Overptimization? Not enough links?

mreigle · 03-09-2006, 01:19 AM

Hey everybody,

I've been studying SEO continuously for 2 months now. Seriously... it's pathetic. I wake up around noon, skip breakfast and jump onto the computer. From noon until about 3-4 AM i'm constantly engaged in working on my site and trying to find new tips. Sure, there's occasional times when I do get to take exciting field trips outside of these walls, but there hasn't been a day in the last 2 months where I've spend less than 8 hours tediously working on my site.

Hopefully soon I'll be making thousands a week and I'll just hire some hot chick to sit in my place.

Anyway -- my website is http://www.preciousbedding.com

I registered the domain name the 2nd week of January. It's been up for about 6 weeks now. I'm not sure how long it takes to work your way up in the rankings to as high as you're gonna go, and I'm not sure if I'm sandboxed either. I'm #1 or #2 for about 90% of my keywords on MSN, but apparently everyone else is on MSN for their keywords too. Do I have to wait for the next index update to see where my site falls in the SERPS?

My nearest biggest "competitor" has about 16,000 links on Google. 99.9% of the links to that site have nothing to do with bedding. It looks like in the links game, 20 irrelevant links count for 1 relevant link, but it's easier to get those 20 irrelevant links...

I've manually added my site to over 60 directories and swapped my link with about 20 other bedding-related -- right now link: is only showing me 70 results, and they're all same-site, forum posts, and sites that replicate the DMOZ listings.

Here's a list of everything I've done SEO-wise to my site:

(if you decide to browse the site, keep in mind that I have over 200 products and I'm still customizing every page. I'll only use examples of the pages I'm 100% done with for now)

- I have a sitemap of all my products with a link to it on every page

- I have no session IDs being generated for Google (verified by my logs)

- All my URLS end in .html

- All my URLS have hyphens to seperate keywords

- All my URLS relate to the title of the category it represents
(e.g. /Queen Bed Sheets/ = Queen-Bed-Sheets.html)

- I have a custom <h1> and <h3> on every product category listing
(e.g. <h1>Queen Bed Sheets</h1> as the first sentence on the page, then again <h3>Queen Bed Sheets</h3> after the header, specials, navigation and stuff -- right above where each category listing begins to list the products.

- My content is pretty rich. I have written about 10 articles about Bedding, bedding care, cotton, thread counts, etc. (all between 500 - 1000 words each. About half of them are at http://learn.mydomain.com and the other half are on the main site. I have them cross-linked inbetween the main domain and the subdomain) My http://learn.mydomain site is linked from DMOZ and has a PageRank of 3, however my main domain has a rank of 0.

- On several of my pages I have links to outside pages about bedding.
(e.g. On my Olympic Queen Sheets category I have a link to Wikipedia's reference on bedding and also the Simmons mattress company (the company who makes that size bed) website)

- I have my keywords in my ALT tags -- I don't think they're stuffed

- Here's an example of my meta tags from a product:

<title> Olympic Queen Sheets</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="Olympic queen sheets, ">
<meta name="description" content="Largest selection of Olympic Queen sheets online. We have many thread counts in Egyptian and Pima cotton, flannel and satin. Simmons and many other brands available. ">

- Here's the meta tags from the main page:

<title>Bedding - Olympic Queen, California King, Queen, King, Twin & Full</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="olympic queen sheets, california king sheets, olympic, california, bedding, bed skirt, egyptian cotton, twin, twin xl, full, cal. king, sheet set, mattress pad, satin, bedding, comforter, down, blanket, fitted, featherbed, double, thread count, sateen, cotton, TC, pima, ruffle, dust, duvet, pillow, feather">
<meta name="description" content="Largest collection of King, Queen, Twin, Olympic Queen and California King bedding online. We have sheets, comforters, mattress pads, duvet covers and lots more.">

As you can see on my product mage meta tags, my <title> tags and keyword tags have 100% density for the keyword phrases that I am focusing on. For my main page, I decided to just uses the sizes of the bedding I offer.

- I try to crosslink my products.
(e.g. On my Bed Sheets pages I'll have a link that says, "Here's Some Mattress Pads" and I'll link that to my "Mattress-Pads.html" category page with my mattress pads)

- On my main page, I've put my keyword phrases in <strong>'s

- I have a Google Sitemap set up on a cron job and is submitted every 6 hours

- I have a Froogle feed setup on a cron job that's sent to Froogle once a week

- I have a links page to major bedding websites with high page ranks (e.g. Bed Bath and Beyond, Linens 'n Things, etc.)

So my questions are:

Is there anything I've forgot?

Is this too much?

Is having the site split up over two domains going to negatively affect my rankings?

