Top Listings on Yahoo/ Poor Listings on Google

[Ghome1971]

I have been using Google Ad words for over 6 months. This has not only got me good business but been vital in identifying what keywords are crucial to my business.

I had a google page rank of 1/10 thanks to a link from a friend. This got my site indexed by Google and I had a few strange and useless listings.

Now, I have designed my whole web site around these keyword phrases. To my joy I have really good listings on Yahoo and MSN. Unfortunately little of my business come from these search engines.

In order to imprive my Google page rank I have worked hard on listing my site on directories and requesting reciprocal links. I have dozens of links to my site including at least one link from 4/10 ranking page and I have paid $299 to list with Yahoo (still waiting on DMOZ).

However, finally after waiting 4 months and thanks to the help of you guys and gals to get my google sitemap working my links have appeared. BUT I still have a page rank of 1 and none of my good links appear.

I have read many threads on this subject and I cannot see what I am doing wrong.

HELP!

Geraldine

www.stardustkids.co.uk

[Bun]

It's a strange beast is that Google. I'm top bannana with MSN with a number of keywords but I'm having no such luck with Google at the moment

A couple of months ago I changed server and switched to Actinic for my cart (completely new set of URL's so it's like starting over again) so I'm putting it down to that I've got about 300 pages listed with Google at the moment....the trouble is, they're from my old site.

I think it's a waiting game and the trick is not to panic

Good luck

[Duncan Rounding]

It is an ongong (and never ending) effort to better organic results in Google. One thing I immediately noticed on your site was that you did not have a site map link on your home (brochure) page. All the links on that page into the shop were via cgi-bin.

I am continually trying top increase my page rank in Google but I don't get obsessed about it (not saying you are!) - there's only so much you can do about at once. (And of couse if it was easy then we wouldn't use Adwords!) I have only a few incoming links because I am very selective about who I want to link with and normally I will not list in relatively unknown directories as they don't seem to help anymore. I have got a PR of 4 purely (I think) by working on the basis of having every page on my site acccesible to any other by no more than two clicks.
I also (personally) think it is preferable to have one product per page (section) so that each product description is available towards the top of the page for the SE to find.
Only my opinions mind....

[Ghome1971]

"you did not have a site map link on your home (brochure) page. "

How do I do this?


"I also (personally) think it is preferable to have one product per page (section) so that each product description is available towards the top of the page for the SE to find."

That would mean I have nearly 300 sections! or do you mean to extended link

Thanks

Geraldine

[Duncan Rounding]

You can manually add a link somewhere to:
http://www.stardustkids.co.uk/acatalog/sitemap.html
in your Act_BrochurePrimary and Act_Primary templates

I did mean individual procduct per section (not suggesting you should change - just my thoughts). I don't use the extended info link except for additional pictures - I prefer the SEs to see all the detail on the main product page. I group duplicates as overviews in parent sections.

[BPJSURF]

There are a number of good threads in here on seo and some specific too Google. From what I see and read it would seem your on the right track but you have a bit more work to do to get where you hope to be with Google.

Linking is critcal to increasing your page rank. There is a greater value to your page rank to recipricate a link with a web site that has a pagerank 5/10 or 6/10 and have the link prominant on the refereers home page rather then exchangeing a link with a ten sites that have a pagerank of 1/10. Go for quality before quantitiy when it comes to link partners. Home page links can really help your pagerank.

Tags can make the difference. If you implmement you html tags correctly on a page your google pagerank and Serps (search engine result pages) can show improvement. A properly placed H1, h2, h3 and body tage can make a huge difference to a pages search visibility performance. A good coder will use css to implement the tags for the best possiable effect.

Customize your titles for every page. Titles that are well written and use keyword prominence will give you some advantages in serps.

I looked at this page as an example: http://www.stardustkids.co.uk/acatal...y_clothes.html


Here is your current title source: Unique Baby Clothes, Unique Baby Gifts, Unique Kids Clothes, Uniques Kids Gifts

Here is the meta keywords for the page: Personalised Baby Gifts, Personalised Baby T-Shirts, Personalised Kids T-Shirts, Unique baby clothes, unique baby t-shirts, unique kids clothes, unique kids t-shirts

First - eliminate the "," and non alpha numerics in your titles and keywords.

