Hi. I am new here and just wanted to say that this forum is truly a great source of information. I apologize in advance for the lenght of my post, but I just had a few questions about my site's rankings.

1) I am getting decent rankings at Yahoo - somewhere in the 20's and 30's for my target keywords, but on Google my site is non-existant (or it falls in the 200-300 range) although my homepage has a PR(5) and sub=pages PR(4). Is there anything I should be doing to help my Google rankings? What could be causing the problem with getting listed higher in Google (keywords, links, ect.)? Is the age of teh site a serious issue?

One thought I has was from an article I read about Google penalizing sites with incoming text links that matched the text in their titles and body text. All my incoming text links use the anchor text of my site's domain name, which is both in my title tag and body text. Is this really a problem?

2) Will getting listed in the Yahoo directory help the situation? Is it a good idea to get listed in paid inclusion directories to enhance rankings generally? If so, what other directories should I be looking at besides Inktomi (and the free DMOZ)?

Thanks very much,
-CG

ps - It appears the the Keyword Density tool on the SEOGUY page is not working properly.

Hmm... thanks for the information about the tool not working. I'm going to take a look at it this afternoon. Most likely the problem has arose when we switched frames to the new site. Sorry for any inconvenience

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SEO Tutorial
Bob's quote of the week:
SEO Bob: "world cup of hockey is starting isn't it [, Dilligaf]? Who are you cheering for dilli?"
Dilligaf: "Well... if you promise not to tell my neighbours... "Oh Canada... ""

Is your site on a new domain? New domains have been having issues lately with pages not showing up in the SERPS for a period of time. This is being called the sandbox effect. There is a way you can get around the sandbox effect though, just so you can see where your site would potentially rank. You can see where you SHOULD be (if the theories are correct) by entering your keywords as per usual, and then putting 7 -whatever in the search box. eg... if i searched for seo tutorial, it would look like this:


What this does is search for pages that rank for seo tutorial, but don't include any of the gibberish i put after. We've been finding that that's a pretty good workaround lately. For a ton more information on the sandbox effect, SEO Guy's been writing about it in the thread here
http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/showthread.php?t=326

And rustybrick talks about it at seochat here
http://forums.seochat.com/showthrea...70204#post70204

__________________
SEO Tutorial
Bob's quote of the week:
SEO Bob: "world cup of hockey is starting isn't it [, Dilligaf]? Who are you cheering for dilli?"
Dilligaf: "Well... if you promise not to tell my neighbours... "Oh Canada... ""

PS the spider is fixed

George what is your domain?

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Vote for your favorite SEO site and tell your visitors about this great place, please link to us http://www.seo-guy.com with the anchor text SEO and let them know how you feel

Thanks SEO Bob for the insight into the sandbox effect. Unfortunately, I tried my search with the 7 negative arbitrary terms and the results were exactly the same. I was still buried in the 200-300 range. Any other ideas of why such a big difference between Yahoo and Google?

Does Google put more weight on linking? Do you have any advice about getting listed in those paid-inclusion directories?

Thanks again,
-CG

hey george,

What's your domain?

__________________
SEO Tutorial
Bob's quote of the week:
SEO Bob: "world cup of hockey is starting isn't it [, Dilligaf]? Who are you cheering for dilli?"
Dilligaf: "Well... if you promise not to tell my neighbours... "Oh Canada... ""

http://www.primesportspicks.com

Thanks Bob.

I 'think' I'm now a happy person!! Just put the search term 'play bingo online -basdrad -asdfasdgasd -asdgasga -adsfagasdf -asdfagdda -adfagasdf -adfasdas' in Google, and I'm number 1
Am I reading this sandbox thing right in that i should soon be high up for this term (I'm number 60 odd atm)?

Thanks
Penny

Sorry to butt in on your post George I was just too excited!

Penny

Congratulations Zapcat! those are the kind of rankings we like to see

__________________
SEO Tutorial
Bob's quote of the week:
SEO Bob: "world cup of hockey is starting isn't it [, Dilligaf]? Who are you cheering for dilli?"
Dilligaf: "Well... if you promise not to tell my neighbours... "Oh Canada... ""