SEO
-
Posts
1,370 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by SEO
-
-
How can I make it so if someone clicks on it they are put to the index page 1st and not somewhere 5 pages deep in my site?
There is a way to do this but if you were to redirect, then the indexed internal page would not be indexed
Most ideal to have as many pages as possible indexed.
Have you optimized your home page for those particular phrases? Do you have all your internal pages linking back to your home page? Do you have external backlinks linking to internal pages? Strong external links linking to internal pages would contribute to internal pages being ranked well (which is a good thing).
If you prefer, have all external backlinks pointing to your home page, not internal pages.
In all honestly, your 'problem' is a good thing. Just make it so one can easily be directed to your home page from all your internal pages.
Good luck.
-
Looks to me like things have normalized across all data centers (as off last night, it is early in the morning here now). Over the next several weeks (months and years too!), I will be sorting through data to see what I can find out about the latest algo and new filters that were obviously put into play this round.
It is also worth noting that this was a 'real' dance. A lot in the SEO world expressed that the dance was dead and that it would be a continues update from now on. As I have stated elsewhere, I do not see how this is possible. PageRank, which is the 'core' of calculating rank with Google is dependant upon PageRank for the entire index... each individual site is affected by all other sites. The only way to truly update the index is to do a number of iterations calculating and recalculating PageRank across the entire index. The fluctuations in rank of any one particular page is the shuffling or movement during this period of updating all the pages. This ‘movement’ is what originally lead to coining the phrase 'dance' to describe the massive update.
I think the good news is that Google did do this 'real' update, the next 'hope' is that the update will get back to a more scheduled event (remember it used to be every 4-5 weeks). I much prefer predictability!
I will not be able to comment further after this post as my wife and children are going to spend Thanksgiving in the beautiful state of Colorado...
Happy Thanksgiving to all
-
Collin:
We have added you to our Extended Family - Nonprofit and Informational Sites page
SEO thoughts:
Collin, sorry but key elements are missing from your pages (e.g. meta tags). I would recommend reading Seo… What Is It? and follow all the links.
After you have implemented what is discussed in these various pages, feel free to come back and repost in this thread and I will offer my two cents.
We would much prefer a 'text' link rather then the graphic, would also fit in nicer with your 'clean' design
-
Joe:
You have been added to our Extended Family - Commercial Sites page.
SEO thoughts:
1. Your title is 'title'
How about <title>Keystone Embroidery</title>
2. Description
This <meta name="description" content="Tournament Fishing Shirts that can be embroidered for your club or team with your logo."> says that your number one keyword phrase is 'tournament fishing shirts'. Is this your best phrase?
3. Keywords
If the above is true, then this <meta name="keywords" content="tournament shirt, B.A.S.S., men's fishing shirt, embroidery, bass club, shirt, hunting, www.keystone-embroidery.com"> should begin with 'tournament fishing shirts, next important phrase, etc.
4. Get rid of this:
<p><!--webbot bot="PurpleText"
preview="Write an introductory paragraph for your home page here. This is like the front door to your home on the Internet. Invite visitors to step in and have a look around. " --> </p>
5. Get backlinks (other sites linking to you), lot of them!
Good luck.
-
Devon:
Interdisciplinary Scientific Research has been added to our Extended Family - Commercial Sites page.
SEO thoughts:
Devon, key (important) elements are missing from your pages. I would recommend reading Seo… What Is It? and follow all the links.
After you have implemented what is discussed in these various SEO pages, feel free to come back and post in this same thread and I will offer my two cents.