Second - FOCUS - try one keyword phrase per page not ten keywords per page.

Third - rebuild your catalog to display a single product per page.
Then change the title to be specific to the product (i.e "Kids Personalised Punk Stripy Top ideal for children ages 4 to 9" )

change the meta keyword phrase for the page to i.e. (personalized kids tops)

put an h2 tag on the "actinic breadcrumb" and eliminate the "shop here" or change the words too "childrens clothing catalog"

put an h1 tag on the netquotvar:short description in the product page.

embed some keywords phrases into the long description

change the product image name to reflect your keyword phrase for the particular product your marketing, this will change the "alt" tag in Actinic automatically which will then match the keyword phrases to your alt tag which is very helpful. i.e personalized_kids_top_punky.jpg would give an alt tag of personalized kids top punky

Once you have completly rebuilt your products in a proper format ( thumbnail section pages and single products per page (see example http://soccerpro.com) and you have optimized the pages for keyword saturation and optimized your html code for proper tag placement your results will improve dramtically.

But there is alot more to do. This will just fix your obvious mistakes. Your home page needs work, you need a new keyword strategy and you need a product merchandising strategy to be successful, we shall save that for another thread.

Enjoy

Brian Johnson

p.s. to BUN, some simple .htaccess files can catch all the old pages requests and move them to specific pages or direct them too your home page. If you work with someone who knows what their doing its an easy fix so you do not have to "start all over"

[Jan]

My software site is generally known as www.mole-end.biz but actually the site on the server is www.actinicplugins.co.uk, with www.mole-end.biz as a redirected URL (along with a dozen or so others). Will this have much of an effect on ranking etc?

I have an opportunity to change this back at the weekend and am wondering if it is worth doing.

Regards,

[pinbrook]

it all depends on which phrase you think others will use to search for you on.

Personally, when I search for you, i use Mole-end as my search phrase and it always brings up www.actinicplugins.co.uk as the result.

are you using re-directs or aliases?

I prefer alias as this keeps the original url in the browser

ie if someone types in actinicplugins.co.uk that remains in the address bar (plus the html page name, so actinicplugins.co.uk/thispage.html

when they go to thatpage, it remains actinicplugins.co.uk/thatpage.html,

if the visitor visits you at mole-end again they see mole-end.biz/thispage.html, mole-end.biz/thatpage.html

[Jan]

I am using aliases, I prefer Mole-end.biz because it is shorter and so is easier to type.

Regards,

[los_design]

My software site is generally known as www.mole-end.biz but actually the site on the server is www.actinicplugins.co.uk, with www.mole-end.biz as a redirected URL (along with a dozen or so others). Will this have much of an effect on ranking etc?

I have an opportunity to change this back at the weekend and am wondering if it is worth doing.

Regards,

Hi Jan

How are you redirecting? The method you use will have a direct impact upon your SERP indexing process. Are you achieving this via a mod rewrite or your VH control panel?

Regards
Daren

[Jan]

Daren

I am using aliases to redirect.

Regards,

[Donna Kempster]

[QUOTE=Ghome1971]"you did not have a site map link on your home (brochure) page. "

How do I do this?

There is a thread by Jont which tells you how to do this and add it to the bottom of every page. I did it the other day it was really easy and works!

[jont]

put an h2 tag on the "actinic breadcrumb" and eliminate the "shop here" or change the words too "childrens clothing catalog"

put an h1 tag on the netquotvar:short description in the product

Be careful to nest tags properly - this will effect standards compliance and "may" harm SERP - always aim to lay a page out using correct rules of "grammer" as if in a book, only adding in H1 tags etc where appropriate

[Donna Kempster]

Re changing page titles do you recommend doing this even though some of the pages have been referenced. I'm inclined to do it anyway as google had referenced nearly our whole site but now are only showing one page referenced (when you do the site:www.webaddress.co.uk) but this will affect Yahoo /MSN and we do get orders from natural search via this means. How quickly will they reindex the pages - I don't think all will need amending.

[Bun]

p.s. to BUN, some simple .htaccess files can catch all the old pages requests and move them to specific pages or direct them too your home page. If you work with someone who knows what their doing its an easy fix so you do not have to "start all over"

Brain.....are you referring to something like an error page? or is this a bit more complicated?