I've been developing a website, http://www.rainbowsendquiltshoppe.com, for a client of mine to act as the newer version of their previous website, rainbows-end dot com (I wouldn't go so far as to make that into a link). The old website is being maintained by a member of their family, so despite the fact that it doesn't look too good, they still want to maintain it as well as the new one.

My problem is this: people are still going to the old site. I am getting a decent amount of traffic to the new one, but when I search for "rainbow's end quilt shoppe" (no quotes) on Google and MSN, the old site is first and mine is second. Yahoo is my only big number one spot on the SERP's.

I have a higher keyword frequency for each of those three words on my site. I also have that exact phrase as my title, as well as in a heading and partly in the first paragraph of text. As for backlinks, I've submitted the website to many other quilting sites on the Internet, and although a lot of them link to me, it is apparent that not all of these links have yet been recognized by Google.

Can anyone think of anything else that may be causing my slightly lower position in the SERP's? I'm confident that over time I'll be able to overcome the old website, but I'm aiming to get my site up to number one ASAP.

Thanks for your help!

That sure sounds very very strange!

Why does the family want to maintain the old one.. build them a CMS for the new website if they want..have the old site redirect users to the new one

Believe me, if it were that easy that's definitely what I would do. The fact that they want to keep the old site up is out of my control--it's basically because the old site was developed by someone in the family (it's a family-run business), and they don't want to tell the guy that his website doesn't look good and they hired someone else (my company) to take over. So instead, they've got their new website up on a new domain that he doesn't even know about, and I'm left with the task of beating the domain that they advertise in all of their letterhead, business cards, etc. with nothing but web promotion.

lol, sticky situation m8

can you edit the old page at all? Id kina messy it up for seo, get rid of any optimization :P

It sounds like your client is an idiot. Why would you even bother....

AnthemIT, my client is paying me well, and I always try to serve my clients' interests, even if they do seem a bit strange. I have no intention of dropping them as a client over this--as strange as it is, it's their decision, and their mistake to make (at least in my opinion). TaylorAtCTS, I wish it were that easy! If I could just put a few lines of code in that old site (or take a few lines out for that matter), I wouldn't have much of a problem at all...

Man, you should really explain that you need to edit it some.. do you have access to the server or anything!! Use a robots.txt file to prevent the site from being indexed..

I would if I could! I have no access at all to the old server, so it's a matter of optimizing my site above and beyond the old one.

Ahh lol man thats tough.. DL the other website and make sure your gotten all the keywords they used in the title and meta tags. I would try to add more content to the new site and since its not the same URL.. you need to get alot of backlinks to the new site. Try to get 4 or 5 good solid high PR links

GL m8

Thanks for the advice. Lets hope all the backlinks I've been getting will help increase my PR enough for the next update (and the fact that most quilting link pages have 100+ links each doesn't help!).

Does the first website have more backlinks than the more recent one?

Currently, Google shows that it has two more backlinks. However, in terms of actual backlinks, the new site has many more--some of these haven't yet shown up because they are very new, and some haven't because they are on pages that contain too many links to be considered relevant by Google.

do you have any high PR pages linked to that site?

i dont mind swappin links with that site if they have a place for it

Lots of things and well known rules changed in the world since the google jumped on daily spidering.

I'd suggest optimizing your page for header and title to match the keyword 100% and resubmit. wait 1 week or 2. it will go up

Thanks for the advice, Michael2005.

TaylorAtCTS, what type of website do you have? The links page on Rainbow's End's website contains nothing but quilting resources; I'd be more than happy exchange links with you so long as your site will provide some sort of services to people who would be interested in quilting.