Serious Help

[ardesigns]

I need some serious help. Our site was listed on page 2 with the search term promotional products before the update. We started using google ad words advertising and didnt get any results. After pausing the ad, our site disappeared from the search results all together with these results :(

http://arpromotionalproducts.com

Any advice?

Thanks,
Angela

[minstrel]

Our site was listed on page 2 with the search term promotional products before the update. We started using google ad words advertising and didnt get any results. After pausing the ad, our site disappeared from the search results all together with these results
Hi, Angela:

Welcome to WebProWorld....

How long has this site been active? It's not that unusual for a site to list higher when it first appears and then gradually drop in the absence of other promotional startegies.

You are definitely listed in Google's index.

Google shows only 6 sites linking to you (this is using the search string +"http://arpromotionalproducts.com"):


promotional apparel
www.1golfaccessories.com/47/promotional-apparel.html

Blog for America: Comment on Politics is not a Spectator Sport ...
blog.deanforamerica.com/archives/001114.comments.html

Usage Statistics for gomezwallstreetlinks.com - December 2002
www.gomezwallstreetlinks.com/ priv_stats/usage_200212.html

Advertizing-Promotional
bluemoonworld.com/links/advertizing-promotional.html

Shop Miva Merchant Stores - Shopping Directory - www.designextend.com/shopdir/B2B_Stores/ Custom_Imprinting/

Tradeshows-Meetings Resource Directory - Promotional Products
www.rentaladvantage.com/links/promotionalproducts.htm
However, they must be doing something for you - you have a PageRank of 5/10, which isn't bad.

I don't know this industry at all, but it looks like you are in a very competitive category: a search for "promotional products" (without the quotes) gave me this...

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,840,000

One thing you might think about is regionalizing your site a bit - trying to optimize for keywords for specific products or geographical regions, as a way of narrowing the field a bit to give you a better chance of standing out.

[cbp]

If you beleive in conspiracy theories, you dropped because you stopped using Adwords, BUT, I do not believe in these sorts of conspiracy theories.

There are no hard and fast guides for getting back positions that were lost during Florida update - some of sites have come back naturally without changing anything. Some site have come back after minor changes, but we do not know if they have come back because of the changes or they were going to do that naturally --> this has led to the spawning of theories (eg "replace your H1 headers with H4's" ... BTW, don't do this :-).

I had a look at your site and nothing jumps out at me ... the only thing maybe is all the links to product categories at the bottom (I know they are legit) - but some spam sites use a lot of keywords/links (sometimes hidden) at the bottom of page - can you remove these? (but this is a really minor point, so do not count on it helping)

Also stay away from some of the wacky theories going around - have a carefull read of this thread and the article linked in first message:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=10802
I keep reading it and thinking - if this guy is right what does it mean for my site ... if he is not right now, parts of what he is saying may be right in the future, so what can I do to benefit my site now.... still working on it..

CBP

[ardesigns]

Thanks for the help.

Our site was listed on page 2 for at least 6 months. I don't want to believe in conspiracy however being listed on page 2 and we stopped using the ad words we are dropped from the search altogether I don't know what to believe.

The links at the bottom are actually links to the product categories on our site so I don't see how that would hurt us. Would It?

Angela

[cbp]

The links at the bottom are actually links to the product categories on our site so I don't see how that would hurt us. Would It?


I am not so sure they will either.

BUT, given that we do not know for sure exactly what is going on @ the Googleplex and we do not want to make changes to sites based on poor advice --> however, as spam is a big problem and was probably one of the main reasons for the big overhaul at Google (it is debatable if they succeeded for not) --> the only changes that I would be inclined to make would be to get rid of anything on a site that might hint at being spam (even if its not). Hopefully the changes will not do any harm and may be possibly help.

Some of the obvious things that hint at spam (these are generic and not aimed at your site), even if they are not spam ... but it could be possible that Google could maybe possibly looking for these:
eg
* repetition of keywords in title
* keywords in comment tags in meta
* lots of keywords in alt tags
* I have even seen it suggested that eg <META NAME="Revisit-after" CONTENT="30 days"> might also be a flag to potential spam (it is a useless meta tag, but a lot of spam sites use it)
* etc

Lots of keywords and links at the bottom of a page are used on some spammy type sites, so my suggestion was based on this assumption/idea/theory (not fact) that we should remove all hints. I did not check again, but haven't you got links to categories on right hand side of page?

Please do not put a lot of emphasis on this - it really is a minor point.

CBP

[ronniethedodger]

I did notice that you had the term "promotional products" listed twice, one right after the other, in your title on the Home Page. I don't know if that is a good idea or not. You might be getting dinged for doing that.

Look at some of the titles in the first couple of results pages and even deeper. I did not come across any that repeated the term like you have. Some used the word "promotional" twice...once with the word "products" and once with the word "items".

Also, if you look at the stemming aspects at Google...you will also notice that they highlight words like "promotions" and the non-singular word "product".

A lot of people seem to be over-obsessing with two-word terms dropping out of the rankings. As Minstrel pointed out, you might be better off focusing your efforts on the types of products you carry and the regional aspects of it too.

I was in this area several years ago, but it seemed to me that they had some buzzwords other than "promotional products" that they used. Some that come to mind are "custom silk-screening" and "photo imprinting".

Perhaps creating some pages that offer your visitors some trivia on what goes on behind the scenes in the production process may capture more people using some off the wall search queries. You never know what they will key in to find you.

For example, if I wanted to have my company logo and phone number put on some coffee mugs...what would I ask for in my search? I have no clue really, but it I can tell you that it probably wouldn't be "promotional products". Since a lot of people have seen this done at State Fairs...they may key in "picture coffee cup companies".

Having the trivia pages ask the question as I did above in simplistic terms, then answering the question using some technical keywords would probably grab a lot more traffic for a wider variety of possible search queries. Plus it would provide your visitors with some interesting content, and maybe Wow them a little bit and say "So, that it how they do that!"

[ardesigns]

I would say 99.9% of our customers are corporate so most of them know the industry terms (promotional). I still don't understand how we can be kicked out of google after being on the 2nd page for so long and none of the other sites have been kicked out. I have noticed that there are new sites listed and dont even have anything to do with promotional products. I adjusted the keywords some as you suggested but we are still not listed. I sure hope something gets done with this sometime soon.

Thanks,
Angela

[Mel]

Hi Angela
Google shows 48 backlinks with the link: command but 34 of these are from either your site or ardesigns.com which seems to be an affiliate company.

IMO Google since Florida has deprecated internal links and if they are using Hilltop will also be downgrading links from "affilated sites".

Assuming that your prime keyphrase is promotional products:

You do not rank in the first 100 results for that term.

allinanchor:promotional products - you rank #6 out of 13,600
allintitle:Promotional Products - you rank #6 out of 140,000
allintext:promotional products - You rank #7 out of 3.6 million

I would first of all suggest a linking campaign using anchor text whenever possible and concentrating on getting links from places like trade directories, your suppliers, Community directories, etc.
You can improve the on page portion of your rankins by using h tags and by by using the title attribute in linked images to display the tool tips (you can then describe your products in the popups more completely) and to use some keywords in the alt tags like:

Promotional product #12453 - white ceramic cup, instead of just white ceramic cup.