And, yes, Google doesn’t tell you all the links it knows about, which is why I did a Yahoo search for that information first.

Build more pages, get more links naturally, let your domain age and you’ll climb the rankings for “scotland hotels” over time.

Neil.

That doesn’t seem like natural linking.. 99.3% of external links pointing to your homepage.

Also, a large percentage of those links are from scottishhighland.com, onestarhotels.net and scottishweb.net.

Google only reports 12 links into your site, 6 of which are from scottishweb.net, 2 from scottishhighland.com, one from your own site and two from some wordpress tags.

>> It’s not enough to rank your site highly. <<

I think you need more diversity of links. Try submitting articles to article directories.

Neil.

We’ll just have to agree to disagree, then. Your site is in the Google index. Your site has PageRank. Your site is listed at position 202 for a competitive keyphrase, and your ranking may well rise over time as you add unique content, keep the site online and gain links.

I don’t see a problem, but everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, and yours seems to be that your site has had some kind of penalty applied because it’s an “affiliate site”.

I wonder if that penalty applies to all sites that use affiliate links? This blog does… and so do many, many other high ranking websites.

Neil.

I apologise to your readers for using up the forum like this, and I thank you Neil for the effort you have made on my behalf. But this is the whole problem with this industry. One person says one thing, one says another, and the business is left guessing what to do. Its cost me a lot of money and a lot of heartache. This shouldn’t be a black art to get into the serps, or guess whether you’ve been punished or not. Googles monopoly position with uk search makes it unfair for them to dictate terms and just keep saying “its our index”. If a utility company was doing that, they’d get rapped on the knuckels.

Thankyou readers, and I’m sure you, and Neil, can understand my frustration.

S.

Yes, you do.

But you also need to be realistic.

Try “great scotland hotels”, “best scotland hotels”, luxury scotland hotels, “great scottish hotels”, “best scottish hotels”, luxury scottish hotels, “hotels in scotland”.

You’ll get more traffic from a dozen longer tail key phrases, than one competitive phrase. Fighting 400,000 other pages that *exactly* match your primary keyphrase is not doing you any favours.

I found hotels.about.com (a major website) with PageRank4, on the fourth page of search results for “scotland hotels”.

I don’t see you being penalised. I see you competing for a phrase you’re not going to rank highly for without a lot more effort.

OK, digging deeper, I found your site on page 21 of the search results. The Title of your homepage badly lets you down. Instead of just “Scotland Hotels”, use something like, “Scotland Hotels, for the best Hotels in Scotland”. I think that will help. I also think that being the 202nd result out of 347,000 is a pretty good start, and you can get that higher with more hard work.

You could also use the Google Adwords Keyword tool to dig up more useful, low-competition keyphrases. I just found…

edinburgh hotels
glasgow hotels
scotland breaks
hotel inverness
scotland accommodation
inverness hotels
loch hotel
hotel oban
loch hotels
hotel pitlochry
scotland luxury hotels
the scotland hotel
aberdeen scotland hotels
hotel perth scotland
perth scotland hotels
scotland hotel deals
cheap scotland hotels
hotel breaks scotland
hotels dumfries scotland
castle hotel scotland
scotland spa hotels
luxury hotels in scotland

Neil.

google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.hotelsinscotland.org&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

… and the homepage is PageRank 3.

I don’t think Google is penalising your site, but 84 pages is not a whole lot to get traffic from.

Your problem is competition. When I search for “THE COPTHORNE HOTEL ABERDEEN”, using quotes, I get 907 results but when I search for “quality service received when staying at The Copthorne Hotel in Aberdeen”, yours is the only result.

You either need more pages, or more links to your current pages to out rank the competition.

Neil.

What you are saying is right with regards to phrases that have no current results on Google, but practically what use is that? I could build a site called “badgers using plug-in kettles on ice” tomorrow and I bet I could get straight to the top of Google for that phrase.

My point is this. I am only using the Scottish part f the hotel booking database, I’ve written a blog which is updated regularly, I’ve written over 50 pages of unique content, what visitors I’ve had (from yahoo) say they find my site very useful, and yet it’s nowhere to be seen on Google. There is no question to me that Google is penalising my site for being an affilliate. The affilliate program is perfectly legitimate, perfectly legal and above board. I poured all my savings into getting my site done, and I believe its of genuine use to people looking for Scotland Hotels. However, because Google conrols 80% of the UK search market, they can dictate terms to little guys like me. Its just wrong, in my opinion. I am very disheartened by the whole experience, and my little dream of being able to make money from my remote highland home is fading fast.