What went wrong with my SEO?

[Andy Johnson]

I have a site hosted on hostgator which i set up about a month ago.

Its a single word domain which is a clear mispelling of another word.

When i first set up the cart on the site, google returned it right at the top of its listings when i put in that quite unusual word. That was before doing any SEO.

Now though, its dropped to the bottom of page 2. This is AFTER doing a little bit of basic SEO through host gator.

Worth noting that the top 3 of my competitors are:
1) a photo on a myopera photosite that someone submitted in 2007
2) a youtube playlist containing a video from 2010 thats had 500,000 views
3) a tumblr page written in text speak with nothing valuable on there at all.

So the top 3 have no need for specific SEO on that particular keyword, even the 500,000 hit youtube vid would have had very few if any hits directly from searching this obscure word because its not relevant to the video, just happens to be in the title.

So i guess the question is a) what went wrong? and b) what is it that affects the search results of a single word? We've all obv had the word picked up by the google spiders so why is mine so far down? Is it just a matter of being a generally popular site to push me up?

Thanks
Also just realised, I have the .co.uk and the .net for this site, the .co.uk is the primary site with .net diverting to it. When it was first set up, the google results for .net and .co.uk appeared almost "nested". Now, the .net (divert) is the one thats actually showing up at bottom of 2nd page, with the .co.uk nowhere to be seen even as far as page 19 (cant be arsed going further than that to find it as there are 150,000 results)
Thanks Jake, global monthly count for the word is only 320 so very low competition

[Jake]

The number of links from other sites is an important search ranking factor, though google is trying to rely more on social signals. Using the word in several places in at least one page should help ranking as well, typically in the header, window title, an image file name and the body text.

You didn't mention if there is much search volume for that typo word, typically such searches often don't get the best conversions, (there could be a higher percentage of drunks typing it?)

Search ranking takes some time for a new site, try to get another couple of links a day for the first month or so. Ranking positions bounce around sometimes, like when Google is in the midst of a ranking algorithm change.

Academic articles
http://domainnamebasics.org/?p=43
http://www.dynamicwebsolutions.com/blog/...-worth-it/

Apparently the evil application of mis-spellings is called Typo-Squatting

There's a service that specializes in selling traffic from mis-spelled domain type-ins, using a lot of sites each of which gets only a moderate amount of traffic from mis-typed urls without the benefit of SEO. I can;'t recall their name.

Here's a tool that might suit you
http://www.mispelledkeywords.com

[Smark]

It's difficult to answer your question without seeing the site but two things come to mind straight away.

1. Google had a big shake up of it's listings last week based upon it's evolving algorithm Many sites dropped down the rankings or were delisted.
2. Don't redirect domains to others you own unless you do it right following Googles guidelines. Basically a 301 permanent redirect in your .htaccess file.

Again, I've not seen the page that was listing on the first page but here's a few ideas for getting your page to rank higher...

Onsite:

1. Google has stepped up it's quality standards for sites it lists. Look at your pages from a user experience point of view. Keep content long (500-800 words), strong and useful with any ads to a minimum below the fold,
2. Make sure you have a privacy, terms of use and contact us page with real contact information.
3. Subscription forms are also seen as an ad so don't put these before content either.
4. If you have a shopping cart make sure product descriptions are unique and not copied from other sources.
5. Avoid over-optimisation penalties by keeping repitition of your keywords to a minimum. Try and use alternative/related keywords to say the same thing
6. If you are using wordpress to build you site get some good plugins such as wordpress seo by yoast
7. Make sure your page titles and meta descriptions are unique from each other.
8. Claim the Google webmaster tools account for your site to get more detailed information about how google sees your site.
9. Make sure your hosting is providing fast access for visitors to your site. You can find the speed of your site inside the google webmaster tools account.
10. Create a google plus account and add the rel="author" tag to your content.

Offsite:

1. Get a broad range of links from quality sites to your home page and deep pages.
2. Add social buttons to your site so visitors can bookmark and share your page content. Try 'addthis'.
3. SEO tools/strategies provided by hosting companies are usually pretty lame so I'd avoid any search engine submission services etc.

I could go on for ages but these are some of the biggies for seo at the moment.

Good luck.

[Sarah D]

Sometimes new websites have what is called a honeymoon period where Google ranks a site high initially but will have the site drop down in rankings after it isn't so new. I think your honeymoon ended.

Make sure your title has the keywords in it and also build links to your site. You'll get back up in no time. Good luck!