Page 2 - Question to all of you with websites..

My websites are:

wwwdoteverafter-bridaldotcom
wwwdoteverafterbridalveilsdotcom

The first one I am specializing in wedding invitations and although there are some searches for wedding invitations in specific regional cities, it's not that many. The term "wedding invitations" alone brings in a ton of traffic like 5000 daily searches or more. People whom I've talked to who rank in the top 10 for that search term are selling around 5-10 a day.

I know there are some ugly URLs in my shopping cart, which unfortunately this was a "hook on" shopping cart that I got through an ecommerce development place (I know...not the best route to take for SEO) but I really don't want to change platforms again since I already did this once and unfortunately those URLs cannot be shortened or changed since the webmaster is in charge of all that and everyone who uses that has the same thing - if that all makes sense.

May I also add that about a month before my invitation site disappeared from the searches I redid my whole site. I kept less than half the pages out of probably 150. The rest the url addresses were not able to be kept the same (long story as to why). Anyhow, this is the second time I've done this to my site since I launched it because of various reasons: The first time I was using a sitebuilder platform that I didn't find out till later that I couldn't change my meta page titles, description on each individual page. Plus the system was difficult to use. So I switched to yahoo sitebuilder (not yahoo store), and that was easy to use but some experts told me my source code was really messy and it was probably screwing my rankings from ranking higher. The code was unable to be changed because this was something that was programmed in yahoo sitebuilder that everyone has in theirs. And the more images and such you put on your page, the html code has these green dollar signs $ in front of it. Anyway, so I decided to go with a clean code system called Site Spinner which is what its on now, but when all was said and done I should have stayed with Yahoo since I've seen someone using yahoo sitebuilder for their wedding favor site which is a fairly new site and they are already ranking in the top 10 for the search term "wedding favors" - which is even more competitive search term than where I am (speaking of wedding favors). I just wish I had someone that could have given me the correct advice then making all these constant mistakes over and over. Now I think I did the site in for good.

1400 of your 1950ish links are from a single source, allweddingcompanies.com, 78 from affairnet.com and 24 from yourinvitationplace.com - stopped looking there, may be more sitewide links. Read this post for relevance. http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/sitewide-links-84524.html?p=341643#post341643

Yes alot are from those companies but there are alot of other links all mixed in with those ones, but they are all different links. I guess they are not relevent enough though.

For future reference when someone tells you that you need to change your site "because your code is too heavy" Dont believe them. Its rather irrelevalt as search engines skip the code and read the text. Use a spider simulator such as the one on the tools link on the left of seochat.com if that tool shows all your text then you are just fine.

You never will "do the site in for good" It will just take more time to rank perhaps. Don't give up on it as there is always time to change strategies unless your site gets completely banned which has not happened and wont as long as you stay white hat.

Your site URL's Look good, keyword placement looks good. Page rank looks good as well. As you already know...

The site wide links are probobaly being devalued and not counting much toward your relevancy. How much have you promoted those articles? Have you submitted them to digg?

Who R U? Choose one:

1) SEO webmaster marketer
2) Online Retail Store

If you choose #1 you still have a ton of learning to do. You need to do your own website otherwise the SEO and webmaster costs will eat your profits.

If you choose #2 start an affiliate program. Try ShareasaleDotCom or something similar. That will bring the traffic and you can focus on the products, customer service and shipping. Solicit the TOP web sites for your keywords. Ofter them more $ % then anyone else.

The end game is to make $$$. Focus on that.

Are you refering to the articles on my site? I have not submitted them to digg or any directory. Am I able to do that without those pages getting penalized for duplicate content?

Many of them you can just submit the URL of the story and it will take the story and put the whole thing or a snippet on their site. This wont penalize you for duplicate content.

The duplicate content filter is another very pervasive myth. It is not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. If you have an article which is on your website, especially if you allow the article to age on your website for a while ane then you submit it will help your site. You will gain links, and exposure and spark interest in your content.

