Does Google Hate Affiliate Sites? - Frustrated!

[cat7ken]

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I know it was only indexed three weeks ago but with good on-page SEO and my target search phrase as the domain name I would have thought it would be somewhere in sight by now not lurking somewhere beyond result 200 with dozens of far less relevant and less interesting sights above it.

The main page has only four affiliate banner links with some relevant content and lots of internal links using pictures with key phrase ALT tags. There are 26 pages containing around 20 affiliate links each with many of the links supported by descriptive text to give some content. Each sub page links back to the home page via the domain name and using anchor text.

Is Google frowning upon this as being too much of an affiliate link website? Or do I have to a little more and keep on backlink building and it will one day soon appear on page one as if by magic? It's a little generic but the page one competition appears very light on SEO, relevance and content.

I've put many days into this, it's a Christmas website and I really need it ranking well by mid-September.

Any comments?

Yours frustratedly

Ken

[mikey_gee]

At the end of the day your a 3 week old website compared to, im guessing, many years old 1st page sites - correct me if im wrong. Another point to consider is your trying to rank for something generic as you say, many sites will therefore probably mention this keyword even if its in a roundabout way. Add that to your young age and Google will favour the others. Do you have any incoming links? Have you ever ranked for the keywords but now dropped out? (very normal for new sites for up to 6 months sometimes). If you want PM me your site and ill have a look.

MG.

[lufc]

This happens time and time again so don't worry about it.

Take this time to concentrate of writing unique content, fine tuning your website and building strong relevent links with other sites and when you appear again you will be a strongor position and (hopefully) ready to start making sales.

Good luck with the website,

Darren

[d33man]

have to agree with mikey_gee (unintentional rhyme...!)

I began my site with something similar, and only had a trickle of traffic until around 6 weeks when things started happening. I continued my SEO work regardless of whether traffic was coming or not.

The more you update the site the more often GoogleBot will come and take a look at your content. The more it indexes your site, the more it will add weight to your target keywords.

It is difficult to pin point the exact cause of any issues you may have but personally I think unless you're in a great niche (which if you're looking at a generic keyword, probably not) it will take some time to rank. One keyword I was chasing took me 4 months to start appearing as an authority and at peak has seen me in position 3 behind 2 other massive commercial websites, which for a part-time attempt was phenomenal for me. This was due to a) lots of good, fresh content with the keywords (not keyword stuffing) and b) link building around the keyword

Depending on what the Christmas item that you're selling is, I'd have personally started the site in Spring and started building traffic late Spring/early Summer at the latest. For a brand new site I'd leave 3 months at least to begin ranking.

The other side of it is of course PPC if you feel you're missing something in the short term whilst you build your SEO authority

As with Mike PM me if you want me to take a look at recommendations for your site

D

[cat7ken]

Thank you for your helpful comments. I've PM'd Mikey and D33

Cheers

Ken

[cycloneuk]

I think you need to wait at least 3 months, 3 weeks is far to soon and many sites can take months to be fully indexed. When i am working on a keyword i would expect to see first page results after around 6 months, some keywords can take longer and some can only take a few months depending on how competitive the word is.

[cat7ken]

It's very chicken and egg this Google SERPS ranking. Google expect you to have great content so that people will link to you in blogs etc, but on the other hand they won't see you until people link to you in blogs etc.

So we have to tediously build unnatural backlinks to give it some sort of visibility.

[findlite]

It's very chicken and egg this Google SERPS ranking. Google expect you to have great content so that people will link to you in blogs etc, but on the other hand they won't see you until people link to you in blogs etc.

So we have to tediously build unnatural backlinks to give it some sort of visibility.

Ah but when you have the chicken the egg and some decent money coming in its smiles all round:tup Course iv yet to have this )-:

[renegade]

I've put many days into this, it's a Christmas website and I really need it ranking well by mid-September.

Ideally just above all of ours?

Seriously though, if you start working towards Christmas 2010 and consider any sales you get this year as a bonus you'll be on the right track.
Just about every affiliate reading this forum would like to have the slots you're trying to muscle in on and google has no love for any of us so don't expect it too be easy even if you think you are doing all the right things.

[cat7ken]

I can only see two affiliate sites on page one for the search term I'm targeting and one is particularly naff (IMVHO). So I don't think I'm muscling in particularly.

I do accept already though that any commissions earned this Christmas will be a bonus and I really have to target 2010. However it's not going to stop me spending a lot of this week doing the necessary to improve its position

[Darkwing]

Hi Ken

I'd carry on building links to it from lots of different relevant sources, and if you can stick a blog on the site too. You've not said if the site is blog based or not, so I've assumed not.

The blog could do with a new relevant post each day, even if its only 100 words or so, on a relevant news item. (Place a link in each post to an internal page in your site, as well as ideally another relevant site too.) As long as you ping the blog posts using something like pingoat the search engines will come running.

Hope that helps

[cat7ken]

Hi Darkwing

Thanks for that. It's a standard website. In fact D33bloke above also strongly recommended a blog be appended to it updated daily so that just about clinches it. However I have no understanding of this goat that needs pinging but will have by the end of the day

I'm certainly busy building backlinks from blogs, forums and articles and of course the usual (maybe useless) reciprocal linking using Linkmarket.

Thanks for your input - Much valued and appreciated. I'll ge there.

Cheers
Ken