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

Also look at this page Humboldt County City Guides. 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
Patricks Point State Park, Trinidad CA, Recreation

[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