(this is the second time I have postponed my comments... sorry
) -
Sam:
You are on our Extended Family - Commercial Sites page
SEO thoughts (brief):
1. Title
<title>Venue Chicago Event Management Home Page</title>
How about,
<title>Event Management by Venue Chicago</title>
2. Description
<meta name="description" content="Venue Chicago Event Management delivers sociable, creative and innovative ideas for any type of event. Venue Chicago works with the top venues to ensure top quality presentation with every event">
How about,
<meta name="description" content="Event Management by Venue Chicago delivers sociable, creative and innovative ideas for all events.">
3. Keywords
<meta name="keywords" content="venue,Chicago,event,services,event management,corporate events,philanthropic events,event planner, venue planning,venuechgo@aol.com,Venue Chicago,Venue Chicago Event Management">
How about,
<meta name="keywords" content="event management,venue event,corporate events,philanthropic events,event planner,venue planning,Venue Chicago Event Management">
4. You have to get some body text on your home page... you have 21 words and some of these are stop words (i.e. not 'looked' at by the search engines [e.g. 'and'])
5. You need to get other sites to link back to your site.
Have you read all the SEO resources that are here? They are full of useful information that would help you and your site
-
Billy:
We added your site to our Extended Family - Nonprofit and Informational Sites page.
Thanks for being part of the family!
-
Kyler:
We have add your site to our Extended Family - Personal Sites page.
Thoughts on SEO:
Your pages lack some of the very basics
I would recommend reading Seo… What Is It? and follow all the links. I think you will find the information both useful and beneficial.
Good luck
-
You bet
-
DarqFlare:
Remember PageRank is important but only one 'part'. More importantly is your actual rank.
You choose 'online multiplayer gaming' to be your most important phrase. I see that you are now listed 4th for that rank... I do not remember where you were before but 4th is not to shabby
Thumbs Up -
Over the next several months, I'll be doing whatever I can to make Google just one piece of my marketing mix, rather than the key factor.
Very wise words Thumbs Up
The only problem is that Google is so darn important. If you look at real numbers of sites that have top rankings for their most relevant search phrases among all the major search engines you will see that 'Google' is the search engine, bar none.
Then when you look at search engine derived Internet sells (again across an array of sites that do possess top rankings) as it compares to 'other' forms of derived Internet sells... well again, no comparison. Thus, we logically conclude that Google needs courting.
If we are conscience of the ‘power’ of Google, we focus our efforts appropriately on Google. However, by putting so much dependency on Google we flirt with devastation (i.e. the source could dry up) - potentially damned if we do, definitely damned if we don’t.
This is why so many are interested in the relatively recent turn of events within the search engine world and hope that someone (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) will give Google a run for their money. But for now, Google is the only dance in town.
-
You can change the contact information to whom ever you like
-
As of 12:39am (EST) November 20, 2003 the ‘November Shuffle’ continues.
-
Oh, you beat me to the punch Mr. Rob...
... nice to see how consistent these TCH folks are
-
Sorry John... thought I answered your question.
From Googles own mouth:
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.For example, if I have a hard to remember domain name that is hosted, then want to create a "support" page - it would make sense to acquire an easy to remember domain name and forward it to the support page at the existing hosted domain.As I alluded to, my advice would be to 'acquire an easy to remember domain name' and redirect the 'hard to remember domain name'.
-
Not legal, I am speaking in terms of search engines only. Search engines can and will penalize sites for duplicate content. One of the early spams was to have multiple URLs with all the same (or very similar) content... a no-no today.
Regarding redirects:
More on permanent redirects here.
To have a redirect you need access to your .htaccess file... not sure you have access. Do you have an .htaccess file in ~rachel (this would be, by loose definition, your root)?
-
John:
This 'strategy' would be asking for trouble.For example, yoursite.com is registered and hosted at TCH (yoursite.com/index.html). You buy a couple of other domains (say, each representing a different product sold at yoursite.com) and want to point to subdomains or a specific pages within the yoursite.com hosted account.Furthermore, would the ranking be effected in any way if the additional domains were hosted as 'themselves' rather than being forwarded to pages at an existing site?If 'as "themselves"' you mean separate distinct content, then they would be viewed, indexed and ranked as separate entities. You have to be careful here though with avoiding the filter for duplicate content.
And finally, does multiple redirection have any effect on the listing - e.g. newdomain.com forwarded to a DNS service such as zoneedit from the registrar, then further forwarded through zoneedit to the sub-page or domain within the main site?If the redirect is a permanent 301 redirect, you are fine.
