Search engine optimisation - preparing a site

[prosite]

Well the other topic is getting a little heated so I am starting another topic in order to get to the bottom of what is considered good practice and can help you get high on the results but there is NO garuntee. This is meant as a guide only

Being ranked on search engines is in a nutshell about providing the search engine with relevant content that will be scored against the search undertaken. For this example I am using chocolate frogs... the search being made is for chocolate frogs Web surfers are pretty savvy now and tend to know what they want and will use that for the search.

From the top down

1/ Domain name, a good start for example if you are selling frogs then frogs.com would be the best, if you are selling chocolate frogs then chocolatefrogs or chocolate_(or-)frogs.com would also be a good one to have. so you have the domain chocolate-frogs.com

2/ Title Tag, This should contain the word chocolate frogs

3/ Meta Keywords tag use chocolate frogs (only once no repitition)

4/ Meta Description We sell chocolate frogs

4/ Image Naming, name your images relavent to your product/s chocolate-frogs.gif chocolate_frogs.jpg etc..

5/ Content - Buy this splendid chocolate frog they taste of chocolate and look like a frog

6/ Link to other sites, google in particular likes this one if possible link to suppliers sites or something like a charity it is all bout creating the WEB although most people will find a reason not to link to someone elses site.

7/ Links to your site, get your freinds to link to your site and add your site to directory listings like the open directory project http://www.dmoz.org you should create a junk email address as this does tend to generate alot of spam, but hey you get a link and a higher ranking...

If you follow these 7 simple guides and actinics guide to setting up catalog then you should do ok.

There are quite a few other things that you could do but you are entering a minefeild, best stay out of that one.

NOTE: do not over do your content and related image naming this can work against you in the long run, keep it clean and relavant. All search engines are in a very very competative market place and all want to give the best results possible, so help them out. Good content = Happy search engine = Good results for you..

Next addition:-
Search engine optimisation - submitting your site

[prosite]

Search engine optimisation - submitting your site

So you have prepared a site what to do now?

Google/ Certain search engines like that of google are pretty intellegant (unlike my ability to spell!) The googleBot will find your site if you have a link from any site that google has already looked at hence. So theroetically you do not need to actually submit it. However you can and I would but once and once only. Firstly do a check by running a search on your domain name, if you are listed DO NOT re-submit, you are already there go back to points 1-7 in the previous post and see if you can change anything. You can also do a search in google by typing link:http://www.youdomain.com this will display all sites that link to you. if you have over 5 sites linking to you do not submit to google.

Oh and google Toolbar, when you conduct a search from that if no site is found then googleBot will start looking for a result. type your domain into that and press search available from google.com under tools or http://toolbar.google.com/

Yahoo/ Pay to be listed in the yahoo! catagories google uses this aswell and you will be ranked better on the results page.

Open Directory project/ http://www.dmoz.org search to see if you are already listed, if not surf to the catagory that your site should be listed under once at the final catagory stage you will see Add URL click this and follow the instruction. Most search enignes will look into the ODP to get a better content click through.

Directory Sites/ Get listed on directory sites, they are free and all they want to do is send you junk mail! for that you get a link and potentially a better placement.

All other search engine/ Dont know and frankly dont care, both I and my customers get enough buisness from google thanks...


Hope that helps someone out there

J

[prosite]

One other thing

Include in this in your meta tags open up Act_primary.html and paste this intbetween the <head></head> tag

<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">


Also create a file called robots.txt in notepad or the Mac equivalant, copy the below code into it, you will need to FTP it to the root location of your website

User-agent: *
Disallow:

The above will allow ALL robots to view ALL folders

If you want to exclude a particular folder then you use the following:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /users/
Disallow: /logs/


This will stop a robot looking at that folder on your site and indexing it.

For a lowdown on robots and exclusion look at http://www.robotstxt.org/

Robots are also known as Bots, webcrawlers, spiders etc...


J

[Mike Hughes]

A few other things:

1. You don't need a robots.txt file unless you want to exclude certain areas. The search engines will happily search your site without one.

2. Each page of your site should have a different title. To use the above analogy, one page could be 'chocolate frogs' another 'golden wrapped chocolate frogs' another 'white chocolate frogs' etc.

An easy way to do the above is to include the actinic page name in the title (and name each page/section appropriately in Actinic). To do this just put this for the title at the top of the template and actinic will do it automatically.

<title>NETQUOTEVAR:PAGEHEADER - other keywords or marketing message</title>

The reason you might want to show a marketing message is that the title is what the search engines will display when they show the result, so you might want it to say "Chocolate Frogs - Best Selection in the UK".

3. The second most important area for google and other engines (after the title) is the heading tags. (<h1>, <h2>, etc). I embed the H1 and H2 tags in my templates so they highlight the appropriate bits (the section name for H1 tags and product name for h2 tags). These tags change the font size and boldness so I redefine them in the CSS file to make them look the way I want them.

If you follow the few simple steps we've outlines here you will do better than 98% of the sites out there and usually much better than the so called professional sites. They're usually very badly designed from a search engines point of view (unlike actinic).

Mike

[prosite]

Actinic rules

Absolubtly right, in fact you really cant go wrong using an actinic store. Because of the way that actinic generates static html for your store, that you then upload, it is porbably one of the best store solutions on the market.

We have developed sites using a multitude of e-commerce solutions but none get the results that actinic get. I feel that the original (and the current) developer/s really have a great understandning of how the search engines work so most of it is done for you all you have to do is take a little time in setting it up naming images correctly etc. and there is no reason why your site should not rank highly on the SE's.

You cant go wrong with an actinic solution....


