Does Anything Work For SEO Anymore?

[scgalvin]

I'm getting a little frustrated with SEO. I have a nice site with useful content. Why don't might sites increase in the search engines? It seems like what ever I do might ranking just stays the same!

Lets go down the list of what I have tried....

Social Bookmarking - I have submitted ever page on my site to over 20 different sites. Have I seen any results....nope. It seems most are nofollow, and I feel most people don't won't see my listings on these pages any ways.

Directory Submission - Been there, done that. Have done it myself and have paid people to submit my site to 100 if not thousands of directories. But it seems to me like directories for the most part are dead.

Article Submission - Seems like the perfect idea, write an article about the topic you would like to rank for, submit it to quality article sites (Ezine, Goarticles, Articlesbase) get a dofollow with your anchor text pointing to your site. Problem is that I'm not getting any results from it.

Content Is King - Make sure your site has quality content. Sounds good...I did that, did increase in the search engine...nope : (

So what am I doing wrong? What haven't I tried? Should I give up and become a pig farmer?

[mjtaylor]

Which site is the problem?

[scgalvin]

Here is one of my sites....
http://humboldtsearch.com (http://humboldtsearch.com/)

Also look at this page Humboldt County City Guides (http://humboldtsearch.com/citysearch.php). I have content for every town in Humboldt County.

[bobchrist]

The niche you're targeting does not have enough search volume, Google adword keywords tools shows " Not enough data" for most of the keywords related to your site. The keyword humboldt county/county humboldt showing search volume 135,000 per month. At the most I would suggest to target for that keywords mainly and also optimize the images which you're using in your different posts.

The homepage introduction page has too much links that you're using in the anchor text, it includes the following links which does not show any results. You need to remove them or replace with relevant pages.

Natural History Museum, Arcata CA, Museums (http://humboldtsearch.com/moreinfo-acc_id-63.htm)
Patricks Point State Park, Trinidad CA, Recreation (http://humboldtsearch.com/moreinfo-acc_id-35.htm)

[HHI_Golf_Guy]

Social bookmarking and articles are a good supplement for link building, but nothing beats a good old fashioned anchor text rich one way link to your site.

BTW, you may also want to address the canonicalization issue on your site.

[mjtaylor]

Well, you come up #32 for your most relevant term. You appear to have 1700 or so backlinks. How long have you been working at this? Did you acquire those in a short space of time? Many appear to be social bookmarking links. What proportion are blogs or regular websites? What proportion are truly relevant? How many actual Humboldt businesses link to you? How do your links compare to the top ten sites?


Are you using anchor text as the link from the linking websites?



Not exactly sure what he meant; perhaps he's asking what the anchor text of incoming links? And I do see that you aren't using 'humboldt county' as anchor text on your links leaving the home page.

Are you linking BACK to your home page with your target text from your own pages? Or do all your home page links say 'home?' That one change could make a difference.

[ksburgess]

How long have you been working at it? I've found that strategies like directory submits and article submissions do pay off - but you may not see results immediately. Give it time, keep building out your site, and you'll see results.

[urb100]

There are many things you can do to improve your site:

For example on homepage:
What is your main keyword? Define it?

"Humboldt County lodging" or "Humboldt County Restaurants" or ""Humboldt County activities"

Then use in your titile.

Simple change in your homepage title can drastic difference.

There are more than 10 items any experienced SEO guy can suggest on your site. Need more info - what is the goal of your site?

[Jeffwend]

Your site ranks number 2 on Google for Humboldt County travel guide. The only site that beats it is the Humbolt County Convention and Visitors Bureau

[aidan6969]

Here's something very basic. Set up an account at google.com/webmasters and submit a sitemap.

I didn't even see one when I looked for it.

If you don't have one go to xml-sitemaps.com and get one.

Cheers,
Aidan

[scgalvin]

My goal is to be #1 in google for the term "Humboldt County"

[JBullet]

Are there any bloggers in your industry that would want to comment on content on your site? Have you tried commenting on blogs relevant to your site which have DoFollow comments?

[Vetofunk]

What is the goal of your site? What unique content do you bring to visitors? Looking at your site, it looks more like a made-for-adsense type site, as you have 3 groups of Adsense ads and then Amazon ads as well. Maybe instead of having those ads, go after retailers and local lodges for advertising...will be much more important and related to the visitors coming to your site.

With the link types you are building, those can work, but are at the bottom of the barrel as far as the best links to get. What about getting links from local retailers with online sites? How about local area web sites. Talk to local companies about having them add a link to their site in exchange for you adding them to the section on your site that fits with them. Directory, article submissions and social bookmarking sites are not going to do it. 1000's of backlinks from directories you paid someone for?...I am surprised you haven't been penalized yet as they probably used the same anchor text for it all.

I also noticed that your domain expires next month. Show search engines that this is not just a spamming domain and register it for longer than a year.

SEO still does work amazingly, you just need to put much more time and effort than you currently are.

Hope that helps...

[slimwoman]

Title tags, Heading tags in your content for your keywords is what helps me in SEO. Being able to name a page with a keyword also helps.

[urb100]

You didn't answer the second part. What is the goal of your site?

