Low ranking on Google

Thrash

Thrash

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Ollie
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Hey guys,

Ive just set up my new website using WordPress along with the SEO tools from Yoast, my posts all have the highest level of SEO but the pages are a bit awkward because of the way my theme works; the homepage isnt really a page at all, its just built from components within the theme options section.
If I type the domain into Google then its the first result, if I just type in "OEJ Photography" it doesnt come up until page 8 though, despite my domain being pretty much exactly that with just a dot joining them! It doesnt seem to make sense.

But anyway, anyone know of any ways to get up there a bit further up? Ive been designing sites for a long time but never had to bother with SEO stuff really, not my game!

Cheers in advance
 
Get other sites to link to your site with the link text OEJ PHOTOGRAPHY then be patient
 
I'm not sure how Google are weighting those .tlds yet. Are you specifically targeting OEJ Photography as keywords in your text/posts etc? Backlinks may help.
 
Firstly, before you go any further, why do you suppose OEJ photography is going to be searched for?

The point of SEO is to deliver your site in results of the people looking to buy stuff.

I'm on a crap signal on my phone so I don't know what you're selling. But maybe you've not considered your strategy before looking at the tools.
 
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As the portfolio seems to consist of only three photos (that's all that load for me), the copy still needs work on grammar and spelling, and there doesn't appear to be an overall purpose to the site (picking up on Phil's point about strategy - or lack of) maybe you're just expecting too much too soon.
 
I have a similar issue. I am second on Google but it is odd because I actually have the domain: chrislloydphotography.com where as the top result is c-m-l.com. I also believe my site is updated more often.
 
Crusader said:
I have a similar issue. I am second on Google but it is odd because I actually have the domain: chrislloydphotography.com where as the top result is c-m-l.com. I also believe my site is updated more often.
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I'm searching photographer in coventry and not seeing you in Google local business listings? Virtually all my visitors come from photographer in 'town' searches
 
Phil V said:
Firstly, before you go any further, why do you suppose OEJ photography is going to be searched for?
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I wouldnt be expecting people to search for that, I just wanted to see if my site had been added to Google yet and figured ive I searched for that id find it quite easily but had to go back to the 8th page. I know its there, just assumed id be near the top with such specific search terms?

Alastair said:
As the portfolio seems to consist of only three photos (that's all that load for me), the copy still needs work on grammar and spelling, and there doesn't appear to be an overall purpose to the site (picking up on Phil's point about strategy - or lack of) maybe you're just expecting too much too soon.
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The 3 portfolio items link to a range of photos in that style, theyre just essentially thumbnails for the gallery. Im assuming that doesnt really work though haha?
There isnt really a point to the site, just looking to gain a bit more exposure and I feel that by having a half-decent website is better than trying to direct to a Flickr or something.
 
Thrash said:
I wouldnt be expecting people to search for that, I just wanted to see if my site had been added to Google yet and figured ive I searched for that id find it quite easily but had to go back to the 8th page. I know its there, just assumed id be near the top with such specific search terms?



The 3 portfolio items link to a range of photos in that style, theyre just essentially thumbnails for the gallery. Im assuming that doesnt really work though haha?
There isnt really a point to the site, just looking to gain a bit more exposure and I feel that by having a half-decent website is better than trying to direct to a Flickr or something.
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I think the .photography is not being seen as a keyword yet. If you had bought oejphotography.com and put site on it the same as you have I suspect it would be higher in the rankings.
 
I just did a Google search for OEJ photography and, you come in at no.8 on page one.

So it has been indexed by Google, you just need to work out some relevant search terms and, work on the SEO for those terms, no quick fix though.
 
Thrash said:
There isnt really a point to the site, just looking to gain a bit more exposure and I feel that by having a half-decent website is better than trying to direct to a Flickr or something.
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If there's no point to the site, then Flickr would be just as good.

If you were doing it as a business site, then you'd need to think about what you want to achieve first and built to meet those needs - as it is it's a very poor business site.


Thrash said:
I wouldnt be expecting people to search for that, I just wanted to see if my site had been added to Google yet and figured ive I searched for that id find it quite easily but had to go back to the 8th page. I know its there, just assumed id be near the top with such specific search terms?
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So this has all been a waste of time for those who've gone and had a look at your site to see if they could help.
 
