Website search engine hits

[Stonaman8]

i have been asked to develop a small website but i'm not sure how to add key words to the code/page that would be used by search engine to find the website. i would prefer to be found on the first page on most search engines if possible so any advice or tips would be appreciated. the website info is mostly on building supplies but mainly bricks. cheers

[sameer.net.in]

u should focus on following tags
<meta name="keywords" content="your relevant keywords here( no more than 10-12)" />
<meta name="description" content="your relevant keywords here( no more than 10-12)" />
<title>your relevant keywords here( no more than 10-12) - your page title </title>

read an advanced tutorials >> http://codezila.com/section.php?section=articles

i hope those help u figure out what you need.

[SEOJoe]

u should focus on following tags
<meta name="keywords" content="your relevant keywords here( no more than 10-12)" />


i hope those help u figure out what you need.


google doesnt use the keywords meta tag anymore. just title and description within the meta tags. the reason being, site owners where stuffing the keywords meta tag with keywords that are unrelated to the sites topic.

[sameer.net.in]

yes google does not consider keywords meta tag,
but google is not one and only thing in world.
dont ignore other search engines :)
be positive :)

[SEOJoe]

yes google does not consider keywords meta tag,
but google is not one and only thing in world.
dont ignore other search engines :)
be positive :)

i believe that if you optimize for google the other search engines will fall into place. :)

[Battaglia]

I to am trying to find a way of improving my sites search results, If anyone can offer further tips on getting it to come up as near a top as possible please let me know. :)

thanks

[SEOJoe]

it takes alot of work. please email me. i am not on the board too often. thanks

[Battaglia]

thanks will do, whats your email address?

[SEOJoe]

email removed for your own protection

[webstart]

is it ok to email you as well??

[JoeySEO]

You may be add <h1>Subject + Keywords</h1> to top page.

[<Eddie>]

You guys have all missed the most important aspect of getting a good rank. Plenty of informative content. When it's structured well with descriptive headers, is on topic, concise with a descriptive title you'll have a good base to work with. It's the links to the site that will give this good content rank though.

[mousepaw]

I may be way off here but here's what I've been able to discover so far, about SEO... It's the hits that give you the ranking. You need popularity. Yes, linking is a good idea but I haven't been able to figure out if it's reciprocal or to what degree. I might link to you but does that do you (or me) any good if no one can find my website? Content is wonderful but webbots still have to find you which I imagine is where the idea of stuffing keywords (particularly using big names no matter how irrelevant) came from. Google Adwords won't even consider you unless you have the traffic so other than traditional advertising (business cards, locally, national papers, tv, radio, yellow pages, etc.,) it's tough to drive traffic to your website unless you can get your link on a biggie website. ($$$??) I did it by making sure the company's website address was on every single piece of paper that left their desk so that people could find us. Word spreads. Eventually you get found on a major search engine - it took us about 3 months @ 100 hits/day to come up on Google within the first 3 pages. It's the fastest, cheapest and surest way to get an honest/good ranking. Once you get the hits, you don't need as much advertising anymore. Also, the more directories you're listed in, the better.

[webstart]

yup, links and word of mouth... One day I just happen to be on google what a surprise that was :D

[SEOJoe]

hi mousepaw,

you make a very valid point. SEO is by far the most cost effective means in terms of ROI. However, depending on your business model, especially if you are a corporate entity, SEO would only consist of 13% of an overall online marketing campaign. SEO is highly cost effective but search engine rankings fluctuate, as I am sure we all know, and if you base sales or leads strictly on your ranking, business could suffer a lapse in earnings if your ranking lost its position. Actually, focusing on SEO alone can actually hurt your profit margin from SEO as well. Let me explain. Lets say for example, you rank #1 in google for "laptops". During that time you ranked #1 for "laptops" you made an average of 8 sales per day for 4 weeks. During this period, your profit margin was highly satisfactory, the sales coming in are on autopilot and your time, energy and expenses are kept to a minimum due to the cost effectiveness of SEO. Business is great! SEO is great! However, the days following your 4 weeks of ranking #1, you begin to see your ranking slip. The 5th week, you rank #2 only getting 1/3 of the sales your did previosly. The 6th week your ranking slipped another 3 positions to #5 only receiving 1 sale a day. This is when SEO as a single online marketing channel becomes a concern. Your profit margin is shrinking rapidly. Your revenue is decreasing. Your time and energy needs to be rechanneled away from where you had it focused when business was good, now towards regaining your ranking. In hind sight, business growth is stalled. After all this, your finally regain your #1 ranking on the 8th week regaining the steam you had during the first 4 weeks and you have saved the day. However, if you compare your profit margins, weeks 1-4 vs. weeks 1-8 your will see that weeks 1-4 proved that SEO is the most cost effective means of online marketing but if you compare the profit margin of weeks 1-8 from SEO against, lets say, PPC, you will see that after the 8 weeks the profit margin was equal to lets say your 8 week PPC profit margin. The moral of this story is "Diversify". SEO is the most cost effective means of online marketing but you should not rely on SEO as a lone form of marketing online. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Especially if your online business is your single source of income. Diversification in terms of online marketing should be your goal. Not only will you be able to sustain profit but you will be able to handle any unforeseen hurdles that may occur. Your business will continue to grow but mostly importantly your business will be able to with stand problems that are not in your control.

