Doesn't Make Sense - Need A Little Guru Insight on My Site

Hi!
I have to preface this by saying that it's my first post, and although I'm not a moron, I just may seem so to the casual SEO. Ok, joking aside, here are some things I want to throw around. I have a site that has been "live" for about 3 months now. It was indexed by Google approx. a month ago and ranked a lowly 2. I did several changes & had suggestions from some people to add DOC TYPE to my code...which I did. I immediately went from a 2 to 4, but whether that made any difference or not I do not know. Anyway, I keep tabs on my competitors' sites as well, and I just get miffed when the #1 or #2 spots on Google for my search terms come up with sites that don't seem to have nearly enough content, or simply have it full of links to other products on their sites. I, on the other hand, tried to construct my pages to be keyword rich, etc., etc. I've added ALT tags to my images and tried to include keywords in those tags, as well as in my TITLE tags. I've been working long and hard to establish good relevant links, and have many already, but mysteries of mysteries, not many of them show up when I do a "link:" search of my site on Google. As far as being super technical, I'm not. I'm self-taught all the way here, and have read and re-read all the things I should do and not do to optimize my pages. If anyone wants to take a look and possibly give me any thoughts, here is some of my website's info:

1) Keywords include: self-defense, pepper spray, safety for women, home protection, personal alarms

2) The site focuses on providing self-defense and home safety products, and caters to women's safety issues.

3) The latest changes I've made to the site have included adding more ALT tags to product images, as well as trying to write TITLE tags to include keywords while still making sense and sounding cohesive. These changes were done AFTER the most recent Google dance.

4) Not hard to tell this one, but I don't use frames or flash or anything else that I've read about that hinders ranking.

5) Finally, here is the URL:

URL

Any comments are greatly appreciated!

I don't like using a doc type unless the page pass the w3c validator for the doc type. It is interesting that you said the site seemed to go up with the doc type entry.

Here is the W3C validator for your site:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.titanpersonalsafety.com

"Valid code" is weird. They've eliminated most attributes of tags, and expect a close tag for everything.

Ending the tag with a /> is supposed to work as a open/close tag. eg <br />. I guess that means you have to enter images as <img /> . I think it is extremely awkward.

They pretty much expect all formatting to be done with CSS.

If you have a doc type, but don't have "valid" code, the browser goes into a weird quirk mode. It can get ugly in Netscape and Opera.

a PR of 2? Where did you rank as far as your keywords... that is the real test.



patience.... patience... 3 months is not a very long time... keep at serving up good info and content... BTW, Gogle does not give a damn about ALT tags, not one engine does... that is for the end use who is sight impaired. and if it is not an accurate description of the image, use a blank "" for the alt tag, that way the text reader skips it, instead of repeating to them your search engine description.... make a useable site and people will come and come back, and link to you voluntarily...

f the links you are linking to are not a PR4 or above they will not show up in the backlinks search.
Just keep making the content worthwhile and have patience.. it takes a long time to gain ranking in a highly competitive field.

zen

as well, each of your products listed on the left should have a hypertext link with it, so people don't have to do a mouseover to see what the product is. it will also allow you to describe the product in the link so that the search engines will know :wink wink: what is on the page (google uses the anchor text in links that point to a page to help determine the relavency of that page when a search is preformed)