Not ranking on Google

[ICON_Malta]

Hi all, I am optimising a site which is a hotel directory for a small island in the Mediterranean - Malta. The site is www.maltahotelsonline.com.

I did a keyword research and optimised the page. However I am now at link building stage. Since we do not have many links the site is still not ranking very well for the desired keywords (ranking fine on Bing and Yahoo yet not on Google). As a result there isn't much traffic on the site.

1. Is there any particular issue that you can spot on this site that is not allowing it to rank well on Google?

2. Any suggestions on link-building please?

[FisnikSylka]

I would suggest you to change:

content='Book your hotel in Malta with Malta hotels online - Competitive prices for hotels in Malta, budget hotels, Malta excursions, transfers and more.' name='description' />

To:

Cuz this is the first time that I see an content to be declared before name.

I dont say that this would help something in your rankings, but better fix it.

[ICON_Malta]

Thank you for your suggestions Bryan! I will look into the links you shared.

[Bryan_Loconto]

Hi Daniela,

**1. Is there any particular issue that you can spot on this site that is not allowing it to rank well on Google? **

Run the seoMOZ report card to make sure your on page data is crawl able without too much error.

Also you have a PMD (Partial Match Domain), these URLs where recently punished if they had low quality links or unnatural link profiles.

2. Any suggestions on link-building please?

I would focus on a clean link profile (anchoring 50%-75% of you links as your Brand name or URL  )

There are many ways to earn links. SEOmoz is full of articles to help one rank, however what works in one niche might not work in another.

You can find the best bloggers in your niche (it could be a "malta travel blog") and have them share an article for you.. Maybe give them a free stay if they blog about you.... (This is one example of #RCS)

Hope this Helps.

[ICON_Malta]

Hi Andrea,

Thanks for your feedback.

I'm definitely with you that it takes time to rank and that it is not easy for people to find us.

We created new sections in the site where we can update content on regular basis - e.g. the About Malta and the News & Events section. I am trying to get a special offer too to make it more attractive for the consumer and instill some word of mouth.

We've done a small PPC campaign on google yet keywords were expensive for the identified keywords in the market we want to reach.

Thank you for pointing out the keyword stuffing issue - I will revise the content again.

With regards to the EMD update- we are adding original content, thus hoping that Google won't see our site as low-quality.

[josh-riley]

Well, if this work you are doing is relatively recent, it can take time to get rankings. Especially if you have limited inbound links - it's not easy for people to find you. So what else are you doing besides SEO to get the word out about your site - blogs? Inbound marketing? What are you doing to drive traffic?

It seems like you may be keyword stuffing "Malta" and "Malta hotels" to the point where it seems spammy - this is a bad thing. It doesn't read naturally for the user. Your main page and why Malta pages also have similar page titles - you may want to tweak that; your main page title tag is really stuffed. And, keep this in mind: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/your-guide-to-googles-emd-algorithm-update/49915/

Just a few initial thoughts.