What Should I Do?

**Lebleu** · April 8, 2003

My website has been going ok for about 3 months now. It just recently got on google and yahoo but the only place it turns up is when u type in the actual name and even when that turns up it doesnt use the correct description i put in so basically its no help on the engines. As for my website its pretty plane if u take a look at it www.wiredgamerz.com it would be great if you could help me out on what i can add or do to it to make it better. But more importantly how should i promote it. Its basically a fun site to hang out with my friends but thats all, i want more i want strangers coming by and becoming regulars in the forums. I love to talk about that stuff and even now its like a ghost town there cuz most of my friends are getting bored of talking to the same old people over and over. As for advertising thats probably out of the question unless some big sites offering cheap price which i doubt so what do i do?

**Lebleu** · April 8, 2003

aside from the promotional issue i was just lookin at v bulletin how hard would it to be to switch from my site to it? ANd how long would it take?

**TCH-Sales** · April 8, 2003

It always seems to take a while for sites to really get going through the search engines, even after three months.. just the way the wacky world wide web likes to treat us.

As far as getting hits up and advertising; I always say word of mouth is usually the best way to go. This friend tells that friend and passes it along to the next guy or gal.

You might also try searching for some sites with simular intrests as yours, and asking the webmaster or owner of the site to trade links with you. This is another fairly easy way to get some new people into the site.

With reviews or asking people what your site needs or could use, feel free to add a link to your site and post under the Website Reviews. Lots of helpful people will give you some good information about what you need, don't need and what could give you a more stranger friendly site.

Hope this helps!

**Lebleu** · April 8, 2003

ok and btw by vbulletin i was wrong i mean how hard would it be to add phpnuke to my main page that would definatly make it way more lively and i wouldnt have to convert cuz ireally have no main page. Is it possible for the help desk to set phpnuke up? or do i got to do it myself i tried once and i know its pretty hard.

**TCH-Sales** · April 8, 2003

Adding phpnuke to your main page would require you to get your hands dirty a little bit with some codding, and if you don't at first suceed then you gotta try try again. Below I've added some links to some threads about phpnuke that are from this board's past disscusions on it. Hope this helps you make your dessision!

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...339&hl=php+nuke

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...413&hl=php+nuke

**TCH-JimE** · April 8, 2003

Hi,

All sites need a theme or an useful purpose for use in order to make it sucessful. Examples could include www.microsoft.com, www.jennicam.org, www.tek-tips.com, www.players-society.com. Each one has a purpose and a reason for having a web site, and in my mind, thats what makes people come back to it.

My small humble site only worked because my promotion was to post on a board which I know that thousands of people read and since it was connected to my hobby, i wasn't blantanly advertising it either. Within a few months, some extra coding (meta tags), some submission to site engines and a few useful banners placed on other peoples sites, my site is now a rather good success (well IMHO anyway, i better shut up before my head explodes!)

Also remember to have fresh content, have it updated regularly and to make sure all links work. With a bit of "word of mouth" you be surprised how good your site can become!

Jim

P.S. Adding nuke is a good chance to get your hands dirty with some coding, it may look a nightmare when you first start, but persist and nuke can be fun and easy to use. Let us know how you get on!

**Lebleu** · April 8, 2003

so whats going on with this phpnuke self install is it gonna happen if so when? If it is will surely wait for it to become active. And btw can i support nuke 6.5 on these servers?

**Matt** · April 8, 2003

You may also consider adding a recommend box where visitors can send the site to a friend to look at. This usually is only effective on sites that have a loyal following. Being extremely specific in your content is best if you use one...that way people who come to your site for it's content can start to spread it around the applicable community.

**Lebleu** · April 8, 2003

yup specifically gaming but once i get this nuke up it will be even more. But in that thread it mentioned by the guru that we may be getting a auto install for this? Whens this happening?

**TCH-Sales** · April 8, 2003

Best thing I can tell you right now is to stay tuned!

