Thread: SEO and Indexing Help!

I know seo consultation costs a lot of money, but I was wondering if anyone could give me a little help since I'm just starting to learn seo, link building, etc.

I've built the site Equipment Leasing Companies so I could try to put in practice what I have been reading about seo (and if the site generates some cash... hey, I won't complain). It's been about a month since I launched it, and it seems to rank well (first page) on yahoo for multiple keyword phrases, but for the same phrases the site is nowhere to be found on google. In fact, I have found only one long phrase in which I rank on the first page.

Any tips on how I can improve my google ranking?

Another problem I have is that yahoo seems to always link to the site's root. Example: try doing a search on yahoo.com (US) using the phrase "why do companies lease equipment". My site ranks #1 and you see a snipet of the post I wrote as the description, but it does not link to the actual article. instead it links to the root. Why?

Any help would be appreciated.

No help? Any takers? Anyone???

build more backlinks for better ranking on google

Well you're using WordPress which is a good start. Part of the problem is your theme. It's not so SEO friendly IMO.

For starters, I would remove your site name from the <title> of every page on your site. It is only hurting your ability to rank for your targeted keywords. It's reducing the keyword density of the "real" targeted phrase for that page. Optimizing title tags ... err... elements is very important to your on-page SEO.

Use custom <title>s if your theme allows them. Many times you want your URL to target a particular keyword phrase. The <title> should be set to that keyword phrase. But the title of the post itself might contain those keywords plus a few more words to make it catchy or more marketable. So you really don't want your them to simply build your <title> for you using /%postname%/ | sitename. It's better if you set them yourself.

The <h1> element on every page on your site is:

<h1><a href="Equipment Leasing Companies - Business directory, Resources, Jobs, and industry news." title="Equipment Leasing Companies - Business Directory, Resources, Jobs, and Industry News">Equipment Leasing Companies - Business Directory, Resources, Jobs, and Industry News</a></h1>

This is terrible IMO. It's telling the search engines that every page on your site is about "Equipment Leasing Companies - Business Directory, Resources, Jobs, and Industry News".

The <h1> should reinforce the keyword phrase you're targeting in your <title> and should summarize what the page is about. <h1> is probably the 2nd most important on page ranking factor... the most important being <title>. I have never been a fan of putting links inside of header elements. Header elements are meant to outline or give structure to the content on the CURRENT page... So why would someone think that having a header (ESPECIALLY the <h1>) point to another page was a good thing? /shrug

On your post pages, the <h1> should be the /%postname%/. It might make sense to to have "Equipment Leasing Companies - Business Directory, Resources, Jobs, and Industry News" be the <h1> on the home page... but that is about it.

The excepts for your most recent posts that are being shown on your home page are the typical first 200 or so characters of the real post followed by the famed "read more..." link. Linking from your home page, category page, archive page with "read more..." as the link text tells Google and the other search engines that your post is about "read more".

If your theme allows it, use custom excerpts for your home, category, and archives pages... This eliminates anything that might be interpreted as duplicate content... but more importantly it allows you to add a link to the end of the excerpt with your own link text. I always make the link text at the bottom of the excerpt be the targeted keyword phrase (or a slight variation) of the page being linked to. You can follow the link in my sig to my WordPress blog to see examples of this. Notice that the post title, the alt text for the image link, and link at the end of each excerpt are all slightly different but all target the keyword phrase (or slight variation) from the title of the post being linked to.

I use a premium WordPress theme called Thesis by DIYThemes.com. It's very robust... very SEO friendly... straight out of the box. It's easily customizable (check out some samples by clicking on the thumbnails here) and done so in such a way as to make upgrades of the theme easy. All customizations to CSS or hooks (using PhP) are written to a "custom" folder. You need only to back them up before upgrading to a new version of Thesis, run the upgrade, then restore them and BAM! You're back in business.

Other than some of the above, getting backlinks from relevant sites to the individual posts with their targeted keyword phrase(s) as the link text would help a lot. You want deep links to posts... not just links to your home page.

I've found ezinearticles.com VERY effective for building backlinks and helping with rankings. If you write quality articles, lots will repost them on their sites leaving your links in the post. I put one link to the post in the body of my article and a link to my home page typically in the author biography unless I have another related post on my site to link to. If you want to check out how I use ezinesarticles.com you can see check out of my posts on search engine optimization.

First off let me just say what an excellent post this is. It's great to see a reply of this high quality on NB as lately it seems most posts are a few words repeating what everyone else said or just agreeing. So, thanks.

Originally Posted by Canonical

I put one link to the post in the body of my article and a link to my home page typically in the author biography unless I have another related post on my site to link to.

