Right now I'm paying for ads on The Google   for the term Organic Baby Clothes.

Our natural ranking is 95 and has been that way for almost a year.

Is it possible that I'm being pushed down to keep me paying for clicks?

I've noticed quite a few of the sites that outrank us don't even have the term "organic baby clothes" anywhere on their page.

I can't believe that Google would do that, seems unethical, but I have been trying over the last few months to improve my site to try and get a better ranking.  I've moved up 4-5 notches but nothing radical and it seems to fluctuate within that range.  Yahoo, Excite, and other engines give us much better rankings, 50 or better.

How long should it take to move up in rankings if one starts optimizing and improving a site for specific keywords?

Would Google do such a thing?

Naw...to much to lose if they get caught....

Usually just a SEO thang... have URL?

you've looked at my site before: www.positively-organic.com

I've been adding more copy using keywords in the copy, redone metatages, added an h2 tag, etc.
I know it's light on text content, working on that.

but the rub is this site:
http://www.babyminestore.com/
which doesn't even have the word organic on the page.  It has it in the code in 3 places.  Yet they rank 70-80 ahead of us.  Just not sure if I get this whole thang.  There are a bunch of sites like this way ahead of us.

Some of our pages, not the main one though,  rank high on other terms such as organic toddler clothes  and organic baby clothes wholesale.

The problem is that the term organic baby clothes (or clothing) is the main search term for our business, it's where we get our best conversions from.

I know I have some cleaning up to do, that's coming after christmas, don't want to risk a major redesign just before the holidays.  I will be putting as much code into the style sheets as I can, simplifying layout, adding more copy and H(x) tags, etc. 

Hopefully that will help things out, but it's frustrating seeing these other sites that don't specialize in what we do getting better ranking.

Peter, I am sure gyspsy is going to give you a good response and some advice, but my guess is that if will have to do with establishing a solid link campaign.

Ok, to start with there is no point nor glory in anything past the 3rd page; http://forums.site-reference.com/topic/ … vior-data/

As WS alluded to the problem lies in the Link Profile… not enough and no targeted link text.

The competitor has a TON of BLs. – BUT they are not targeted well for your term ( an opportunity there)

Further more they have 31k pages indexed.. certainly a worthy foe.

On top of that the site is from 2001 – a little ‘authority’ there… to your 2004

So in the end it is their targeting of ‘baby clothes’ and the ‘authority’ that is getting most of their love…. You can certainly make some head way I would say. Some strong on-page targeting of the term and building the link profile with the same targeted term in mind should get you somewhere.

How far? I don’t know because I haven’t checked the rest of the competition on the term… anything CAN be done… it’s always about time and money :0)

So is there a way to get linked elsewhere other than being a good merchant etc.?
We've gotten on some by paying and some from being mentioned on blogs and such.
I'm hesitant to do link exchanges with anyone, especially if they just run a link site.  From what I've read this is risky.

As far as pages, we don't have that much merchandise to sell yet, we just started last year.  We are redesigning with more cross referencing on the items by doing categories, but until we expand there's just not much to put on the pages for merchandise.

I see on the baby hygiene site they have a lot of info about baby care and such.  Is that a valid way to increase the size of a site?  We have plans for:
-message board/forum
-photo gallery
-news

I guess this is a good way to expand if we're lacking in sell pages.

Thanks for the help...again!

happy turkey day!

Peter, there is NO fast lane to the top. A good merchant is great but you also have to be a smart merchant because until you reach some form of authority status, you have to keep up with the jones.

I certainly don’t want to know your financial status but in the first years there can be lots of financial droughts and when you do get money, you need to toss every bit of back into inventory. Is you primary business plan retail sales or baby info?


I almost forgot to ask, you are not thinking/believing that paying for Ad words is going to increase your rank, are you? (please say no)

No, I'm paying for clicks to get some search engine action and traffic, I realize it won't affect my ranking.  I'm hoping one day to not have to worry about that so much and have my site come up naturally.

The business is all retail and wholesale baby clothes.  If we go into any kind of  info or articles it will be in conjunction with the ecommerce.  At some point we are hoping to become a big brand and not even sell retail ourselves but just have stores and websites carry our goods.  Then I can just make the website a flash/script/artsy site.  Or better yet, pay someone to do it!

I can see it now, the levis of diapers......

Hi hopes are positive but you certainly want to develop a sound business plan in the early stages. I am sure you know this is coming but are you tracking your conversions so you know if they came from ad clicks?

You can blow a ton of money on clicks, so you must make sure the costs are worth it. If you are blowing $500.00 to get a $100.00 in profit you may want to rethink your strategy. Since inventory is probably driven by available monies you could divert the click money to build inventory.

Have you experience with price points? It makes the SEO world look pretty dossal.

PeterP wrote:

So is there a way to get linked elsewhere other than being a good merchant etc.?
We've gotten on some by paying and some from being mentioned on blogs and such.
I'm hesitant to do link exchanges with anyone, especially if they just run a link site.  From what I've read this is risky.

As far as pages, we don't have that much merchandise to sell yet, we just started last year.  We are redesigning with more cross referencing on the items by doing categories, but until we expand there's just not much to put on the pages for merchandise.

I see on the baby hygiene site they have a lot of info about baby care and such.  Is that a valid way to increase the size of a site?  We have plans for:
-message board/forum
-photo gallery
-news

I guess this is a good way to expand if we're lacking in sell pages.

Thanks for the help...again!

happy turkey day!

I also wonder about link exchanges. Are they a good idea? Are they more effort than they are worth?

It's been rumored that link exchanges are a thing of the past, but no matter how you look at it, a link is still a link. Google got smart and decided to place a 'value' to these links based on all kinds of criteria. Gypsy has some great articles on this subject, and are a must-read.

However, a new site that i've started will have no link exchanges what so ever. I've decided to run the site, based entirely on what Google is telling us... build a great site for users. To me... users don't give a crap about the resource pages.

I'll be doing the usual of course... hanging out in forums for similar topics, dropping a link here and there, do some directory submission, and build content.

Whether this type of plan works or not, I don't know. I guess we'll find out in about a year.

MrStitch wrote:

It's been rumored that link exchanges are a thing of the past, but no matter how you look at it, a link is still a link. Google got smart and decided to place a 'value' to these links based on all kinds of criteria. Gypsy has some great articles on this subject, and are a must-read.

However, a new site that i've started will have no link exchanges what so ever. I've decided to run the site, based entirely on what Google is telling us... build a great site for users. To me...

users don't give a crap about the resource pages.

I'll be doing the usual of course... hanging out in forums for similar topics, dropping a link here and there, do some directory submission, and build content.

Whether this type of plan works or not, I don't know. I guess we'll find out in about a year.

I am certainly not an advocate of the “in your face” presentation of links, mainly because it seems the only people who obsess over it are the same people who won’t buy anything any way. But… links and exchanges are not dead.

Something that has not been brought up lately is the supplemental index, no links or regular refreshing of content guarantees you a seat on the bus to supplementville.

Recips start being devalued last year and more-so on RELEVANT recips came on stronger this year. They are certainly not dead, but like all things with links, be carefull. It is one of the easier places to run afowl of ''the Google' (GWB speak)

There is actually another mention in a recent Site Review session with Matt Cutts; http://forums.site-reference.com/topic/ … e-Reviews/