Good luck
-
samporras:
www.venuechicago.com has only just been indexed. Only the home page has been included thus far in Google's index, your site has no PageRank. You have to wait and get the entire site indexed (i.e. deep crawled) which may take some time.
As far as links go, you are right that links from a site may 'lead business away' but the reciprocal links (links on those other pages back to you), may 'lead business your way'. Therefore in essence, it is a wash (from that perspective). You can also go after links that complement the business not compete.
Word of caution: having duplicate content can get you in trouble. The original will always carry more weight (makes sense, it was the 'original'). Ideally, you would put permanent redirects on the school project pages to the 'real' page. This would give your 'new' site instant indexing, PageRank, and rankings (and eliminate any potential penalization for duplicate content).
Final suggestion: If the site is hosted here at TotalChoice, add it to our family members page.
-
You made me laugh Jim... thank you.
Maybe you are better then you think!
Don't look at any rankings right now... they are not real. Wait a couple days and maybe it won't be so high and you won't be so discouraged... boy if that does not sound funny (worse results for encouragement!).
P.S. Your images are not showing up on the goat (car for those unfamiliar) page.
-
I have no index page in my public_html folder, it is in my /blog folder for my blog site. I put this, DirectoryIndex blog/index.html, in my .htaccess file. Is that not a good thing or am I totally off topic?
Rob:
You are on topic. My answer is one from my gut not concrete fact. I do not like redirecting an opening page. So many people used this in a negative way to spam the search engines. Thus, I always recommend a 'real' index.html on every single site. Again, this is just my gut feeling based on the history of misuse for redirects (i.e. better save then sorry).
Also, think about it... the most important page of any site (by far) is the index page. Most attention should be placed on if from both a visual presentation point of view and, most importantly, from a search engine point of view.
I guess my question to you would be why did you create a /blog directory? If this is your primary page(s), put that in the root (well the public_html directory) and create subdirectories for the remainder of your files.
If this does not make sense, I might be the one who is misunderstanding your situation... if so, sorry.
-
... it would be better to have people that are linked to him link to the correct pages instead of relying on the redirect.
Most definitely, the only reason I would recommend a permanent redirect is in a case which two URLs have been used to identify the same page. This would apply to computerman's situation. I personally do not know of any other way to maintain previous links.
Most importantly (from my very focused perspective [wish one day someone would remove these darn blinders
]), it is the only way to pass indexing, PageRank, etc. to the new named page. -
As we alluded to in other threads, Google is definitely in the midst of a dance. I have received multiple e-mails, and messages asking me for a follow-up and my opinion on this latest round.
To be honest, you really should not look until it is over (which I would think should be in one more day [or two]). At this point I can say that all the sites I manage fall into two distinct groups. One set has maintained high rankings (with minor up/down fluctuations) and the other set has fallen drastically or disappeared completely from the rankings.
Another distinction between these two groups that I have noticed is a difference in the page cached within Google. The group which maintained high rankings has a ‘fresh’ page cached. The group that has fallen or disappeared has an old cached page. This would suggest that the ‘fallen’ group has not been put into the mix (i.e. dance) yet.
Again, no sense of speculating what this new scenario brings us until… well until it does.
Time will tell and I will follow up with comments at the appropriate time.
-
Highly recommended!You can add a permanent redirect from your Cpanel if you want.More specifics in the thread Htaccess, permanent 301 page move
It's not a great long-term solution but it will keep folks from getting "Error 404 - page not found" errors.Not sure what you mean here Jim, it is a 'long-term solution', remember it is a 'permanent' redirect.
-
Good discussion!
Relevancy (in terms of a search result): close logical relationship (and importance to) the searchers request.
Here lies the crux… logic. How does one logically identify a relationship between a keyword phrase and a huge reservoir of text?
This is the question of all search engines.
From the ‘data’ point of view it is obviously difficult. Not everyone uses the same vocabulary, nor do writers use the same format. It is a very inconsistent, multi-language database that gets bigger every single second of every single day… quite a task.
Then throw in those manipulating SEO types which try to utilize every line of an algorithm to their advantage (i.e. enter the ‘filter’). Continuous manipulation, continuous filters.
