Can't get my exact match domain to rank - any ideas?

[djuqa]

Shane, Mate.
Don't bite my head off!
This is given as helpful and valid advice
Your HTML doesn't validate well.
Maybe a factor with the GoogleBOT

 

[James]

Shane, Mate.
Don't bite my head off!
This is given as helpful and valid advice
Your HTML doesn't validate well.
Maybe a factor with the GoogleBOT

The code errors on this page are limited, Google has crawled the site on the 25th oct fine.

I would not think the HTML can be a issue.

 

[Shane]

Moving in the right direction. Interesting the homepage isn't in the top 1000 results but internal pages ranking:

#119 builders-warranty-insurance
#218 commercial-vehicle-insurance
#219 tool-insurance

Did you make any other changes? Add any content?

One other thing I'd recommend is a non-www to www (or vice versa, pick a canonical and stick with it) redirect. I crawled the site again and you effectively have two identical sites, one on the www subdomain and one without www.

This is an easy fix, just put the following in your .htaccess file (make sure to replace domain dot com with your actual domain!).

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Make a backup of your existing .htaccess, if you have one.

Thanks Joe, much appreciated.

Yeah it is strange that the home page isn't ranking now. It was previously, but it certainly seems that something funny is going on. At least pages from the site are moving up the rankings!

I've only added one extra page of content and a few links, so I think the main difference may have come from fixing the errors.

I've also implemented the htaccess code. I've never had this issue with any of my other sites, but I guess you'd recommend adding this to all sites right?

Shane, Mate.
Don't bite my head off!
This is given as helpful and valid advice
Your HTML doesn't validate well.
Maybe a factor with the GoogleBOT

There will be no biting off of heads, I am calm and relaxed now!

I wouldn't be surprised if there were HTML errors, as I certainly don't claim to be an expert at coding, but I think I fixed them all last time. Hopefully...?!

 

[Shane]

The code errors on this page are limited, Google has crawled the site on the 25th oct fine.

I would not think the HTML can be a issue.

Thanks James. Hopefully I've fixed everything now. My coding will never be perfect, but it should be good enough to keep Google happy.

 

[joe]

I've also implemented the htaccess code. I've never had this issue with any of my other sites, but I guess you'd recommend adding this to all sites right?

Yeh but it's more about being pedantic than fixing a major issue. A few years ago it might've been a bigger problem but I think goog has smartened up and can figure this sort of thing out.

 

[djuqa]

There will be no biting off of heads, I am calm and relaxed now!

I wouldn't be surprised if there were HTML errors, as I certainly don't claim to be an expert at coding, but I think I fixed them all last time. Hopefully...?!

no problems, mate, your main HTML errors are non-quoted values
i.e. bgcolor=#1b7abe should be bgcolor="#1b7abe" or even better still style="background-color: #1b7abe;"> as we all move towards HTML5 Conformance

One other thing I noticed is the articles are prone to OVER-USAGE of the key phrase "builder's insurance" googlebot penalises over usage.

 

[Shane]

Yeah I fell into the habit of not using quotation marks a while back, I need to turn that around. As for the HTML5 changes, I think I'll make like an ostrich and pretend it doesn't exist!

I enjoy writing my own sites, but I think the time is approaching where my primitive HTML skills will no longer be good enough. At that stage it will probably be time to start outsourcing.

Cheers for the tips.

 

[Search]

Some extra tips:

- Add contextual links to your content linking to other internal pages.
- Add ALT attributes to your images, especially the images that are also links (like the collection of insurance company logos).
- Add a robots.txt file (http://www.buildersinsurance.com.au/robots.txt )