May be you are focusing on the wrong keyword:
Humboldt County has "1,800,000" pages on google
Humboldt County lodging has 36,100 - i bet you will #1 in google for this term in 3/4 weeks with things you already know.

[morestar]

I'm going to go on an instinctive hunch here and say Google doesn't like your site too much because it does seem like a made-for-adsense-and-amazon-ads-site...

Basically I feel the site isn't trusted as an authority with respect to your keywords. Your site is less than two years old correct?

I would re-write the following sentence:


Located in northwestern California on the Pacific Coast between Del Norte and Mendocino Counties, Humboldt County is a stunning, mostly rural area that beckons visitors to come and explore the wild northern portion of the state.

as


Humboldt County is located in northwestern California on the Pacific Coast between Del Norte and Mendocino Counties. Humboldt County is a stunning, mostly rural area that beckons visitors to come and explore the wild northern portion of the state.

but that will only help slightly...

more?

this page for instance: moreinfo-acc_id-79.htm, you only have the word Humboldt in 4 places. Nothing in the title, nothing in any H1 tags...if you want to rank for Humboldt county you MUST add those terms to several more places on your website. On that page, where it says "Bless MySoul" you can (should) add the words "Humboldt County" in that Heading...cause Bless MySoul is in that county right?

more? and the page moreinfo-acc_id-79.htm can (should) be named Bless-MySoul-in-Humboldt-County.htm - more utilization of keywords...be creative...

I assure you if you do that, next week you will see an increase in your rankings...

This all if you have indeed done everything you've said you've done in your original post.

;)

[dgswilson]

"How long have you been working at it?" - That, and why are so many people from India interested in a Humboldt County Directory? Are you from India?

I would think, someone with a county directory with your Alexa rating would be happy. I mean how many people in the global community are looking for it?

I entered this "Clark County Tourist Directory", this was #1 "http://www.clarkcounty.worldweb.com/", the page has a Google rank of (2), an Alexa rating of 9,443. Now "worldweb.com" which includes the "Clark County Directory", has an Alexa rating of 23,205 and a Google ranking of (7). So they (worldweb.com) help pull for the Clark County Directory which on it's own boils down to Las Vegas.

From that little bit of research I think my suggestion would be, see if you can get something like Las Vegas built in Humboldt County.

[Hometutor]

humboldt county 135,000

Now let's look at Ca

california 83,100,000


california hotel 1,500,000

california hotels 2,240,000

inn california 301,000

Even if you make number for those search terms you'll be number one for terms hardly ever searched. Why not get the word california in there which would make it more useful?

Rick

[scgalvin]

For example on homepage:
What is your main keyword? Define it?

"Humboldt County lodging" or "Humboldt County Restaurants" or ""Humboldt County activities"

My main keyword is "Humboldt County" should I use just that for the title?

[morestar]

My main keyword is "Humboldt County" should I use just that for the title?

Yes absolutely and on several pages as well...throw it in into every page where it can appear to sound natural...no spam...if you do all this and come back here in less than two weeks you will probably have good news for us...

;)

Edit: no, don't ONLY use that for the title...use it first though...and add something after it like "Information and Tourist information", whatever you think is appropriate to your site.

For instance again, moreinfo-acc_id-79.htm, make the title "Bless MySoul Restaurant in Humboldt County"...

[scgalvin]

Well, you come up #32 for your most relevant term. You appear to have 1700 or so backlinks. How long have you been working at this? Did you acquire those in a short space of time? Many appear to be social bookmarking links. What proportion are blogs or regular websites? What proportion are truly relevant? How many actual Humboldt businesses link to you? How do your links compare to the top ten sites?


What tool did you use to show those links? in yahoo explorer I only show about 500.

I have been actively working on building links for about the last six months.


Here's something very basic. Set up an account at google.com/webmasters and submit a sitemap.

Yah, I have a sitemap submitted to webmasters tools.

[morestar]

We didn't find the sitemap.xml file...I didn't...

[timbo]

Content is King is the biggest lie in the business. You must have content but even spammers can access great content. There are a trillion websites all with great content being indexed by a machine. And that machine doesnt care about content because it cant read. It cares about backlinks and you dont have enough.

The thinking is if you have great content then folks will link to you. They may or may not. Even if they do this could take months. You can't compete like this. No one can. Some sites are getting thousands of links per day.

You can have over 5000 at your disposal without a lot of effort.

Pligg site submissions, Bookmarking, Blogs, directory submission. And it must be automated. Unless you want to sit in front of your pc 24/7.

Or pay someone to submit these for you. But cranking away at these one by one is a fast track to futility.

BTW I just ranked Number 2 out of 25 million websites for a highly competitive term within 24 hours.

Must have been great content???

[scgalvin]

You didn't answer the second part. What is the goal of your site?

My goal is to be on the first page of google for the following keywords....
Humboldt County
Humboldt Hotels
Eureka Hotels
And ideally the first page of all the towns in Humboldt County, which I have pages for all of them located here....Humboldt County City Guides (http://humboldtsearch.com/citysearch.php)

Once I achieve that, I would like to drop the Google Adsense and sell listings directly to local businesses.