I have one comment regarding your strategy with links on ezinearticles; do you realise that the link in the body of the article is given a "nofollow" tag, while the resource box one isn't?

I was also looking to have a link in the body of the article so that it would look more like a natural link, however when I realised this I stuck with having two links in the resource box instead (one deep and one to homepage).

I couldn't have asked for a better reply. Thank you for your in-depth analysis. I learned more about seo reading your reply than I have learned in months of reading hundreds of articles, honestly.
If I can help you with anything, just send me a PM.

I am aware of the Thesis theme, but I didn't realize the theme I used was not so SEO friendly. Since I had bought the theme awhile ago I decided to use it.

Thanks.

Originally Posted by Canonical

Well you're using WordPress which is a good start. Part of the problem is your theme. It's not so SEO friendly IMO.

For starters, I would remove your site name from the <title> of every page on your site. It is only hurting your ability to rank for your targeted keywords. It's reducing the keyword density of the "real" targeted phrase for that page. Optimizing title tags ... err... elements is very important to your on-page SEO.

Use custom <title>s if your theme allows them. Many times you want your URL to target a particular keyword phrase. The <title> should be set to that keyword phrase. But the title of the post itself might contain those keywords plus a few more words to make it catchy or more marketable. So you really don't want your them to simply build your <title> for you using /%postname%/ | sitename. It's better if you set them yourself.

The <h1> element on every page on your site is:



This is terrible IMO. It's telling the search engines that every page on your site is about "Equipment Leasing Companies - Business Directory, Resources, Jobs, and Industry News".

The <h1> should reinforce the keyword phrase you're targeting in your <title> and should summarize what the page is about. <h1> is probably the 2nd most important on page ranking factor... the most important being <title>. I have never been a fan of putting links inside of header elements. Header elements are meant to outline or give structure to the content on the CURRENT page... So why would someone think that having a header (ESPECIALLY the <h1>) point to another page was a good thing? /shrug

On your post pages, the <h1> should be the /%postname%/. It might make sense to to have "Equipment Leasing Companies - Business Directory, Resources, Jobs, and Industry News" be the <h1> on the home page... but that is about it.

The excepts for your most recent posts that are being shown on your home page are the typical first 200 or so characters of the real post followed by the famed "read more..." link. Linking from your home page, category page, archive page with "read more..." as the link text tells Google and the other search engines that your post is about "read more".

If your theme allows it, use custom excerpts for your home, category, and archives pages... This eliminates anything that might be interpreted as duplicate content... but more importantly it allows you to add a link to the end of the excerpt with your own link text. I always make the link text at the bottom of the excerpt be the targeted keyword phrase (or a slight variation) of the page being linked to. You can follow the link in my sig to my WordPress blog to see examples of this. Notice that the post title, the alt text for the image link, and link at the end of each excerpt are all slightly different but all target the keyword phrase (or slight variation) from the title of the post being linked to.

I use a premium WordPress theme called Thesis by DIYThemes.com. It's very robust... very SEO friendly... straight out of the box. It's easily customizable (check out some samples by clicking on the thumbnails here) and done so in such a way as to make upgrades of the theme easy. All customizations to CSS or hooks (using PhP) are written to a "custom" folder. You need only to back them up before upgrading to a new version of Thesis, run the upgrade, then restore them and BAM! You're back in business.

Other than some of the above, getting backlinks from relevant sites to the individual posts with their targeted keyword phrase(s) as the link text would help a lot. You want deep links to posts... not just links to your home page.

I've found ezinearticles.com VERY effective for building backlinks and helping with rankings. If you write quality articles, lots will repost them on their sites leaving your links in the post. I put one link to the post in the body of my article and a link to my home page typically in the author biography unless I have another related post on my site to link to. If you want to check out how I use ezinesarticles.com you can see check out of my posts on search engine optimization.

Originally Posted by tmongy

First off let me just say what an excellent post this is. It's great to see a reply of this high quality on NB as lately it seems most posts are a few words repeating what everyone else said or just agreeing. So, thanks.


I have one comment regarding your strategy with links on ezinearticles; do you realise that the link in the body of the article is given a "nofollow" tag, while the resource box one isn't?

I was also looking to have a link in the body of the article so that it would look more like a natural link, however when I realised this I stuck with having two links in the resource box instead (one deep and one to homepage).

Thanks tmongy and esoul for the kind words. AND for teaching me something... Actually I was unaware that the link in the body of the article was NOFOLLOWed. I never even bothered looking. LOL

Honestly, I signed up and wrote 10 articles for my SEO blog w/ no edits to get Platinum Status and haven't even written the 11th yet. LOL I really just wanted to have it ready for when I launch a couple other sites that I have in mind.