Ranking Tips

Hi I have just launched a new website.

http://www.realbayside.com.au

Im having problems getting it ranked highly in Google. I think I have done everything right.

The keywords that Im trying to capture are

'Batemans Bay Real Estate' or 'Batemans Bay Real Estate Agents'

It would be much appreciated if people could take a look at the page and let me know what else I should do to atleast get to the top 2 pages.

give your website chance, i dont know how long its been online for but it takes a while to get it high up, change your content even if its just a picture or paragraph every week or so that will make sure google comes back
im not sure if you use a stylesheet or nto as i havnt checked your website that should help a little

your targeting keywords aren't really competitve. get a few more backlinks and work on on-page optimization, you should have no problem to get to tthe top 10.

when exchanging links with other sites make them put this kewords in the anchor text, this will make you be in a higher position in the SERPS

Can you explain a little bit more the 2 points below..

* Making targeting keywords more competive and

* on-page optimization..

You are up against some tough competition in the real estate game. I notice you are on page 6 of Google Australia SERPs for the phrase "Batemans Bay Real Estate". Not great but can sure be improved upon. Your Google PR is 3 so not bad again. You have a few backlinks pointing to the site (3 on Google on 16 with Altavista) but not enough to propel it up the SERPs. You are doing OK with non-Google engines though. My research shows you on page 2 with Alltheweb, Altavista and Hotbot and on page 1 with MSN.

Yeah Im starting to relise that.. Thought it would be a bit easier to crack Batemans Bay Real Estate..

That site that has the number 1 position. Surely taht shouldn't be there as it doesn't even relate. It just seems to bomb the words Real Estate and Batemans Bay a lot of times...

You're talking about acr net? I always say: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Look under the bonnet and see what they have done with their code. Check the title tag for example against yours. Look at how many times they repeat the phrase batemans bay and real estate throughout the page. They have it in bold and in links. They also have more backlinks to their site than your so you have some catching up to beat them. I saw 1580 backlinks on Altavista and 49 from Google (you guys had 3). Some of the links they had were a bit Arthur Daley (a little dodgy maybe?) - who are linksmanager.com? They also look like they have listed with some real estate directories. There's some tips- better get cracking...

Yeah thats the one..

I have already started with examining what they are doing. With the backlinks, how do I measure that? Is that other sites linking to our site? Or links within our own site??

Google shows 5 backlinks - 2 of them are from within your own site. The others three are a) directory.google.com/NSW/ b) lesap.com and c) realestatelogic.com.au. The thing to look at is the PR of the sites linking to you. Lesap has a PR5 and realestatelogic is a PR3 so that's not too bad. It's also beneficial that websites in the same industry link to you so you have some positive points there - you just need more of them if you want to compete.

Yeah I did a bit more investigation and they have entered into link agreements with companys and after they have had the link pointing to them, they seem to remove the link back..

Yeah definatly cheeky..

Alot of the links exchange sites I saw require you to promote them as well, this is fine and I would expect that.. So would the answer would be to create a links page going off to other sites. I tried joining a webring, but it is no good as you require graphics at the bottom of your pages.. Kind of destroys the page design...

Definatly a hard field to crack, thanks for your advise and tips though, they are very valuable...