[morestar]

Content is King is the biggest lie in the business. You must have content but even spammers can access great content. There are a trillion websites all with great content being indexed by a machine. And that machine doesnt care about content because it cant read. It cares about backlinks and you dont have enough.

The thinking is if you have great content then folks will link to you. They may or may not. Even if they do this could take months. You can't compete like this. No one can. Some sites are getting thousands of links per day.

I'll place a little wager that the sites above him don't have tons of backlinks or even much more than him.

I'll place another little wager that if he worries less about the back links (at this point because he's done back link work for the past six months) that his rankings will increase - substantially...

I'm not the #1 SEO on the planet but I do really well in local search...

[WebFadds]

Hi -

Remember some other items that are big factors in the SEO ranking formula:


Relevant and frequently updated content (ie. a business blog with good regular, and relevant posts)
Length of time your site has been online -- score goes up the longer you are on.
Not quantity of sites linking to you... but quality -- ie. are they ranked high, and are they highly regarded in your niche. Correct -- directories do very little unless they are ranked highly.
Have you used the technique of concentrating on a specific term and placing it in highly ranking positions throughout your page? Google will not "shotgun" rank the same page highly for several terms. Instead it looks for a primary search key phrase in all the right positions.
What is your primary key-term density?

To help you answer some of these questions, I recommend the excellent, free SEO Toolbar -- get it at SEObook (for FireFox). I'd give the URL, but this system doesn't allow me to do so yet.

Best of success -
Scott
WebFadds - *Optimize *Connect *Convert

[tangeray]

I would change your homepage title to : "Humbolt County - (major city), (major city), (major city), (major city) services. " or " Humbolt County - Hotels, Rentals, New, Events, Local Services" or a hybrid of both.

I would like to link up with you, below are some of my sites. Please message me for contact info.

[Ginseng]

1. You may be linking from bad neighbourhoods such as too many directories which link to gambling and porn sites. Try and get more links from gov, mil, edu, or ac uk sites and sites with good trustrank. There aren't too many directories worth getting links from, limit yourself to the list on alcander dot co dot uk slash resources-directories dot php
2. Don't get links from off-theme sites e.g. you have one from a hosting company
3. Use Hub Finder (google it and you'll find it) and enter 10 competing sites. Find co-occurring backlinks and try and get links from these sites.
4. In the articles make sure you link back to the original website owning the article
5. Try youtube video marketing to attract people to your site who may then link to your site
6. Do extensive keyword research to target keywords which have high search volumes while at the same time are relatively low competition in terms of mentions on competing websites
7. Build links are gradually. Google "link profile" and check all aspects of your link profile. Aspects include mix of kinds of websites you get links from, get links from unique c block addresses (see Link Harvester tool)
8. Use twitter to engage with people and draw them to your site. Some may link.
9. Use trending tools such as Google Insights, oneriot and insttant to see trends in your industry and then build keywords accordingly into your pages and utilize in off-site anchor text of links
10. Replace graphical text such as your "Humboldt Arts Council" with text that the search engines can find. Use CSS and DIVs to position the replacement text

etc.

[iany]

Although there are many very useful and valid comments made elsewhere, there are fundamental issuse with the site and the approach.

Firstly, site build. There are 225 line of code before we reach the content, there are a large number of markup errors, and there are no meta descriptions or geo tags.
As mentioned, the page titles are cursory and almost valueless in SEO terms.

More importantly, you do not appeat to have a clear strategy for the site. To be no 1 in Google for Humboldt County is to miss the point. Surely the objective must be business oriented and measureable. I have to say I have no idea what the site is trying to achieve. It is also not very inspiring with little to encourage the user to navigate through it.

Ultimately, if a site is not worth reading, no amount of SEO will help.

Go concentrate on your business goals, what the website is doing for your business and then enlist the assistance of a good SEO specialist to help you market the site.

[dlsweb]

If you have hit a wall where SEO work is not paying off right now
I would suggest you work on completing everything you have there, ie coming events.
Great, and relevant, content will generate links over time.

[mjtaylor]

Your site ranks number 2 on Google for Humboldt County travel guide. The only site that beats it is the Humbolt County Convention and Visitors Bureau

And since Google's External Keyword Tool shows no data for that search tern, it's not going to do much for the OP's business.


Here's something very basic. Set up an account at google.com/webmasters and submit a sitemap.

I didn't even see one when I looked for it.

If you don't have one go to xml-sitemaps.com and get one.

Cheers,
Aidan

Not a bad idea, but it's not going to help Scott with his target keyword phrase:


My goal is to be #1 in google for the term "Humboldt County"

I got that from your title. :)




With the link types you are building, those can work, but are at the bottom of the barrel as far as the best links to get. What about getting links from local retailers with online sites? How about local area web sites. Talk to local companies about having them add a link to their site in exchange for you adding them to the section on your site that fits with them. Directory, article submissions and social bookmarking sites are not going to do it. 1000's of backlinks from directories you paid someone for?...I am surprised you haven't been penalized yet as they probably used the same anchor text for it all.



These are good ideas, similar to what I was suggesting when I asked how many Humboldt County businesses link to the site. And I was also wondering with all those links whether Google doesn't like some of the sites. Are low quality sites linking to you?




