Why does my site rank so badly

[lethal0r]

its my turn to ask the interminable question why does my site rank so badly?

site is: marriagerecords.org.uk.

it was #1 for 'marriage records' on google for about 6 months.

then it was 5th to 10th for about 2 months.

now it is nowhere for this phrase and anything else, none of the pages I have written rank for anything.

I have spent hours upon hours researching original content and I have got some great backlinks from sites like wrexham.gov.uk and somerset.gov.uk (some dont show in opensiteexplorer yet).

im guessing im over-optimizing something but i'd love some concrete fixes if anyone could suggest any.

thanks,

tom

[NigelJ]

Hi Tom,

Just had a quick look over your site using the process we'd normally use at my work to assess why a site might be struggling and I think the link building portion of your SEO efforts is where you should start looking.

You're right in thinking you've got some great links on there such as the one you mentioned from wrexham.gov.uk but you're competing against some much stronger sites, the National Archives for example has a DA of 100. With other sites in the top 3 having DA's of 67 & 69 respectively. This is going to make it difficult for one great link to boost you to the top, you need to have several strong links to bolster your current profile. I would suggest breaking it down into targets of linking domains, from OTE i can see you're on 11 so make your first target 50 and so on.

Technically, i can't see any huge errors with your site. Are there any of the Google Algorithim updates which coincide with the drop you've seen in position?

Nigel J Linton

[SteveTheWoodsman]

Since you just picked up the domain in 02/2012, remember that you picked it up and then all the big algorithm updates hit.

Since you went after an EMD (exact match domain), remember that Google has been decreasing its relevance recently: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data

Also, when I visit your site, the colors make it really hard for me to stay on the page.  What is your bounce rate?  There is a lot of speculation that you'll lose rankings for high bounce rates.

Additionally, the site really functions as a directory.  And directories have been getting less and less good rankings (even DMOZ).

[tdawson09]

Spammy keywords might be something to look at. Although you they are not high for "marriage records" it is used twice in your title tag, and the word marriage is used 49 times. I recently did some clean up on some of my pages that were kind of spammy with some keywords and saw an improvement.

So something to consider.

[dawnieando]

I agree with bstone81 as a starting point - i.e. reduce the number of instances of 'marriage' for example.  We recently did some clean up on one of our primary terms which we'd been link building for but not seen must change.  When we reduced the number of instances of our target term we say a huge jump.

[lethal0r]

thank you for the responses. i'll start with reducing the number of instances of marriage.

bounce rate is 40 to 45% which seems OK to me.