**Lebleu** · April 8, 2003

after uploading phpnuke to my site and going to the page its located at i get these errors:

Warning: main(language/lang-.php) [function.main]: failed to create stream: No such file or directory in /home/lebleu/public_html/html/mainfile.php on line 166

Warning: main() [function.main]: Failed opening 'language/lang-.php' for inclusion (include_path='') in /home/lebleu/public_html/html/mainfile.php on line 166

Warning: head(themes//theme.php) [function.head]: failed to create stream: No such file or directory in /home/lebleu/public_html/html/header.php on line 31

Warning: head() [function.head]: Failed opening 'themes//theme.php' for inclusion (include_path='') in /home/lebleu/public_html/html/header.php on line 31

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: themeheader() in /home/lebleu/public_html/html/header.php on line 47

How do i fix these, FYI my upload stopped after 20 minutes at 97% for some reason if that has anything to do with any of these errors.

**Onlinehelper** · April 18, 2003

***************

It just recently got on google and yahoo but the only place it turns up is when u type in the actual name and even when that turns up it doesnt use the correct description i put in so basically its no help on the engines.

***************

This is what I found on your site's homepage:

**************

when u type in the actual name and even when that turns up it doesnt use the correct description i put in

**************

Have a look at your description tag. You should put up a proper description for your site, which is rich with keywords that you want visitors to come on your site.

Go here:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinve...ory/suggestion/

And try to find out as to which are the most frequently searched keywords and phrases.

Try to target two keywords, which have less competition and more searchers. Put up a description tag which starts with those keywords and repeat those keywords after 2 to 3 more words within the description. Build a decription tag this way. Submit your site to Yahoo and Dmoz.org and use the same keyword rich description. This way, the web searcher will see the description you have put up and will be most likely to visit your site. Most of the times Google uses the description from the Dmoz directory, if your site is listed there.

Have a look at the META TAGS. What are you try to do? Try to get targeted traffic and not just any traffic. Unwanted traffic will not do any good. Remove the unwanted keywords from the meta tags. Your site will be considered as 'keyword spammer' by search engines. Use properly researched minimum keywords per webpage, for maximum results.

Change the content of your site or webpage frequently or weekly and search engine robots will crawl your site again and again. Google loves content!

Change your homepage. If you want traffic, put up a good keyword rich homepage, with minimum graphics. If you have enough traffic, keep your homepage as it is.

Try to find high traffic/pagerank websites and exchange links with such sites. The more links your site gets, the better it is.

The reciprocal links should have the keywords within the text, by which it points your website. Try to get 100 reciprocal links from similar gaming sites, with the keyword 'online gaming' as anchor text and your site will rank higher at Google and will bring in large amount of traffic. (this is just an example. Try to target a keyword which has more popularity and less websites coming up).

**Onlinehelper** · April 18, 2003

Even Totalchoicehosting.com is not optimized for search engines! I think it gets most of it's traffic from FindMyHosting.com due to the excellent reviews and ratings posted by users. But Matt should try to optimize the for search engines!

<head>

<title>Web Hosting - Total Choice Web Hosting</title>

</head>

**SEO** · April 20, 2003

Even Totalchoicehosting.com is not optimized for search engines!

It is not? Onlinehelper, we shall see how TCH shall rank, give it a little time.

I think it gets most of it's traffic from FindMyHosting.com due to the excellent reviews and ratings posted by users.

True, it is a very good source of traffic.

**Onlinehelper** · April 20, 2003

***********

It is not? Onlinehelper, we shall see how TCH shall rank, give it a little time.

***********

Link:www.totalchoicehosting.com

At Google, the above search shows that TCH receives 234 links pointing to it.

And I don't think any site will not be in the top 10 at google (for anchor text keywords, ofcourse), if it receives those many links.

Atleast I am confident of what I am saying! I have placed a few websites in the top 10 at Google, with a few 100 links.

It will be good if you start promoting TCH aggressively, and target free search engine traffic.

