No Longer in Top Ten

[fjayhall]

Hello,

My website www.ExecSearches.com has been in the top 10 for our two most important keyword phrases for a while now.. "nonprofit jobs" and "non profit jobs". But in the past few weeks our ranking has been dropping and now this week we are no longer in the top ten. We have a lot of other sites linking to us and I believe our content is good. We have more sites linking to us than some of the sites in front of us at this point.

I once hired someone to do some optimization for my site and I am afraid that perhaps they did some things they shouldn't have and they are still present on the page and now I am being penalized.

I would appreciate any advice folks may have regarding changes I should make to the main page.

Thanks,

Jay

[mm99]

I really could not find anything really wrong. I would just clean things up a bit and you might do better. These are some things to look at:
1) your title is long. You should limit it to something like 60 chr.
2) you have a lot of script in the head. You should always place it in external files and link to it.
3) get rid of any meaningless garbage in the head. Generally title, kws, desc and robots are about all you need there.

You're not really doing that bad. When I googed your kws, you were right at the top of the second page. Looks like you just may have been moved around a little. If it were much more than that, then I would worry.

peace...Paul

[janeth]

I would remove this

<meta name="Robot" content="ALL">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="15 Days">
<meta name="Rating" content="General">
<meta name="PICS-label" content="General">
<meta name="Language" content="en">
<meta name="distribution" content="Global">

If nothing else the part that tells them to stay away for 15 days.

I would get rid of the script in the head

Add a little more text and threw a header tag with you key word in it and you should start moving.

How long has it been since you changed anything?

[Mel]

The advice above will help you and in addition:

Your homepage could do with lots more content both from the search engine point of view and from the customers.

From the search engine point of view there's not much on that page to tell it what your site is about.

From the customers point of view, when they click on your link from a directory to your home page there is nothing there to tell them why they should use you as opposed to the other hundreds of sites listed.

First you have to get rankings to be seen,then you have to have page titles that sell the viewer on clicking through to your page and then you have to sell them on your product when they reach the page

[fjayhall]

Thanks for the replies.

I have made some of the changes that you mentioned and I will ask my programmer to reorganize the script in the head..thats above my head. :-)

With regards to the <meta name="Robot" content="ALL"> ... i was under the impression that tag directed the engines to crawl the rest of the pages on my site... which they do and i want it to continue... is that not correct?


Mel, I dont quite understand your comments about not telling visitors/engines what my site is about. In the very center of my main page is this statement "Welcome to the premier site for executive, fundraising and mid-level jobs in nonprofit, government, healthcare, education, and other non-profit sector industries. "

I went ahead and added an H1 tag around that statement but I get the feeling Mel that you are suggesting something else... what I am I not understanding?

Thanks for all your advice. Jay

[Mel]

HI Jay:
I would add text content to my home page until I had 250 - 400 words there, and then I would tell them why your site is the logical choice for what you do. You are not the only site listed for such services and if viewers do not find compelling reasons to use your site in preference to other, its much easier to just click on another site.

[ronniethedodger]

What Mel is saying Jay, is that your Home Page is like a magazine cover. Think of that cover sitting by itself in a sea of covers in a magazine rack. They are scanning hundreds of these, and you want them to pick yours up and see what is inside.

Your Home Page needs to get to the point and capture their attention, all in the small space of a tiny screen. You not only need to tell your story, you need to sell your story as well.

[Mel]

Nice analogy Ronnie, Mind if I borrow it from time to time?

[ronniethedodger]

Originally Posted by Mel

Nice analogy Ronnie, Mind if I borrow it from time to time?

Hell Mel...why not? Just as long as you use my byline and copyright notices, I don't care! ;0)

Seriously though. Having top results is one thing and it gets them to your site. If you don't make a good first impression and capture that traffic, then what good are the results doing you eh?