How long until my website gets "comfortable" in the SERPS?

How much is a $300 link from Yahoo Directory going to help me?

Can't I just outsource my link building to India?!?!?

Many thanks!

Mong · 03-09-2006, 01:49 AM

Myth:
You would see major changes in new updated.
Busted: No you can see it tomorrow.

I am pretty much impress with your SEO efforts. There is nothing which can be said as OVER optimization.Alwayrs try to over optimize your page but don't do keyword stuffing or such bad things.

Problem:
Your competitior has good number of links (from irrelevant) websites.But you haven't mention about the majority of anchors for your competitor webpage.

I would suggest try to get more backlinks and backlinks.It would ultimately help you to improve your rank in SERP.

mreigle · 03-09-2006, 02:11 AM

My main competitor is www.elegantlinenspc.com

They keyword phrases I'm optimizing for right now are "olympic queen sheets" and "california king sheets"

No matter what the heck you search for bedding-wise, you'll see elegantlinenspc right there in the top 5. Its very frustrating.

Right now I'm going through all the DMOZ linens/textiles/fabrics/bedding directories and emailing the webmasters about how to get a link. I'm pointing them to my "Linen Learning Center" at http://learn.mydomain.com since it's a lot easier to get a link to an informational page than it is to get one for my commercial one. (there's a big link that says "Buy Olympic Queen and California King Sheets" on the top of every page of my subdomain site that points to my main site.. heh) My "Learning Center" is really just a copout to get more traffic, but that's the name of the game... plus there's some good information there.

These sites these DMOZ categories are great. Some of them are 6+ PageRank and they're directly related to my content. Hopefully I'll get a few takers.

Well, it's 4:00 AM. Time to hit the hay and continue my link building tomorrow.

Hope fully I'll wake up with hundreds of helpful replys on here.

'nite

(eh, screw it i'll send a few more emails out)

Johan007 · 03-09-2006, 04:37 AM

Mreigle don’t fret. First things first you must try and get all your pages indexed before worrying about ranking.

Currently Google only trusts you to enough for just the homepage:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=sit...sbedding%2Ecom

Do try and get at least one quality back link that will enable more pages to be indexed. A PR5 back link would really help (or a few 4's, or many 3's).

mreigle · 03-09-2006, 11:04 AM

Ahh, off to another day of promotion. I got this email from my Indian buddies. I'm thinking about buying 1 or 2 and seeing what they do. If they do good then I'll get a few hundred:

Quote:

Hi Matthew,

Thank you very much for the link building query. I am Abhinav Parashar, Manager Marketing with Mosaic Services.

Mosaic Services is an ISO certified, 60 people big, online marketing agency, based in New Delhi, India.

To give you a heads up on our link building services, in year 2005 we have built around 70,000 links spread over 400 clients. We have a dedicated team of 20 people who manually build each link .

For more information on our link building campaign I would encourage you to pay us a visit here:

www.sem.mosaic-service.com and specifically for your queries on link building here:

http://www.sem.mosaic-service.com/li...lding_faqs.htm

All the links built are on themes (various domains) and we check for the Search Engine cache for link page indexing.

The one way links and are priced as under:

1) PR 3 link $11 USD
2) PR 4 link $13 USD
3) PR 5 link $17 USD

The links we develop are manually built and are based on the theme of the website.

Please let me know if you find this ok and if you have any more queries.

I look forward to hear from you soon.

Thanks and Regards,
Abhinav Parashar
Manager Marketing

Mosaic Services
G-68, East of Kailash,
New Delhi-110065.
Tel. : 91-11-51623530/31

We Promise! We Deliver!

MadKad · 03-09-2006, 11:12 AM

Is there anything I've forgot?

Is this too much?

Is having the site split up over two domains going to negatively affect my rankings?

How long until my website gets "comfortable" in the SERPS?

How much is a $300 link from Yahoo Directory going to help me?

Can't I just outsource my link building to India?!?!?

OK for all them, really you need to know that most SEO is trial and error you could do all of it and get every page correct on the website, but i have to say i have noticed a hell off alot of websites that are ranked hight without all the SEO.

For the $300 for yahoo i would say NO WAY i would never pay any one that i wouldnt even pay some one that if they said they could get me number one in google, why? well i think if other people can do it then so can we, yer it takes time but it's good to sit back and look at what you have made of your site

mreigle · 03-09-2006, 11:20 AM

From what I've gathered, 90% of it is getting inbound links with good anchor text. Should I try this company out?

MadKad · 03-09-2006, 11:24 AM

There are lots of ways in getting links without paying, I dont think i have ever paid for a link to my website and i have over 20,000 to one of my sites and this can be plenty but that would count one what you were doing.

