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The Magus
08-06-2003, 11:21 AM
Good Evening
I have been reading various bits on this site about Search Engine ranking and am confused.

It seems that everyone recommends sticking by the rules etc when it comes to search engines with
lots of cautions as to what will happen if one is guilty of Spamming by including
keywords that at not relevant or repetitious or other activities designed to "illegally" increase their
ranking.

I have tried to stick by the book, so to speak, yet am at a loss to understand how two sites who happen
to be my competitors manage to consistently rank at or near the top. The only thing I can
see in common with these two sites is that they both claim to belong to or be associated with companies who are in the
Search Engine business.

Let's, for the sake of arguement, say that I don't think much of the way that these two sites use keywords (repetitous and irrelevant) and image attributes (long attributes that appear to correctly belong under the keywords tag) as they seem to break the rules which if the
recommendations are correct should result in their site being downgraded. One of them is an "Org" site which I understood
was reserved for non-commercial sites yet this site is nothing more or less then a commercial site.

Can anyone explain why they are at the top when my site is not. Is it because they have paid for
inclusion with search engines?

If that is true and the search engines rank them highly when they don't stick to the rules, it seems
to me that the search engines are engaging a sort of prostitution by putting them at the top when they do
not fairly belong there.

I am reluctant to post their URLs as it might result in a visit from the heavy mob or a lawyer however
if any one is interested in having a look at them drop me an e-mail and I will forward the particular URLs to which I refer.

Jack
:confused:
Compguy Pete
08-06-2003, 01:24 PM
Go ahead and PM me with the links.

someone taking any kind of action against you is not likely, but I can understand your reasons.
nkaisare
08-06-2003, 01:43 PM
A recent ALA article on Search Engine Optimization may be of interest to you:
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/seo/
nkaisare
08-06-2003, 01:52 PM
Originally posted by The Magus
If that is true and the search engines rank them highly when they don't stick to the rules, it seems to me that the search engines are engaging a sort of prostitution by putting them at the top when they do not fairly belong there.
If Google also ranks them above you, you can be assured that your site isn't optimized for search engines. Google doesn't engage in "search engine prostitution". Neither do some of the other "respected" search engines. But most others do rank paid sites higher.

1. Again, look at the ALA article to see if you can do better.
2. Improve the HTML from a semantic point of view. For example, use <h1> for top heading, <h2> for section headings, <h3> for subsections and so on.
3. Choose an appropriate page title.
4. Don't use unnecessary keywords. Choose them wisely.
5. If title and <h1> that follows <body> convey the crux of the page, it will score very highly.
eg.
...
<title>Search Engine Optimization - ALA article</title>
</html>
<body>
<h1>Optimizing your site for search engines</h1>
will get MUCH higher ranking than using <img scr="titleimage.gif" alt="">.

I guess some of these are points from the ALA article itself. Nonetheless repetition reinforces.
(is that even gramatically correct english :rolleyes:)
Justin_artist
08-06-2003, 09:06 PM
A couple small things that might help, use the alt tags for images with relevent keywords, also try using hyperlinks to other sites with your keywords in them. The reason some sites might be higher then yours could be because other highly ranked sites have that sites link on them.
Compguy Pete
08-06-2003, 10:31 PM
Yes for sure you need to do what Justin is recommending... the links you sent me have alt tags for their images which is a huge move.

I also noticed you have spaces in your file names, not that this has much to do with your ranking but something to work on fixing.

Next... from the other pages they have any where from 2-3x the content you have. So work on making more content for you page.

A subject we haven't gotten into much here at this forum is Google Ranking numbers... Your at 0/10 and the other sites are 5/10 and 4/10. AS your number raises you're going to see your listing up towards the sites you want to pass...

Next... Backwards links or people linking to you... THis plays into the last item as well... The site that listed with a 5/10 also has 45 listings in the link search on google. The other site has 13 and you have none.

DMOZ: get listed in this section... http://dmoz.org/Regional/Middle_East/Turkey/Provinces/Mugla/Districts/Marmaris/ The DMOZ listing will help you get on the google directory http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Middle_East/Turkey/Provinces/Mugla/Districts/Marmaris/ (lifted right from DMOZ ??? maybe maybe not ;) )

Lastly red does not go very well on that color blue... for the logo on your page.
The Magus
08-08-2003, 05:17 AM
Thanks very much for your help and suggestions - I will take them to heart and try to follow them.

However my petulent inclusion of the comment about the other site ranking higher then mine was a bit
of a red herring and led the comments over to my site - like said, I am glad for the assistance but this
was not the main thought behind my original question. I don't think my site is ready to be up there with
the big boys but I have been checking what they have done and am trying to understand how it all works.

The point I was trying to clarify was connected to "why and how can these sites be ranked so high when they
do not seem to follow the "rules" about repetitious key words or using massive amounts of keywords as
alt tags for images??? My Mother told me that cheaters never prosper!!!!

It is possible that my understanding as to what constitutes repetition of key words is wrong and maybe these sites are not
guilty. For example I would have thought that something along the line of "Black shoes, red shoes,
blue shoes, green shoes" would be considered repetitious. This is the sort of thing that one of these sites uses a lot.

It must be very boring for anyone with these images turned off or even those who put the mouse over the
images to see a massive amount of keywords behind every image. Again this does not seem to be in spirit of the
game!!! I am sure the gentleman who writes or comments for WC3 would be outraged by it.

So once again the original question "fHow can these site achieve such high ranking when they, in theory, should be considered guilty of spamming as I understand it???

I will be chasing the comments about http://Dmoz.org and trying to find out what that is all about soon.

Away from this question for a moment - I am amazed at the range of knowledge and expertise that members of this
forum seem to have - it really impresses me to find members pick up a thread and come up with a bang on the point
comment and references to URLs concerning any subject within a few hours of the question being posted.

Re comment on logo - I have about as much artisitic sense as the local farmers brood sow but will work on it.
Cheers

Jack
Aronya1
08-08-2003, 02:07 PM
Search engine optimization is confusing at best. I have seen sites with NO keywords and little content rank very highly.