Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Design and Content : Google question

[kentcounty]

I have a site that was ranked by google last month with a PR of 5, the forum attached to the site was also ranked and ended up with a PR of 4.

Both are fairly propular with lots of good back links from high ranked sites. The thing I don`t understand is that the site and forums are poorly situated in the google search engine. They do very well in the other search engines.

Even entering the full domain name I end up some four or five pages down, yet the sites above are all linked to my site (if that makes sense). Trying to search keywords, or words/phrases from my meta tags also reveal a poor position if it finds my site at all. My forum is practically non-existent on google, yet it gets a rank of 4.

Can anyone share some tips where I maybe going wrong? Could this be down to content? I have tried putting my site through these online meta tests, and the meta/content comes up very good.

[Jamie Harrop]

Firstly, Google ignores meta tags, so they won't help.

PR4 is not all too hard to get, it is very common in fact, therefore PR4 does not automatically mean you will get a high search engine position.

I would take a wild guess and say your site and forum is related to a very competitive market, so there are many more sites in a better search engine position.

It may well be down to content. Make sure you have the phrase you want to be found with in your <title> tag, and in the first opening paragraphs of text on your home page.

[foress]

Right. Your site, pages, structures could be badly optimized.

Well, if you want us to know what's wrong with your site, at least let us know the URL

[LordAramus]

also.. google search gives the majority of its grading curve to references and links to your website from other websites... if you have friends that are willing to promote for you, it'll help out your rankings substantially

[kentcounty]

Thankyou all...

Are there any sites/tools out there that will scan the site/pages for problematic areas with regards to SEO? Something free would be great!!

[san-deep]

Unluckily, there aint any automated tool for checking the same.

[bbqchips]

Check out the google webmaster guidelines: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Other than that , Google is strange and has been known to ban websites for just about any reason. Lots of forums try to speculate what those reasons are, but nobody except google employees knows for sure.

[JohnSea]

Originally posted by fundy_fish
I have a site that was ranked by google last month with a PR of 5, the forum attached to the site was also ranked and ended up with a PR of 4.

Both are fairly propular with lots of good back links from high ranked sites. The thing I don`t understand is that the site and forums are poorly situated in the google search engine. They do very well in the other search engines.

Even entering the full domain name I end up some four or five pages down, yet the sites above are all linked to my site (if that makes sense). Trying to search keywords, or words/phrases from my meta tags also reveal a poor position if it finds my site at all. My forum is practically non-existent on google, yet it gets a rank of 4.

Can anyone share some tips where I maybe going wrong? Could this be down to content? I have tried putting my site through these online meta tests, and the meta/content comes up very good.

Did this happen in June-July after the Burbon update?

[voxio]

I found a great FREE piece of software to help with SEO you can download it at http://www.websiteseo.com