Google's being a ratbag!

[2under2blog]

Hi there everyone,

After the initial sage advice I received here, my blog has been going from strength to strength and now I get at least 100 hits a day, which I am utterly thrilled with.

However, having delved deeply into my stats, I see that most of this traffic is coming from social networking. Nobody is finding me through Google despite my best efforts in SEO. Which frustrates the hell out of me as I've never failed at SEO before

I heard somewhere that Google isn't a fan of Wordpress sites - is that right?

I would be so grateful of any advice for getting my site to find favour with Google. I mention my key phrases (2 under 2, two under two, baby and toddler) as much as I can in H1 tags and descriptions but still a search for these terms never brings my site up.

The results that do come up are great but they're out of date and contain nowhere near as much info as my site (and others that I also think are great).

Help!

www.2under2.co.uk

Oh also, any honest feedback would be gratefully received. I have fairly thick skin :)

Dumb question, but I take it you have submitted it to google? I'm assuming you have, so next question would be how long ago did you do it - I've heard from some people (their own experience, not mine) that it can take several days sometimes (or even a week or two) for them to pick up sites. Also, have you played around with header/robot texts that crawlers look for?

Personally I've not heard of of any actual examples of Google treating wordpress sites unfairly.

Will have a look at your blog after I've done the washing-up (oh for a dishwasher)

Hi DD, many thanks for your comments.

Yes I submitted around 6 weeks ago and have loaded up page headers with my key phrases.

This approach has resulted in me getting first page positions on my other sites - all built from scratch. That's what makes me think Google may look unfavourably on WP sites, but I could well be wrong.

hmm, sounds strange - what about meta tags etc? Were your other sites non-wordpress? Now a really dumb question (as it's the sort of thing I've done in the past) - you have set your blog to "discoverable/public" and not private (or whatever the wordpress equivalent is)? Sounds like you know what you are doing so I'm not sure what it could be then. Do you not get any search results back at all, or just very low positions?

Yes the other sites I built myself just in HTML and they get generally good rankings. I've double-checked the privacy as you suggest and that's all fine.

I get pretty shoddy positions for 2 under 2/two under two which is a commonly-searched phrase. The IMDB pahe for "The Genie from Down Under 2" comes up before I do!

Interesting point about the meta tags though - I will have a look at those.

Thanks again, really appreciate your suggestions. No such thing as a dumb suggestion, it all helps!

I was curious so I just Google 2 under 2 and Two under Two.

All of the top hits are major parenting sites. So I think that's part of your problem. The phrase Two Under Two just isn't unique enough to your blog. You're up against sites with the money and the experts to push their stats up.

So maybe find some unique keywords?

HI Tee,

I just double checked and suddenly I'm position five - hooray! That's for 2 under 2. For two under two I'm still not on page one but still, happy with that.

You're right, it's no mean feat to compete with such massive websites. I certainly don't expect position number one but it would be nice to creep up over blogs that seem to have been resting since since 2011.

Still, looks like things are progressing. I added the 'metatag manager' widget for Wordpress yesterday after DebonaireDad's suggestions. I wonder if that's helped?

Many thanks for your comment :)

My blog is with wordpress too, how do you set your page headers and titles, and also get the meta tags widget?
I'm pretty new to blogging, been doing SEO on my own website for years but stupidly didn't even think of it for my blog
So any advice on how to do this on Wordpress would be much appreciated.

Just gone and searched in Wordpress and got some good info on how to do SEO, so I'm going to get started on it tomorrow.
Thanks for talking about SEO or I'd never have thought about it!

Borninastorm - I must recommend two plugins to you:

1. Meta Tag Manager
2. All In One SEO

It was shortly after loading these plugins that I started appearing on page one.

Can you post a link to your blog? I'll have a look and see if there's anything I can spot that might help.

Thanks 2under2 I'll download those tomorrow.

My blog is mumtoteens

haha I love your header! Yours is a very honest blog, I like its tone.

The only thing I can think of to help your SEO is to use more specific, wordy titles (though not too wordy). So for example your post about teenboy going to uni might be of interest to someone going through the same thing - so if the URL contained 'eldest-leaving-for-university' (as an example) it would be far more likely to be picked up by Google. Also be sure to use those words in the post - perhaps in a slightly different way (i.e. 'our eldest is leaving for university tomorrow'). I hope that helps!

Very sorry to read about your daughter's friend. How awful for you all.

Hi,
I'm reading with interest as I've been having the same problem completely, so will follow your advice 2under2, thank you.
Loving your header too!
Here's mine, just incase you're vaguely interested!
www.veganbody.net

Hi VeganBody, I will admit to being a TOTAL carnivore. But I'll be trying your Thai Slaw - looks yummy! Great pics too, do you take them yourself?

