Legitimately beaten to top spot or ripped off?

[Steve W]

I'm new at web design and recently launched a mortgage site that was scoring well with Yahoo UK for the clients search terms (not ambitious ones), but on the recent update, we were knocked down by a site that used our content including the company name like a directory site would, but when you clicked the link it took you to what looks like a landing page for another mortgage company. I'm sure most people would click the 'enter' text. However, if you scroll down there are a bunch of mortgage related links, but the site I developed is not among them?

This seems wrong to me. If they hadn't indexed our content, they wouldn't have ranked above us, they give total priority to one site only and they don't even link to our site? It seems like a scam to get traffic for the mortgage company that gets total priority on the page. Any comments appreciated: whether I am right to be upset and can/should do anything about it?

The site I developed is http://www.openchoicemortgages.co.uk/ and the search term for Yahoo UK is 'stop repossession south wales'. If you do the search, you'll see what I mean straight away.
Thanks.

[ADAM Web Design]

Man, talk about your Spammy McSpammerson sites.

Dude...you've got every right to be pissed off. I'm not sure how common a search phrase that is, but that's some hardcore spam.

You could report it to Yahoo!, but I don't think they'd do a hell of a lot about it. Never hurts to try though.

Personally, if I were you though, I'd go after some quality IBLs. Put out a few articles with your backlink included in them. That should knock those idiots off their perch.

[brian.mark]

Yahoo states that the SPAM reports are looked at by a human in a timely fashion at every SES conference. I'd report it and then see what happens. Give them a few days and see what happens. If you were ranked at the top before, you shouldn't need to do a whole lot to get back up there.

Brian.

[Steve W]

Thanks for the comments guys.
I will find out about reporting to Yahoo and try for good IBL's, any pointers for either appreciated.
Cheers

[ctabuk]

Hi Steve, I'm a Mortgage Broker too.I see your points, and reporting it to Yahoo might help. Have you ever thought of the Yahoo Directory? OK it's more money to pay out, but I did that 5 years ago and I've been on page one of Yahoo for my search term 'Right to Buy' for 3 years now.
Our search phrase 'Mortgages' is highly competitive. But one point here that might be missing is the fact that Yahoo is not doing that well on my SERPS, it's down to 10% Google is at 60% MSN has leapt up and so has Ask Jeeves. If you visit the marketing forum here at wpw - I'll see what I can come up with for you. Cheers David

[Steve W]

Thanks for the info David,

I'll look into the Yahoo Directory and visit the marketing forum as you suggest.

Google is of course high on the agenda but we have PR 0 despite what I consider a decent amount of honest content (although there's still a bit more to add). I've heard about the 'Google sandbox effect' but not sure what to make of it, and I've read the importance of IBL's to Google many times, but not sure how to go about getting good IBL's - I'm looking through this site for information, any help would be great.

We also don't appear on MSN or Ask Jeeves yet, is it only a matter of time (the site was launched July 3rd) or is there something I need to do? Neither site appears to have a free submit, and I was told submitting a site loses rank anyway (??true/false??)

Cheers,
Steve

[ctabuk]

Well I'll see you in marketing, then you'll probably get all my business - oh hum

[brian.mark]

Thanks for the info David,

I'll look into the Yahoo Directory and visit the marketing forum as you suggest.

They've got a decently high ranking directory, so that can get you a lot of spidering traffic, but then just about any directory will get you some spidering. The key is quantity, Yahoo just happens to be quality. Oh, and Yahoo admits at SES conferences that they set a flag when your site is manually reviewed for inclusion into their directory if it is considered quality or not. Not doesn't bring a penalty, but quality means you get a bit of a bonus in the SERPs in their engine. They do randomly inspect sites with lots of content according to their reps, but the only way to guarantee a human view is paying the money.

Google is of course high on the agenda but we have PR 0 despite what I consider a decent amount of honest content (although there's still a bit more to add). I've heard about the 'Google sandbox effect' but not sure what to make of it, and I've read the importance of IBL's to Google many times, but not sure how to go about getting good IBL's - I'm looking through this site for information, any help would be great.

Public PR is only updated every 3 months or more. A site launched July 3rd can't possibly have PR yet. PR is based entirely on incoming links and has nothing to do with content. Submitting to lots of directories and asking related non-competing sites for links is the best way to start. Eventually, you'll have links occurring naturally (but you need to get that jump started).

We also don't appear on MSN or Ask Jeeves yet, is it only a matter of time (the site was launched July 3rd) or is there something I need to do? Neither site appears to have a free submit, and I was told submitting a site loses rank anyway (??true/false??)

Cheers,
Steve

False. Submitting doesn't hurt, but it also doesn't help a whole lot either. It does get the spiders to at least know your site exists. Links are still the best way to be included... the more the better.

If you want to submit to MSN (seemed to help a lot for our sites), the form is here.

Brian.

[wrmineo]

Steve - nice website.

Your problems with MSN and others are simply a part of infancy; if your site is new, getting there will take a bit of growning up. IBLs from other sites act as a nice growth hormone though so it's not impossible to speed up the process. Your listing at Heres1 should help as MSN hammers this site with its bots many times a day.

However, you could also be be getting some hinderance from the flash and java. Search engines are getting better at crawling pages with flash, but they've not yet perfected it except maybe Google.

You have LOTS of content on this page. It all seems relevant, but could also be reducing your content relevancy % to your keywords. I recently took one of my home pages down by 40% on the content and it's now in the top ten at Google for a very competitive keyword phrase - something to consider maybe. Doing a smaller snippets and then linking over to your relevant secondary pages may serve you well in the long run - it could also help you diversify your keyword market reach.

Your page has a link in the footer about XHMTL validation. One point - make sure your pages is valid. Three simple errors, but I can only advise on one - line six "&" should be "&". The script errors on lines 166/7 will need Brian, Speed, Adam or someone much better than I for a quick fix - but they can do it - they've done it for me (oh, was that a challenge) :)

CTABUK can provide you with an infinite wealth of information about your site as he's already offered. Here's another challenge - take him up on it or get yourself a big idiot placard to wear. I'm not trying to be abrasive - the info is that good and someone would have to be stupid not to take the FREE offer of his advice. He consulted with me about etowninfo.com recently - do a search in Google for "Elizabethtown Information" and you'll see HIS advice at work on my crappy site!

Good Luck and Happy Ranking!
w®m

[Steve W]

Thanks again guys, especially the 'nice site' comment Wrm - makes all the effort worthwhile!

Thanks too for the advice and the link Brian - I've now submitted to MSN and will look into Yahoo directory.
Jump starting the link process is definately where I need help!

Wrm - I've also fixed the errors, thanks for the tip-off! The page used to validate fine... I bet they all say that... while lightening the page size recently, I screwed up dropping a graphic link from the 'noscript' tag and added a few keywords to the meta description in the template and forgot to encode an ampersand as you thought.

Seems the java is completely ignored (I've seen the noscript comments turn up in a Yahoo search) which is a bitch as its keyword rich, and the flash is just 'pushing' phrases used elsewhere - I didn't expect robots to decipher it, but when you say 'hurting' the page, do you mean something like the robots not making it past the 'object' tags and missing the rest of the content or pushing the content down the page, or something else?

Talking of the index page content, I'd felt it had got a bit much, thanks for the advice - I'll cut the teasers down a bit.

CTABUK's offer is very welcome, I've already scanned and read a few of the marketing posts and intend to post a discussion there looking for help.

Cheers,
Steve