SEO
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Just view this as the total number of vistors, some unique and others... well just pretty normalQUOTENumber of visits 2667
This is the number of times that the unique vistors have visted, so some have come back more then once.
(i.e. repeats).A hit is any retrinal of a file which makes up a page, e.g. a graphic, a picture. These days "hits" are banded about like they are going out of fashion.In reality, they mean nothing, because its not about hits, its about unique vistors.
Exactly!
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More of that proactive stuff!
TCH TCH Stones and rolls!
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More specifics on this subject coming soon.
Dakota, as promised... Search Engine Optimization - An Overview
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The importance of inbound links (Backlinks).
Recently the topic of link structure has come up within our family forum.
Read Link Structure - Hyperlinks and the Importance of Link Structure for review.
Here I would like to discuss the ever-growing importance of inbound links. These are the links that other sites have which link back to your site (thus the name, backlinks). Inbound links affect all search engines but here I will focus on their influence to Google's PageRank.
Read Google's PageRank for review and more detail.
A large portion of PageRank (PR) is calculated by the number of inbound links and the corresponding PR of the linking page. Thus, not all pages contribute the same amount. It is more complicated then simply stating that a PR7 page contributes more then a PR5 page. Analysis of the equation reveals that the PR of the linking page is equally shared among all the outgoing links. Therefore, the ideal world would be a PR10 page with only one outbound link… the one pointing to you.
Side note: Understanding one's rank and PR score will be discussed in my next post.
Keep in mind that the text of the link and the surrounding text are involved in the analysis. Thus, one can accurately conclude that a text link would be more 'rewarding' then a graphical link.
For example, we ask all TCH clients to link to us
using a text link that looks like this:Web Hosting by TotalChoice Hosting
><a title="web hosting by TotalChoice Hosting" href="http://www.totalchoicehosting.com"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1" color="#003366">Web Hosting by TotalChoice Hosting</font></a>
Note the use of words, we like 'web hosting'.
We also offer you to add a link to your site on our family member's page. This is in your very best interest. The requirements are that the site must be complete (e.g. no under construction sites) and you must have a link to us (as the one described above).
Side note #2: The best way to be included in Google's index is not by submitting your site to their index, rather by their spider (Googlebot) 'finding' you via a link found on a indexed page. Googlebot frequently visits TotalChoice Hosting; therefore, adding your link to our family page will insure a Google visit.
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Remember the google dance?
PageRank of all indexed pages is recalculated during each dance.
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Jack:
It looks to me like you are just early in the process. You have seven pages queued in Google's index. Once these are truly indexed, following visits will be deeper crawls.
Depth of crawl depends on 'How important a site is.' which is influenced by the number of quality inbound links you have. I count less then 10 inbound links to your site... that will never get you deep crawled. Therefore, get more links!
The good news is that I do not believe you are under any penalty... they can be a serious pain, which can take many months to rectify.
Good luck.
One side note:
I could not get you to come up in dmoz. They did not drop you did they? I see that that you were there (dmoz listing in Google's cache). Not sure if this is a red flag or not.
You do not use doorway pages do you?
Do you have any other URL's pointing to similar or the same site?
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Jack (and others):
I have looked into dynamic pages extensively with regard to search engine indexing.
Without a doubt, the way to go was using mod_rewrite (for Apache).
However, from Google's mouth:
Writing dynamic urls as if they were static used to be the "right way" to present dynamic urls, but that's changing, at least for Google. Google is getting better about crawling dynamic urls, and we'd prefer to see dynamic urls in all their glory instead of written as if they were static. You'll see an increasing number of hosts where we could crawl deeply into a site through all kinds of dynamic urls.Google was pretty much the first to crawl dynamic urls, and we want to do it right without causing webmasters to rework their site. Of course, if you have a url with 15 parameters and only two of them actually mean anything, it's always a good idea to shorten a url whenever possible by trimming out the unneeded parameters.
Changing dynamic urls to appear static will be less important over time as Google crawls dynamic urls better. We also estimate host load by taking account whether a url is dynamic or not. Keeping dynamic urls written as dynamic will help us to estimate the load for your server and keep a bot from hitting your server too often.
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There will be three judges for this contest - lstover, sicilychick and dsdemmin.
