Hello

I manage this site
< removed >

When I do a site:< removed > search on Google, the home page is listed, but way down, with a pretty unimportant page first. I have very very carefully checked the homepage but I cannot find any way in which it might be breeching Google guidelines etc etc. There is also an xml sitemap and all the internal homepage links are < removed > rather than just 'index.html'

Can any expert out there advise please?

Russell

1) I wouldn't worry about that particular query's results if I were you. Who's going to type in site:sophie-anne-escort.com, other than someone interested in the SEO of the site? (In other words, what potential customer will type that in?) No one. So if that's the result it returns, then so be it.

2) Your bigger issue, and the one likely causing the issue you're seeing, is that of "over-optimization" and "excessive SEO". You're keyword-stuffing and link exchanging at the expense of your end users, the same users who probably would think your escort is more of a cheap hooker upon first glance at the site.

If you cleaned up that site, looked at it from your end user's point of view (you can still focus on a couple of keywords per page, but not 10-15 like you have now), and then found the various escort directories and sites to submit to that wouldn't require a link back, you'll be a lot better off than you are now.

Usability and SEO are closely intertwined, and SEO is not a standalone module (contrary to prevailing opinion.)

Please only limited keyword stuffing and make the site more user friendly and submit urls on search engines and directories.....

And get rid of the over optimization from the pages....

Rest will take care search engines.....

Can any expert out there advise please?

Yes; read the forum rules on adult links for a start.

There can be no such thing as

Originally Posted by seowebdesigner

over optimization

First of all, apologies to Chris, I should have read the guidelines first.

I do appreciate the responses, although since this enquiry was made in good faith, I do not expect unnecessary nasty sniping remarks like those by Adam about 'users thinking the site makes the escort look like a cheap hooker', which it most certainly does not. Comments about 'keyword stuffing' are however interesting, although if you examine any of the successful escort sites on the web you will see that they do contain masses of keywords. And as for 'usability', there is no attempt to mislead searchers with irrelevant content etc – so I don't understand this point.

The fact that the homepage is listed very low in a Google site: search is of course not important of itself, but ever since this happened, the site doesn't get bad results, rather it gets incredibly erratic results in Google. An example would be; enter search string 'mature escort heathrow' and it's nowhere, but enter 'escort mature heathrow' and it's number one out of about 89000 results. However, I assume there must be something that the almighty Google doesn't like about the homepage, so I suppose it must be 'keyword stuffing' – a little more specific pointers would be very welcome.

Russell: you missed the point of my comment. It wasn't necessarily what I thought, but how other people who may be interested in escorts would perceive your site. Having worked on an escort site in the past myself (no, I'm not putting a link up here because 1. the site is no longer active because the two partners ended up buying an offline jewelry business and 2. if it were, it would be an adult link), one of the things I know about the industry is that the escorts in it try to portray a classy, "GFE" style of image.

When you do things like keyword stuffing and link exchanging, you cheapen the image of your site and by extension, the escort. In other words, you create the "cheap hooker" feeling for your escort in the eyes of your users.

As far as the keyword stuffing is concerned, the best advice you're going to get on this subject is the simplest: create a page for each 1-2 keywords that you want to focus on and write something focusing on those keywords while still being relevant to your end user. It's simple to say, tricky to do, and you won't get it right the first time. Adjust as necessary until you've got it.

As far as what your competitors are doing, the idea of worrying about where they are and what they're doing has always been silly to me, both online and offline. People who worry about their competitors generally don't have a strong enough foothold with their own business and try to spy on their competitors as a means of undercutting them, rather than improving their own businesses. In other words, you really shouldn't be concerned with what your competitors are doing to rank, unless your own position is weak in that regard (and we've already pointed out a few of the reasons why that is.)

Thanks for the clarification, Adam, I appreciate the response. Obviously we are both too busy to continue this for too long, but I would be grateful for your thoughts on the following points...

As you've worked on a similar site in the past, you'll know that in order to attract visitors to the home page you need to at least cover different locations, eg 'escort london', 'escort heathrow', etc etc etc. I can't see how I can avoid doing this. Is it that I should carefully avoid repetition of keywords? Because I can see that I am certainly doing that.

Re link exchanges, surely unless you pay high ranking directories etc surely you have to do reciprocal linking?

One final thought. A while back I did have a few 'dodgy' links on the homepage to zero page rank sites and have long since removed them. Would it be worth re-submitting to Google. Incidentally, I forgot to mention that the site does amazing well in MSN for many search strings...but why would that be???Google drives me mad!

Okay, I'll be brief then, for both our sakes (mostly mine because I have to leave in 5 minutes):

1) No...it's that you shouldn't be focusing on so many keywords on the home page. Repeating them is fine, within reason...it's that you've got a whole bunch of them in one header tag right off the top. Put one in the header tag, with an appropriate heading...which means something a user can easily follow. Then create a page focusing on that word (again, within reason...make sure a user can read it first). Then repeat for each keyword that you can comfortably fit in.

2) No. You don't actually have to do either. There are means for commercial sites to promote themselves without having to use either technique (free topical directories...and I know a few exist for escort sites, since this is what I built in 2003 and there was competition, getting involved with the appropriate communities, and most importantly building a useful site, etc.)

What most SEO-types and followers miss completely is the reason they're focusing on SEO...the traffic. They try to get ranking for things to get traffic, rather than getting the traffic and using the traffic to help them rank in turn (in other words, exponential growth...the normal business model.) If you understand what I mean by that, you'll understand the rest.

3) Submitting/resubmitting to any engine is a waste of time. Google will crawl your site eventually (assuming you don't do anything else silly in the meantime). The best form of SEO for Google is to focus on aspects of SEO that also help users (good site design, easy to navigate structure, clean copy, etc.), and MSN and Yahoo! will pick up after that.