my site: BayAreaFreeFi.com (http://bayareafreefi.com)
google key words: bay area free wi-fi (see results (http://www.google.com/search?q=bay+area+free+wi-fi))
#1 result: bobby.watchfire.com (http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/bobbyServlet?output=Submit&gl=sec508&test=&URL=http://bayareafreefi.com%2F) as it parses my site for content.

Other info:

the first 6 or so links on the search results all point directly to my site.
my site doesn't exist at all on the rankings (checked up to about 1000 results)
my site does exist in the database, as confirmed by searching site:bayareafreefi.com (http://www.google.com/search?q=site:bayareafreefi.com)
my site does, at least once, rank on the same page as the bobby page: here (http://www.google.com/search?q=1392%209th%20Avenue%20san%20francisco%20I nternet%20Wired%20Cafe), bobby is link #6 and #7, while bayareafreefi.com is #10.


What I'm looking for:
I'm looking to determine why I'm not number one for the search terms bay area free wi-fi (http://www.google.com/search?q=bay+area+free+wi-fi) or an assortment of related terms. And how bobby.watchfire.com can take the number one spot just by parsing my code. All the other top links point to my site, so I'm not sure why the search keeps mine out.

Bobby is stealing my hits and my ads by not letting people get directly to my site. I've currently put a php sniffer to determine if bobby is parsing my site. But there's got to be a better way!

What can I do?

They're not really stealing anything, they've got a PR4 page there (on an authority site) that really is kind of optimized - even though not deliberate - if you look at how it looks in the cache

Google Cache of Bobby Page (http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:oLoU5_EaYFsJ:bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/bobbyServlet%3Foutput%3DSubmit%26gl%3Dsec508%26tes t%3D%26URL%3Dhttp://bayareafreefi.com%252F+bay+area+free+wi-fi&hl=en)

You say you've got inbound links, but your whole site is still PR0 at this point in time, which may or may not mean anything lately.

No funny stuff, Google ranking the site is just reflecting the scoring based on what's in the cache.

One thing you can do is get some quality inbound links that include the anchor text for what you want to rank for, another is to read up on basic page optimization, and at this point in time use at least part of your chosen keyword phrase in the anchor text of an outbound link from the homepage; to a page on your own site that's relevant for it is OK.

Welcome to the Forums and your first post, xrusos.

Maqrcia gave some great advice, you need good incoming links to your site.

Also, make sure that your home page has the keywords in the text. Do you have 3-5% of the text containing the keywords [bay area wi-fi]? They don't all have to be the exact phrase. A combination of the whole phrase and individual uses of the words is fine.

Do you have an initial sentence containing your keywords? Having those in a Header tag would be helpful.

Keep checking out the posts in the Optimization Forum and the Google ones. You can get great info there.

xrusos - Did your site rank previously and then drop down? How long has it been up? Google shows no backlinks, so you may not be giving it enough time. These days, I would allow at least 3 months for a new site in Google.

Beyond that, Marcia is right that your page is not optimized. You're going a difficult route if you're including blogs on your home page that change constantly.

From your home page content... "And did I mention there's free wi-fi?" Well, you almost forgot. The review of Buck's currently dominating your page content doesn't include any of your target terms until almost 400 words in. You'd do a lot better if you started off your page with about 150 words about the wi-fi scene in the Bay Area, and then previewed the first 30 words or so of your feature article, putting the rest on an inside page where it should stay at the same url.

I generally don't recommend keyword stuffing, but I think you're going to make sure your articles are as much about free wi-fi as they are about restaurant ambience.

If you're worried about someone stealing content, check out CopyScape at www.copyscape.com. Frankly, your competitors will rank better if they don't take anything from you. Forgive the tone of this post, but I think it's bad form to accuse another site of theft in a public forum.

1) I have strong inbound links. If you search for various terms around my topic, you'll see that a bunch of the top ranked sites all link to me.
ex. search google for "bay area free wi-fi" the top 6 links are all pages that reference me... often solely recognizing my site as THE resource. Some of my inbound links even come from Google themselves... I'm a "blog of note" on their blogger.com service, and get 1,000 hits a day from that site alone (as well as a handfull of new inbound links from other bloggers). In addition to that, I've been recognized by some power hitters in the web dev arena... Doug Bowman of Stopdesign.com and Om Malik of gigaom.com and business 2.0, among others.

2) searching google for link:bayareafreefi.com leads to nothing. that's probably my problem. my site is young, but since i saw it ranked on some searches, it surprises me that i'm not on others. site:bayareafreefi.com says i'm in there.

3) yes, my code is all about SEO... i link to all my internal pages from the main page. plus, i'm very deliberate about my links... using the title and alt tags wherever possible.

