Have I over egged the pudding

[nkernick]

With a PR of 6 my site mortgage-specialist is trying to get to the top of google for the keyword "buy to let mortgage" , Ive tried back links and H1 , bold, h2 tags, filenaming etc and still cannot break the top 200.

Any one got any ideas where I am going wrong.

http://www.mortgage-specialist.co.uk

http://www.mortgage-specialist.co.uk/buy-to-let-mortgage.asp

Any advice would be welcomed

thanks

[JamesW]

Have you made any major recent changes to the pages that you're targeting this keyword with?

Cheers

James

[SPARKO]

if it's a new site read about the sandbox theory, I have the same problem you have to wait circa 3 months for your backlinks to show properly, thats why you probably see loads of sites with a lesser pr show up with better rankings than u ...

[nkernick]

Noi major changes have been made recently, I am about to revamp the whole site however I need to ensure I know What mistkes I need to avoid.

Site is 2 years old, however Pagerank has moved from 4 to 6 in last two months

thanks

[nkernick]

Im not sure but The mortgage site has only got one page per subject, say one page for mortgage type (a) and one page for mortgage type (b), as I am not in the top 100 for buy to let mortgages should I create more content around this keyword, if so how much?

thoughts welcome

[Aim1SEO.com]

Your site spcifically this page http://www.mortgage-specialist.co.uk/buy-to-let-mortgage.asp
Should be on the first page for "buy to let mortgages". I think you're being penalized for these links:

Cricket Shop
Other Sunglasses
Adverse Commercial Mortgages
Finance @ StartBuying

In fact, I bet if you take the above outbound links off of all pages of mortgage-specialist.co.uk within 2 weeks your term "buy to let mortgage" will have jumped leaps and bounds. You can leave the inbound links on the other sites but you need to take them off of yours.
Aim1SEO.com

[Gas Scooter Guy]

[QUOTE=Aim1SEO.com]
In fact, I bet if you take the above outbound links off of all pages of mortgage-specialist.co.uk within 2 weeks your term "buy to let mortgage" will have jumped leaps and bounds. You can leave the inbound links on the other sites but you need to take them off of yours.
Aim1SEO.com[/QUOTE]

Whoa...Aim repeat that last part again, really slow. Are you saying you can be penalized for outbound links that go to lower PR, unrelated content based sites? Is that because they have nothing to do with your keywords?

Thanks,

Gas Scooter Guy

[disgust]

*sigh*

people say that, but it's flat out wrong. don't try to remove outbound links. as long as you're linking to quality sites, you have nothing to worry about.

[Linda]

For crosslinking?

[Aim1SEO.com]

Check "buy to let mortgage" on http://www.googlerankings.com with your site. You are not even in the top 1000. Your site is optimized for that phrase but you have nothing. I think you're being penalized for crosslinking with a bad neighborhood. I don't see another reason. The page specifically optimized for buy to let mortgage has no ranking at all, it's NOT just that it is poor. I've seen this before. I crosslinked one of my sites with a friends web template site and I lost all rankings for main keywords and only had rankings for really small ones. After I removed the outbounds within a week I started on my way to the top. Crosslinking can be dangerous. Only way to tell is to remove the links for 2 weeks are so. If you break into googlerankings.com results and then keep climbing you'll see.

[nkernick]

I can have a links section though? Just remove from pages which I need high up google.

Also page designed for "buy to let mortgages" is a PR6 not a non ranked page, however that makes it worse that I am not in the top 1000

[Aim1SEO.com]

What I would do first is put all of your keywords into googlerankings.com so that after you remove links you will know if your problem is getting better. I can't say for sure this is the problem but it is my best guess. After you write down where you rank for all your keywords then remove the outbound links. If after a week or two you suddenly have rankings then the problem has been found. If possible I would remove the outbound links from all pages for a short time to see the results. That's what I did when I had this exact same problem, and if the partner sites asked where the link was I would just say I'm testing something, in the end I told them I had to remove the link indefinatly because for some reason my serps were being effected by having page to page link exchanges with them throughout my site. If you do not enter into the top 1000 for 'buy to let mortgages' within a few weeks of not having the outbound links I would be very surprised. By looking at your site, particularly the 'buy to let mortgage' page it should be on the first page. The only other reason I could think of would be if you just made/optimized that page a couple weeks ago then the results in google serps would be poor as it has not had time to rise to the top yet.