Dating Sites

[luemob]

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?

[stymiee]

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.

[luemob]

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?

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.

[stymiee]

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... ;)

[internet-tv]

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.

[stymiee]

is the website using a shared hosting service

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

[internet-tv]

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.

[stymiee]

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.

[canadafred]

..., 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

[luemob]

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

[internet-tv]

Hello everyone.
I agree this is not the norm, it depends on the particular search engine and other factors. I've seen this happen, and is not "a myth." If you do a search for "website sharing ip not listed" you'll see all the articles on this subject.

Best Wishes

[stymiee]

Those articles are written by newbies. It is so easy to see why this isn't true. All it takes is common sense.

1) Yahoo has servers that host thousands of websites on each server with one IP address. According to the people who say this theory is true, if a few of them do bad stuff, and when you have thousands of sites you are guaranteed that some will. The percentages dictate this to be true, then thousands of other sites will be penalized for doing nothing wrong.

2) This could be used by competitors to attack rival websites. All they would have to do is get on the same IP as their competitor and do bad stuff.

Naturally this is bad for Google because their job is to offer relevant search results and if they are filtering out good sites because they used a blanket penalty on an IP address they would be failing in that respect.

Rule of thumb: a website can never be hurt by another website that it has no affiliation with. Unless your site clearly is associated with a black hat site (i.e. you link to it) that site can never affect your site.

[canadafred]

Rule of thumb: a website can never be hurt by another website that it has no affiliation with. Unless your site clearly is associated with a black hat site (i.e. you link to it) that site can never affect your site.

:-O (I'm surprised he put it that way)

I think about the unsuspecting web site owner looking for some IP advice of how his IP may be affecting his organic search engine performance. I sure don't want some poor sap out there on a garbage IP thinking that it could not possibly be his web hosting provider dragging down his web site promotion, as you so adamantly insist. It could very well in fact be such.

I have a perspective on this based on experience.

I have moved web sites from crappy IPs on several occasions and the positive results were immediate. In fact, that's one of the first things I look for now when doing an SEO analysis. A simple thing really, but when needed it is an important one.

Folks, check your web site's IP neighbours. If they seem to be mostly spammy stuff, change your IP. Learn about Google's IP blacklist. I just looked at it again and sure enough, there are scores of hosting companies on it and, they are still hosting general business web sites, yet their IPs are blacklisted ( heavily, heavily penalized ).

Ask questions. Who shares the IP? Get a list and check out your IP neighbours. Chances are they are mostly business web site owners like you and if that is the case, then you'll probably have no IP issues.

I have been in nightmare after nightmare with extracting web sites from the clutches of the cheaper hosting services, they are often pretty sneaky with their trade. I always, always recommend to people to get local web hosting services, even though they may cost more than the some of the other cheaper ones. You can usually trust your local web hosting provider to have his web servers in ship shape like you can usually trust your local butcher to provide you fresh pork chops.

Web site owners should know the people providing their hosting services, by name. A web site and its IP host have a relationship that goes beyond just allotting MB of server space and setting bandwidth limits, a much bigger relationship.

There is someone in practically every town hosting web sites right now. Find out who that is in your town and go for a coffee together.

In SEO, we try to do the safe things first.

[stymiee]

I have a perspective on this based on experience.

I have moved web sites from crappy IPs on several occasions and the positive results were immediate. In fact, that's one of the first things I look for now when doing an SEO analysis. A simple thing really, but [when needed it is an important one.

I'm glad you didn't do a scientific and well thought out experiment because then it might have meant something. You can't just make observations in SEO because there are too many variables that affect a page's rankings. For all you know your rankings went up in spite of your change instead of because of them. I once had my site's ranking go up while I ate dinner. So that must mean eating dinner is good for SEO.

Shared IP addresses will never hurt you just like bad incoming links will never hurt you. Bad sites, just like bad links, are filtered out and disregarded. IP addresses are only banned if every site on an IP address is known to be part of a black hat scam. Otherwise it is never done. They'll ban domains but never IP addresses. They can accidentally hurt legitimate sites and that very reason alone is not to disprove that myth.