SEO Tycoon

**Darting.com** · 01-05-2009, 05:42 PM

We are trying to optimize our darts site for the keyword "darts" and have barely come close to breaking the 50-60 range on Google. All of our other keywords such as dart shafts, dart tips, etc. all rank in the top ten.
We have tried everything. From buying software that analyzes your site to staying up-to-date with current SEO trends.

If you search for the word "darts" you'll notice two or three sites that really shouldn't be there. How did these sites manage to get in to the top twenty?
What are we doing wrong? Is there any way will ever break the top ten for the search term "darts"??????

Our site is http://www.darting.com

Thanks in advance for anybodys help!

**Decaf** · 01-05-2009, 05:51 PM

You do not have enough traffic/backlinks/pr/bias from google to give your site a higher search. Google will sort the query's on "keywords of site against keywords entered", "number of credible backlinks", "amount of more trusted backlinks on said site", "amount that the webmaster(s) have paid google to push there site up","if the url has accounts up", "amount of good site reports". ect....

Just get your site to be listed on credible sites and your rankings will soar.

**vangogh** · 01-05-2009, 08:25 PM

It's really just that the single word 'darts' is more competitive than phrases like 'dart shafts' When I type each into Google here are the number of results Google is reporting

darts - 20,500,000
dart shafts - 172,000

If you wrap quotes around "dart shafts" only 30,000 pages are returned.

The phrase is simply easier to rank for since there's much less competition for the query. At the moment it looks like you're ranking for darts in both Yahoo and MSN Live, but nowhere to be seen in Google. Definitely give it more time.

I wouldn't put too much stock in seo software. The advice is often out of date and focused on things that aren't so important. That's not to say seo software can't be useful, but it's generally going to be better for data collection than for analyzing the data and telling you what to do.

Sounds like you have a foundation in the basics of seo. If not spend some time learning the basics. Pay attention to seo trends, but no a trend is just a trend. Trends come and go and if you base your optimization on something because it's the latest and greatest you'll be tracking down the latest trend every few months and undoing the previous trend. Better to have a good foundation in the basic concepts so you can better judge when trends are worth following.

**Jeremy80** · 01-06-2009, 04:05 PM

Ranking well for a one word keyword can be quite difficult. The websites in the top 10 are usually web established websites with a decent amount of backlinks.

One thing that I would suggest is to make better use of your internal linking. You could be linking back to your homepage using good anchor text instead of just 'Home'.

In the end ranking mostly comes down to quality of backlinks. So work at getting more links with a variety of phrases.

I have heard of many people stuck on page 5 or 6 for certain keywords. This is often due to some type of penalty from Google. Perhaps you quickly built up too many links that just say 'darts'.