I can't get ranked...why?

[watto]

I have been trying for a while to get ranked for the search term "businesses for sale", but with no result.

What do I have to do to get results for this term?

All feedback would be greatly appreciated.

kind regards

Watto

[watto]

woops!

my url would help.

www.businesstrader.biz

cheers!

watto

[bj]

Watto, I think it's more important to use a stats tool and find out what search terms people are using that are allowing them to actually find you and then optimizing for those keyphrases- there will be more than one and some of them will surprise you. AWStats is very good for this. There are many other tools as well.

I have seen a complete turnaround in my conversion rate since I did this. It's not that my traffic is that much greater (well, it is, but that isn't what did it- or maybe it is), it's that the traffic that is now coming into my site is very targeted on specific things I have to offer instead of the broad term I originally optimized for that was so competitive that I ended up in the six digits in terms of placement.

Now out of my five best keyphrases I'm #1 for the first, #1 for the second, #4 for the third and #8 for the fourth, and #2 for the fifth. Before I wasn't even in the running for the first twenty pages of google returns for ANYTHING, even though I had very decent google PR.

Even better, the traffic is converting into income. That's what it's all about, right?

I hope that helps.

Oh, and one other thing- I owe it to reading and rereading and rerereading the advice on this forum. Thanks folks!

[bj]

I just ran "businesses for sale" in google and got the first ten results out of 42,400,000.

You better start looking for niches to target!

[watto]

I really have my work cut out for me and I don't know where to start?

Niches?

[seolion]

First of all I feel it is not optimised in the basic levels.
I couldn't find any H1, H2 tags.
You must be building links. I saw your backlinks in MSN.
Are you giving your anchor text as business for sale?

Try to complete the on page factors, then on to link building.

Best of Luck

[weblaunch]

How old is your site? It's probably suffering from G's sandbox effect. How does your site fare in other search engines, say MSN?

I had a site that ranked #1 on MSN while not ranking at all on Google. After a while, it climbed to #5 on Google.

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by watto

I really have my work cut out for me and I don't know where to start?

Niches?

Exactly! According to your site, you're really targeting "Australian Businesses For Sale" and "Australian Business Classifieds." I'd go even further and optimize for specific cities or areas and/or types of businesses.

"Carpet Cleaning Business in South Australia" is a lot less competitive and a lot more targeted than just "Businesses for Sale" and the real beauty is you already have a listing for that on your site! You just need to work with what you’ve got.

I'd suggest posting the titles of some of your listings on your front page, with a text link to a subpage with more info for that business. Getting some of those listings on your front page, with their naturally occurring keywords and text links, would help.

Another issue is that your database isn’t giving each page a unique title. You have a Restaurants Category page and the search engines get an entire page on restaurants for sale in Australia, and the page title needs to reflect that. Currently all your category pages are titled "Business Trader – xsstock" A better choice would be "Restaurants for Sale in Australia : Business Trader."

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by seolion

Try to complete the on page factors, then on to link building.

Unless a site is a real mess, I don't think it matters which you do first - they're both important and they both take time.

[watto]

Thanks cspelts.

I will look at making those changes you suggested.

I started this site from scratch and I have 3 telesales girls working for and it is doing quite well as you can tell by the amount of listings I have, but as you can see, my seo has really suffered and now it is time to really get stuck into it!

I feel my business could literally double if I rank well for "Australian Businesses for Sale" etc.

I would really appreciate if you could pm every now and then to let me know how I am going and if I am heading in the right direction.

Once I have made the changes, how long before I will see results?

kind regards

Watto

[Bidera]

Probably will take 30-90 days to start seeing an improvement. Could be quicker though.

[watto]

After making a few changes, I am now on the first page of YAHOO for the search term "Australian Businesses for Sale"

Thanks for great advice!

[watto]

I am now number 3 page one of MNS for the search term "australian businesses for sale"

thanks guys