I also noticed that your domain expires next month. Show search engines that this is not just a spamming domain and register it for longer than a year.


This is an SEO MYTH! There is NO value in your registration term.


I'm going to go on an instinctive hunch here and say Google doesn't like your site too much because it does seem like a made-for-adsense-and-amazon-ads-site...

Basically I feel the site isn't trusted as an authority with respect to your keywords. Your site is less than two years old correct?

I would re-write the following sentence:



as



but that will only help slightly...

more?

this page for instance: moreinfo-acc_id-79.htm, you only have the word Humboldt in 4 places. Nothing in the title, nothing in any H1 tags...if you want to rank for Humboldt county you MUST add those terms to several more places on your website. On that page, where it says "Bless MySoul" you can (should) add the words "Humboldt County" in that Heading...cause Bless MySoul is in that county right?

more? and the page moreinfo-acc_id-79.htm can (should) be named Bless-MySoul-in-Humboldt-County.htm - more utilization of keywords...be creative...

I assure you if you do that, next week you will see an increase in your rankings...

This all if you have indeed done everything you've said you've done in your original post.

;)

Listen to him, Scott.

[morestar]

Firstly, site build. There are 225 line of code before we reach the content, there are a large number of markup errors, and there are no meta descriptions or geo tags.

Check out this little diddy: totalhomecare.millennium-hosting.com.

Tons of nasty code. #9 or so on Google.com for 'maid services' and #1, 2 or 3 for 'misssissauga maid services'... sure valid code helps but content users need is more important and if google can determine if the content is relevant and what users want, you should be good...


If you have hit a wall where SEO work is not paying off right now
I would suggest you work on completing everything you have there, ie coming events.
Great, and relevant, content will generate links over time.

I agree. You have at least 500 back-links...focus on what dlsweb and I have said...change your copy around a bit by adding the keywords you want to rank for in places that you know they should be, i.e. title, headings, anchor-text (internally cause you're already doing it externally) and you should see a change very shortly.

This really isn't a huge issue of backlinks at this time...it's the page copy that should be concentrated on...

Yes clean up your code...remove the smelly amazon banner (was it ebay?), keep the adsense and move forward.

:rolleyes:

[BluePlanet]

Lots of good advice here. Learning how to write would also be a good first step. You have some of the worst run-on sentences I have ever seen. Your theory seems to be one sentence one paragraph. You obviously have not followed any suggestions given here.

Also, putting the Google ads at the top of your page just directs traffic AWAY from your site. People probably won't return once they click away. Those few cents per click you might earn is nothing compared to the damage you are doing to your site. People also are not going to take your site seriously. Once they read some of your run-on sentences they likely won't take your site seriously at all. Probably Google doesn't take it too seriously either. Plus, with it being up only two years you don't have a lot of credibility.

Also, I assume you live there. Don't you own a camera? You need to have more photo content and do proper alt tags, etc. Know how to geocode photos?

[mjtaylor]

My main keyword is "Humboldt County" should I use just that for the title?

Yes! I agree with Morestar. And Humboldt County should be in anchor text coming back to your home page. From all or at least all of your landing pages.

Want to do an SEO experiment? Just add thost home page links and wait until your next caching and I would bet you see a jump in your position. Or do what Morestar suggested earlier, wait for the cache and see the result.


"How long have you been working at it?" - That, and why are so many people from India interested in a Humboldt County Directory? Are you from India?
:palm:A whois search would indicate no. And why wouldn't people from India be interested in this site? We are all webmasters and SEOs sharing information. What kind of comments are those!?!:palm:


I would think, someone with a county directory with your Alexa rating would be happy. I mean how many people in the global community are looking for it?

About 135,000 a month, according to Google's Keyword Tool.

[mjtaylor]

What tool did you use to show those links? in yahoo explorer I only show about 500.

I have been actively working on building links for about the last six months.




I used link:yourdomain in Yahoo ...

Google likes older links ... your links and your domain are pretty new. The only way to overcome that is with truly good links coming in ... such as local businesses. Or other high quality, relevant links.

[morestar]

I also noticed that your domain expires next month. Show search engines that this is not just a spamming domain and register it for longer than a year.



This is an SEO MYTH! There is NO value in your registration term.

Exactly. Obviously if you're going to continue working on the site of course you're going to renew it. Domain age isn't an issue like a lot of us thought it was...it might have a slight, very slight significance but again, of course you're going to renew next year...

Useful and descriptive content trumps domain age.

:roll:

[mjtaylor]

Although there are many very useful and valid comments made elsewhere, there are fundamental issuse with the site and the approach.

Firstly, site build. There are 225 line of code before we reach the content, there are a large number of markup errors, and there are no meta descriptions or geo tags.
As mentioned, the page titles are cursory and almost valueless in SEO terms.



Good point. Good post. Rep points added.



More importantly, you do not appeat to have a clear strategy for the site. To be no 1 in Google for Humboldt County is to miss the point. Surely the objective must be business oriented and measureable. I have to say I have no idea what the site is trying to achieve. It is also not very inspiring with little to encourage the user to navigate through it.

Ultimately, if a site is not worth reading, no amount of SEO will help.

Go concentrate on your business goals, what the website is doing for your business and then enlist the assistance of a good SEO specialist to help you market the site.

