What next to help with my rankings

[Wardy]

I'm after a fresh set of eyes and any suggestions to help me with my site on what next I should be doing to help increase rankings.

The site is: http://bit.ly/VR6xIm

Currently the site is ranking around 9-11th on google.co.uk for it's main term which is the name of the site. The site is around a year old, when it launched it went initially up towards positions 3-5 but has since settled at around where it is now.

I have a free tool webmasters can use to implement our speed test into their sites which also includes a link back to our site in it to recognise that we are providing the tool for free, I periodically change the link achor text so it is not always the same anchor text that every site uses.

Is there anything obvious I should be doing or that is missing that would help with my rankings?

*Just as a note, I am not after a review on the actual speed test on the site, a new one will be developed to help further increase accuracy.

[yousayjump]

Hi Wardy

A quick check on opensiteexplorer comparing your site and the number 1 current ranking [<cite>broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk</cite>], the results show a huge difference in inbound links, page authority, domain authority and social activity to name a few.

You said so yourself that your domain is only 12 months old.  Doing a quick search on Google.co.uk indicates that there are about 23,600,000 results for the search phrase "broadband speed test". Fairly saturated market but time will hopefully allow you to improve.

The fact that your site is at the number 10 position is not bad in my opinion for such a young domain.  Get your new site uploaded with 301 redirects in place and review it after the new site is up and running.

[Wardy]

Thanks for the reply Kriscons.

Yes the speedchescker sites is quite a bit older than mine and so has a lot more history, age and authority to it.

I'm guessing it's not just a case of trying to play "catch up" with links that will get me competing with them is it as I envisage that would be quite a mamouth task to do.

I'm not actually putting up a new site, I was saying that just the actual speedtest on there will be being developed (the site stays the same, the speed test just becomes a bit more accurate is all).

[yousayjump]

The key is to make sure your website growth, authority and success is natural.

I have personally witnessed a client who has tried to "get to number one in Google" by rushing into activities of obtaining vast numbers of inbound links and ultimately they logged into GWT one day to see a nice message from Google notifying them of the suspicious activity.

Keep things simple. Start with fixing any errors within the HTML by running your site through the WC3 validator. I can see you have 8 errors on the homepage.  Easily fixable.  Then run your site the Y-Slow browser add-on.  The page loading time is taken into consideration with search engines.  You are currently getting a Grade C - see if you can improve this somewhat.

One thing at a time. Oh and remember, its no longer about "being number 1" so much now, its about measuring your goals and conversion rates and determining success that way.  Stick some kind of track_pageview onto the "start test" button, then you can compare how many people visit your homepage and also compare how many actually ran the speed test system.  The fact that the speed test is the main function of your site suggests you should see that the number of visitors to your homepage should not be too disimilar to the number of people who run the test.  If there is a big difference, find out why.  Good luck.

I got 9mb per second by the way.