Hello, I'm in a situation and I need a few expert opinions. I've gotten myself in a real spot and I'm so worried that something is wrong with the way that my websites are set up.
I'm pretty new in this industry. I put my first website online in 05 and since then I've built a few more good size sites. Being new and learning new things all the time, these past three years have been an educational period for me. I come to this forum and read what you guys are talking about and then I try to do what you all say is successful. (Thank you for that.)
I'm not alone in this, I have a husband who is a industry professional. He's a programmer and webdesigner. He's really good at what he does and he's been doing it for nearly 20 years. He makes the sites for me and then turns me loose to keep them up. He taught me basic HTML and I'm hooked up with an editor program so that I can easily create new pages as I want them and update the existing pages.
I have two sites that I'm worried about. The first site I put online two years ago. It's a 50 or so page homepage with a vbulletin forum. The forums are doing fine. The homepage was a blog and six weeks ago I took down the blog and put up this really nice homepage. Google gave the homepage a page rank of 4 although they have yet to give any of the new pages a page rank. I've got lots of link trades and TONS of organic backlinks. Thousands of those backlinks are from puzzles that my husband made for the site. The puzzles were picked up and passed around all over the world. This made Google see the site as international and so it is. The site caters to USA, CA, UK and AU. It's an impressive site compared to many sites in it's niche.
The site is set up as 4 websites in one. The homepage is the entrance to the USA site however there are tabs where traffic can choose what country they are from. Clicking on their countries tab takes them to a full site just for them (a duplicate of the USA page).
The second site is in the same niche and it's the same site structure as the first site although it is targeted only at the USA. This site went online Christmas day 07. Google just gave us our first page rank of 3.
As I said my husband is a great programmer. He's very knowledgeable and has taught me everything. He and I discuss SEO CONSTANTLY because there is so much conflicting information online. I really hate to insult him but I worry that he's not "up to speed" regarding SEO. He makes websites and software and he's never gotten involved with working with affiliates, sales or internet marketing. That's all my websites are about. My sites ARE making money. Not nearly what I want but I could pay all of our monthly expenses and then some from the revenue that my sites generate with Google and various affiliate companies.
OK with that being said, please help me. If anyone would like to take a look at my sites please PM me for the URLs.
We have keywords (my husband made me a program which lists specific keywords that I've chosen for each page and then grabs keywords from the content of the page), my titles are good, I've made sure that my keywords are sprinkled here and there throughout the pages, I have link exchanges with sites in my niche, I have directory listings, blog posts and social bookmarks I hired the Indian gentlemen to do that for the site that went online last Christmas the other site I did by hand. I've been adding original content (we wrote them) articles to the older site and I hired a guy from this forum who is working on a pres release for the older site.
I fear that my site is not set up properly. I can not get anywhere near the first pages of Google searches for my main keywords. In fact I'm very jealous of a site that is much younger and frankly much less of a site who has managed to capture those words. I've looked at his site and I've looked at the properties of his pages and I can't see how he's so much better than I am in SERPS. He has far less work in his site and hardly any link trades or back links.
What worries me is that my husband says trading links is stupid and meta keywords are not important and a few other things which conflict with so much of what I read here and in other forums. The bottom line is that my sites are not indexed well for my main keywords so something is not right. Someone please PM for my URLs and take a look for me. I would appreciate your help so much. This business is ALL that I want to do and I MUST be successful.
I'm pretty new in this industry. I put my first website online in 05 and since then I've built a few more good size sites. Being new and learning new things all the time, these past three years have been an educational period for me. I come to this forum and read what you guys are talking about and then I try to do what you all say is successful. (Thank you for that.)
I'm not alone in this, I have a husband who is a industry professional. He's a programmer and webdesigner. He's really good at what he does and he's been doing it for nearly 20 years. He makes the sites for me and then turns me loose to keep them up. He taught me basic HTML and I'm hooked up with an editor program so that I can easily create new pages as I want them and update the existing pages.
I have two sites that I'm worried about. The first site I put online two years ago. It's a 50 or so page homepage with a vbulletin forum. The forums are doing fine. The homepage was a blog and six weeks ago I took down the blog and put up this really nice homepage. Google gave the homepage a page rank of 4 although they have yet to give any of the new pages a page rank. I've got lots of link trades and TONS of organic backlinks. Thousands of those backlinks are from puzzles that my husband made for the site. The puzzles were picked up and passed around all over the world. This made Google see the site as international and so it is. The site caters to USA, CA, UK and AU. It's an impressive site compared to many sites in it's niche.
The site is set up as 4 websites in one. The homepage is the entrance to the USA site however there are tabs where traffic can choose what country they are from. Clicking on their countries tab takes them to a full site just for them (a duplicate of the USA page).
The second site is in the same niche and it's the same site structure as the first site although it is targeted only at the USA. This site went online Christmas day 07. Google just gave us our first page rank of 3.
As I said my husband is a great programmer. He's very knowledgeable and has taught me everything. He and I discuss SEO CONSTANTLY because there is so much conflicting information online. I really hate to insult him but I worry that he's not "up to speed" regarding SEO. He makes websites and software and he's never gotten involved with working with affiliates, sales or internet marketing. That's all my websites are about. My sites ARE making money. Not nearly what I want but I could pay all of our monthly expenses and then some from the revenue that my sites generate with Google and various affiliate companies.
OK with that being said, please help me. If anyone would like to take a look at my sites please PM me for the URLs.
We have keywords (my husband made me a program which lists specific keywords that I've chosen for each page and then grabs keywords from the content of the page), my titles are good, I've made sure that my keywords are sprinkled here and there throughout the pages, I have link exchanges with sites in my niche, I have directory listings, blog posts and social bookmarks I hired the Indian gentlemen to do that for the site that went online last Christmas the other site I did by hand. I've been adding original content (we wrote them) articles to the older site and I hired a guy from this forum who is working on a pres release for the older site.
I fear that my site is not set up properly. I can not get anywhere near the first pages of Google searches for my main keywords. In fact I'm very jealous of a site that is much younger and frankly much less of a site who has managed to capture those words. I've looked at his site and I've looked at the properties of his pages and I can't see how he's so much better than I am in SERPS. He has far less work in his site and hardly any link trades or back links.
What worries me is that my husband says trading links is stupid and meta keywords are not important and a few other things which conflict with so much of what I read here and in other forums. The bottom line is that my sites are not indexed well for my main keywords so something is not right. Someone please PM for my URLs and take a look for me. I would appreciate your help so much. This business is ALL that I want to do and I MUST be successful.
]) for me to get anything done. For the hubby, PM me if your answer isn't suitable for public viewing.