Um... my three kids want to know if I can be bought.
Let's see:
Lawn mowed until college.
Dishes done until college.
Dog (you know) picked up until college.
Laundry done... until college.
Clean cars and truck until college (weekly).
Hose vacuumed every other day... until college.
And did I mention nightly backrubs?
And speaking of college.... scholarships?
Lianna and Patty... we need to talk.
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Not necessarily a bad idea... but it definitely affects the link structure which in turn affects how each page is ranked.
Remember that a site is there for 'real' eyes to view. Therefore, I do not want to put too much attention on SEO. You never want to negatively alter a visual presentation for the sake of SEO.
Having said that, most do not put any (or minimal effort) into SEO and if you think about it... it might be your most important concern.
You could create the most beautiful site in the world but if no one can find it... what good is it.
On the other hand, some of the ugliest sites have really good rankings (and traffic!).
Which would you rather have?
Me, I like both!
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Jack:
I will look it over tonight, not that I am going to give you a 'real' review but I will see if anything blatantly stands out.
I will get back to you.
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Several potentials reasons:
1. Spam penalty... there are lots of tactics which are considered spam which can penalize rank or remove sites (or never add) from directories. One of the most common 'surprises' is linking to bad neighborhoods (e.g. link farms).
2. Indexing (with Google) can take awhile these days. For instance, we are at the tail end of a dance right now that is taking an unusually long time. Depending how the ball bounces, it can take three months or longer to be indexed. I tell our clients that top rankings (not just indexing) requires patients for 180 days.
I do not want to get into this practice at this time but,
what is the URL?
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If you have 20 links on the same page linking to one page... no difference than if you have one.
Redundancy does not count. We are speaking in terms of how all the pages within a site are linked together. Not all pages should link to all pages... therefore there is a certain link structure.
Assuming your home page is the most important, it should be the only page that has every page within the site linking back to it.
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Spam is a continuing problem with the search engine spiders. They continue to update their alogs for searching, finding and penalizing sites that use any devious tactics.
... this applaus me, because its so easy to spamThis surprises me... why do you think it would be so easy?
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This can occur during a fresh crawl. Scenario: Google is crawling a high PR (PageRank) site that has a 'new' link on it to page X. Page X will automatically be included in the index (sort of). It is not truly indexed rather in the queue to be indexed. However, since it was a highly ranked site that got it in the queue, Google extrapolates a 'fresh' (and very temporary) PR for that page (Page X). Therefore, brand new pages can be given temporary high rankings.I've seen some websites that have been up for one week with nothing more than a "We're coming soon" listed fairly high at Google where my "well designed" sites get nothing.I know Google likes to find sites by backward links... but I think I've seen some sites that don't have backward links yet.A site appears in a Google search but does not contain backlinks: this is related to the above description. Actually, this is exactly what you would see. Meaning this page is not truly indexed but is in the queue. The PR is extrapolated from the truly indexed page (or pages) that have linked to it.
Read more on Google's different crawls.
Any tips or ideas?Read all the search engine optimization articles supplied by TotalChoice Hosting:
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From a private message:
I've been having a heck of a time getting some of my sites even listed in Google at all.I've seen some websites that have been up for one week with nothing more than a "We're coming soon" listed fairly high at Google where my "well designed" sites get nothing.
I know Google likes to find sites by backward links... but I think I've seen some sites that don't have backward links yet.
Any tips or ideas?
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does http://www.greatfolios.com/html/services.html equal www.greatfolios.com/services.html equal ../html/services.html ?
It used to, but these days spiders are 'geared' to dig deep within sites. I will add this: Good sites have good structure, meaning multiple directories. It just makes organizational sense to tree (multiple level directories) a site in a logical fashion.
If one does this then pages will have hierarchical differences within the site. This plays into the complexity of the internal linking of a site.
My question is this, should I be concerned just how many internal links (on site) my main page has?Internal links would be silly to count if a search engine does it cos its would be easy to spamInternal linking is very important. Not silly at all... think about it.
If I was a resource of content.... say Birds. I would have to give this content some 'structure' for usability reasons. I would have some introduction regarding a very general introduction to birds and hopefully an explanation on the organization of the site. This would be my home page... where the rest of the information disseminates from (i.e. all pages should point back to this page).