Now if your site goes out and steals content, or if you but up three or four pages of the same exact content on your site you will be penalized.

Think about the hundreds of thousands of news portals which post the same stories, they dont get penalized, they even fall on after another in google searches for keywords related to the stories...

Thank you very much for your help.

Working Hard? vs. Working Smart?

Working Hard?
You can submit 100 articles centered around the Keyword Wedding Favors and you will NOT rank for that keyword. It's just a bunch of hard busy work.

Working Smart?
If you want to make $ in the wedding favor industry you need to work smart. See my previous post... "start an affiliate program. Try ShareasaleDotCom or something similar. That will bring the traffic and you can focus on the products, customer service and shipping. Solicit the TOP web sites for your keywords. Ofter them more $ % then anyone else."

Otherwise your website is just a hobby (aka tax write off for 3 years). I know I'm being harsh - especially in a forum where most make $ selling SEO services.

Years ago many made $ with Internet IPO's. Can we do that today? NO

The answer is the same for a new web site (2 years old is new) that you are trying to get organically ranked in a highly competitive industry.

Gail.....I think you are mistaken. The amount of members in this forum who actually sell SEO services is a very small portion of the membership. Regardless....your comments are very sound. SEO should only be part of a marketing plan especially with the difficulty it takes to compete at Google if you are NOT in a niche business. Bad Kitty I would take a good look at Gail's suggestion.

Bad Kitty.....wow....isn't running an Internet based business fun! Sometimes people get lucky and other times they don't. I think in your case bad luck has dominated. You have some of the top people in this forum answering here and other smart contributors. So maybe this is the start of more good things to come.

As for banner ads on web sites, it is one higher priced methods in terms of exposures (CPM) with poor lead generating results. Most companies use banners for branding these days unless they have multi-million dollar budgets.

You have to create a funnel.

Visitors, prospects, leads then conversions. There are hundreds of different ways to get unique visitors but I always opt for "quality" of visitor vs. quantity. Make sure the experience at the point of purchase is easy in every way, from site navagation to contacting you to check out. Usability is of highest importance and often minimized.

Perhaps you can tie up with wedding planners and wedding photographers in your area, start an affiliate program, tell them how much money they can make. Sometimes we sit in our offices hoping our website will do all of the work but selling in your community is a way to get interest especially in a people to people business like wedding favors.

Europa - yes, bad luck has dominated with my invitation site that's for sure. I think if I had the proper direction when I first started this site I wouldn't be in this mess now. I should have found this forum a loooooong time ago. My wedding veil/tiara site is just starting to move up into top 100 positions on google for some of my keywords, and moving into top 20 positions on yahoo (knock on wood - let's hope I didn't do myself in by saying this!), but that site is only a year old so "she" still has hope. My wedding invitation site - (which I'm not selling wedding favors I just used that as an example), is still going to need help. If my home page was found anywhere in the top 1000 for my keywords, I would know kind of where to go from here, but no such luck. My fear is my home page will never return. My husband's home page hasn't returned for some of his keywords either in 2 months! What is going on????

Gail - thank you for your suggestions, although I'm not quite familiar with how an affiliate program works. I here alot of people on here mentioning it, but not sure what it is exactly. I will keep that in mind though.

Sometimes someone who is so new in an industry that even if you were told the answer to your problem, you wouldn't know it.

That's why I rarely or probably never post here replying to first time posters.

I am VERY familiar with your industry. (Both the SEO and the product).

Print this out - make it a time capsule. Eventually, depending on how fast you educate yourself on affiliate programs, you'll slap your forehead and say, "Oh, wow! That girl was right!"

The bottom line is in business some people are not really interested in becoming big players. They just want to make some extra $ and it could be very very little extra money just so that they have there own business which is truly just defined as FREEDOM. Freedom from driving to work and reporting to someone else. Visualize how you see your business in 5 years and go after it.

A question for the SEO's will adding a forum to her website help or a blog about wedding products.