Has anyone every had experience in optimzing dating websites? I have had minimal success in generating traffic at this point though its only been about 2 months since the site has been live.
Things done so far:
1. Optimized all pages according to topic
2. Have posted in many blogs with anchor tags
3. Created a Myspace account to bring to attention to the site on My space
4. Still making submissions to relative directories
5. domain has been up for years

Client is actually screaming for immediate results, is all that is needed are backlinks at this point? What are some techniques used to calm screaming clients down to SEO reality?

If they want immediate results they'll be sorely disappointed as it doesn't work that way. You need to educate them as to what is reality and what is fantasy. Quick rankings is fantasy, Quick rankings for a competitive terms is lunacy.

If they want to rank well they will have to work very very very hard for it. Period. Seeking links won't do anything for them. They need a lot of high quality links and that takes a lot of work and time. Why would anyone who offers a quality link want to link to them? Do they do anything different then the big boys? If they don't they're irrelevant and will be treated as such. And considering who the competition is I would not be optimistic of success ever.

Considering their genre and their expectations. my advice to you: walk away.

In MSN this site is coming up on the term "online dating services" Page 6 #5 and others of course but I totally agree on what you're saying and to tell you the truth its not even my customer, its my boss'es client!!
He asked me to ask here in my daniweb account cause he's to much of a coward to post it himself!
My boss and I work for a reputable hosting company that is now offering SEO services, we guarantee ranking but not traffic, easy right?, well when you have a sales team promising the golden ticket to SEO it can get hairy. I enjoy it though, SEO can be as much of a game than work, so thats why I like it.

In your opinion, would adwords be an alternative?

Adwords would be a more feasible way to get traffic as you can ensure they are displayed. But I suspect it would be quite expensive to pay for the phrases they probably want to rank well for.

And anything below page 3 (really page 2) is almost like not ranking at all due to how little traffic those pages get. And with a dating site I suspect people won't be looking for the 55th best dating site! Plus with MSN they are just such a bad search engine I would never take any rankings on them too seriously unless it was a very high traffic term. Just having the right words in your domain can be enough to rank well. Even then MSN delivers so little traffic...

Oh, tell your boss to walk away...

There are many factors with getting a high ranking in search engines. Some of the many things to consider is; what websites are you competing with for the keyword phrases your using, is the website using a shared hosting service, how old is the website domain, and so on. If you need help, send me the keyword phrases your trying to get ranked, and the website address.

That has nothing to do with SEO or rankings at all.

Hi Stymiee, I will make this more clear. Many "shared" hosting companies will use a single IP address for hundreds of domains. If one of the hundreds of web sites that are sharing an IP address breaks the rules of the search engines, the search engines may (not always) remove or ban websites (from the natural search results) using the same IP address.

That's a myth.

..., the search engines may (not always) remove or ban websites (from the natural search results) using the same IP address ...


... That's a myth ...

I think I can clarify this one.

The question revolves around whether or not a web site will get banned due to the misbehaviour of another web site sharing the same IP address virtually.

The answer to that is no. A search engine will not ban another web site unrelated to its neighbours sharing the same IP address.

Now. Will the search engines penalize unrelated web sites sharing the same IP address virtually because a misbehaving neighbour? I think that could happen, in extreme cases. I think the search engines sorta' warn us themselves about this factor. The type of behaviour needed to get banned from the search engines is not usually the type of SEO foul play you'll find in the general web sectors. In the general web sectors, I can't see IP sharing being much of a problem, anymore.

What is important, however, is when a web site needs an advantage in regional and country specific searches. It seems to me that having a web site that is totally looked after in the same country has an advantage. I can easily see the reasoning behind that. Why would a James Bay Frontier Fishing Expert want to have his web site hosted and managed in Taiwan?

Cheaper maybe.
Cheers

Whether shared hosting is a myth on the SE's or not, I can't say for certain. I do work for a major hosting company and I do see issues as far as banning ip's but that is only happening when it comes to emails, not Search engines. I do agree that depending on the market your working to optimizing either unethical SEO techniques or adwords will bring quicker results.

The keywords my partner has been working to get the site ranked are
Free Online Dating
Online Dating Services
Online Dating Profiles
Sexy Singles Date