SEO

R&RPig: We have added Indie Riot to our Nonprofit and Informational Sites page. I think this is best... if not, send a squeak my way. SEO Thoughts: You are in Google's Index Thumbs Up PageRank: 4 Number of pages indexed: 5 Relevant Backlinks: 37 1. You need a Meta Description tag... important. 2. I would also include a Meta Keywords tag (good for the 'other' search engines). 3. I will assume that you would want 'southeastern music', 'southeastern art' and 'southeastern filmmakers' as your keyword phrases (again this is just an assumption. If so, I would have those phrases in my description (complete phrases of each) and then you have to include them several times within your body text. Think about it... look at your site from a completely naive perspective. Remove all graphics and all links (i.e. just look at the body text). Don't 'read it', just look at and tell me what it is about? Would be difficult. You use 'south' ones, never southeastern. You use art, music and filmmakers once each. This would tell me (Mr. Spider) that it does not have a lot to do with 'southeastern music', 'southeastern art' and 'southeastern filmmakers'... make sense? 4. I did not look but how large is the site? It looks like you will be adding content as you go which is good. Content is king not only for the viewer but also the spiders. Good luck

Well said Mr. R&RPig... I concur.

Welcome aboard Glenn!

Correct. If you add your site to our family members page (as suggested above) you will definitely be included in the Google index. The best way to be spidered by Google is for them to follow a link to you from another site (and Google likes to frequent our site) In addition, you can ask for a Rank Evaluation and we may be able to give you a few pointers. No you do not. But I would

I would reccomend reading the following: Search Engine Optimization - An Overview (follow all links) Web Site Promotion Tutorials And have you submitted your site to our family members page? Add Me to the Family -> How To Add Your Site P.S. I moved this to the more appropriate forum Web Site Promotion

Brian: Bluegrass Garden has been added to our Web Hosting Family Members page SEO Thoughts: 1. You need Alt tags on all your images. 2. Hmmm... Brian I do not mean to sound harsh but your HTML is pretty dirty. Meaning the proper structure of nested opening and closing tags is not adhered to. Spiders do not like poor HTML so I would highly recommend you clean this up. Here is just one example of you code: ><li><b>Perennials</b></font></a><font color="#003366"> <a class="browse" href="store.html"><font color="#003366"></li> Each set of tags (opening and closing) should be nested properly. See the <b> and then the </b>, well that is perfect. Now notice the </font> closing tag without a corresponding <font> tag. This is true for the </a> as well. And then you have a <font> opening tag but not a closing tag. This is all nested in <li> </li>. You should also get rid of all those spaces ' ' You can validate your HTML using the W3C MarkUp Validation Service. This is very important... for many reasons including spiders. 3. You have one image that is quite large (as in kb); whtswan2.jpg, the actual image is 400 x 326 but you are displaying it at 655 x 221 which is not an equal ratio. This is why the image looks distorted. It would be best to reduce the image size to the actual size that will be displayed which will allow you to display it without distortion plus it will take less memory (i.e. the whole page will load faster). Make sense? 4. <title>Buy trees,shrubs,perennials,vines,plants online! Secure Online Ordering for plants. Top quality garden plants at affordable prices. Buy Online!</title> Too long, how about: <title>Bluegrass Gardens - Online Trees, Shrubs, Perennials, Vines and Plants</title> 5. <meta NAME="description" Too long also. How about: <meta NAME="description" content="Buy trees, shrubs, perennials, vines and plants online from Bluegrass Gardens."> 6. <meta NAME="keywords" Wow... you got a bunch Reduce these down (way down) to only the most relevant. I think I have given you enough to start with... you have a little bit of work to do. Good luck

