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It must depend on the keyword because in the past few weeks, I've had a couple of brand new domains hit the first page of Google very quickly. It's not for ultra competitive keywords, but it isn't for bad keywords that people aren't searching for either.

I've got well over 1,000 website that I do testing with, I'll add another 50+ this week to do some testing on.

Any particular keywords you guys want me to test? Give me something that is middle or the road, nothing too hard or easy, that way we should get some pretty quick results.

As the others have said, Analytics for sure. In addition to that, through question and answer with them, you can ferret out the main keywords they want/need to rank for.

In terms of seeing what they rank for right now:

Use Semrush to see what they are raking for right now.

Also, find out who their competitors are and use Semrush to look them up as well.

Hope that helps!

Thomas,

EMD's are still ranking really well but the real key here is to put great content on them. I believe Google is going after low quality spam type EMD's (which many are) but I've never had an instance of a legit high quality content EMD getting penalized in any way and I don't think Google is going in that direction.

There isn't anything wrong with an EMD itself, they might get "watched" more carefully but as long as you put high quality content on there it should be beneficial. Also, and this should go without saying, avoid bad linking practices with the EMD as well.

I'd still buy and use the brand name domain but I'd definitely grab the .com/net/org EMD's and probably redirect the .net/org to the brand name and build a high quality blog on the .com EMD.

Branding is super important. I would build your site based on a brand name and not your keyword for sure.

HOWEVER...I'd also buy the keyword.com/net/org domain if it's available and I'd probably create a blog on there that will eventually link to your main site. Doing this will get you some additional traffic but also prevent a potential competitor from grabbing an EMD and outranking you in the short term.

Hope that helps.

Thomas,

I look at 4 key things:

Rankings, Traffic, Visibility, & our Competition's Results.

Rankings - What keywords went up/down etc.

Traffic - Detailed traffic analysis to see changes by keyword and overall

Visibility - This is also important. For example, we had a site that was #1 in Google for it's main keyword (and still is) but now has less visibility because we actually had 5 of the 10 spots on page 1 and now we have 2 out of 10. Still #1 though, so no complaints.

Competition - In addition, I look at our competition's results and changes in the 3 criteria above as well.

How about you?

"An SEO Company from India doing articles"

That is a BIG warning sign. My guess is that you've got a bunch of low quality spammy links pointing to your site.

Another thing to check on is your anchor text distribution as well. Make sure it's not over 10-20% for your main keyword.

I'll second what Paul said about Crazy Egg...it's amazing! I still use GA as well but I absolutely LOVE the Heatmap and have made many optimization decisions after doing tests with it running.

I'll add a little bit to the excellent answers already given in this thread.

SEOMoz is a treasure trove of information on SEO without a doubt so you are in the right place.

I just wanted to comment on the criteria of an SEO being able to show a website in the #1 position.

While that is good, you need to dig a little deeper because some bad SEO's utilize nothing but churn and burn strategies that might get them a #1 spot for a few days/weeks/months, and during that time they might be doing a product launch or going for new clients, only to eventually have their #1 site(s) tank because it was built on sand using black hat and other nefarious methods.

When looking for and judging an SEO, look a little deeper and check for longer term results.

Hope that helps.

In taking a quick look at your link profile, I do see some questionable links that look very irrelevant to your site but not a lot, and none of them are real recent either.

It could just be a Google dance going on. I'd give it a few more days.

Your anchor text distribution looks just fine with roller banners cheap website around 12%. I wouldn't go any higher than that though.

I haven't had time to look at your site thoroughly but I ran a quick report through our system and something did stick out a bit.

When you compare your site to the other 9 sites (in the top 10) of Google, the average number of times "weight loss camp" is on the page is 0-5 and on your site, it's showing up 9 separate times.

I would either reduce some of that exact anchor text and/or add more text to your homepage to dilute it a bit more. A combination of both is probably best.

If I have some time later, I can take a better look but that's definitely one thing you could address and optimize right now.