Can't rank no matter what.
I'm kind of curious if anyone else is in this situation. I read a lot of comments here about how this keyword stuff really works and I come across comments about people getting on page 1 of Google within a few weeks and I just don't get it,
My own site's been up for about three months and has about eighteen posts. And the content isn't lazily slapped together - far from it. I'm very knowledgeable about my niche (writing fiction) and I write engaging and thoughtful articles for each and every post, including a guide on formatting e-books which is second to none on the internet. I know this because I spent months reading through similar guides before I wrote my own.
But aside from a couple of posts showing up on page 4 of Google's search results, the site just doesn't rank. I've submitted my sitemap. I've put in attractive attribute-free images from Pixabay. I've put keywords in the alt tags attached to my images. The keywords appear in the first paragraph of posts and in the meta-description. I use headings and short paragraphs to make my content easy to read. I share my posts on Google+. I've tried targeting low hanging fruit keywords. Nothing works. I think my site must be in Google's sandbox and it's not being let out.
And it really drains the motivation levels. If nothing I do makes a difference to my rankings, then maybe nothing is what I should do. The end result seems to be the same either way.
I know a lot of people quit after their first three months here and I can really understand that. I actually cancelled my premium membership subscription myself but I'm still here as it was a yearly subscription. And since I'm subscribed until November, it makes sense to keep trying a little longer but even that's tough.
I'm hard-pressed figuring out what I should be trying to do. Should I keep on publishing posts and sharing them on Google+ so that Google search can continue to ignore them? Doesn't seem like a good use of my time. Should I scratch writing for a niche that I'm interested in and start a new site promoting something I don't care about? Maybe I could have a website reviewing the never-ending parade of new smartphone models. I can scroll through Amazon customer reviews, dig up the pros and cons and uses them for my posts. I don't know.
Is anyone else in this position? Any ideas on how we get out of this position?
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Update:
It's been a busy week as I've been moving house and am about to move country as well. So I haven't had time to do a lot. However, I put up another post and made sure I was really targeting a low hanging fruit keyword.
This one had just 24 searches per month and only 7 sites competing for it.
So I wrote a post over a thousand words long and put a lot of care in preparing it so I'd have something really useful for my readers.
And now that a day has passed, my post is nowhere to be seen in Google's search results. Not on the first page, not on the tenth. Nowhere.
Perhaps this keyword business works for some people but I'm really unimpressed so far and more than a little disappointed.
I have to wonder whether there's much point in continuing with anything else on Wealthy Affiliate, since getting our site ranked through the use of relevant keywords and engaging content is the base on which everything else here is built.
I had no idea about keywords and SEO practices before I came to Wealthy Affiliate. When I first joined up as a free member, I saw a demonstration where Kyle found a keyword about organic milk, wrote a post and had it rank at the top of Google search within hours. As someone who had tried and failed at blogging before, I was amazed. I thought here was the big secret behind getting content noticed. In fact, it was this demonstration that inspired me to go premium.
But it seems Google plays favorites, helping some sites get a leg up and punishing others. I've done nothing against Google's policies. I haven't used any black hat tactics. I've filled my site with quality content, the kind of thing that Google says it rewards. But no dice.
Perhaps WA should have alternative training for those people who'll never rank on Google. I understand that it's possible to drive traffic to a site through things like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Maybe there should be some training on these things - and not just broad lessons that say 'promote your post on Facebook' but lessons that actually teach people how to use these services step-by-step.
I know a lot of people on the internet assume that everyone knows what these services are and how they work but that isn't the case.
But we need something to help us out because if all the official training is about getting our sites ranked on Google and these methods don't work for our sites, then our sites are dead in the water.
Have you tried speaking to press and bloggers about your product? They can be a great source of referral traffic when they publish a post or article with a link.
Ask your fans, clients or business partners to put a link to your site on theirs.
Register your website in relevant directories and listings.
Look at the main referrals of your competitors to get some ideas of websites you could be engaging with.
Make your site SEO-friendly to make sure its indexed by search engines. Keep your website structure simple, clean and coherent for crawlers to index and rank pages.
Find out which are the Top 100 Search Engines on the internet here.
Think about the keywords you’d like to rank for and use them throughout your site, including content, titles and META tags.
To choose the right keywords, simply put yourself in your target user’s shoes and think of what you’d type if you were looking for your product.
Choose your social networks carefully. There are many options and you can find the Top 100 Social Networks in your Country here.
Facebook and Twitter are very popular networks but if you can look for alternatives that might be more relevant to your content (e.g. LinkedIn might be more effective for professional services).
If you don’t have your own social pages you can still make sure your site content is shared across social networks by adding social buttons on your site.
Work hard and be patient: unless you’re a celebrity, it will take time for your social networks to grow. Make sure you invest time and effort keeping it up to date with exciting news and content.
Try researching bigger competitors so you can find out what your potential audience is interested in.
Also, when looking at bigger competitors, you will get some ideas about other websites visited you might be able to partner with.
Thanks for the tips, Mindwell. That's a big list to work through but I'll try to implement some of these things. Don't know about fans, clients and business partners though. I don't have these people in my life.
But I'll see about contacting other bloggers. That's something I haven't tried before. Well, at least I haven't tried it with the site I'm running now.
Thanks again.
Have you watched Jay's Site Audit WAbinars?
Here's the latest one: Hot Seat Winter 2016: SEO Site Audit You might also check out some of the earlier ones - he does them every 3 months or so. Maybe you can submit your site for the next one. ~Jude
I haven't, Jude, no. I know I can watch the replays but because of time-zone differences, the live webinars are always on Saturday mornings when I'm busy with some other things.
I'm not sure if Jay would like it if I submitted my site for one of these things and then didn't bother to watch the live seminar.
But we'll see. I'm moving country in a couple of weeks but when I'm settled again, I'll look into it.
Thanks for the suggestion though. It's a good idea.
You could benefit by watching how he goes about doing the site audit and the suggestions he makes. It is not a requirement to be present at your own site audit...lol. ~Jude
Hi again, Jude. You're right. I might check out some of the replays of previous site audits and maybe submit my own site later on.
Thanks for the suggestions. I really appreciate it.
What is your URL, and are u getting any traffic as well
Give me URL of one page and keywords plz
Hey, Mindwell. That's kind of you to take a closer look at the site. I really appreciate that.
The main URL is http://aboutwritingfiction.com.
Regarding traffic, this surprised me actually. All my comments come from fellow WA members and since I haven't seen any comments from visitors who've found the site on Google, I've assumed there's been very little or no traffic.
However, to answer your question, I had a look on Google Analytics and was surprised to see that there was a lot more traffic than I thought I was getting. So I've had visitors but they've been very quiet.
I've included a screenshot from Analytics.
And for a keyword targeted post in action, my latest one is at http://aboutwritingfiction.com/types-of-science-fiction-stories.
This one targets the keyword "types of science fiction stories", which according to the WA keyword tool has 24 searches a month and 24 sites competing for the keyword. It's not ideal but I can't be too picky about keywords in my niche.
Anyway, I figure with ten search results per page on Google, my post should at the very least show up on page 3 when I type in that keyword but, like so many of my other posts, it's nowhere to be found.
If you have any ideas about what's going on though, I'd be very grateful to you. And I appreciate you taking the time to help. It's very kind of you.
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Did you ever get over your ranking problems? Google won't recognize my site at all but when I post the exact same content on Google + it will rank the Google + post on page 1, so I just put my website address at the end of my Google + post.