Image Stash has been added to our Web Hosting Family Members page SEO Thoughts: 1. I see one type: possibilities instead of possibilites 2. <title>Image Stash - Free Image Hosting</title> How about: <title>Free Image Hosting - Image Stash</title> 3. <meta name="description" content="Free Image hosting by Image Stash. Image Stash is your source for Free Image Hosting."> First move this tag above the keyword tag, just below the <title> tag. How about: <meta name="description" content="Free image hosting by Image Stash is your place to store your pictures free."> 4. <meta name="keywords" content="free image hosting, image hosting, auction image hosting, free image storage, free file storage"> Remove the [space] after each comma. I would change 'free file storage' to 'free picture storage'. 5. Good Header tag use Thumbs Up 6. Body Text Bold the first instance of 'free image hosting' (e.g. "We are YOUR source for free image hosting.") As you noted, this is a very small site which is going to make it very difficult to obtain high rankings. Think about adding more content... it is still king! Good luck

SEO Thoughts: You are in Google's Index Thumbs Up PageRank 2 Total Number of Pages Indexed: 11 Number of Relevant Backlinks: 18 Total Backlinks: 18 1. You need to set Alt tags for all your images. 2. <title> Thumbs Up 3. Meta Description Thumbs Up The only thing I might suggest is to switch the word 'firm' in the title to match 'company' in the description. Also, you may want to include 'OR' as well (in addition to Oregon) 4. Meta Keywords I would remove some of these... remember the more you have the less important each one is (i.e. dilution). I would remove email, application, applications, customer, identity, solution, programming and get rid of all the repeats (e.g design). 5. I would add ' Copyright © 2004 by Synotac Design - Portland, OR - All rights reserved.' at the bottom. Gives you one more instance of those keywords. 6. Make sure that every word/phrase that is in your <title> is also in your Meta Description, Meta Keywords and within the text on the page. That means altering your tags or your page tags, which ever seems more appropriate. Good luck

SEO Thoughts: 1. You need to set Alt tags for all you images. 2. You have an HTML error: This (<tr>) should be a </tr> 3. You have several Browser conflicts within your body tag: These are not supported by IE or Netscape. These are not supported by Netscape. These are not supported by IE. 4. Not sure what <br soft> is? 5. Your Meta Description tag should be one complete sentence. You have used two, and the first is a direct repeat of your title... not good. 6. Your Meta Keywords should be listed in order of importance (most important first). If 'vegetarian' is the most important word then I would like to see it in your <title> tag and your Meta Description... actually, should be the first word in both. Make sense? 7. Right under 'where healthy living becomes simple and practical' and above 'What's new?', I would include a small paragraph that begins with your most important keyword and then have other keywords within the paragraph. Maybe even bold a keyword or two. Obviously make it readable for the viewer but think keyword. Actually from a viewers point of view it would be nice too... a quick synopsis of what Simply Natural Health is all about. 8. It looks like you have quite a bit of content... I would create a site map and put a site map link on all pages. This is good for the spiders and your visitors. 9. I did not look at all pages; I try to just focus on the home page for these 'quickie' evaluations. However, in looking at topics.html I see you have quite a bit of content on just that one page. I would recommend breaking this up into multiple pages (e.g. wholesome eating page, raw foods page, etc.). This might be easier for you visitor and definitely best for rankings. Hope this helps

Bill: Synotac Design has been added to our Web Hosting Family Members page Rank evaluation (SEO thoughts) will be made shortly.

evelynmary: It looks like you are still in the process of getting the site moved over. Best for you if you have a complete site for Google to spider. Let us know when you are ready.

John: Simply Natural Health has been added to our Web Hosting Family Members page Rank evaluation (SEO thoughts) will be made shortly.

More important to Meta Keyword tags is to make sure that all pages have a unique <title> tag and Meta Description tag. I too would have Meta Keyword tags but the other two or definitely more important.

Tracy is exactly correct when she says: The meta keyword tag has a very small affect on Google rank. Not to say do not use it, other search engines do put greater emphasis on the tag but 'other' areas are more important with regard to Google and rank. When you enter words into Google's search box (e.g. key west fishing), Google returns what it thinks are the most relevant pages that contain all of the words within the search query (including all variations for those words [i.e. stemming]). When you enter a quoted phrase (e.g. "key west fishing"), Google returns the most relevant pages that contain that exact phrase (in the exact order and no stemming). Hope this helps explain what you are seeing.