Another one to listen to, Scott.

[mjtaylor]

Check out this little diddy: totalhomecare.millennium-hosting.com.

Tons of nasty code. #9 or so on Google.com for 'maid services' and #1, 2 or 3 for 'misssissauga maid services'... sure valid code helps but content users need is more important and if google can determine if the content is relevant and what users want, you should be good...



One can overcome nasty code and too much javascript with good content and links, AND it is still a good idea to clean it up .. it's one less thing to overcome.

[mjtaylor]

Lots of good advice here. Learning how to write would also be a good first step. You have some of the worst run-on sentences I have ever seen. Your theory seems to be one sentence one paragraph. You obviously have not followed any suggestions given here.


Agreed on the writing style. But to be fair, he really hasn't had much chance to take any advice. :D




Also, putting the Google ads at the top of your page just directs traffic AWAY from your site. People probably won't return once they click away. Those few cents per click you might earn is nothing compared to the damage you are doing to your site. People also are not going to take your site seriously. Once they read some of your run-on sentences they likely won't take your site seriously at all. Probably Google doesn't take it too seriously either. Plus, with it being up only two years you don't have a lot of credibility.

Also, I assume you live there. Don't you own a camera? You need to have more photo content and do proper alt tags, etc. Know how to geocode photos?

Thoughtful, good suggestions. Awarding rep points.

[tangeray]

This is a great SEO discussion. I take the standpoint that many of you share, don't try and trick the search engines, but instead make a solid website with lots of useful content. You will then know your potential audience, and plan your SEO strategy accordingly.

It is a great idea and domain name, and with a little PR and more traffic (increasing PR will bring that) I would definitely be interested in advertising my local satellite tv installation network on it.

[Link DROP removed from post.]

[somjai]

A small point

Humboldt County (http://humboldtsearch.com) ranks better than Humboldt County (http://www.humboldtsearch.com)

adjust your htaccess to use only 1 url.

My personal opinion is that you should write your pages focused and for your visitors ( I think I have written this in other posts too :) Being number 1 in Google will then be a more achievable goal. Do you have a high bounce rate for the people who actually visit your site?

I agree with others about your text, very long sentences. Use shorter sentences and smaller paragraphs. an average paragraph on your site is 170 words. could be made into 3 easy reading paragraphs

your homepage text could have sub-headings using h2 heading tags- Homboldt County South, Humboldt County History..... with keyword anchor text to those relevant pages.

keywords in image alt tags

keywords in anchor text

more interesting title and description tags

Just always sit back and look at your pages and think if you found this website would you want to continue reading or click back out and find a site that is easier to find the information you need

Good luck and sawadee

[scgalvin]

Sooooooo many good and helpful replies to my post! Thank you everyone for the tips and info. I have already started to make changes that I think will help improve my placement.

I agree that Adsense is taking away visitors to my site. Adsense is more of a short term solution to a long term goal. I do make a bit of money from it, enough to pay my overhead cost. Once I achieve better placement and start sell listing directly to businesses I will pull them down. I get at best a CTR of 5%, which means I'm only losing 5% to Adsense, that's fair. And I can't agree more with the Amazon ad, that was completely worthless, it was an experiment that didn't show any results. I just took down the ad.

I have a few things that I had questions for....


A small point

Humboldt County ranks better than Humboldt County

Are you saying that in theory it would do better without the www or are you seeing that my site has better placement currently that way.

From a placement point of view, not conversion. Would I be better having just "Humboldt County" or "Humboldt County Online Travel Guide" for the Homepage title? I know its not very descriptive but is it too short?



Have you used the technique of concentrating on a specific term and placing it in highly ranking positions throughout your page? Google will not "shotgun" rank the same page highly for several terms. Instead it looks for a primary search key phrase in all the right positions.

This is very interesting can you explain a little more about that or recommend a good article.


What is your primary key-term density?
To tell you the truth I don't even know. What would you recommend?

mjtaylor - I completely agree about contacting local businesses and trying to get them to link to me. I have done this in the past and it has had the most success for increasing my placement.

morestar - thanks for all the helpful tips.

somjai - Thank you for the very specific on site tips, I'm going to start making those changes write now.

[aattwood]

Probably everything that has been written here has some value however I think the real point has been missed. Following the argument content is king I would qualify that the content really needs to also be relevant to be useful. Now this site has great content about places however I think that visitor traffic will be more interested in services offered in these regions and while there are some I think there are too few to really be useful. I think that there will probably be a reasonable click through for google adsense as thats delivering more useful links than the pages themselves.

[simonm]

relevant contextual linking from contextually relevant sites.

Patience.

The Google algorithm works slowly. Google as a public company has to keep one eye on its shareholders (despite what they might say). Too much churn and lets say a search CitiBank brings up the wrong website, Goggle doesn't want a major shareholder(s) (part owner of Google) demanding a change to the algorithm at the next AGM. Inertia is a way of limiting this.

[Webnauts]

My goal is to be #1 in google for the term "Humboldt County"
The key phrase you are targeting is petty huge. Monthly search volume for is 18,100!!!

I hope you are aware of what you are after. :)

[mjtaylor]

Scott,

Yes, you *do* need to address your canonicalization issues.

