Question

Topic: SEO/SEM

Toddler Activities Site Ranking In Google

Posted by Anonymous on 4/21/2007 at 3:02 PM ET 125 Points
I've maintained this toddler activities (www.toddlertoddler.com ) site for about a year. I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong that's preventing me from getting ranked high in Google, for "toddler activities". I'm # 3 in MSN, Yahoo and AltaVista. But I can't get high up in Google. I've submitted to dmoz and haven't been added yet. I've submitted a sitemap to Google, and run some GoogleAdwords.

There was one day where we had over 4500 unique visitors. I don't know where they came from. It wasn't from a link anywhere. I'd like to try to get that everyday since it brought in a lot of money from commissions and googleads.

Right now the site gets about 4 visitors signing up for the newsletter each day. I know that visitors like the site content, and if I could only get it up higher in Google, I'd see some great growth.

Any ideas, comments, suggestions?
thanks for the professional touch!
~JLW
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  • Posted by NatashaChernavska on 4/21/2007 at 6:04 PM Member
    Hello, JLW,

    As you noticed, it may be a little hard to say for sure why you are not on top in Google search results. But here are my thoughts about it.

    First of all, make sure you have Google analytics counter installed on your page. It's really easy and very convenient tool, and, I believe, Google "likes" it when you have it. You will also be able to trace all sources which have a link to your project on their pages.

    That was my second guess. Make sure that there are a lot of other pages and projects linked to your project.

    My third guess would be that you used TOO many "toddler activities" word combinations on on your pages. Google may just think that it's too much and block you from the search results at all.

    I would also suggest that you remove some words toddler from your keywords and add some other words and word combinations to your keywords. If I were you, I would also create better Title and description for the project.

    Another thing is, of course, your domain name. toddleractivities.com - would be perfect. if you can't get this one, modify it with different domain zone names like org and biz and dashes. You need both words in your domain name.

    And the last but not the least - look at the names of your files - htmls and graphics. You want to use words toddler and toddleractivities in the names of your files as well as in "alt" texts for your graphics.

    Check all this stuff, make sure that you are not too much, and

    Good Luck!

    Natasha Chernyavskaya
  • Posted by excellira on 4/22/2007 at 12:26 AM Accepted
    You need links. You have quite a few in Yahoo but only 3 are showing in Google. I searched “toddler activities” (using quotes when searching). Here is what the top three ranked sites on the SERP have for backlinks in comparison to your site:

    Your site:
    Google: 3
    Yahoo: 1,212


    #1 Preschoolexpress
    Google: 125
    Yahoo: 3,902

    #2 familyplayandlearn
    Google: 5
    Yahoo: 560

    #3 wondertime
    Google: 745
    Yahoo: 7,940

    With one exception each of the top three for that term have you beat for links.

    To be safe I would create an empty directory or use a directory you do not wish to have indexed and use that in your robots.txt file for a disallow. Currently you have:

    User-agent: *
    Disallow:

    Might be safer to have

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /junk-folder/

    You are using the term “toddler activities” in the beginning of all pages. This should be changed on each page as SEs (google in particular) may read this as duplicate content. Make sure your description tags are unique as well.

    I wouldn’t change your domain name. You have too much equity in it and the benefit by having a different domain name would be too insignificant to be a concern.

    I do not see a correlation between Google analytics being utilized or not and improved rankings.

    “Toddler” keyword density is slightly high on home page. Good for Yahoo and Live though. A bit high for google.

    I would not change the file names unless you do proper 301 redirects to the new file name. Keywords in file names or paths can help but we are talking a very slight amount. This is good to consider for new pages.

    Xml sitemap will help.

    You could clean up some code bloat by using rudimentary CSS to eliminate all the font tags and more.

    These are some suggestions. The truth of the matter is that there are a lot of things that can be done to improve the traffic to the site and it would take too much time to be able to convey them all to you without actually doing the SEO project. The best bet would be to hire someone to help. It will help you to ramp up income much sooner even though it will increase costs for the short term.

    I hope this helps.

    -Greg Hill


  • Posted on 4/22/2007 at 9:18 AM Member
    You seem to do well in Yahoo and MSN, which is great. SEO is a huge undertaking and soemtimes it is not as clear cut as we wish.

    The old tricks of SEO are not as effective as they once were. One of my favorite sites with SEO information is www.seomoz.org and they have blogs/articles for free.

    You are doing some things well, like working with google site maps, etc... I would make sure you are watching the www.google.com/webmasters/ for information. I read the blogs constantly and as one person above mentioned, sometimes you can actually have your keywords in copy too much. Relevance is critically important to them, since it is what makes Google money.
  • Posted on 4/22/2007 at 10:12 AM Author
    Thanks so much for the speedy responses. I've started to make some of your recommended changes. I hadn't realized that I could have an overload of the keywords.

    I have considered paying someone to help, but have no idea what that cost would be.

    Thanks again! I'll be closing this question soon.
    ~JLW
  • Posted by Phoenix ONE on 4/22/2007 at 8:50 PM Accepted
    I think my colleagues have given you some helpful info - I would offer the following:

    Fact the G-Aglorythm is a muscial score indexing that is non-intutive, but recognizes word count and indexes by the relationship of keywords to overall content based on a weighted average to other words within your pages. Your home page is too complex in content.

    Your home page as submitted to Google is much too confusing in content for a true G-algorythm. Even though you have solid metas and title the G-alogrhytm cannot pick them up on your page for indexing---namely you are confusing the bot---it happens often when the diversity of information exceeds the metas -----the bot simply does not index for HIGH rating. I would suggest creating a simpler LANDING page for toddler activities ONLY--- MAKE IT content enriched---submit that to G for indexing with links to your other pages. This should allow the G bot to go into a second phase criteria for the your other site tiers allowing you to index your home page.

    Your problem is not unique when a home page becomes to diverse and text complex for the search engine to truly qualify in quality your "musical score"

    This landing page content enriched and NOT spammed will allow the bot to really index your site.
    Make certain the landing page is in your parent directory and contains links to your parental links.

    You should see indexing in the next google deck shuffle.

    Good Luck & Happy Marketing ~ Bill
  • Posted on 4/23/2007 at 9:35 AM Author
    Funny!

    This forum posting is already at position 26 in a Google search for "toddler activities"!!! How can that be?

    My site is at position 101.

    I will close this question today. Thanks for all the info, it has really been helpful. I'm also considering hiring someone to help with the project, since I'm just confused as to how this posting appeared so high in the results so quickly and my site is still not up there. !
    ~JLW
  • Posted by Shell Harris on 4/23/2007 at 10:24 AM Accepted
    JLW,

    Most of the suggestions here are right on target. If you want to learn more and take a shot at doing it yourself, I highly recommend the SEO Book by Aaron Wall.

    I also recommend reading my blog where I give very explicit directions and real life examples of how to perform SEO and Internet marketing. My SEO Tips portion of my SEO blog are particularly useful for the novice.

    I will offer this, you should be titling your posts with the activity name first and then the title of the site such as "Toddler Abstract Art : Toddler Activities". This way all the titles will have a different focus and be better indexed by Google.

    One more thing, all the links to the activities have the same text: " Click here for full activity description..." Change that so it reflects the activity. For example, a link to the this page: https://www.toddlertoddler.com/todaysabstractart.htm should read something like this: "Create abstract art with your toddler". Your keywords are now in the link "toddler, abstract and art". Google now knows what to expect on this page. This link example will also help as you now have a keyword rich link pointing to your site. Of course, the title of the page should also have these keywords in it too, which it doesn't now. Links should match page titles when possible. Good Luck!
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