My ranking keeps getting worse and worse

rachael_ritchie

I hope this is the right place to post this sort of thread. I had a pretty respectable ranking on google over a month ago which kept getting better as the days went by. I got alexa so I could really watch what was going on with it. Everything was fine until about a month ago it has been progressively getting worse and worse by a lot! I'm wondering if I am breaking any google rules with my website that could be visible to anyone (keyword wise, metatags, etc). I'm at the top of google local when you google "Clarksville TN Photographer" or anything like it, but I can't find me in the organic listing anymore. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Rachael Ritchie
http://www.rachaelritchiephotography.com

Phyxius

Rachael,
Organic listings are just unpaid listings on search engines, basically any search result that is not an advert is an organic listing. I googled "Rachael Ritchie", your website came up number 2 and your blog is number 3.
Googling "clarksville tennessee photograher" you come up number 5.

The number one way to improve your organic listing is a link system. If you'll look at my signature on my posts here it includes a link to my site as well as some keywords that I want to be google searchable.

Another big point to pay attention to are keywords. Put keywords on your site, in your meta tags, in your page title, file names, etc.

Tons more info can be found in this thread - http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=45537

denisegoldberg

Also look at http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/Maximize+Search+Engine+Findability.

I wonder if you are hurting yourself with your use of essentially the same set of keywords on most of your photos. For example, if I go to your photos using "portfolio fine art" as a keyword, those photos also show "wedding" as a keyword when the photos have nothing (obvious) to do with weddings.

--- Denise

Tampa-Photography

Hi Rachel,

Here a a couple of easy fixes to improve your search engine ranking:

1) Adjust the "Page Title" field under "Customization" to reflect the keywords you want to rank well for. Something like "Clarksville TN Photographer - Rachael Ritchie Photography" seems logical.

2) Adjust the "Bio" field under settings. This feeds the description meta tag of your site, which is where google looks to read what your site is about (your description). Make sure your keywords (i.e. "Clarksville TN Photographer" are listed first.

3) Add some text content somewhere on your site (the "custom footer" works well for many) that reads well for human eyes, but also contains your keywords for search engines. Some basic HTML coding can help here as well (put your keywords in H1 tags, bold, italics, etc, where appropriate).

4) Phyxius is right - inbound links to your site are incredibly important - check out this article about links for more info.

Hope that helps!