Anyone have bad experience with Google in getting banned for specific search terms? It seems like I was in position #6 when you searched for "naples wedding photographers" and now I don't show up at all. However, when you search for "naples photographer" I show up. Perhaps I used the term "Naples wedding photographers" too many times on my page? Has anyone been able to re-gain their status with google, and if so, how did you go about doing so?
That little blurb of text on your site is so ridiculously obnoxious it drives me nuts. I wonder if brides/grooms see that and it is a turn-off or only geeks like myself.
Yeah, I see you on page 16 for "Naples Wedding Photographer". But I see some glaring problems. First is that you hardly have any backlinks. You have around 133 and sites on the front page have in the thousands. Secondly, you have no anchor text that says naples wedding photographer. Anchor text is the text that appears as the link. Some on-site stuff too. Your Heading tags (h1,h2, etc.) don't mention naples wedding photographer anywhere. Here's a big one- you don't have a site map or robots.txt file. This gives google a map of your site so it can crawl it properly. You're not banned if that's what you're asking, but your SEO isn't that great either.
TTLKurtis wrote:
That little blurb of text on your site is so ridiculously obnoxious it drives me nuts. I wonder if brides/grooms see that and it is a turn-off or only geeks like myself.
Text helps tell google what the site is about. Its ridiculous and ugly, but it helps.
TomHarmon wrote:
Text helps tell google what the site is about. Its ridiculous and ugly, but it helps.
It's all a matter of priorities I suppose. I don't see SEO as being more important than putting my best foot forward and not looking like someone who can't write properly or someone desperate for search engine traffic. As always, horses for courses.
deepbluejh wrote:
SEO in this industry a long term strategy, not a short term one. Trying to get to the top too fast will get you burnt.
I agree with you that SEO is a long term strategy, but how would delsol9400 get burned if he reached the top relatively quickly?
Tom I don't know how long you've been into this whole Internets thing but Google is constantly tweaking their algorithms to penalize those who are trying to game the system.
wordstream article:
What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.
Cutts did mention that Google is looking at sites by “people who sort of abuse it whether they throw too many keywords on the page, or whether they exchange way too many links, or whatever they're doing to sort of go beyond what a normal person would expect in a particular area.” It’s widely believed that keyword stuffing and link exchanges are already spam signals in Google’s algorithm, so either Google intends to ratchet up the amount of penalty or dampening that those spam signals merit algorithmically or they have new over-optimization signals in mind as well.
Google wants to do something about over-optimization. That's not saying they want to do something about SEO. As Matt said on that same panel one more time, they have nothing against SEO, they have something against spamming … Now, stop over-analyzing everything Matt says and get back to work, building good websites for users....Show more →
I'm not sure why you have this attitude towards me or SEO, but it's misplaced.
There's a difference between keyword stuffing and writing text with relevant keywords in it. By no means is delsol9400's website over optimized nor do I think he will ever get to that point. All of the advice I gave him is sanctioned by Google, and just because you think his text on his homepage is ridiculous doesn't mean it's going to get him penalized.
You're entitled to your opinion, however I think it's blatantly obvious and if it isn't penalized now at some point it will be.
I notice that if I search for New Jersey Wedding Photographers you don't come up on the first page, Tom. Despite your 'seo' class h2, h3, p, logo description, and so on and so forth. You are on page 2 for that keyword, but I suspect that has more to do with the fact that you're doing good work and people are linking to you as opposed to having all that text waaaaaay down on the page.
What about my responses makes you think I am even the slightest bit angry? (I'm not being facetious here). I'm simply making a point. That is all. Nothing more.
If you think SEO is so important why is it that I'm on page 3 and I do basically nothing for SEO, and you're on page 2 and you seem to do a lot in terms of SEO. (P.S. I really don't care what page of Google I'm on)
Well, like I said, good SEO takes time. I've been in this market for 6 months and have made great gains in my keywords in that time compared to others that have been here for years. But I'm just wondering, if you don't do a lot of SEO and you don't really care about it, why jump on a thread and send shots across the bow? The OP wasn't asking if you think SEO is better than a nicely designed website, he was merely asking why he wasn't ranking well. If you don't think SEO has any benefit, fine, but don't come on here and tell me "I don't know how long you've been into this whole Internets thing" because you really don't have a leg to stand on and haven't given the OP any sound advice.
I agree, I don't like the paragraph of text at the bottom of my page. The truth is, it did help my SEO previously. Just last week I was ranking #5 or 6... Now I went way down, so I have to investigate as to why this is. I updated some plugins that are supposed to help with SEO on my wordpress site, so maybe I need to investigate that a little bit further, as well as build more link backs to the site.
By the way, I recently caught a Sal Cincotta post on Creative Live, and he talked about all the stuff Tom is talking about, and does it on his site. Not only does he have those little annoying paragraphs on his main site, but also at the end of every blog post. As long as you write it in such a way that is understandable, google supposedly won't penalize you for it. Sal also consistently ranks number 1 when searching for "St. Louis Wedding Photographer"
