Zero ranking after a month of ON Page Tweeks.

[stevecounsell]

I've been tweaking a Wordpress little by little over the last 3 to 4 weeks but I'm making no progress in the rankings for my keywords.

All keywords are still reporting >50 in the SEOMOZ Campaign.

Here's the clients pet keyword:

"Sailing in Scotland"  www.capriceyachtcharter.co.uk

The site is indexed and shows IF I search for the company name "Caprice Yacht Charter"

What am I missing?

Thanks in advance

Steve

[stevecounsell]

Hey Alan,

! ! ! ! 300 broken Links ?????

I'm not seing any of that.  The most I've seen are 2 URLS.  What are you using the detect broken links?

Thanks for your help

[AlanMosley]

I detected over 300 broken links, you also have unnesassary redirects leaking page rank.

fixing these will help

[stevecounsell]

Perfect!

You guys really are fantastic.

[StoresDirect]

I found this really helpful for getting started with link building http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professional-guide-to-link-building-2011

[stevecounsell]

I figured it'd be worth the time writing your own content so i've been doing that although have tried out a couple of links with their writers.

You're right the quality is on the low side.

Much appreciate the advice

Cheers

Steve

[itrogers]

I actually have used BuildMyRank. The good thing about it is that it's affordable, the bad thing is that the links are usually very low quality. Some of the links do have pass a high PR, but the quality of the content isn't very good. My advice is if you are going to use BMR, write your own content and have them distribute it. Otherwise, having them write the content for you will give you poor quality articles!

[stevecounsell]

Hey itrogers

Thanks for the pointer to the seomoz link directory. I'm OK with on site but link building is new to me so I'm just feeling my way.

I'm just starting to try our "BuildMyRank" for link building. Do you have any experience of that. Is it worth using?

Cheers

Steve

Now , where's that link building button...

[stevecounsell]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

I've made changes over a few weeks in small batches.  It's a new site so all the pages needed Title and a boit of content focus.

Backlinks may well be holding us back, so we've started that process although the competition aren't looking that great either. It should be easier than this !!

We'll continue to build links and update the content for keyword focus.

Thanks again for your help.

Steve

[itrogers]

It looks like what you are missing is links from other sites. Anyone can launch a website and make it relevant for any keyword or keyphrase they want. But even the "perfectly" optimized page won't rank in Google without any links pointing to it. Links give your site authority. According to OSE, your site has one external link. If you're new to SEO and link building, some easy ways to get some links right off the bat is to check out the SEOmoz Link Directory. Submit your site to the most relevant directories in the most relevant category. Don't submit your site to every directory here, it's not meant for that. Plus. you'll go broke.

Also, check out the link building category on the SEOmoz blog. There are a ton of articles from the staff, associates, and members of the community who post literally hundreds of creative ways to get others to link to your site. It's good you have a blog, use that as a link building tool by creating good keyword rich content that your users and prospects will find useful. Add some social sharing features to help get the word out there.

I wish there was a magic button for link building, but there isn't. It is what separates the wheat from the chaff in the SEO world. But at least you are in the right place! Good luck!

[StoresDirect]

Other than the general issue that it can take weeks for the changes you make on site to have an effect on rankings, I've found with Wordpress that a large batch of tweaks seems to have a negative effect for a couple of weeks (trial and error is such fun!). Wordpress is really good about pinging the search engines, so more than a handful of tweaks at any one time can look like ping spam even if you're actually improving your site.

You don't say anything about off-site work. If you are being beaten by competitors with better link networks then the on-site tweaks simply won't be enough. If you haven't already done some competitive analysis for your most important keywords I would do that next to see where your weaknesses are.