4) my links in to my site (from other sites) are pretty descriptive as well... using key words that i'd like to be recognized under.

Can you confirm that I should just wait? Or is something wrong here?

I'd hate to wait a few weeks with no changes and then find out that I could have done something about it. But if I will eventually make my way to the top... I can be patient.

>>I generally don't recommend keyword stuffing, but I think you're going to make sure your articles are as much about free wi-fi as they are about restaurant ambience.

Exactly - it isn't the time for keyword stuffing with Google now looking long term, you kind of have to watch the number of occurrences of the *exact keyword phrase* on a page and keep to a reasonably conservative number, but use the words individually in writing the copy - in ways that flow naturally and are intended for users. But make sure the phrase is in there - the topical phrase, sprinkled through the site. And synonyms and related words also; go for rich use of vocabulary.

That said, when optimizing for something in a local area, as Robert suggested, it's good to have a balance between the topical keywords - most of the emphasis on the topical actually, but also establish a connectivity with the area itself on the site, both through inbound links that are obviously at the local level, and having a couple of targeted pages on the site (that link out locally) - at least one of which is linked to from the homepage using the location in the anchor text. It really doesn't take all that many, just enough so it's clear.

I have strong inbound links.

xrusos - I checked your backlinks on the Google Toolbar, which said there were none, but I realize that, because of the way that Google is currently showing backlinks, if your links were all good ones they may not appear at all. Or, it may be a time factor.

Re the current Google backlink display, look at this thread...
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=634

Can you confirm that I should just wait? Or is something wrong here?

No, you should not just wait. You're thinking that SEO is entirely about links and link structure and ignoring onpage optimizing completely.

Your site is quite nice and I can see why it draws in people interested in your topic. Unfortunately, it's a limitation of the search engines that they're not psychic. You really need relevant text content to help them out. Eventually, if you had enough good inbounds, you might transcend this limitation, but including your phrases on the site, as we all suggest, would help you a lot. SearchEngineWatch has some good basic articles on onpage optimization that you should read.

And again, change your home page format enough that your main content is not changing with each new restaurant review. You want the top part of this page in particular, I'd say the first 150 words, to be pretty much stable... and I would not make the article excerpt too long. I would make sure that the article talks about Bay Area wi-fi and wireless. Don't be coy about it.

PS: I just noticed that you mentioned alt tags. They are really not going to help you much. To oversimplify greatly... search engines reward text that is prominent on the page. Things that are "hidden," like alt tags and meta keywords, aren't given much weight in determining the relevance of your page.

thanks for all of your comments! i've taken your advice by putting the more relevant information on the top of the page.

BayAreaFreeFi.com (http://bayareafreefi.com)

There really is a lot of original content. Have you submitted to ODP? If not, read the instructions *carefully*, pick the exactly right category and submit. You might also find a Yahoo category to submit to, it's worth a look around to see.

yes, already done... unfortunately it just takes some time to get listed.

the site only launched on july 7th officially. it was submitted a bit before then, but didn't start receiving mega traffic until the 8th (when google picked up on it as a "blog of note").

the site's received some nice complements and is already seeing an impact on some local businesses that I've highlighted. Pretty cool.

Some business owners are even offering me free coffee when I show up!

i've taken your advice by putting the more relevant information on the top of the page

I think you're keyword stuffing now. Back off on the frequency of repetitions. If you repeat a phrase too often, without a reasonable number of words intervening, it not only sounds like spam, but the engines will see it as spam too.

Some business owners are even offering me free coffee when I show up!

Get them to offer you a free laptop. :)

I have see that your title is same for all pages
Further I will advise you to wait before drawing final conclusion as Google Update is going on.

If the site went live July 7th, grab some more coffee and wait another 2-3 months 'til you start to see anything. It just doesn't happen this quickly.

Hi,

As of 8:00am Monday, I think you are much better with getting in the keywords. But like Ralph suggested they are kind of bunched up in the beginning. If it were me, I would take some of them from the top and put then later in the site, perhaps in the middle and certainly at the end. Then, like Marcia and megri said, need to sit back and see what happens now.

Sounds like a new site bounce to me. Give it time and keep working on links :)

Thank you all for your help yesterday. My site got slashdotted (http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/19/2215239&tid=193&tid=176&tid=180) today, so I'm so glad that you came along before I was hitting this stage of the game.

So I'm hoping that since I now have about 10 strong referrers (and a ton of little guys) linking to me, I should be at the number one spot in no time.

Thanks again.


ps - i took your advice by changing the titles on my city pages too! that should help differentiate and bring traffic to specific locations.

pss - i switched hosts to dreamhost. i hope my server can take the slashdotting!