From the searchers point of view, again a difficult task. Not everyone uses the same vocabulary, nor does everyone possess the same ‘logic’ (e.g. different search phrases for different folks… same desired ‘relevancy’).
Chosen Approach:
1. Great big powerful computers.
2. Sophisticated algorithms that associate and rank text to actual content.
3. Sophisticated algorithms that associate and rank content to brief descriptive words (i.e. the search phrase).
4. Sophisticated algorithms that associate ‘importance’ of a given document (e.g. Science Citation Index, PageRank, etc.)
5. Creation of huge databases (thank goodness for 1.)
6. More sophisticated query options.
…in a perfect world, the search engine would know exactly what I was after and deliver it to me.You walk into a library, you head straight for the reference desk, and you smile and look into the eyes of the librarian (who has a vast knowledge of the ‘content’ and ask… “I am looking for information on ‘Kodak camera’. She accesses her vast knowledge and instantly thinks of several resources (an excellent George Eastman autobiography, a historical perspective of Kodak, minutes from last year’s shareholders meeting, a products catalog, this quarter’s financial report, that brand new controversial biography of George Eastman, etc.).
What happens next is critical… the librarian peers back into your wanting eyes and asks for more specifics on what you are actually 'looking for’. After this follow-up he or she briskly walks to the desired reference. I have often thought that the briskness in the ultimate retrieval is indication of the internal joy they have of ‘solving another challenge’. You know, the "I've got it!".
What they heck does this have to do with Google?
Well actually, a lot. Google does not have eyes of the librarian but it certainly has the briskness! What we have to do is prompt the critical step of ‘more specifics’. Therefore, if we are interested in product information for a Kodak DX6490 from Kodak, we should search for ‘dx6490 site:kodak.com’ This gives us a search for ‘dx6490’ restricted to the domain kodak.com. The advanced search feature on Google is pretty darn powerful; I think that most people tend not to use it however.
[Now we may not want to restrict are search to just Kodak. I think that we would all agree that generally the best reference material for a product does not come from the manufacturer, software is a perfect example.]
As you alluded to Jim, most corporations are very inept at presenting relevant information in a usable fashion via the Internet. Very few large marketing departments and firms ‘get it’. They are using the same strategies and techniques that they have always used and these are inappropriate, or rather ineffective, in this new digital arena.
Sears is a perfect example. The ‘size’ of it would contribute very well to search engine rankings, no dilution. Proper site structure would feed all internal pages resulting in a lot of top rankings which in themselves would feed upon each other propping individual page rankings even higher. I have always said the more content the better. Obviously the better the presentation and organization of that content the better for the ‘viewer’ and the search engines.
One thing that did remain true... content is still king!
Therefore, as you’all have already stated, we have two considerations to the problem of ‘relevancy’. One, the data is not structured or presented in a matter that is most useful (to both the viewer and the indexing search engines). Two, actual search quires could be more refined.
On the second point, I have a few suggestions. First and foremost, setup your Google preferences if you have not already done so. This is accomplished by clicking on the ‘preferences’ link within Google. I search ‘English’ text only, I display 50 results not the standard 10 and if I click on a link from the ranking results, it opens to a new window (leaving my ranking results page loaded). As far as advanced search quires go, here are some of my favorites:
allintext: keyword phrase found within the body text of page
allintitle: keyword phrase found within the page title
related: lists pages that are ‘similar’ to a given page
site: as demonstrated above
And I can not leave out my favorite SEO searches:
site:www.somesite.com –querty - this gives the number of pages indexed.
link:http://www.somesite.com - this gives the number of backlinks which actually contribute significant PageRank
+www.somesite.com.+com - this gives me the number of total backlinks
Google's November Shuffle
in Web Site Promotion
Posted
The question for the last 8 months! It used to be pretty darn predictable (about every 38 days or so). Now, well now nobody knows. This last 'rearrangement' was more like the typical dances of the past (with some strange results I will add). If things begin to normalize, I imagine it would be on a more regular basis (insert large quantity of Hope here
).