Here's the story on that issues from Matt Cutts: SEO advice: url canonicalization (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/)

It doesn't matter which you choose, but follow the advice above on choosing one and redirecting the rest. And best to get those who link to you to be consistent with your choice.

[NJ]

One can overcome nasty code and too much javascript with good content and links, AND it is still a good idea to clean it up .. it's one less thing to overcome.

Amen! And, nasty code makes maintenance inefficient, and it will catch up to you eventually, anyway. I'm finding an increasing number of sites with messy code because someone built them with a tool, who didn't know anything about the backend.

[Webnauts]

About on-page optimization I would suggest you to have a look at a thread I posted in my forums: Ultimate On-Page SEO Tips - SEO Forums | SEO Workers (http://www.seoworkers.net/search-engine-optimization/469-ultimate-page-seo-tips.html)

I am sure it will help you a lot.

[Webnauts]

Scott,

Yes, you *do* need to address your canonicalization issues.

Here's the story on that issues from Matt Cutts: SEO advice: url canonicalization (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/)

It doesn't matter which you choose, but follow the advice above on choosing one and redirecting the rest. And best to get those who link to you to be consistent with your choice.
Off-Topic: MJ, I did not go to bed yet. :lol:

[deepsand]

There is NO value in your registration term.

:?

Per Google's patent,

"Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith."

[morestar]

Well I bloody well stand corrected...

but I hope the can means it is and it's not just a way that Google is asking us to register for longer terms in order to feel more secure in the results it's listing.

But ya, good find deepsand...

[deepsand]

Considering that it's a factor little known outside of those who've read & discussed their patents, it seems unlikely that Google has here asked for anything that they deem to be of great import. I.e., it's a factor; but, probably not one given great weight.

[Webnauts]

:?

Per Google's patent,

"Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith."
Does that confirm that I was right on 31-may-2008 when for that purpose I extended my domain the expiry date of my domain seoworkers.com to 05-Oct-2017? :lol:

Can you share the link to that patent, as I never bookmarked it? Thanks man. ;)

[SteveGerencser]

Google filed over 150 patents in the last 3 months.. All of the SEs file hundreds of patents every year.. And very little of that finds its way in to the active algorithms..

As for this particular "factor".. Have you tested it?? Or just a WAG based on what you think it should be?? This was discussed by a LOT of people that actually do this for a living and test things, and the general consensus is that as a ranking factor it sucks because it simply allows people with more money to "buy" yet another ranking factor rather than compete on "relevancy".. Sort of like using server speed as a ranking factor.. People with more money win again..

This is not Google's stated goal.. Relevancy is.. And age of domain registration does nothing to contribute to that solution..

[Webnauts]

If you do not want to watch this video YouTube - How much does a domain's age affect its ranking? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1_1NQWQJ2Q) Matt Cutts said, “My short answer is not to worry very much about that [the number of years a domain is registered], not very much at all.”

I still think it is worth the read the article before we continue discussing this: Google Says Domain Registrations Don’t Affect SEO, Or Do They? (http://searchengineland.com/google-domain-registrations-dont-affect-seo-or-do-they-25483)

[Dcrux]

Content Is King - Make sure your site has quality content. Sounds good...I did that, did increase in the search engine...nope

How do you surmise that? Your only indicator is what you have not paid any attention to: Unrigged, one-way links from reputable sources who link for one reason: The content is worth linking to.

Sorry, but SEO blinds you to this. You're too concerned with rigging for high rank when you should spend some time qualifying for high page rank.

Not a popular topic where the SEO's kids have to go to college ...but still.

[mjtaylor]

:?

Per Google's patent,

"Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith."

I beg your pardon. Let me rephrase that:

There is likely little or no value in the length of the domain. Yes, Google did apply for a patent that said it could be used as a ranking factor, but when Matt Cutts of Google was asked whether this was important he said:

"My short answer is to not worry about that very much. Not very much at all, in fact."

Apparently some registrars circulated emails saying that Google gives you a bonus if you register your domains for 3 or more years.

Cutts response: "Just to clarify that's not based on anything we've said...
We have a lot of ideas and we file a lot of patents, and that doesn't mean that all of that gets used in our ranking."

[deepsand]

I beg your pardon. Let me rephrase that:

There is likely little or no value in the length of the domain. Yes, Google did apply for a patent that said it could be used as a ranking factor, but when Matt Cutts of Google was asked whether this was important he said:

"My short answer is to not worry about that very much. Not very much at all, in fact."

Apparently some registrars circulated emails saying that Google gives you a bonus if you register your domains for 3 or more years.

Cutts response: "Just to clarify that's not based on anything we've said...
We have a lot of ideas and we file a lot of patents, and that doesn't mean that all of that gets used in our ranking."


Google filed over 150 patents in the last 3 months.. All of the SEs file hundreds of patents every year.. And very little of that finds its way in to the active algorithms..

As for this particular "factor".. Have you tested it?? Or just a WAG based on what you think it should be?? This was discussed by a LOT of people that actually do this for a living and test things, and the general consensus is that as a ranking factor it sucks because it simply allows people with more money to "buy" yet another ranking factor rather than compete on "relevancy".. Sort of like using server speed as a ranking factor.. People with more money win again..