Hi 2under2, my dh is a total carnivore too. Yes to the photos, not my forté at all, but v kind!
My 3 dc's are still small, but I have two dss's who are just at the point that you are now. Love your blog!

Hi everyone, very interesting thread, i'm just a newbie too and hadn't really thought about all of this (although I did an IT degree!!! - but 15 years ago now)

2 under 2 - I'm a huge fan of your blog and am sharing it with friends who are in same position - and a few with 3 under 3 and one with 4 under 4 (bonkers!!!!) - am following you as you know :)

mumtoteens - wow, you write amazingly well, i haven't been able to read too much cos doing kids tea but will definitely go back and read more tonight - have followed

veganbody - your food looks amazing, my husband is the cook in the family so I will definitely be forwarding him some of your yummy recipes.

I know what i'm going to do tonight - try and understand what you've all written above and see if i can add it to my wordpress site :)

2under2 - i'd love for you to look at my blog and see how i can improve with regards to SEO - can you talk in layman's terms please as i don't understand tech talk anymore!!!!

my blog is www.pressiesbypebbles.com

Hi 2under2blog - I'm a professional SEO and happy to take a look at your site later when LO is asleep (that's not a plug lol I've got an in-house SEO job but love helping with other sites).

I tried looking on my phone but couldn't display the metadata to take a proper look. Just on-page though, are you confident you are following up your htags and metadata with appropriate density of keyword phrases throughout the copy itself? Just on the first blog I landed on, I wouldn't have been able to say what your key phrases were just from the copy itself (if it was removed from the rest of the site template). That's fine if you're trying to rank each blog for a different phrase & just your homepage for those phrases. If you ARE trying to rank every blog for the exact same terms you may be experiencing an SEO issue called 'keyword cannibalisation' - ie all your content is competing for the same couple of terms. The older pages (which you state rank higher) are likely to out-compete the newer ones as they have had longer to build link authority & climb the rankings. Generally, all pages should optimise a slightly - or completely - different keyword variation.

On the other hand (can't tell without checking on PC) could you be guilty of 'keyword stuffing' in your metadata? This didn't used to be too much of an issue but the latest algorithm updates to dish out the penalties for this...especially if you're using the 'metakeywords' tag & cramming loads in there? Have you also checked with a SERPchecker tool that your page titles & metadescriptions show up the way you expect? Google recently changed the rules do that title & desc limits aren't governed by length/characters but pixel width. Basically, a title with 'wide' characters (like W and B will take up more pixel width & be allowed less characters than ones with lots of I and J characters). If your titles / descs are falling outside this pixel width limit, Google is often substituting them with its own variations, randomly taken from copy on the page. If your pages don't have enough of your keywords in the copy, the titles & descs allocated may be far less relevant than you expected.

Wordpress as far as I know is still v much in favour with Google - when optimised properly and without excessive use of subfolders.

Will take a proper look later

wow BoyMeetsWorld you really really know your stuff :)

Can anyone recommend a website or a book (is there a SEO for Dummy's!!!) that i should read to help me get the hang of all of this

Thanks

Best recommendation I have is to sign up for the blog at www.seomoz.org : they're the group that most professional SEOs follow / look up to. Some of their stuff is too in-depth if you're just dabbling but a lot of it is grassroots level & very well explained so anyone can apply it. The Mashable app is good too...

Thank you for your kind words about my blog 2under2 and pebbles.

There is an SEO for dummies book, that's what I used to optimise my business website and managed to get it ranked no1 in google for some of my terms. So it's worth it. But any websites with free info and advice are great also.

For some reason I thought SEO for blogging would be very different! I don't know where I got that idea from

I've just signed up for Blogfest in the hope that I'll learn lots and lots of new things to help my blogging along.

Thanks BoyMeetsWorld - i've just signed up for that blog and will look at app too

borninastorm - i think i might head to library tomorrow to see if i can take out the dummy's book - i quite like books as easier to read ... if that makes sense.

I'll see you at Blogfest - i'll be the one looking really scared and gormless :)

PS, thanks for the SEO advice 2under2 I have began to take your advice re headers already.

well pebbles that'll make 2 of us looking scared and gormless!

The SEO for dummies books is great, it does it step by step and you can just work through it, by the end you feel like you're an expert.

And it's easy to read!

borninastorm - i've just gone and bought it!!! decided i'd need it for longer than a week. can't wait to get it so i can start working my magic :)
Thanks

Yikes BoyMeetsWorld you put me to shame! What an amazing skill to be so up on SEO. I know it - but far from inside out. Thank you so much for your suggestions, I will work through them tomorrow.

Pebbles thank you so much for your kind words and for sharing my blog! I am so grateful, I really want to reach as many parents in my boat as possible. Especially those who are just about to enter the world of two under two!

I really hope the SEO book helps you out, let us know if you learn any fab little tricks and tips!