Following up on yesterday’s post, here are my suggestions for Taz on what he can do to get his website, http://www.beardcareproducts.com, ranked once again in Google:

1) Make sure you have not been sandboxed

It was a great idea to sign up for the Webmaster tools to make sure nothing was wrong with the site. Also, a site:www.beardcareproducts.com query reveals that Taz’s pages are not in the supplemental index - another good sign. Keep doing the above board SEO techniques to avoid being penalized.

2) Target your keywords

The good news for Taz is that the keywords he was looking at are not very competitive. Beard Lotion, for example, is not mentioned as a keyword phrase in the title of any of the results that show up in the top 10 for the search term. The top 3 results also carry PageRanks of 3, 0, and 2 respectively so it will not take much to knock them off. Build a page on Beard Lotion, use it in your title tag, write an article that is relevant to the topic of Beard Lotion and you will start rising up.

3) Get relevant links
It is no secret that Google’s search engine is based on the number and quality of the links you have pointing to your site. Taz should focus on building relationships with relevant websites and blogs and get them to link to his page. Right now a link:www.beardcareproducts.com search in Google reveals that there are no recognized links pointing to his site yet.

4) Have a strong internal link structure

If you want Google to rank your site they have to find it. Make sure that all of your keyword pages are linked from the homepage so that it gets spidered quickly and your PageRank (when it comes) will pass directly to those inside pages.

5) Add more text to the product pages

This can always be a challenge for e-commerce websites but Google loves content. A good rule of thumb is to aim for at least 300 descriptive words on the page. Make it relevant to the products and have the important keywords mentioned throughout. Right now, none of the pages (not even the About Us page) has enough content to rank effectively.

Good luck Taz! Let us know what changes you make and what impact it has on your site’s rankings!

Evan Carmichael

This week one of our readers, Taz, the 25 year old owner of http://www.beardcareproducts.com, wrote in looking for help with his website rankings:

Hi Evan,

I’m glad I found your site…we started an online business called www.beardcareproducts.com and were ranking pretty high and then suddenly dropped way, way down. We are still in the index, so I hope we can regain our position by implementing some of your suggestions. I’m 25 so still a YE!

You probably get a lot of inquiries so if its possible could you let me know what might have affected my site’s rankings? We only started June 13th, 2007…and haven’t violated guidelines. I haved used keywords appropriately and recently reduced the density just in case that was having an effect. In Webmaster tools, I’m still in the index…but don’t know why I lost my rankings…any help in this regard would be appreciated.

I asked Taz for more details…

Hi Evan,

Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it. I noticed that the ranks I had on Google are still retained on MSN almost exactly. Here are the Keywords & Former Positions on Google:
Beard Lotion #1
Beard Care Products #1
Beard Care #2
Beard Grooming #5
Beard Shampoo #7

Even if I put beardcareproducts.com (my url) into Google, I still rank below a site that links to me. I signed up for Google’s Webmaster Central and there are no crawl errors. I lost my rankings around July 27th. Site has been online since June 13th, so a little over a month.

Kind Regards,
Taz

I hate to be the bearer of bad news and let a fellow internet entrepreneur down but it will hard to get the rankings back quickly. I have noticed two distinct trends that often occur with brand new websites:

1) They get sandboxed and do not get any recognition by Google. The more spammy the industry tends to be the longer you can get sandboxed. For example, a friend of mine launched a blog offering practical money savings tips for every day life (a great read) but because there are so many fake sites in this industry, his site is still in the sandbox after being around for six months and having quality sites link to him.

2) They get top rankings quickly only to disappear from the index a few weeks later. This seems to be the case with Taz’s website. He was on top of Google’s results and soon got downgraded severely. Do not feel bad - it usually takes a sustained effort to rank for any sort of mildly-competitive keyword, let along the difficult ones. One month in should not get you a ton of search engine traffic. Google is on my website every day and it can still take a few weeks for a new article to get picked up and put into their index.

My solutions for Taz? Check back tomorrow

Evan Carmichael

I have always found there to be great benefits to going to an office every day to work. An office makes it easier to separate our business from personal lives and adds some regularity to what can be a chaotic lifestyle. Working with others in your office (even if they are working for you) can help generate new ideas and keep you motivated.

Getting office space, especially when you are starting up, however can be expensive. Here are three ways that I got have gotten and given free office space to help my company grow:

1) Offer Computer Tech Support

As the saying goes, “you can’t get something for nothing.” The key to getting an asset like office space for free is offering an asset other than money in exchange for the space. Find something that you have an abundance of that you can offer in return. I got space in my first office by offering basic tech support services. I connected with a group of highly talented businessmen who were all in their 60s and 70s. They ran into a number of ongoing basic computer issues such as updating their virus software, fixing printer issues, and connecting to the Internet. They ended up having to hire experts to come in to fix their simple problems. I joined them, helped them solve their problems as they came up, and saved them money. For me it amounted to a couple of hours per week and got a great free office space out of it. I also learned from their experience and had a fantastic resource to draw on when I needed help for my business.

2) Become A Lead Generator

As I learned more about the business that these men were in, I started to help them bring in new leads. All I did was create a website with some content and made it SEO friendly. It tied in well with my business and was easy for me to do. New leads started calling and my office mates were sure glad I was working with them. As my business began to expand I needed more space. Because I was helping bring in revenue for my new friends, they did not want to lose me. I was able to bring three new people into the office space before we were busting at the seams. I had to move on from the opportunity but I did manage to get office space for four people to help me build my business until I could afford to get my own office.

3) Partner Up!
In February of 2006, tired of renting office space, we bought a building. It is two stories and has more space than we need at the moment. We bought it so there would be space to expand. Last summer we tried an experiment where we brought in a young entrepreneur who wanted to start a business for himself. We gave him free office space in return for writing a blog for us that documented the growth of his business. He got access to everything in our office as well as a collaborative group of people to bounce ideas off of. Unfortunately his business did not pan out and we abandoned the blog but it was a good relationship and I would be happy to do it again. I benefited from the blog as he added new content to my website. The key is to find a partner whose business you can benefit, offer a win-win situation, and get that office space you are looking for!

Evan Carmichael