18 replies to this topic

[UnderRated]

Hello.
My site, www.50dollarbeat.com used to be in the top 5 in Google under the keyphrase "rap beats"
This is what I'm targeting the most... But, now my site has fallen to the 21st position and my sales are really dropping.
Its been about 4 months now and my site is steadily dropping in rankings. To the 3rd page tonight so I had to come on and ask for some much needed advice.
Although my page isn't the best looking page I think it suites its purpose and if I can get traffic, I will get sales...

I'm not sure what I did wrong if anything or if Google changed up some of there parameters.
I used to also have the links on the left side and they read rap beats. They were linked to the rap beats page in about 10 different places with the phrase "rap beats" in every link.
Although I think this helped me in the past I thought maybe Google penalized me for having too many places where it said rap beats. Is that possible?
I've since changed it about a week ago to what it is now but my rankings are still slipping.
Is there any glaring weaknesses that you guys might see?
I gotta get back to top 5 in Google under "rap beats"
Can anybody help me please???

Thanks so much!

General
Is this site completed or under construction?
Completed

If completed:
How long has the site been up?
4 years

SEO
Do you have incoming links?
Yes, about 10

What keywords are you targeting?
rap beats, hip hop beats, rap instrumentals, hip hop instrumentals

Do you want your code reviewed for errors or improvements?
Of course

Marketing
Who is your target audience? Think about:
Gender: Mostly male
Nationality: All races
Age Range: 12-40
Income/Education level: any

The more you tell us about your target audience, the better. We don't know them- you do!
My target audience are kids that want to purchase beats and make rap songs and to sell their own CDs.


Why is your site different from sites selling/offering similar info/goods/services? Why will someone want to do business you?
My site is different because I have some of the best beats to offer kids for very competitive prices.

How important is usability?
Very, I want my music to load up and play quick and work for everyone hopefully.

What is the purpose of the site? (inform, sell, online community, support B&M business, contact info only, etc)
Sell beats and get help kids make good music to get out to the people.

Design
Do you want design suggestions?
Sure why not?

[UnderRated]

Oh yeah I almost forgot.
I switched hosting plans to GoDaddy about the time when I noticed my rankings slip. Could that have any effect???

I have a plan where my main site 50dollarbeat.com is combined and hosts 2 other sites I have also.
2 other sites have there own folder in the 50dollarbeat directory but they are there own unique site.
Could that have an effect too?

Any help appreciated. Panicing a little

Thank u much!

Josh

[ScottSalwolke]

SEO
Do you have incoming links?
Yes, about 10

What keywords are you targeting?
rap beats, hip hop beats, rap instrumentals, hip hop instrumentals

These could be two of your problems. Ten incoming links isn't that many. It could be that your competition is developing more links and thus your site has dropped.

Another problem is your keywords. Have you done research on what keywords your prospects are using? Rap beats may bring you traffic, but the phrase "rap beats for sale" also has high traffic. This would be a better phrase for your site to rank for.

As for the site itself have you tested the music clips. I was on Internet Explorer and I couldn't get the music to play. It said there were no current files in the playlist. Test it out on the various browsers to make sure it works. If you get visitors and they can't even sample the music, your rankings won't matter.

[UnderRated]

I did a lot of research on the phrase "rap beats" and found it was the best.
I don't remember trying "rap beats for sale" though. Did u check those? Whats the easiest way to research that? Its been a while, sorry.

My beats play .m3u files so it should work with the default. I have 4 different systems and all of them worked for me.

I will definitely try to trade with more people and links. Although I did add a few links a couple weeks ago I hadn't tried to collect links in some years before that.

Do u think moving hosting companies to GoDaddy could have any effect on my ranking?

Thanks so much!

Josh

[UnderRated]

Just checked it out.
I'm actually #5 in "rap beats for sale"

I need "rap beats" though.

Anyone have any other thoughts???

Thank you.

Josh

[Betty]

If you put everything you've got into 1 phrase, you're missing the point. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of phrases you can be found for. You're not thinking things through enough if you're just optimizing for 1 phrase. Those other phrases may bring you more traffic...

[ScottSalwolke]

I did a lot of research on the phrase "rap beats" and found it was the best.
I don't remember trying "rap beats for sale" though. Did u check those? Whats the easiest way to research that? Its been a while, sorry.