P.S. These statements are not meant to prove anyone wrong in this thread nor is it a knock on SEO. It is stricly an unbiased statement based upon my many years of doing business online. This may not be the case for all business online and many business can possibly challenge my statement based upon their own experiences. However, it is better to be safe now instead of sorry later. What I mean by that is, this may be typical for a startup company. Most companies had all gone through "Growing Pains". For those business owners who have been lucky enough to avoid hurdles like these in the beginning and have built many profitable businesses I say to you this, "From my experiences, it is better to go through growing pains now then to encounter problems when business is great. The bigger the company is the bigger the headaches are."

SEOJoe

[mousepaw]

To SEOJoe,

You are wise in the ways of internet marketing. Thank you for your considered opinion. I (obviously?) am relatively new to this and am feeling rather overwhelmed by the difficulties and frustrations of getting a new site seen. I'm not stingy by any means, I just don't know where to put the money and so, word of mouth, (as Webstart put it) and advertising in all the usual spots is what seems to work for me, to date. Unfortunately (embarassingly), I am still struggling with frames and so this is my first foray into the world of search engine optimization/web development to seek answers. However desperately I am trying to figure out where to go to learn which/what/it all, it seems that in the end, we are all searching for the fast track to getting into a first page on a search engine. I sincerely appreciate your feed back.

Best regards to all.

[SEOJoe]

To SEOJoe,

You are wise in the ways of internet marketing. Thank you for your considered opinion. I (obviously?) am relatively new to this and am feeling rather overwhelmed by the difficulties and frustrations of getting a new site seen. I'm not stingy by any means, I just don't know where to put the money and so, word of mouth, (as Webstart put it) and advertising in all the usual spots is what seems to work for me, to date. Unfortunately (embarassingly), I am still struggling with frames and so this is my first foray into the world of search engine optimization/web development to seek answers. However desperately I am trying to figure out where to go to learn which/what/it all, it seems that in the end, we are all searching for the fast track to getting into a first page on a search engine. I sincerely appreciate your feed back.

Best regards to all.\

Hi Mousepaw,

send me your URL so I may take a look @ your site and provide feedback.

[mousepaw]

Thank you for your offer to comment, SEOJoe.

First let me say that I built this website before I found out that search engines don't like frames. (They used to be okay with them, not so very long ago.) Having said that, MSN, Dogpile and Ask have it listed if you know the url. Now I have to start building a site from scratch using code. Although I have the googlebot code file uploaded, google still refuses to list me, even when I punch in the exact url. At least Yahoo offers the link, with a disclaimer that the site may not exist.

This situation could be remedied if I could get enough hits because that's what Google wants before they even consider listing you. If no one is interested in your site, seemingly neither are they. It's a paradox. How do you get the hits if the search engine won't list you or recognize your keywords, or it's own code, for that matter?

My first task is to rewrite the site. Where to start, where to start...

www.uwantithowbad.com

Thanks again.

[SEOJoe]

there are many items that you need to address in terms of SEO.

Here is a quick list.

1. I would lose the frames. The reason being is, the search engines will index your top frame however, the top frame doesnt contain any rich text.
2. You are missing a meta description
3. You are missing a keyword meta tag.
4. You are missing an H1 which should contain a target kw.
5. Your title should contain your targeted kw phrase.

These are some small changes but I can see many items that should be addressed.

[mousepaw]

SEOJoe,

Thanks! I thought maybe you went to my website and found so much wrong that it wasn't worth a reply! I understood everything you said except the "kw." Would you mind telling me what that stands for?

Mousepaw.

[NZSolutions]

mousepaw, one thing i have found to be very useful in terms of increasing pages that are indexed in google is to have a different title/description for each/every page of your site. if you are only using one title/description set then just one page will be indexed.

i have made this mistake and am currently updating client sites! our problem was that we use one index page and includes, so the title/description were staying static.

[mousepaw]

Hi! Thanks for pointing that out. In one way I hope you have a lot of business but in another, you could be changing page titles for a long time! Good luck with that. Sorry it took so long to reply.

[poiuy]

Definitely lose the frames for sure.

Also instead of page1.html page2.html etc etc name the pages with a keyword specific to that page. i.e. your products page -- products.html or dreamproducts.html etc etc.

Also you keywords meta tag shouldn't be a sentence it should be more like "keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, etc" You want to use "key"words that will be searched for and they preferably should also be words used in the page too. simple word like and; or; the; we etc. won't do any thing for you.

Yes Google ignores them but they don't hurt you in anyway having them in your page so they might as well be in there correctly.

[mousepaw]

You are all great. Thanks for taking your time to help! I'm working on a new website with all this stuff in it (meta tags, keywords, frame-free, separate titles, et al) but boy does it ever take a long time when you're learning one thing at a time... I'd be happy to visit anyone else's website to a) help with hits and b) get some hints. No hidden agenda.

...mousepaw