This is not Google's stated goal.. Relevancy is.. And age of domain registration does nothing to contribute to that solution..

Overlooked perhaps was http://www.webproworld.com/search-engine-optimization-forum/95863-does-anything-work-search-engine-optimization-anymore-2.html#post484853

[deepsand]

I still think it is worth the read the article before we continue discussing this: Google Says Domain Registrations Don’t Affect SEO, Or Do They? (http://searchengineland.com/google-domain-registrations-dont-affect-seo-or-do-they-25483)

Which drives home the point that a longer registration term cannot hurt, and just might help.

[deepsand]

You're too concerned with rigging for high rank when you should spend some time qualifying for high page rank.
:confused:

Is not the goal of SEO to attain a high SERP position?

And, can you quantify the weight given PR in the SERP algorithm?

[mjtaylor]

Which drives home the point that a longer registration term cannot hurt, and just might help.

Okay, sure, it can't hurt. And it might help ... but I never saw it help. I had a few client domains (years ago when this rumor first started) which we registered for longer terms. To my personal recollection and observation, none of their SERPs were affected. For a domain that is active, it is hard to assess the impact of one event, as there may be several.

My domain is renewed annually, automatically, and I'm doing okay for 'seo web design.' I suppose I could register it for 10 years and see if that changes my position.

Maybe the OP should register his for 5 years and see if that helps ... I think it will have a negligible impact.

[deepsand]

Okay, sure, it can't hurt. And it might help ... but I never saw it help.
Discerning the effect of changing the input value of a single variable in a multi-variant system becomes increasingly difficult as the number of variables increase, particularly when each does not operate wholly independent of all others.

And, constructing and running valid tests involving such systems is no mean task.

Therefore, it is oft times the case that "can't hurt, might help" is the only practical guideline available.

[scgalvin]

How do you surmise that? Your only indicator is what you have not paid any attention to: Unrigged, one-way links from reputable sources who link for one reason: The content is worth linking to.

Sorry, but SEO blinds you to this. You're too concerned with rigging for high rank when you should spend some time qualifying for high page rank.

Not a popular topic where the SEO's kids have to go to college ...but still.

Directory submission, article submission and social bookmarking are all considered "rigged" link?

That was my question from the very beginning. "Does anything work for SEO anymore?"

People say content content content! And while I don't disagree I think that content will only get you so far. And before anyone says you don't have content please actually look at the site in question.

I have a page for every town and city in Humboldt County with original helpful content.
Humboldt County City Guides (http://humboldtsearch.com/citysearch.php)

If you check the first result of "Humboldt Count Cities" in Google you get this...
NACo | Find a County (http://www.naco.org/Template.cfm?Section=Find_a_County&Template=/cffiles/counties/citiescounty.cfm&CountyID=6023)

They have nothing more than a list of the cities in Humboldt County...oh yah and a PR of 4, which is higher than my whole domain.

[scgalvin]

Maybe we should change the name of the topic to "Does domain registration length help? If so how much?"

I agree with most of the people here, its probably helps...but just a small bit.. I would think that age of your domain is a much bigger factor. BTW my domain is about 4 years old.

[Niche]

I'm getting a little frustrated with SEO. I have a nice site with useful content. Why don't might sites increase in the search engines? It seems like what ever I do might ranking just stays the same!

Lets go down the list of what I have tried....

Social Bookmarking - I have submitted ever page on my site to over 20 different sites. Have I seen any results....nope. It seems most are nofollow, and I feel most people don't won't see my listings on these pages any ways.

Directory Submission - Been there, done that. Have done it myself and have paid people to submit my site to 100 if not thousands of directories. But it seems to me like directories for the most part are dead.

Article Submission - Seems like the perfect idea, write an article about the topic you would like to rank for, submit it to quality article sites (Ezine, Goarticles, Articlesbase) get a dofollow with your anchor text pointing to your site. Problem is that I'm not getting any results from it.

Content Is King - Make sure your site has quality content. Sounds good...I did that, did increase in the search engine...nope : (

So what am I doing wrong? What haven't I tried? Should I give up and become a pig farmer?

I don't think you are doing anything wrong
It's just that the SEO techniques are out there and everyone and his dog is implementing them. This means that the man that wins the day is the one with the most relevant links, the most up to date content, the best onpage optimization

The competition is a little steeper but you can get there. You just need to work a little harder

[scgalvin]

As far as building high quality links from relevant sites, I do have those, not as many as I would like: )

feel free to look at all my ibl https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=humboldtsearch.com&y=Explore+URL&fr=sfp

M.-J. Taylor, I agree with you, contacting local businesses and trying to get them to link to me would be the most productive use of time for link building. I actually have done this in the past and it is how I have the "quality links" that I do. This is something that I am starting to do again.

[scgalvin]

It's just that the SEO techniques are out there and everyone and his dog is implementing them. This means that the man that wins the day is the one with the most relevant links, the most up to date content, the best onpage optimization

I have never heard this put in a better way!

[scgalvin]

BTW - I have updated my on site factors per everyone's recommendation.

