I'm new here and would like to ask for some help with SEO. I've been methodically reading through various forums, trying out tools, re-engineering some pretty old sites that I've developed and ensuring that the basics such as sitemaps etc. are covered and I am no wiser .

I have a practical example of two sites (one of which I developed) which are chasing the same sort of keywords.

Site A - which has lots of validation errors and some rather less than pretty rendering, is getting to #1 position for a whole range of keywords, the other simply does not appear in the first 100 results. Lynx viewer can render site B but not site A, and yet I understood that Lynx was an excellent representation of how a spider indexes a site. - you get the idea.

I've held off posting here for some time ( a year believe it or not) to be certain that I had allowed enough time for some organic growth and to give me time to apply some of the knowledge that I've gained in the past six to eight months of a learning curve that I've gone through (I actually used to think I could write tight code - but I'm feeling pretty humbled by the whole experience).

I have to assume I have done something devastatingly simple but wrong and have the wrong premise for what I am trying to do; no black hat, no gaming, just trying to give the client an honest position.

can anyone help me in trying to put together a scientific measurable strategy for improving a sites SERP position ? Has this been done before and I simply can't read ? Am I going crazy (likely) or is this whole SEO lark a chancers delight ?

I simply cannot understand why a site which seems to 'break the guidelines' can be so much more successful than a genuine site who's owner has been spending a lot of time diligently updating and sourcing back links.

I haven't published the two site urls that I've been using to try and develop a measurable effective methodology as I'm not sure if it would be appropriate to do so. I'd be happy to post the client's url (they're equally frustrated) and I'd be very grateful for any comment on this - as I'm aware that there's some seriously talented web people on this forum (thus the rather nervous post )

How old are the two sites?

Feel free to PM me the two urls and I'll take a look. I am sure Richard, Dave and the others will jump in to help too and see if anything can be spotted.

__________________

The URL of the site that I'm trying to use as a test case is Surf Schools Ireland, Surfing lessons in Clare with Aloha Surf School -Welcome to Aloha Surf School Ireland - a good friend of mine owns this site and has been hammering away to try and get some decent exposure on google - working pretty good with Yahoo and Live.com

The target keywords are 'surf lessons ireland' or variants on that.

I entered a url as the link but the page title came in - ho hum wasnt intentional - but I guess the page title is working then

It is a feature on the forum when you place a full url in the post.

If you don't want it to display simply uncheck the box below the "submit reply" button

__________________
Hosting & Domains|Plesk Vps Hosting|Geek / Cool Stuff|Films.ie|Cool Sites|Monetisation Tips|Movie Chat


Energise your forum! Click here for info

I presume that's the site you're having issues with...

Unless I'm mistaken the site only seems to have a half dozen links in, which probably isn't helping

__________________
Hosting & Domains|Plesk Vps Hosting|Geek / Cool Stuff|Films.ie|Cool Sites|Monetisation Tips|Movie Chat


Energise your forum! Click here for info

Who owns the 2nd site you sent me? Is that your competition?

First thing that I spot is that when you hit surfschool.tv you are redirected to a longer url full of ID strings. You need to try and implement Search Engine friendly urls. One would be surfschool.tv/surfing-lessons.html or asp in your case.

Another thing. The alt text for the image on your main page is stuffed with keywords. If someone is using a text browser these keyword wont make much sense, try using a more reader friendly approach. Using something like "learn surfing in Ireland" could be efficient enough. You are telling the reader what exactly it is but also letting the search engine know what its related too.

To be honest, without insulting you, but the site could be doing with a complete SEO overhaul and even considering buying a .com/.ie name instead of the .tv extension.

- heh, a few people earn a living this way.


And re: the .tv domain - keep it - maybe make a little Video tutorial thing and post videos on Youtube - go viral. It's a pretty catchy domain i must say.

thanks for the feedback; however the points that I am trying to drill into here are this:

1. I fully accept that the site needs a revamp and that there's been a bit of over-enthusiastic use of keywords; a sign of some of the desparation to be honest. But point taken and accepted
2. However - the other site that I passed to Gavin directly - and please understand I'm not knocking the site - simply trying to use it to benchmark the new site's performance - (too many qualifiers I'll start that again) - however, the other site fails validation, and may have pretty urls (another gulp) but does not meet with published guidelines - i.e. there's a javascript error on page one
3. the link:Surf Schools Ireland, Surfing lessons in Clare with Aloha Surf School -Welcome to Aloha Surf School Ireland syntax shows 6 backlinks in google; but the webmaster tools indicates over 80

What I'm trying to do is work out a method that customers can follow without breaking the rules and where they'll see some result - it's a kicker to see rather grim sites out-performing yours. - but points all taken and appreciated.