Losing Rankings

[tonya1]

I had some good rankins with yahoo, then all of a sudden they disappeared, could someone have a look to see what i need to do to get listed for major keywords, holiday gift baskets, git baskets

[brian.mark]

Are you a competitor to DMC_34? If so, what are the odds? Ok, probably better than I think.

The first thing I noticed is that your homepage has a TON of keywords in the title. It's a good idea to only try ranking for 2 - 3 phrases on any given page, so your title is major overkill as it is. Also, your meta keywords has way too many as well. Try some 2 - 3 word phrases, as I doubt that you're going to rank for words like "men" with that page regardless if you list it as a keyword or not.

From the looks of things, you just need to focus a little more closely on smaller topics for each page. We tend to set up 1 page per phrase, then whatever other phrases it ranks for are just a bonus. Keeping in mind that I have a list of 47,000+ keywords right now, you can imagine how busy that keeps us at my office.

Brian.

[DMC_34]

Yes, we do target the same keywords. There is plenty of business for everyone and plenty of competition as well. :)

If you dont mind taking some advice from a competitor, I posted a response to some of your questions which would help on Yahoo. In addition to Brian's suggestions, you have some serious duplicate content issues happening on your website.

As for Yahoo, my rankings tanked as well. I was top 10 on many keywords until this last update. I admit my understanding of Yahoo algo is very limited. Yahoo seems to enjoy low keyword density, and loves the keywords in anchor text with little variation. See GiftTree for gift baskets. They use the same acnhor text over and over. No variation at all yet are #2 on Yahoo but no where on Google. Google doesnt like non-variation of anchor text, as it is seen as link spam.

As you can see the #1 for holiday gift baskets is actually pretty lame. I posted some information about this here.

Good Luck,
DMC

[greeneagle]

jkomp,

I'd caution anyone developing a directory:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=51235

Ken