Alastair said:
So this has all been a waste of time for those who've gone and had a look at your site to see if they could help.
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How has it been a waste of time? Im asking about SEO and how to get nearer to the top of Google, I have no idea about SEO at all.
 
Thrash said:
How has it been a waste of time? Im asking about SEO and how to get nearer to the top of Google, I have no idea about SEO at all.
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SEO is pointless if your website has no purpose.

The purpose comes first, the SEO second. It cannot be done any other way.
 
Well if it is any consolation your site comes up in 8th position on page 1 for me when I search for it as "OEJ photography" , although it is beaten by this thread at position 6.

Perhaps it just needed a little time to index your site. I understand that the internet is quite large, and not everything happens immediately ;-)
 
May be you are using your site like I do, like a brochure not an advert. People hear about you and search OEJ ... To find out more.

Like I originally said, get a link to your site with your name as the anchor text and you will soon be at the top.
 
Alastair said:
SEO is pointless if your website has no purpose.

The purpose comes first, the SEO second. It cannot be done any other way.
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This^

SEO is the tool you use to get your website to the top of google rankings when people want a website that delivers what they want to see.

If you don't know what your website is for, then what use could it possibly be to someone else? And if you have no idea who'll be looking for it and why, then how you do start optimising for that.

Sorry to be blunt but it's why help with vanity sites is pointless. Websites are storefronts. A shop that is only somewhere to store your photos isn't a shop, it's a room that's a photo album. It's a room no one is looking for, so why do search engines need to know about it?
 
I think the main problem you have with your site is there is not much text on the home page. Forget SEO packages for now. Google seems to look for content on the home page or blog page. Include terms such as "photography in your whatever your area is" or what particular field of photography you think folk might be interested in. You need to think like a punter looking for a particular subject. Create a block of text for the home page making sure these search terms are included somewhere.

In Wordpress I prefer to set the front/home page as static and work from there, you appear to have yours set as "Your Latest Posts" which looks like a blog but no text as you would expect to find in a blog. Imagine your the guy surfing the net looking for something via Google, try and have a similar search term on your phone page. Once you have done that then use SEO, I use Yoast SEO. If you can get this right you won't wait long to climb into the first page in Google.

Below is two sites I did one for my sons double glazing business, he operates in Edinburgh also the Lothians, we have up here East, Mid, and West lothian locally known as The Lothians, entering "double Glazing in Edinburgh" ...or in "double glazing in the lothians" gets his site www.eldg.co.uk right up at the top (apart from paid adverts) Reading the text on the home page there is some phrases a prospective customer would maybe type into google.

The other site I did for my sister's villa in Corfu, not as com plicated as the above one, colour scheme was here choice. In Google typing "villa rental in north west corfu" gets her up the top too which should be www.villalinakis.com or just plain "villa in north west corfu" also puts her in the top 5. It's all down to words on your website, don't get too hung up relying on SEO packages straight away, concentrate on getting the text on your page right too. you need to do most of the work not Yoast.
Nobody knows your website name so they are not going to type it into Google, you need to think of other ways to get them to you. HTH
 
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If anyone is trying to SEO their website they should make sure that whatever they're doing is compliant with and optimised for Penguin. There's a lot of outdated advice on SEO about. Some of it on this thread. A lot of the old tricks will appear to work, but only if you're competing against other non-optimised websites.
 
Alastair said:
If anyone is trying to SEO their website they should make sure that whatever they're doing is compliant with and optimised for Penguin. There's a lot of outdated advice on SEO about. Some of it on this thread. A lot of the old tricks will appear to work, but only if you're competing against other non-optimised websites.
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I can't see any advice here that may be affected by any changes to Googles search algorithms.:thinking:
 
None of the advice given is bad, but it does seem outdated compared to the advice I've recently had from specialists in the field.

As I understand it, concentrating on keywords and external links won't muck up your SEO. But it does leave your page ranking susceptible to being beaten by someone that's on the ball with the higher scoring social media and content relevance/dynamism aspects of the current ranking algorithms.
 
Meno said:
I'm searching photographer in coventry and not seeing you in Google local business listings? Virtually all my visitors come from photographer in 'town' searches
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I'm not too bothered about that because I'm not a business :p Just a hobbyist :)
 
Thrash said:
Hey guys,

Ive just set up my new website using WordPress along with the SEO tools from Yoast, my posts all have the highest level of SEO but the pages are a bit awkward because of the way my theme works; the homepage isnt really a page at all, its just built from components within the theme options section.
If I type the domain into Google then its the first result, if I just type in "OEJ Photography" it doesnt come up until page 8 though, despite my domain being pretty much exactly that with just a dot joining them! It doesnt seem to make sense.

