If you’ve ever tried to get your website ranked in a high volume search with Google, it’s basically a life long quest. It’s so much of a quest that people who know very few facts about the topic are actually paid good consulting money in order to take their best guesses at how to get better rankings.
Then, of course, as soon as you do that, Google can just change a gear in its system and you’re dropped right out again. I’ve been going down this road with my game server hosting startup HostedGameServers.com. I have a great service on servers that perform great. I ping 16 to my server and I’m over 1,500 miles from it! We’ve got a few clients and its the best we can do with manual promotion while we work to get listed in Google. Right now we’re about position 408… except if you typo the search.
First, search ‘Game Servers’ in Google. Not listed. Well, we are, but we’re on page 48 or something stupid.
Next, search for ‘Game Severs’. Note the missing r. Yep, we’re first page.
Our keyword significance is perfect. It’s #1 Game #2 Server #3 Hosting and our backlinks aren’t bad (about 125). Our site does nothing against the Google laws of sneaky code, either. I feel like I also have plenty of content.
My best guess as to what is going on involves the proper term ‘Game Servers’ being too valuable to list me, even if I am perfectly relevant. This search term gets a lot of hits, so Google has some high requirements for who gets listed. I’m not sure what those are exactly.
Other searches, like the typo’d ‘game severs’ get much less volume. So much less volume that I show up right on the front page. Why? Because I’m relevant but just not trust worthy enough for some reason. I have never had ’severs’ anywhere in my code base. I grep’d it.
I have no idea what Google wants form me. We provide a good service and our site is relevant for the right terms. We’ve even spent hundreds of man hours trying to get out there and spread links. Man its a hard world with Google!