By the way, do not target keywords like 'web hosting, hosting, cheap web hosting' , which you must be thinking of. Try something like:

Google:

inexpensive web hosting 2,00,000 competitors.

lowcost web hosting 18,100 competitors.

discount web hosting 7,87,000

affordable web site hosting 7,62,000

dedicated server web hosting 7,98,000

cheap hosting plan site web 1,62,000

.

The list goes on and on. You have to research and target your own keywords. If properly done, TCH can drag in 10,000+ free search engine visitors per month. Get a professional to work on it and your sales will double or tripple up within a few months.

Suggestion: Those customers who place TCH banners on their sites, should place a text link too, saying 'low cost web hosting' and you will notice a huge difference in the rankings your site have at Google.

Forward this suggestion to the Head Guru.

**Head Guru** · April 21, 2003

Even Totalchoicehosting.com is not optimized for search engines! I think it gets most of it's traffic from FindMyHosting.com due to the excellent reviews and ratings posted by users. But Matt should try to optimize the for search engines!

Web Hosting - Total Choice Web Hosting



You are wrong. less than 1/3 of our traffic is related to any web hosting listing site.

You really need to understand the web hosting biz. We dont have any desire to compete with the 2,000,000 other hosting companies listed in yahoo or google.

Our sales come from Magazine Ads, Word of Mouth, Referals, Forum Thread and many other sources.

I really have no desire to have our sales triple. We like the small, family feeling and have no desire to become listed in the top five sites on google.

While your thoughts are kind, we kindly pass.

I hope this makes sense.

Small = good personalized services

Large = Slow response times, overloaded tech support people and high client turnover.

Here is a fact that will blow your mind.

Client turnover at TCH = Less than .005%

Beat that Mr. other Web hosting companies.

So, we can try like hell to get listed in Yahoo and have the sales go thru the roof and fall on our face or grow at the rate we have been, while still providing excellent services.

I'm getting that warm fuzzy feeling again.

**SEO** · April 21, 2003

Mr. Guru:

I too get warm and fuzzy from this (your) family. We all appreciate the disciplined approach you have taken to provide us an excellent service.

However, I along with Onlinehelper would suggest that 'Our sales come from …' may change once optimization takes affect. Having said this, I feel compelled (for the general benefit of our family) to elaborate on some of the important issues that Onlinehelper has addressed.

Onlinehelper:

Thank you for your comments and I am sure others have enjoyed them as well. It is for their sake that I continue this discussion. Search engine optimization is a very worthy topic for any site owner and as you know (but others do not), very few understand and, most importantly, address it.

A little background on TCH. Their site was just recently optimized. It had never been spidered by Google and was never included in their index (or others). The site was submitted to several of the major search engines on March 6 (not Goggle).

Note to others regarding Google submission: It is actually much better to be included into Google by links from other Google indexed sites that link to yours rather then a direct submission to Google.

A link strategy for TCH was developed and then implemented on March 6. Google did their first crawl (shallow) within several days after this. They recorded 38 backlinks at that time. The number of backlinks on March 13 went to 102 and presently they have 234. They have subsequently been deep crawled to a certain degree (e.g. some of the threads within this forum are now spidered) but the entire site has not been crawled as of yet. They have obtained a PR of 6, which is quite respectable considering the timeline (For others: PR stands for Google's PageRank, again discussed in other threads). However, TCH is not formally in the Google index yet. This process is sometimes hard to predict (and getting more difficult these days). When sites are first spidered they can actually appear, disappear and then reappear in the index over time (this was observed for TCH). Furthermore, actual addition into Google's index is not always predictable. I have had sites that were spidered and indexed at the same time, sites that had to go through at least one Google dance. What we are seeing now is that it typically takes two Google dances to be properly included and indexed now.

Note to others regarding Google's dance: Google does several different crawls, which I have explained in this

thread.

Therefore, this should explain my earlier statement 'give it a little time'.

For other members of our family, I would like to elaborate on a couple of Onlinehelper's points.

