers (theres always alot of footy banter!)

Consider writing some original articles on Arsenal and getting them posted on other fans blogs (with a link back to your site of course).

Your niche is great for the amount of people whom you can engage socially, on twitter, blogs, facebook etc...mine is a real nightmare (coat hangers, who wants to talk about them?). Use the social side of things to your MASSIVE advantage.

[kdaly100]

To be honest I don't know. The search volume is in the 40K region sotough space for those two words.

If I was you (hate that phrase  :-)) I would spend some effort on looking at something long tail   I had a quick look at keywords for this and there are some 'nice' candidates with relatively modest compeition.

• cheap Arsenal shirt

• new Arsenal kit 2011

• arsenal shirts cheap

• arsenal shirt sale

[lonniea]

Hi Simon,

Here's a very simple rule of thumb to follow on any given web page. The most important part of any given web page is the title. Therefore if you want Arsenal Shirts as your focused keyword for your site, try this:

1. 'Gunners Direct Arsenal Football Shirts' as your Title

2. You have no H1 tag, therefore make one that reads; Arsenal Football Shirts, Kits and more at Gunners Direct

3. Immediately after make a H2 tag (you have no H2 tag) that reads; "Arsenal Shirts, Football Shirts, Kits - Shop Online at Gunners Direct.

4. In your head tag, place commas inbetween each keyword. Do not capitalize any words in your meta description except for the 1st word of the sentence.

5. Add Arsenal Shirts at the beginning of your first sentence of your content. Spread the term at least 4 more times within your content. This is course depends on the volume of your content. Bold the keyword, Italize it and also underline the keyword at least once.

6. Add a cornerstone content page about Arsenal Shirts. Tell us why you created this site is an example. Make this page awesome! Recommend at least one authority site link (content driven) above the fold on this page.

7. Build at least 3 more unique articles about Arsenal Shirts which all point to your cornerstone content page.

8. Add Arsenal Shits at the bottom of your home page in the very last sentence.

If you do these things i describe above, it will not take long to get listed well with Google. It works everytime I do it, no matter how much content I have on the site.

Good luck!

[kdaly100]

Lonnie

Above are good points but I think on their own wont put him up the SERPS for the keyword combination alone as it has 40-60K searches per month by some pretty established UK players.

He should do them but there is a lot of additional work (aka slog) along with Aran's points above for a start