Originally Posted by chrishirst

What has "what search engines look for?" got to do with it. SEO is really about optimising for the people who use the search engines. It is NOT about getting rankings. Almost anyone could get front page billing for many keywords that would bring along maybe a trickle of traffic but not one interested buyer.
So what SEs look for shouldn't really interest a good SEO.

This is where ALL software can and will get it wrong. All it can do is focus on the mechanical aspect of coding pages, eg;

a keyword density of x% to yy%,
use bold or italics for keywords,
put your keywords in heading elements,
stuff the alt attributes with keywords,
the page title should be XX characters long,
meta description should be between XX and YYY characters,
XX number of words in the meta keywords element,
XXX number of words to a page.

REAL SEO is not about ANY of those things, neither is it about what it looks like the competition is doing. Hey they probably don't know any better than you do, so why follow them.
Successful SEO for a site does not chase the competition, when you do that you are always behind.
Successful SEO is about doing it better than the others.
Successful SEO is about having the competition follow YOU.
Successful SEO is about ignoring "rankings" and focussing on real people and conversions.

You can't bank rank and Walmart don't take PR!


Good discussion BTW, because it is highlighting some of the many incorrect ideas that are prevalent in the SEO world.

What does optimising for the people really have to do with getting to the top of the search engines for a certain keyword?

in the thread starter here she says this

One is "vintage dresses" I'm #2 on the 1st page of Google.

the other is "vintage clothing" but I'm on like page 22 or something.

I don't feel her problem has anything to do with optimising for the customer.

Originally Posted by PGV

I have more backlinks than my competitors. My site is a very legitimate clothing site that gets written up by major fashion magazines so it has many 1 way back links too. I have neglected trading links this past 2 years so I may do that again.

For the love of all that is good in the world, and for your own sake, please don't do this. Link exchange leaves a footprint; I don't care what any of the "experts" say on the topic. Like Hirst said, you don't want something on there that looks like SEO work.

Your backlink count means nothing as well. It doesn't mention whether they're quality backlinks, and if you're asking the questions that you're asking I'd suggest to you that they're not what you're purporting them to be. You wouldn't worry one iota about SEO shortcuts and tricks (such as link exchange) if they were.

Good sites have diversified traffic sources, and end up lessening their dependence on SEO. The reason that the ultra-misleading "84% of traffic to websites comes from search engine" statistic is bandied about is because most webmasters and marketers fail to realize this and end up putting all their eggs in one basket.

Originally Posted by PGV

I have a question to you ADAM, seo expert, I do not have 2 home pages, I have one. I changed it's name from home.html to vintage_clothing_home because that is what all the SEO "experts" said to do (That does not make me a sheep by the way). I deleted the old one off of the server, so what do you mean by I have 2? exactly.

Actually, this is sheep mentality. You did something because you were told to do it by so-called "experts" without considering the consequences. I know that's not what you want to hear, but that's the very definition. This isn't totally your fault, either; it's prevailing SEO expert "wisdom". It's a deeper problem with the SEO industry; as Hirst quite rightly pointed out, the problem is in the sheer volume and relative percentage of low-grade crappy advice available to the newcomer.

As far as your multiple home pages go, you may have deleted home.html off of the server, but you're still linking to it on your home page (it's your first link, in case you're wondering). That's why I asked the question that I asked. You need one, and only one, home page.

Keywords in URLs can have some impact on subpages, and be user-friendly as well (e.g. http://poshgirlvintage.com/coats makes sense for your coats section, since that's what the section is about)...but not for your home page.

By the way, read Dashes vs. Underscores. Some of this might make sense too.

Originally Posted by PGV

I have analyzed my site stats and my navigation is fine according to my customers. It's as easy as a DR. Suess book to navigate. I don't think that is why I'm so low for the one keyword. 90% of my traffic lingers in my dress section.

I'd almost bet you misread your statistics, but it's not totally your fault. One of the problems with site stats programs is that they often confuse bots for people, and record bot traffic as actual traffic. So the "lingering" that you're seeing may well be a crawler or 20 trying to grab your content.