Also people think that if the #1 site has 1000 links then you should have say 1100 links but this is also not true, look around you will see good free related link or even none related

mreigle · 03-09-2006, 11:28 AM

What's a good keyword density % for the ALT tags?

mreigle · 03-09-2006, 11:29 AM

I have a program called Internet Business Promoter (IBP8 ) that compares the keyword densities of the top 10 search results for your keyword phrase.

MadKad · 03-09-2006, 11:30 AM

50% in the hole page

WorldwideTrading · 03-09-2006, 11:31 AM

I think you should stop and regroup.

Where are you now?
Search for your category pages:- I tried Olympic Queen Bedskirts

Number 34 & 35 on google UK
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Oly...&start=30&sa=N

Same with google.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=Olymp...&start=30&sa=N

Yahoo 7 & 8
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=ro...en%20Bedskirts

7 is your Create an Account page and 8 is your home page.

As far as yahoo is concerned for cetegory pages your onsite content isnt strong enough, keyword enrich a little and add another relevent sentance or too for each cetegory. I would change your internal linking for your non seo links that are on all pages to javascript so they detract from your seo.

Start building targeted links from other websites to your category pages, it wont take many to make a difference.

Item Pages:

Check your headers, you have no title or keywords.
Change Item Description to be the name of the item. The search engines will automatically read the next bit of text as the description.

I googled an item (Olympic Queen Ruffled Bed Skirt)
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...ed+Skirt&meta=

Im seeing you at 2 & 3. Thats good. Not soo good with yahoo tho.

HOUSTON I SEE A PROBLEM
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com...m&bwm=p&bwms=p

Only 2 pages indexed.

MadKad · 03-09-2006, 11:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mreigle

I have a program called Internet Business Promoter (IBP8 ) that compares the keyword densities of the top 10 search results for your keyword phrase.

yes i have that program also it is good and helps you learn more

after you have used it for a while you start to do it on your own

mreigle · 03-09-2006, 11:49 AM

cgreen,

Thanks for all the tips. I'm going to keep adding content to my category pages. I haven't finished ALL my meta tags. Here's a page I'm completely done with:

(Olympic Queen Sheets)
http://www.preciousbedding.com/olymp...eets-c-28.html

I have few paragraphs both over and under the product listings for that category. That's what I'm aiming all the category pages to look like. Is there anything wrong with that page?

mreigle · 03-09-2006, 11:51 AM

Here's the other one I feel I've optimized completely...

California King Sheets
http://www.preciousbedding.com/calif...eets-c-31.html

mreigle · 03-09-2006, 12:02 PM

What's a good density % for the body text?

mreigle · 03-09-2006, 12:11 PM

My site ranks 20 for "Olympic Queen Featherbeds" and 283 for "Olympic Queen Sheets" (the top domain)

Google's retarded.

MadKad · 03-09-2006, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mreigle

What's a good density % for the body text?

Your IBP8 should tell you that

mreigle · 03-09-2006, 12:51 PM

http://www.preciousbedding.com/olymp...eets-c-28.html is optimized...

I think I've been sandboxed. Today, I'm just going to focus on getting links to this page.

[keyword] · 03-09-2006, 01:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mreigle

From what I've gathered, 90% of it is getting inbound links with good anchor text. Should I try this company out?

Yes, it is, but you've gotta be smart about it.

As far as linkbuilding goes, you can't just go and have a link builder build you 1000 links in one month with the same anchor text. As it may help you on Y! and MSN, Google will not like that. You'll find yourself boxed for a while.

Switch up the anchor text. Try not to use "california king sheets" for every link. Make them different, even throw in some "click here" or some "www.mysweetassdomain.com" link text.

Deep linking is another big thing you're going to want to focus on. Point to your subpages with one anchor text, another subpage with another anchor text etc. Get links from relevant pages. Try to get no more than one link per site.

Do this slowly over the next few months. Definitely try to switch up the descriptions (where applicable) as well as links with the same exact text around them gets discredited often time.

If it were my site, I would definitely start with directory submission in the beginning. For a site such as this that I would be serious about, I WOULD submit it to the Yahoo Directory. Take a look at Google's Webmaster Guidelines where they say: "Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites."

Keep writing those articles and start submitting them to article submission sites. (http://www.v7n.com/forums/marketing-...-websites.html)

You could even put together a press release and submit it to sites like PRweb.com.

All in all, whatever you do, do it smart. I repeat, DO NOT get thousands of links all at once. Try not to raise flags, and keep it natural.

Just thought I'd say it looks like a very clean site and you look like you're doing great so far. Just keep it up and don't get discouraged. These things take time. That's it for me... good luck to ya!

Oh yeah, and Get Crunk. :-)