At Google, the above search shows that TCH receives 234 links pointing to it.

And I don't think any site will not be in the top 10 at google (for anchor text keywords, ofcourse), if it receives those many links.

Atleast I am confident of what I am saying! I have placed a few websites in the top 10 at Google, with a few 100 links.

Links, actually a very specific type of link, inbound links, are very important indeed regarding rank. We have discussed this several times in other threads (regarding both their quantitative and qualitative nature). In brief, I will just state it is not simply a numbers game but the more you have the better. I know that sounds somewhat contradicting but please refer to other threads regarding this subject.

Having said that, a statement referring that 234 links is a lot can be misleading. The significance of the actual number of inbound links is highly dependent on the competitive nature of the keyword phrase you are addressing. For example, if you were interested in the keyword search phrase 'Nacogdoches Barber' (Nacogdoches is a small town in East Texas) then a Barber's site (from Nacogdoches) containing 234 links would be significant. If you look at a broader industry (thus more competitive) 234 would be less significant and possibly insignificant. In other words, it is all relative.

Example: The top ranking web hosting company has 19,800 links. The third ranked site has 32,200. I point this out for two reasons: first to show that the number of links is definitely relative to the industry (234 vs. 32,200); and second to show that quantitative link popularity is just one aspect of optimization and not necessarily the most important (i.e. a 32,200 inbound link page has lower rank then a page with 19,800 links).

By the way, do not target keywords like 'web hosting, hosting, cheap web hosting' , which you must be thinking of. Try something like:

Google:

inexpensive web hosting 2,00,000 competitors.

lowcost web hosting 18,100 competitors.

discount web hosting 7,87,000

affordable web site hosting 7,62,000

dedicated server web hosting 7,98,000

cheap hosting plan site web 1,62,000

.

.

.

Note: your first number has a typo: not 2,000,000 competitors but 200,000.

Again, I would like to elaborate to our other family members. The numbers given above are viewed as competitors (which I agree with) but it is important to understand what these numbers truly represent. There are 200,000 pages indexed within Google for the keyword phrase 'inexpensive web hosting'. That really does not mean you have 200,000 actual competitors but it does mean that if you want to use this phrase then you have 200,000 competing pages. The difference in the specifics is that one competitor will have many different pages within the index for this specific phrase (some optimization strategies [which I do not recommend] would involve including 100's of pages for one site for a particular phrase).

Onlinehelper brings up a good point though in that selecting your keyword phrase(s) is very important. We have discussed this in other threads. It is also worth noting that specifics are very important, for instance: 'lowcost web hosting' will return 24,600 (18,100 before, the index is always growing) but 'low cost web hosting' returns 809,000 pages (a far more competitive phrase). Thus, each space, letter, etc. is relevant.

It is important to understand that you really can not judge how good a phrase is by how many pages are indexed using it. This just helps to define how competitive a particular phrase is. There are some very good tools for identifying the best keyword phrase(s). As mentioned in other threads, Wordtracker is my personal favorite. This will give you quantitative results of actual searches performed. A very, very valuable tool. Using this tool would show that from the list above that only two of the recommended phrases make the top ten of actual 'web hosting' searches performed and none of them are in the top six. Again, it is very important to identify the very best phrase or phrases appropriate for your specific site. The more focused and biased the better. This will translate into a more focused and biased viewer, which results in a much higher ratio of 'satisfied' views (translation for commercial site: $$).

Suggestion: Those customers who place TCH banners on their sites, should place a text link too, saying 'low cost web hosting' and you will notice a huge difference in the rankings your site have at Google.

This is very true. I much prefer a keyword rich description text link then an image link. If one is using image links, make sure to include keyword rich alt tags.

I think this is my longest post ever! Hope it is of some benefit.

**greatfolios sysop** · April 21, 2003

USEFUL INDEED!

Thank You! Some of the best info on this topic to date!

BIll McCord

www.greatfolios.com

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