It takes a minimum of four clicks to put anything into the shopping cart from your home page (as in poshgirlvintage.com). Splash page that doesn't need to be there, actual home page, product listing page, detail page, cart. A good cart can do this in 2, maybe 3 clicks tops. Why am I bringing this up? Because the same steps users have to take to do things are the same steps a crawler has to take to do things. The shallower you can make your site navigation, the more pages you'll end up seeing crawled. Site architecture is a very underrated, yet very important part of SEO...and more importantly, it's a user component as well.

This is your deeper issue. It's not backlinks or keyword density or any of the other crap that has been fed to you.

Originally Posted by PGV

And I really don't think my blog is an issue.

Is it really helping your users?
Are they commenting?
Are you seeing blog users become buyers?
And why are you leading your users to another site to view your blog?

It's an issue on two levels:

1) It's not helping your users.
2) It's something that you did, in all likelihood, because the prevailing SEO wisdom suggests that you do it. Everyone, set up a blog. Blogs are great for SEO. Just get onto Blogspot or download Wordpress and you'll have #1 ranking in any keyword you want! Don't delay...a limited number of spaces are left on the bandwagon!

Again, this is your deeper issue. You're following without fully understanding the consequences of what you're followiing. You're following for the same reason that most people follow the prevailing SEO advice...it sounds good. It's sort of like those late-night infomercials for the $39.99 Abdomenizaterminator. The product sounds great, and it comes with a free clothesline and autographed picture of Suzanne Somers to go with it. Then you get it home, use it religiously for a month or two, see no results because you either used it wrong or it's crap, and then it gets shoved under the bed.

Most SEO advice is the Abdomenizaterminator.

Originally Posted by mister-p

What does optimising for the people really have to do with getting to the top of the search engines for a certain keyword?

Optimizing for users creates word of mouth and organic referrals, which in turn lead to other users doing the same. The same backlinks that SEOs obsess over become much easier to get this way. More importantly, the organic traffic that results from these links lessens SEO dependence and diversifies resources.

Originally Posted by mister-p

I don't feel her problem has anything to do with optimising for the customer.

Then you, my friend, aren't paying attention.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Optimizing for users creates word of mouth and organic referrals, which in turn lead to other users doing the same. The same backlinks that SEOs obsess over become much easier to get this way. More importantly, the organic traffic that results from these links lessens SEO dependence and diversifies resources.

Then you, my friend, aren't paying attention.

So you are saying that optimising for the customer gets your off page 22 and up into the top? Boy I must be missing something.

Just wondering how many of you have sites in the #1 position for your targeted keywords?

So you are saying that optimising for the customer gets your off page 22 and up into the top? Boy I must be missing something.

You're right. You are. The elements of good design for the user overlap with many of the elements of real SEO. That's what you're missing in concept...details are all over this board and a scant few others, if you're willing to look. You just need to realize that the prevailing logic doesn't make sense from a user point of view first.

Just wondering how many of you have sites in the #1 position for your targeted keywords?

1) Rank checking is useless, as has been stated many times on this board. It doesn't establish referrals or profit generated from those referrals (the only real SEO statistic worth considering).

2) Those of us who do have "#1 rankings" on any specific datacenter that we could show someone generally wouldn't, because that would reveal proprietary marketing information and because we'd end up putting ourselves or our clients in jeopardy.

But in this case, I'm going to break my rule just this one time and reveal one small example (there are thousands, but this will suffice for now). My IBM Sucks page is the #1 result on at least two Yahoo! datacenters (one in the US, one in Canada) for the phrase "IBM sucks".

But more importantly, read the comments. Those comments came as the result of hundreds of referrals from http://blogs.tap.ibm.com . That's the IBM internal blog network...you can't even reach it from the outside. So from an SEO point of view, that backlink sucks. But I'll take hundreds of visitors from a bad SEO backlink over 0 from what appears to be a good SEO backlink any day of the week.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

You're right. You are. The elements of good design for the user overlap with many of the elements of real SEO. That's what you're missing in concept...details are all over this board and a scant few others, if you're willing to look. You just need to realize that the prevailing logic doesn't make sense from a user point of view first.


