Why is my website not ranking on Google?

[Aaron]

I have built a website for my wife's business and no matter what I try the website doesn't rank on Google. I have read all the SEO tips and have created keyword rich content. I have tried to optimise all meta tags. I have tried to get back links.

But still the site is outranked by pretty awful sites and competitors that dont even have a webpage but out rank us with their directory listing.

Our web site url is http://www.mothersinlaw.com.au and we rank very high when searching for "mothers in law" but I want to rank for "Dee Why conveyancer" or "Northern Beaches Conveyancer".

Please help.

Is there a way to find out if google is deliberately pushing us down for some reason. Or am I missing something else?

[Jake]

Recently Google has started penalizing sites for Over Optimization.

One backlink reporting tool http://www.opensiteexplorer.org found just 2 external sites linking to you.

blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33968/Before-and-After-3-...
hear.ceoblognation.com/2013/04/26/how-did-you-come-up-with-you... Anchor text = Mothers in Law Lawyers

Backlinks really drive ranking.

Anchor text in links can get you in trouble, to play it safe make 1/3 desirable keywords, 1/3 more generic phrases, like Click Here, and 1/3 your raw URL (no anchor text)

Here's a Search Engine Optimization guide by an SEO authority, too much of the stuff taught by others is out of date or simply inaccurate.
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

[Sam Efron]

Reasons could be different because there are many parameters on which Google judge a particular website. The latest algos Panda and Penguin must be the real factors because of which your website is not ranking. Go through the panda, penguine updates and see what your site lacks.

[Richard]

Basing it from your explanation, it seems you are aware of the basics of SEO. With the latest Google revisions, all you need to do is tweak your techniques and adjust them accordingly. Some tips:

1. Vary the anchor text for your link types using these:
exact keywords.. example: Dee Why conveyancer and a variation of it.
url keywords... example: http://www.mothersinlaw.com.au
brand keywords...example: mothers in law or mothers in law lawyers
random keywords such as 'click here', 'find out more' etc.
THE KEY is to keep it natural

2. get links from different sources. Analyze competitors and see if you can get backlinks from their sources

3. Use different profiles when doing SEO
4. Use different IP address or browsers whenever possible
5. Make the most out of social media. Search engines not just crawl text based links but also decide based on visitor-website interactions
6.Link to internal pages, not just home page
7. Combine both nofollow and dofollow
8. To avoid penalties, be mindful of your backlink quantities. if the top competitor only has 100, then you better not have 1000!
9. Distribute linking over a span of time
10. Keep links relevant

It may sound ironic but the idea is to acquire web presence without making it seem like you are doing SEO. Above all, make sure that your visitors find your site content to suit their needs and expectations. Hope this helps.

[Doodled]

You are actually ranking for "Dee Why conveyancer" but it is your Google+ page which is ranking so spend some time on that - encourage more of your clients to review you on Google and keep the Google+ page up to date.

In other words further optimise what is already ranking first. On this note, for example, Yellow Pages ranks extremely high - will you ever outrank them? Doubtful. So make sure your entries in these directories is full, complete and attractive.

Again you rank top 10 for "Northern Beaches Conveyancer" but there are a great deal of powerful and well established directories above you. Make sure you are in them all and that your entries are full and attractive.

Don't be afraid of this line of action. If people search "Northern Beaches Conveyancer" and 'most' click through to (for example) Yellow Pages and then 'most' click through to you this is a clear sign to the search engines that you should be ranking higher.