Josh

I looked on Google Adwords Tool and they show rap beats for sale as being just as popular as rap beats. And this is a better phrase to be ranked for, as it shows the consumer is further along in the buying process.

As for why your site dropped one reason is that it doesn't contain much use of the word rap beats. You have it in your title tag and your headline, but nowhere in the text is the word rap. Try inserting a few times and see if this helps.

[UnderRated]

Wow, really? Rap beats for sale is about the same huh? Well thats cool cause I'm #5 in that... And I have tried for hip hop beats, rap beats, rap instrumentals, hip hop instrumentals etc...

So you are saying put the phrase rap beats in the text of the first page or the text all over the site? Or both?
I have links saying rap beats but not in the text.

So more links and more keywords on the site...

OK that seems pretty simple. Anything else?

Do u think the hosting switch to GoDaddy could have made a difference too???

Thanks so much for your time

Josh

[Jill]

So you are saying put the phrase rap beats in the text of the first page or the text all over the site? Or both?

Each page should be optimized for different phrases, not the same ones. Do your keyword research and find the 100's of phrases people type into Google to find what you offer and then figure out which pages they best belong on.

You may want to review some of the articles in the Tips for Newbies section for more info on optimizing in general.

[seattleweb]

Each page should be optimized for different phrases, not the same ones.

This is absolutely true: exploit each page for its unique content.

Slow servers (especially for dynamic content pages) can hurt you: if your page load time is slow on your server, then upgrade it.

I'd also suggest that you check your site stats for the keywords/keyphrases people were/are hitting your site for.

My $.02

[ceuyan]

the colors are great and the site layout has potential but needs work

1. move the nav under the logo
2. logo needs to be bigger
3. get rid of all the centering text which may make the navigation on the left look better
4. if you like center so much consider make all the text left justified and centering your entire web page

[GLance]

Actually, I wonder why you choose 50dollarbeat as your domain.
I don't get it that you choose meteors as your header. Of course it don't represent much of your site.
The content arrangement in nice and lovely. I like its simple.

[UnderRated]

Hey hi hello.

I'm back after a year of not getting my site up any in rankings

I did however make a whole new site and was hoping you guys could take a look.

www.50dollarbeat.com

See if it has potential and if anything sticks out that is just ridiculously amateur looking.

Still shooting for "rap beats"

Any help is so appreciated! Thanks a lot!

[BBCoach]

UnderRated that's not a bad site to navigate when it's working. It quit working for me @ 1:50pm CST today.

The one thing I detest is the use of pipes in the title. I've never written a report in college or at work where my titles included pipes. They don't communicate effectively to humans. Dashes, slashes and colons are valid in titles. For example; the title for the New Beats page is "Rap Beats | New Rap Beats | Hip Hop Beats |". Why not just say something like "Our newest/latest rap beats collection" or something that communicates to someone searching for the newest/latest rap beats. Sure a person knows they're there when viewing the page, but SEs have not been given a clear indication of what that page is about in the title to relate it to the page information or differentiate it from the other pages on the site. In addition, you only have the word/phrase "New Rap Beats" on that page once. For example, in the table that lists the new beats each column should at least say "New Beat Name", "New Beat Description." That's just one page and all of them are poorly titled in my opinion. Nothing that I've seen on the site cohesively ties the title, the page content and the site links into a comprehensive description of what a page is about.

In the interim, don't forget to utilize Ad campaigns. On my primary site 48-50% of all referrals are from organic search results. That equates to $1+ million/month in SE sales and we use a lot of ad campaigns even tho they only account for $40K-$50K/month. It's still money in the bank

P.S. I've never seen a site's rankings affected when changing hosting companies. I reckon it's possible, but I ain't seen it happen.

Good luck and hope this helps!

[UnderRated]

Thanks for the reply...

I typed "rap beats" in google today and saw that a site [removd] is listed first.

They also have different links for their site like "free beats" "w vocal samples" "dirty south beats" etc.

How did they make this happen??? did google do this on their own?

Also, any reason that sticks out as to why this site get to be listed #1 in rap beats???

Thank you so much for your time!

Josh