1) Rank checking is useless, as has been stated many times on this board. It doesn't establish referrals or profit generated from those referrals (the only real SEO statistic worth considering).

2) Those of us who do have "#1 rankings" on any specific datacenter that we could show someone generally wouldn't, because that would reveal proprietary marketing information and because we'd end up putting ourselves or our clients in jeopardy.

But in this case, I'm going to break my rule just this one time and reveal one small example (there are thousands, but this will suffice for now). My IBM Sucks page is the #1 result on at least two Yahoo! datacenters (one in the US, one in Canada) for the phrase "IBM sucks".

But more importantly, read the comments. Those comments came as the result of hundreds of referrals from http://blogs.tap.ibm.com . That's the IBM internal blog network...you can't even reach it from the outside. So from an SEO point of view, that backlink sucks. But I'll take hundreds of visitors from a bad SEO backlink over 0 from what appears to be a good SEO backlink any day of the week.

Thanks for sharing I can't agree with you more. My only argument in this whole thing started when I was told

Originally Posted by chrishirst

And of course a 500 whatever piece of software will tell you to do exactly the same thing as other owners of the same software get told to, so the end result is precisely nowhere.

If nowhere has landed me in the #1 positions... Hell I'll take a road to nowhere with my $500.00 software.

@PGV

brigitte, having given your pages a slightly more than cursory look over I'll point out a few of the more obvious issues.

first and foremost is the www/non-www issue. You are using the the non-www in your signature BUT the search engines have the www version as the indexed one. This WILL be causing some loss of positioning because it splits the value of REAL PageRank and the anchor text weight so it needs fixing sooner rather than later.

Second is your navigation. It is seriously working against you for both SEs and converting visitors.
Generally the site navigation is a usability nightmare. The product pages have no way of returning to the main site. So people (customers) will find things like this page, click through to your site and have no easy way to find your other products. When searchers land directly onto a product page, they are already well on the way to being sold the item, all you need to do in many cases is give them a reason to trust you, and having them leave the site via the "back" button or closing the browser is absolutely NOT the right way.

You HAVE to consider when optimising for search, that every page is a "home" page, and pages that open with no navigation are the anathema of successful SEO.

You talk about link building but promptly lose the best asset for quality links you have by using numbers as anchor text to your own pages. Your own site is where you should start any serious link building from, by utilising keyphrase in your own navigation.

As you can tell I seriously disagree with you on how easy it is to navigate, as did my daughter who's internet skills are just about limited to Yahoo! mail and ebay and my not specially Internet savvy other half. They both struggled when clicking through from a SERP link.

the content is fine, though when you are writing reviews try to use some different wording to what you have on your own pages.

Forget looking at rankings and concentrate on getting visitors and conversions and your bank balance will thank you.

If nowhere has landed me in the #1 positions...

Sure, that's fine if your only concern is being #1 for whatever phrase, or you have a Adsense click chasing site or a lead generating affiliate site.

BUT for real ecommerce sites, conversions are what really matter.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Sure, that's fine if your only concern is being #1 for whatever phrase, or you have a Adsense click chasing site or a lead generating affiliate site.

BUT for real ecommerce sites, conversions are what really matter.

And that is fine but the question that started this all off was

I've been trying to figure out why I'm ranked so high for one of my keywords & so low for the other. Anyone know why?

One is "vintage dresses" I'm #2 on the 1st page of Google.

the other is "vintage clothing" but I'm on like page 22 or something.

not how can I get my conversion rate up.

Yes, it's called educating.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Yes, it's called educating.

Wait a minute...Comic Book Guy has another half? Is it a split personality or just another flesh roll?

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Wait a minute...Comic Book Guy has another half? Is it a split personality or just another flesh roll?

who is that towards?

Hirst, and more specifically his avatar.