But anyway, anyone know of any ways to get up there a bit further up? Ive been designing sites for a long time but never had to bother with SEO stuff really, not my game!

Cheers in advance
Click to expand...


If only it were as simple as making Yoast go green. Yoast is a fantastic tool and reminds you to do the important stuff on page. But it is only a guide and everybody else does that too. It also can't help with or even know about off site factors. Its also a new site, it takes time to build authority which is important to google

ETA - is it still an idea to have a little content for google to index?
 
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Did you publish your site on Sunday, and then post asking why it wasn't number one in Google?

Stuff takes time. You also need more content, relevant content. Being completely image based, you need to make sure all the alt and description fields are filled in correctly. Plus lots of other stuff, which is repeated ad infinitum in the tech forum here.

As a little side note, the copyright in the IPTC of your images is showing as "Jon Chappell" - I'm guessing that's not you, so you may want to change that in your camera. :thumbs:
 
Alastair said:
None of the advice given is bad, but it does seem outdated compared to the advice I've recently had from specialists in the field.

As I understand it, concentrating on keywords and external links won't muck up your SEO. But it does leave your page ranking susceptible to being beaten by someone that's on the ball with the higher scoring social media and content relevance/dynamism aspects of the current ranking algorithms.
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I don't think anyone has actually offered that advice in this thread, it appears to largely be about the fact that the OP has no idea what he wants to be ranked for.

But if you have genuine advice to deal with changes in Googles algorithms, it'd be more helpful to suggest the right strategy rather than just saying everyone else has it wrong.
 
Jayst84 said:
Did you publish your site on Sunday, and then post asking why it wasn't number one in Google?

Stuff takes time. You also need more content, relevant content. Being completely image based, you need to make sure all the alt and description fields are filled in correctly. Plus lots of other stuff, which is repeated ad infinitum in the tech forum here.

As a little side note, the copyright in the IPTC of your images is showing as "Jon Chappell" - I'm guessing that's not you, so you may want to change that in your camera. (y)
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Haha thanks for pointing that out! Bought the camera and forgot to reset to default settings before I went out with it :P

As for the advice given so far, thank you! Although theres a lot of posts and not much advice/help, people seem to know but unwilling to share the knowledge.
 
Thrash said:
As for the advice given so far, thank you! Although theres a lot of posts and not much advice/help, people seem to know but unwilling to share the knowledge.
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How old is your domain and site?
 
boyfalldown said:
How old is your domain and site?
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About 5 days or so I think now, I didnt know Google placed any real weighting on time, tbh I dont really know much about SEO at all, I thought meta keywords were still being used!
 
Thrash said:
About 5 days or so I think now, I didnt know Google placed any real weighting on time, tbh I dont really know much about SEO at all, I thought meta keywords were still being used!
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Its rumoured google sandbox sites for the first few months. I don't know how true that is. But even so, there won't be any links to your site google has found, it won't have properly indexed it yet and your site won't have built any authority yet. All of which are important. I think your big issue is time. Give it 6 months
 
Thrash said:
Although theres a lot of posts and not much advice/help, people seem to know but unwilling to share the knowledge.
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I think you're being unrealistic, to be honest.

Time and again people have told you that SEO is meaningless unless you know what you are trying to optimise for. Who is likely to be searching for your website, and why? What search terms are they likely to be using? Your first step is to answer those questions. But if you can't or won't, nobody can help you.
 
So when people say that you need word content on the homepage, can someone give an example of what 'word content' you would use. Does this include the about message, and does it matter if the about message is hidden, can google still see it?
 
Thrash said:
...
As for the advice given so far, thank you! Although there's a lot of posts and not much advice/help, people seem to know but unwilling to share the knowledge.
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As Stewart said, there's loads of people willing to help you, but you don't appear to understand that you need an objective before we can help you achieve it.
What do you want to optimise for?

Look at the link to my site in my signature, before you've clicked on it, you understand it's purpose, when you get to the site that purpose is reiterated time and again. There are links back to it from all over the place, again, with an obvious objective.

There are 155,000,000 hits for portfolio on google, where do you expect to land? (I never made that up I actually Googled it)

So work out what you have to offer that might be of interest to someone else, then optimise for it. BTW if the answer to that is 'nothing really' then what's the thread about?