I have fixed my canonicalization issue, everything goes to "Humboldt County (http://humboldtsearch.com)" and did this via google webmaster tools and .htaccess 301.

I updated my homepage content, structured <H> better, divided the content up into bit size chunks, removed excessive links.

My "home link" on my header now says "Humboldt County"

My homepage title now says "Humboldt County", I hope this is not to short or general, but I wanted to see how much it would boost me in the SE's.

I included meta keywords and descriptions.

Added Alt tags for all of my images.

...And still doing more, thanks again for all the helpful feedback!

[deepsand]

Can you share the link to that patent, as I never bookmarked it? Thanks man. ;)
I'll be happy too, just a soon as I can find the bookmark; mine are scattered amongst 12 browser stores, on 7 machines, in 5 locations, in 3 states. :(

I had to dredge up a previous post of mine to find the quoted text. I'd also earlier posted a USPTO link for it, but haven't yet found that.

[douger]

Scott,

I see you have many great suggestions from many talented people in here. All are good. I did not, however, see anyone suggest you validate your html. I also see your sites are not validated correctly, if at all.

Your first two lines on all your pages should start off somethinig like:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en-gb" lang="en-gb" dir="ltr" >

See this link for the specific problems you have there:

[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://lakecountytravelguide.com/ - W3C Markup Validator (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Flakecountytravelguide.com%2 F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)

Then, I suggest you google "validate html" and "website accessibility".

Good luck and let me know if you need any help!

~doug

[holy2050]

yeah, i know Content Is King!
would you tell me how can i find the good content?

[Hometutor]

You write it or hire a writer. Also check sites where you can purchase content from writers

Rick

[BluePlanet]

Maybe a bit off topic, but a posted message made mention of Google filing for patents in large numbers.

There is a big rush on filing software and business method patents. The US Supreme Court is hearing a case this term on business method patents that will most likely change the rules for them and perhaps software patents too. They might be done away with or greatly restricted, though existing ones would likely survive and have to be challenged the old fashioned ways.

Of course, Congress has just reduced the budget of the patent office when it needs a bigger budget. And this was after literally looting hundreds of millions of dollars in patent office reserves last year.

Google might see their patents actually issue in five years or so.

Oh wait. On topic. Does a patent help in SEO results?

[deepsand]

yeah, i know Content Is King!
would you tell me how can i find the good content?
The old fashioned way - create it!

[deepsand]

Does a patent help in SEO results?
Isn't that a bit like asking whether or not divulging the secret formula for Coca Cola makes its drinkers better chemists? :confused:

[mjtaylor]

Yes, "could help can't help" is a reasonable point of view.

Now to the OP:

Yes, SEO still works and it is still based on two things: content and links. I hear you say that you have good content. If so, why aren't more people linking to it?

I don't mean to be unkind in any way, but the proof is in the pudding. If what you are doing isn't working; ie, isn't attacting links, traffic and conversions, then you need to generate more content -- perhaps off site. A blog? Articles? A Facebook Page?

And sure, why not register your domain for longer. I don't believe it will help, but others who are as or far more smart, educated and experienced think so ...

On G's Patents ... or Stanford's:

I believe this is the original patent: The Anatomy of a Search Engine (http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html) and I believe I heard a new one was filed fairly recently?

There is its historical data patent here: Patent description: Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data (http://www.webmasterwoman.com/historical-data/patent-description.html) ...

And I am sure I have heard Matt Cutts say something along these lines:

We file a lot of patents. That doesn't mean we use them. And it doesn't mean we don't develop beyond them.

[deepsand]

Can you share the link to that patent, as I never bookmarked it? Thanks man. ;)

United States Patent Application: 0050071741 (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=3&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=748664&OS=748664&RS=748664)

Within Description, see [0099].

[PaulDylan]

This is a long thread! if you're trying to optimize the sites on your signature, I think you need to really focus on on-site optimization. Tags, url (keywords in urls) etc.

Most important factors:

1- Domain Age
2- On-Site Optimization (Title, Meta Tags)
3- External Links
4- Content Update Frequency
5- Internal Linking
6- URL Structure
7- Size of Website

(Source: PalatnikFactor.com)

[deepsand]

Most important factors:

1- Domain Age
2- On-Site Optimization (Title, Meta Tags)
3- External Links
4- Content Update Frequency
5- Internal Linking
6- URL Structure
7- Size of Website

(Source: PalatnikFactor.com)

From The Most Important Factors for SEO in Googles Algorithm | PalatnikFactor.com (http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/12/21/the-most-important-factors-for-seo-in-googles-algorithm/) .

It's not clear whether or not those 7 items are presented in order of perceived import; if so, very many will take issue with Domain Age being the 1st.

[Hometutor]

Yeah

There's an old trick where you find a recently available domain that's been on the net for a while, you buy it, then link it to your own site

Rick

[SouthamptonAngel]

From The Most Important Factors for SEO in Googles Algorithm | PalatnikFactor.com (http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/12/21/the-most-important-factors-for-seo-in-googles-algorithm/) .

It's not clear whether or not those 7 items are presented in order of perceived import; if so, very many will take issue with Domain Age being the 1st.

I'd certainly have domain name (ie URL) high up in any list, if it's in order of importance.