Rockie67: Bruce's advice is good... please do.

I have been preaching to people for years to use right side navigation / left side body text. Without a doubt the answer to your question is "no flaw here", good sound logic [meaning you now can have left side navigation with spiders 'reading' the body text first] Spiders don't index style sheets... remember, they are just for style and they do not care about style. There are browser issues but I have given in to that as well. Right now I have three new corporate sites that I am working on... I am using CSS on all three. If you take full advantage of library items, templates and CSS, using Dreamweaver to manage large sites is sooooo nice.

Does not look to me like you cleaned up your html or addressed the Meta Tag issues...

Nancy: Reference to your beautiful photography is on our Web Hosting Family Members page SEO thoughts: 1. You have a serious html error which needs fixing (omission of a td closing tag): [i quoted it instead of coded it so I could include the missing tag in red] 2. Meta and Title tags look good Thumbs Up 3. Change your first line of text from "Nancy Breslin is a Delaware photographer who specializes in images of amusement parks. " to "Nancy A. Breslin is a Delaware fine art photographer who specializes in photographic images of amusement parks.". 4. Change your second line from "Other projects include..." to "Other photography projects include..." 5. Change the alt tag on "Flying Swings" to 'flying swings photograph'. 6. Non SEO suggestion: remove the email link at the bottom of the page (you have a 'contact' link and I think it takes away visually. 7. Flip your layout. In other words, put the black links column on the right instead of the left. [Another non-SEO suggestions, I would use a smaller font on your link text] 8. Ask fellow shooters to exchange links with you (i.e. acquire relevant backlinks). Good luck.

Here is an example of Browser errors: ><table cool width="729" height="50" usegridx usegridy showgridx showgridy gridx="16" gridy="16" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> Attributes like gridx, gridy are not supported in IE or Netscape. Also get ride of cool, usegridx, usegridy, showgridx, showgridy... not sure what program you are using but this is not standard html. Explanation of most of my suggestions can be found by reading the SEO Overview (follow all links) and Web Site Promotion Tutorials here at TCH. Again, hope this helps.

arvind2100: We add sites (index page) to our family member’s pages, not internal pages, sub-domains, etc. Since we have added http://blog.arvind-satya.com/ it does not make sense to add http://blog.arvind-satya.com/sideblog/. Hope you understand (i.e. we can not include all pages from everyone’s sites, just the 'main' page).

SEO thoughts: You are in the Google Index Thumbs Up PageRank 4 1) You have several browser errors. How about validating the page? W3C MarkUP Validation 2) You need to include a Meta Description tag. 3) Use few keywords in your keyword tag. Only select the most relevant ones. Ask yourself for every word if someone is actually going to look and find you for that specfic word(s) (e.g. Are they going to use 'upper'?). 4) You have no body text on your home page. I would include at least some relevant text (with keyword phrases). 5) I would also include <h1> tags and <b> tags on key text within this page. 6) You need alt tags on all your images. Hope this helps.

As Raul said, if it is on someone’s browser... well it is on the browser. The thing is though you can discourage some... I look at it as the same as someone robbing a house. Those that lock the doors make it more difficult, those with deadbolts more so, then you can add an obvious security system, maybe even a nice looking German Shepard (or chocolate lab ). Each addition is a little more discouragement and actually may filter out most of the thieves. However, ultimately if someone wanted in.... they could. Therefore it is just a matter how much time you want to spend on discouraging others. There was a nice (well long any way) thread about this a while back (remember this can you opened Ms. Tracy.... hmm sorry, Ms. Family Member of the Month?): Image Security

No offense taken, we enjoy and encourage suggestions, thoughts and critique. As Mike clearly stated we may have other objectives in certain wording. The popularity and content growth within these forums dictates that we constantly adjust and alter them in order for them to become more useful to all family members. Your particular comments are well noted. [A lot of the existing structured order (organization; i.e. usefulness) came from Mike Thumbs Up ]

Without proper determination / confirmation that this is a real critique, I would delete. But HG is a better man then me

Monkey Guru does love his nanners.... especially the 'magic' ones