Newbie needs help

All right let me try this again. From the top and nothing but the truth. I am not trying to impress anyone anymore.

My name is Chad R. Smith and I am the Director of Web Development for 50 Marketing (www.50marketing.com). I have been a very minor SEO for the past year and a half. The sites that I have been in charge of were all very well established before I got there and honestly never needed anything besides a tweak here and there.

I am having problems with new sites though that are just getting submitted to google, yahoo, and MSN. When I took this position over 6 months ago I didn't know much about what a SEO does and it's just another hat I wear at the office. My previous work place was very well established too and never needed any tweaks. I have read a good bit on seochat.com as someone instructed me on this forum. I just need some feedback to why my company's domain isn't going to the top of the rankings.

We are using a pure CSS implementation with a touch of tables where absolutely needed. The links are mainly textual although we do have a few images but those images have very descriptive alt tags associated to them. The content does not have any transparent color schemes anymore, and the text on the page is relative to the page they are on. No more split content pages. I believe we have backlinks setup but am not sure. We are looking to get to the top 5 with "50 Marketing" being their search phrase.

If a review could be done and with problems providing examples to your points would be appreciated. I know my reputation on here is awful, but I do need help. I will continue to read seochat.com on my lunch break (the only time I am not doing a million things at work) and keep learning as much as I can about this business. If there is a acronym dictionary with the seo language please direct me to it. I don't fully understand backlinks, keywords, or what a description really does. As I said, I am pretty much a newbie to this.

The site is: http://www.50marketing.com

Thank you for your time and again I am sorry for my immature attitude when I began on this forum. I said a few things that I shouldn't have and I feel bad for it.

Respectfully,
Chad R. Smith

Hi again.

Okay, for starters, your navigation is NOT text-based. They are image buttons. I've actually heard that spiders CAN read image links, but i've also heard they can't make sense of them, so i'd suggest just making some w/ CSS.

You need content. There is only a short paragraph or two on your home page. Pump up the keyword density and bulk up your content (just make it relevant and quality).

Backlinks are other websites that have text links back to yours. If you type 'addurl:marketing', or something like that into google, it will give you a list of marketing related sites that have an 'add link' page. Most require reciprocal linking however, which just means you need a link on your site.

My last point will be this;
you need patience. If you are 'just submitting' them to google etc., it takes time to get up there in the SERPS, especially with no backlinks etc. Use some of the tools at SEOchat to check your backlinks, pagerank, and all that other stuff.

That should get you started,

good luck!

Thank you for the reply,

We got off on the wrong foot earlier. Now I understand what your talking about and I too have heard spiders don't mind image links. I will put more CSS links at the bottom though.

Can I ask what "Pump up the keyword density and bulk up your content (just make it relevant and quality)." means? I am thinking it is to just start putting keywords such as website development, web, print advertising, advertising, ect. Am I correct about this? I don't want to start something and it be in the wrong direction.

I am trying to be more patient, but it has never been a strong suit of mine. What is a way we could built in backlinks to our site without it looking dumb?

Thanks,
Chad R. Smith

You may need to hire a copywriter for your homepage copy, but all i meant was, you need more content on there. I'm not suggesting you post a novel, or just cramming a bunch of senseless keywords on there, but let people know what it is you do, and use keywords throughout. Just don't go overboard on the keywords, or you will be penalized for 'stuffing'.

Don't just put CSS links at the bottom, do it for all navigation, keep in consistant so people can recognize it.

As far as a linking page goes, i'd suggest naming it 'partners' or 'resources' or something like that(not just 'links'). Then, just have a list w/ a bunch of links on it. Just make sure they are relevant, and leading to quality sites.

Good luck.

Excellent,

Thank you, I will try and get those done. Anything else I should look for and do? How long typically should the writing be? I have seen some high ranked sites have little to no text. How does that happen?

Chad

They likely have a huge amount of backlinks.

The only other thing i'll say is this; don't just design your site for the search engines. Design it for whomever you expect to come to your website. Make it the best you can for your potential clients. Using identifiable, consistant navigation, descriptive text, and a clean, easy to use interface will not only benefit the customer, but the search engines as well.

If you want to find out how many backlinks a site has, use the tool in SEOchat.

Good luck.

Yeah I will do that for sure, thanks for the info. I appreciate it. We designed it for our target audience but I also want our target audience to find us by search engines.

Take care and thanks,
Chad

glad to help.