Google no longer has a sandbox, Google also no longer has a quarterly "dance"

Currently a new site can be submitted and indexed in just a few hours.

You can submit direct using Google webmaster tools, and for extra juice I would get links to the site from another well trafficked site.

SERPS  show up instantly if a site is crawled fast enough, I have seen forums get indexed in five minutes from a first posting.

Something smells odd about the site....

You say the content is unique, yet the photos are obviously stock photos.

I get that you are writing a blog about content marketing...but what are you selling & why?

It feels like the entire reason for your whole blog is to have a place for your ads.

Rather then have ads on an already established blog....

Just thought I would update on the situation.

I have just had a record month of calls and emails from positional clients.

Over 25 client contacts in 27 days.

By far a record May with 5 more days to go.

I'd say the new content is working well.

The updates have not all gone through yet.

OSE has been updated, but as of .5 an hour ago the

Competitive Domain Analysis

had not updated.

If everything works in Google testing tool then just have a cup of tea & relax.

Once you forget about the microdata it will finally pop up in the SERPS.

(It took my site over a week to show up, according to Google not all sites will show it)

OSE is behind in updates & broken, it is being updated & fixed soon.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/drive-failures-affecting-some-customers-rankings-and-reports

Also another good read is this post about why links are not counted the same on all sites:

(still looking for that article)

I would seriously start researching more about Panda and what it has done to the blogs as well as article based sites. Many blog based link boosting sites have been dropped, and are shutting down, many more are to follow if this trend continues. Posting to other link based blogs and sites like Ezine, Squidoo, and the like might just hurt you more in the future.

Google is going through and seriously changing they way that SEO has worked in the past. They are utilizing HUMAN raters that go through and rate sites at random by actually reading them and seeing them with human eyes, this rating information is then tested and built into the new algo changes. This means that if a human can read spun crap content then it is rated down. If you are linking to spun crap then those links are rated down.

Internal blogs are great if they are filled with unique content. about your services and products. Stop posting to other sites and blogs and get people to link to you by posting to your own. Write good content for your sties not other sites that just host spun content..

Twitter, Yelp, Facebook are good for social if people are going to use them for social....

Remember people can SEE what you are doing, a twitter account that is just blank is not s social site, Just like Facebook account with no activity. Not only do you have to maintain these social sites, but you have to post to them as well as INTERACT with your clients customers on them.

That does make a lot of sense.

So as I start to rank lower for MORE phrases the CTR will go down because those NEW terms start lower in the SERPS.

So overall, a lower average CTR WON'T hurt?

I also noticed that one of my images had a huge spike in image search traffic but had a higher bounce rate since the people clicking on it did not get to see more "dirty" images...

I'm having a hard time mulling over more general traffic VS less very direct traffic.

I don't want to be one of those sites that gets 1500 hits a day & no calls.

I have been on a pretty big content upgrade on my websites.

More content

5 pages to 14 pages

100 words to 500+ words per page

More images

More alt tags

This has increased my traffic & my click through rates due to a massive increase in impressions.

But because the impressions have gone up so much further my CTR had crashed.

I have gone from :

500--> 50

to

4500 -->70

In one month.

(Taken from Google webmaster tools)

Will having a much lower CTR hurt my ranking in the long run?

In the end I want more phone calls about my service so far I'm not yet seeing that conversion happening.

Such is true in almost every service based product business.

If your clients knew everything about SEO, they would not  be hiring the service.

A little education goes a long way.

If it is a "local" client one fantastic solution is to hold classes.

Set up a once a month SEO class where your company teaches the basic SEO theory. Invite all your clients in a 50 mile radius, and have them invite others.

This does three things:

1. Saves you time teaching the same thing to 20 people 20 times.

2. Gets you MORE leads from NEW clients.

3. Gets your clients more leads fro others at the class.

Everyone wins...

(Extra bonus points for having your class press releases gain YOUR company more links & press)

The site needs goals.

No use in ranking if there are no goals...

Every business needs goals.

If he sells blue widgets then his goal is to rank for blue widgets.

If he wants to start selling green widgets then new goals are to rank for green ones.

(Final goal is go gain orders for those new shiny green widgets)

It should not be hard to put together actual numbers on link building.

I use Google Webmaster Tools.

So far it is free & shows me the most information.

I ran it last week & is showed 76 domains with a total of 2000 links.

This week 76 domains & 2098 links.

Do that with what ever software you are using.

ALSO include the links you have applied for.

You don't have to write an essay use a chart with numbers.

6 Guest blog posts.

5 links from community directories.

100 links from fiver.

If he wants to know exactly how many links will gain him 1000 more unique hits in traffic, again that is a conversation that should have been had before you started with this client.

Client expectations are the job of the vendor.

If he is a retail client then he wants his phone to be rigging more often.

Your job is to get the site to a place where it is.

Exactly the client wants to know HOW to judge success.

That sort of conversation should have happened before they signed the contract.

Do they want more links?

Do they want to rank higher?

Do they want more hits?

Do they want more conversions & calls?

All of these things matter, and yet non of them do.

If you rank for a tiny niche phrase that no one wants to buy from?

If you rank for a broad hot selling phrase but your shopping cart is broke or your site looks like garbled spam your not going to get click through.

What is wrong with statistical answers?

Supply the client with:

A chart of new links

A report of what you are doing to GET those links

A plan for getting more good quality links.

We all started out not knowing what a meta tag is, or how important a good title tag is.

This website is a great place to learn and study & become knowledgeable in SEO.

The Get started guides are a great place to start.

http://www.seomoz.org/help/campaign-setup

http://www.seomoz.org/help/crawl-diagnostics

Your Meta data tags are little pieces of code that tell the search engines about your site, sort of like an intro.

Your Meta Title tags are the titles of your site.

W3Schools also are a great web resource.

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_meta.asp

What I suggest is to take ONE page of your site that is NOT your home page (just in case you break it)

& use that as a sort of testing page, change your titles, meta tags, h1 tags, ad images add more text run an on page keyword report... just learning from one page will teach you how to adjust all your other pages.

Uh oh... there was a temporary problem gathering Analysis data for your request. Sorry about that! We're actively looking into resolving these intermittent issues, but in the meantime, try submitting your request again in 20 minutes. Thank you!

It looks like it is down...

You need to find out WHERE the ROI comes from in your site.

Example:

10 hits a day from people searching purple anodized  floggers & sell 3 of them.

VS

100 hits a day from people searching Extreme Restraints & sell nothing.

Once you can narrow that down, that will help drill down where to improve.

I have heard with many commerce sites the more narrow the search string, teh more your buyer knows about that product and is ready to buy.

EGOL is right.

I have taken many smaller pages and beefed them up after a few months/years.

Added new relevant rewritten text, new images, better files names, Alt text...

Taking a page with 200 words & no images to a page with 700 words and lots of images will totally get those improved pages even higher.

http://www.facebook.com/MariahCarlePhotography

That might be part of the problem...

Every time I try to put a url in a Private message it gets garbled up with extra chars and then won't go to the right place.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mariah-Carle-Photography

Becomes:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mariah58973jhsdfui-Carle%8594743Photography

Ok after that test I deliberately garbled a url and it STILL work in the open forums....