There's also the issue of the site being brand new, give Google a break here (there's 55 million sites that mention portfolio, how quick do you expect it to index you properly)
 
joel222 said:
So when people say that you need word content on the homepage, can someone give an example of what 'word content' you would use. Does this include the about message, and does it matter if the about message is hidden, can google still see it?
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What do you mean hidden?

If you're using text but hiding it from view, Google will do more than read it, it'll mark you down for it. It's about the most stupid idea to try to 'fool' the search engines without hitting the link farms.

For a start get rid of the name on the page titles, get straight to the point. Guestbooks are so 1997 (that along with the font left me looking for the page stat counter), spend some money on a decent theme, it'll pay for itself in a month.
 
Thanks for quick reply ..................... Sorry Ollie for hijacking!

By hidden I mean not on show, you need to click the 'about' tab to see it. I'm not trying to fool anyone!

Could you elaborate on "get straight to the point" about page titles.

What do you mean the guestbook and font left you looking for the page stat counter?

I wasn't aware that I could buy different themes from Zenfolio, I'll look into that.
 
This thread reminds me of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to" "I don't much care where- " "then it doesn't matter which way you go" ;)
 
Maybe its me being stupid but I dont really understand what you guys mean?

Its my personal photography site, just like anyone elses, apart from you guys have your market as a wedding photographer, sports, whatever but I dont have my niche yet, im trying to find it and want my website to be the tool to help me by building up a greater portfolio and actually doing some work which people might be interested in. Im not a professional and dont have professional gear so im not looking for professional paid work, im looking for people who want to give me some work on a TFP basis so I can get experience.

I mean, its a photography website, im gonna be looking to come up in the same search results as everyone else. If someone searched for photographer in Durham, id hope to be coming up in the search results somewhere, im not expecting to turn up for wedding photographers, sports photographers, product photographers, whatever. Im trying to find that niche so at some point in the future I can add that niche keyword, whatever it may be.

Am I making sense? :/ Im very much starting from the bottom!
 
I think some of the points you might be missing are:

1) Very few people now just search for "Photographer in Durham" they are looking for a specific kind of photographer - and if they do search for that you'll almost certainly and permanently be well below established websites of experienced photographers (of some speciality or even just lots of general experience) with plenty more Google juice than you. (People used to do that 10 years ago when there were 1/1000th of the number of photographers touting for work on the internet... now that throws up too much to digest so they are more specific)

2) Most people look to work with a photographer who shows some talent, or empathy with their requirements. Whilst there are many stories about people who get booked for weddings based on their portfolio of landscapes it isn't as common as you might think. People wanting images of the green widgets they manufacture tend to book people who shoot widgets, and more often than not people who shoot green widgets.... even if that person lives well outside of Durham, or even the UK.

3) If you are looking to find a niche then you need to go out and find it. You'll do this by shooting personal projects that you commission YOURSELF for. You'll not get there if you wait for people to "TFP commission" you so you can make your mind up. You may kiss a lot of photo project frogs or you may find that you enjoy an aspect of a personal project that then becomes your niche rather then the subject matter you set out to shoot.

If you are a "just starting out amateur photographer" then your website will never be a build it and they will come success. Face the fact there are millions of photography websites out there you stand more chance of winning the lottery than a random person finding your website at the moment. You either need to take a punt on what it might be you end up wanting to present yourself as or start shooting, and showing your work, supported by some meaningful textual descriptions to give someone a chance of happening upon you.
 
What Mike said, and what I've been saying all along, you can't find a purpose by Google ranking you. What's it ranking you for?

A website is a complicated advertisement, it is selling a message. If you don't know what the message is, you have no advert, therefore you have no purpose, therefore you have nothing for SEO to do.

It goes like this; purpose, message, website, SEO.

You're trying to do; website, SEO, purpose, message.

It simply isn't how it works. It's like saying 'I've taken a photograph, what do you think it should be of?', you're asking the wrong question.
 
Or, have we created a song and dance for nothing?

Should the question have simply been; 'I've just registered my domain and built a site, how long does it take for Google to index it?'

The answer is available above, but it's; 'not instantly, maybe a month or so before it settles down.'

Which of course has nothing at all to do with site design or SEO, both of which are beyond what the OP really wants advice on until he's sorted out what he really should have asked himself before building the site.
 
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