Now from here I could go off into various general descriptions of more specific topics. Some of these topics would be inter-related (e.g. links to each other), others would not. More pages would be required for more specific discussion on these specific topics (still deeper). Then you could tangent off into particulars of specific birds. Deeper yet would include discussions of the evolution of that particular species (which would relate to other species, e.g. specific internal linking), research on that particular species, etc. Do you see the tree?
Now, how one links (internally) between all these pages will not only give the content structure from a user's point of view but also from a 'relevancy' point of view. It is this 'relevancy' that spiders are attempting to determine.
Does internal linking matter.... Most definitely.
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Good work guys!
Everybody hitting us at once. We need to come up with a name for these P(eople)H(elping)P(eople).
Seriously.... very good posts!
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The first step to any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consideration is selecting the proper keyword phrase(s). First, think outsides of your position (you are not 'you' looking for 'you') rather really try to put yourself in the shoes of a potential viewer. What would they (again, not 'you') use to find your content?
Create a list of potential keyword phrases. Take these and see how popular they are… How? Well, there are several ways. One, do searches using these words, do your competitors come up? How many pages are in the index with this phrase?
More accurate information can be gleamed from professional (i.e. you pay for it) services that offer 'real' numbers. Wordtracker is one example that can give you real data on the popularity of a term. Some people review the PPC rates (Pay Per Click) of individual phrases and assume that the higher the cost, the better the phrase.
The important thing is to spend the proper amount of time (i.e. research) to determine the ideal phrase.
It is not only the first step, but also one of the most important.
Real Story.
A client, on a TCH server, came to us and asked to optimize their site for 'barley straw'.
They offered a single product to fishpond owners, bags of barley straw. It turns out that if one places barley straw in a fishpond, it prevents algae (a continuously big problem for fishpond owners) from growing.
Well, the first step was what?
Yes, Keyword Analysis.
We found that 'Barley Straw' was not a real popular search phrase. Now we could have easily optimized their site for 'Barley Straw' but what would be the point? Through analysis, we found that 'Garden Pond Supply' or 'Pond Supply' would be the best phrases (also the most competitive). Through our optimization procedures, this site has top rankings among all the major search engines for these two phrases. Traffic to their site resulting from these rankings altered their entire business; they now offer all kinds of garden pond supply!
Morale of the story… Choose your keyword phrases wisely.
Read more:
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Back to your question surefire:
Question: Does Google know what size your h1 fonts are if you use an external style sheet?The answer is more complicated then I first relized. The first answer is I gave: 'NO' is correct (generally).
However, there is a small matter of spamming.
Remember that the original point of the heading tag was to convey information about the structure of the document. Important section headings should use a heading tag; it sets it apart from the rest of the text. What is being used now are multiple <h1> tags within the document that are altered via CSS to mimic the rest of the text - clearly spamming.
Therefore, it is believed that algorithms may search for such tactics for the purpose of penalty. Therefore, the answer may be 'Yes'.
The bottom line, formatting any tag to the extent that it no longer visually differs from normal text would be considered spamming and should be avoided. However, altering 'super big' to 'reasonably big' would not generate a red flag.
Hope this clarifies.
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HG:
Thanks for your concern... it helps us all.
I would still recommend changing the name of the script for added security. Anything accept FormMail....
Send_It or even better, Send_TCH_It.
Thanks again.
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I could have sworn that I addressed this last night... strange.Question: Does Google know what size your h1 fonts are if you use an external style sheet?Good question and I do not have a definite answer, my first impression would be no. Let me look into it and I will give you an informed answer.
If I do not respond within the next couple of days... send me a PM.
why in the world does Google care what size fonts are on a page???Think about... you are trying to define what is 'most' important on a page. What would you look at? Might you assume that a phrase or word in the largest font on a page have more importance? The author obviously wanted to put emphasis on it for some reason... sounds reasonable to me.
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I have been known to contact (via email) some nameservers asking them to update their cache (I always give the specific URL). Occasionally, they even reply!
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Sometime when you rub 'Rocks' together... things happen.
Guest
in Pre-Sales Questions
Posted
No, it is part of the Matrix.