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I was just about to post this article here as well. Found it in my inbox this morning and thought a lot of people on this forum would get a lot out of it.

As you guys have said there are many factors that determine whether your site gets a good number of visitors and conversions when using a particular keyword. Things such as what the site is about, the name of the site, the feel of the site once someone clicks through, the name of the sites around yours etc.

I think the fact that UKBF occupy the top 3 spots is having an impact on the number of people who come through to this site. For one, the name of the site is the exact name of the word being searched for and two they have the top 3 spots (which I feel will help the no end).

Just to clarify that the aim of this challenge was to get the site ranking on the 1st page for a particular keyword. We were giving a batch of words to chose from and picked one just to prove we could get it there. We did not take into consideration the potential traffic numbers or we would have gone for one of the other keywords that got 4x as many searches each month. As you say Steve and Sandra, the keyword someone picks is crucial to the success of the SEO. There is no point in being on the 1st page just for the sake of it.

Hi David,

This is just a quick response as I want to keep this thread as the SEO Challenge thread for ranking this forum.

If you have any experience with SEO it should be pretty simple to get your site ranking on the front page. From a quick glance, your main page seems to have the keywords you wish to rank for on it (though not in the titles). I would suggest creating a sufficient number of backlinks to your site (using gutter cleaning london as the anchor text). Send me an email at info(at)innocentadvertising.co.uk

Your site also looks like a site that might stand a good chance of ranking well in the Local listings (if your Google Places listing is well done that is)

Check out SEO 101 thread Steve put together, it might come in handy for you: SEO 101

Also, the design and layout of your site, in my opinion, isn't all that great. There is a sub forum on this site where you can get people to take a look at the site and give you feedback.

With regards the challenge:

Still no movement from 6th spot. Any movement from now on will be slow.

Yep you are right.

You'll notice I did actually explain phrase match correctly, I just got a bit carried away with the examples.

Not sure if this has been answered yet as I have not read the entire thread but thought i would chip in.

When doing keyword research there are 3 different searches you can do, Phrase Match, Exact Match and Broad Match. There is an option in the Google Keyword tool to select which one you would like to use (i think you have to do one search first and then it appears on the left had side of the page).

Basically, the results you have been getting are the results for broad match. Broad match will give you results based on the keywords appearing in any order, so it could be "hairdressers milton keynes" or "milton keynes hairdresser" or "milton hairdresser keynes" etc. If you want to know the figures for just "hairdressers milton keynes" then this option is no good.

You then have Phrase Match. This will give you results with the keywords appearing in the order you specified but with other words attached. For example "male hairdressers milton keynes" or "cheap hairdressers milton keynes" or "hairdressers outside milton keynes" etc. As you can see this would be no good.

We then come to Exact Match. This is what you need to be looking at as it will give you results based on "hairdressers milton keynes" only. So if you want to know how many people are searching for this phrase you would need to unselect broad match and select exact match.

Having said all that, the figures in the Google Keyword tool are not accurate (none of the research tools are that accurate to be honest) but can be a good indicator. Use the results as a guideline.

Hope that makes sense. you might want to read this as it explains it a bit better than I have: Keyword Research

Is this paid advertising?

The advice in the link posted above is very good advice and is probably the best place to start in terms of getting your site to rank better. Most of it refers to on-site SEO (these are basically changes you have to do to your website to get a better ranking)

Before you start with your on-site SEO, if you haven't done so already you should obviously decide which search terms you would like to rank for as this would then give you something to focus on. For example you may want to try to get to the top of Google for the search term 'Fire Protection Service' or 'Fire detection alarm system'. By doing research you will be able to tell how hard the competition is and therefore how long it might take you to reach the top (or not!).

You would then need to concentrate on off-site SEO. This involves creating backlinks on other sites pointing back to your site (this would be done in the form of anchor text, using the keyword you want to rank for).

So some of the things you might want to do would be article writing, bookmarking and commenting.

Hope this helps.

Hi Steve,

Please give me a bit of time to do the report. It's a very busy time for us at the moment. I am actually travelling between Bahrain and London every couple of weeks (I spend my time between the two but moving back home to London in 2011 so have many things to sort out). My business partner has also had to travel to Mexico and won't be back until 1st December.

I will have one of my guys produce the report but I would like to check it before i send it to you. Could you let me know what email address I should send it to pls.

With regards the potential to move up more places in the search engine, I would say that there is still potential to move up further. I slowed down the amount of work we had been doing but will pick it back up again to give it a bit more of a push.

No not branded at all so could be done white label for sure. How would you suggest this would work best?

The only problem we found was that if we bought the site before having talked with businesses we boxed ourself into a corner because we could only sell that site to a specific niche in a pre determined area as the domain names had both the niche and area in the URL (like the example of DentistChiswick.org). As we don't have a 'Sales Team' we were finding it hard to make time to do the SEO and sales.

However, the good thing about having the pre-ranked sites is that if someone wants to rent it today we could put their details on there in a couple of hours and away it goes, already at the top of Google, instant traffic. So we have found ourself in a catch 22. That's why I thought a sales team (or even a couple of sales guys) would work best as they would know what sites we have available and can go out and target specifically.

We still have a number of sites available (but haven't been buying any new ones recently. They rent well but we don't have the time to contact people) but what we have started doing is buying a domain name and creating the site specifically when someone wants it and only charge them 'rent' when the site reaches an agreed position/page. The only draw back with this is they have to wait for it to rank, which is usually between 2-4 weeks.