J

p.s. should there be a discussion on catalogs using frames? and SE's indexing child pages. I have code that will place your pages back into a frame set if that will help anyone.

pps Lets keep this one going, all tips hints and info for search engines post here.

[jxm28788]

3/ Meta Keywords tag use chocolate frogs (only once no repitition)

if you sell all kinds of frogs can you repeat 'frog' or will you be penalised for that?

eg. plastic frogs, fluffy frogs, chocolate frogs, wooden frogs...

What would be the best way to write the tag in that case?

[rmladden]

If you can pay for a product, see http://www.webposition.com/

Too many repetitions will get the page downgraded. Webposition will analyze and make suggestions for your pages.

[prosite]

It will pick the changes up as a phrase so as long as you commer out the phrase then that is ok, you would use something like this

meta name=keywords content=chocolate frogs,fluffy frogs,green frogs

if you have frogs,frogs,frogs then that is bad,
also make sure the content reads in a new paragraph

<p>Choco frogs
<p>fluffy frogs

Google is much better at reading actual content of the page rather then meta tags. it can determin the differance between spam content and justified content.

It really is about providing real content, read the page as if you are a visitor to the site if it reads like you are overdoing it then you probably are.

Sometimes using more pages it good as each page has a referance to the product/item more content is also good but means more navigation. So consider using more sections and individual purchase pages.

So for your site I would consider having an extra section that previews the range and then put each product on a single product page (or bunch them up a little)

For example
> Catalog> Chocolate & Cookies> Belgian chocolate> Product
Or
> Catalog> Chocolate & Cookies> Cookies> Product

You will build more pages and the content of the site in general will appear bigger (more relavent to a search).

J

[jxm28788]

I have been using webposition gold to monitor my sites progress up the search engines, and so far everything looks ok (except for not being very high up!), but the last few days something weird has been happening.

First I noted lycos doing it (but not lycos UK) so I though it was something they were doing. BUt today google is doing it too...

under the search keywords, instead of listing my URL it comes up with garbage, such as -

"www.lowcarbgoodies.co.uk/ onmousedown="return clk(1,this)"

and

"search';ff3('http://click.fastsearch.com/go2/2/ps/1c591241AC/NDA6cGZpOTEyNzAJMzUxOTczMTg4OAk0OAlrZXRvc3RpeA/http://www.lowcarbgoodies.co.uk/','http://sidesearch.lycos.com/?query=ketostix&first=51&hur"

Any ideas what is causing this? APart from Lycos and google the others seem ok. Also google gets the right URL on a different keyword "low carb products" (see me there at position 19... )

[prosite]

Very odd,

Can you give me a keyword when you got that result (cant replicate), also I am looking at your code you have way too many keywords in the meta tag you should reduce that (128 characters max)

This could be happening because it is picking up illegal code from your store but I can not even find the code in your source...

If I do a search from google.co.uk and enter low carb cereals you are #5 on a web search and #1 on a uk specific search! not 2 bad at all.

You have atkins in the keywords but only one referance on the catalog, how about you join the Amazon affiliate program link to the Dr Atkins book.

Also why dont you have an adwords account, it can be a cheap but affective way of gaining traffic. https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/
Consider 10p a click and a fiver a day. (gives you a box on the right hand side)

There is also no meta keywords or description on child pages (ones that appear after the homepage)

J

[jxm28788]

If I do a search from google.co.uk and enter low carb cereals you are #5 on a web search and #1 on a uk specific search! not 2 bad at all.

oh yeah. that's good. I wasn't checking for that keywork in webpositionpro... that explains why there was a sudden rush on cereals (and why they are now all marked 'out of stock'... )

Low Carb Goodies Low Carb Cereals
Products > Low Carb Cereals. Keto Frosted Flakes Now you can enjoy frosted flakes
without all the carbs and added sugars! ... Quantity: Products > Low Carb Cereals. ...
www.lowcarbgoodies.co.uk/ low-carb-BreakfastCereals.html - 20k - Cached - Similar pages

The results are a bit pants though, how do I change this?

You have atkins in the keywords but only one referance on the catalog, how about you join the Amazon affiliate program link to the Dr Atkins book.

Would that benefit me in anyway (apart from the tiny affiliate fees)? I don't really want to send people away from my site!

you have way too many keywords in the meta tag you should reduce that (128 characters max)

I know, when I started I just thought of every keyword I could and then forgot to amend it. Having trouble getting below 128 though... What should I do about plurals? and are they case sensitive (do I need uk & UK)?

Also why dont you have an adwords account

I do, I suspended it because so many lines went out of stock in the last week - no point paying to drive people to an empty store. There was a surge of orders that caught me off guard, and there is a long lead time on the US stuff...doh.

(cant replicate)

nor me. google seems to be sorted now, and lycos seems to work in reality - maybe webpos it getting somethin wrong in reading the results. ho hum. gained 10 today - including my first 3 key phrases into overture on pages 2 and 1 (although quite far down)

Are these webpos stats any good - Visibility Score: 647, Visibility Percentage: 12.25%?

[prosite]

sudden rush on cereals

;-) pretty good eh

results are a bit pants though

It is taking the text from the first and second paragraph in the catalog page, so you would edit the description there, my recommendation would be dont do it! it obviously likes the content of the page and has given you a good (no excellent) result, if it works dont fix it, as they say.

(in fact use it as a template for all other pages that dont get a result)

Would that benefit me in anyway

Not really but it is fairly open as a keyword, and goolge 'likes' you to link out to other sites so you may get a better rating. And all money is good money ;-)

I suspended it because so many lines went out of stock

Great good to see it working eh. more people could do with setting up an account.

webpos stats anygood

No idea I have not used for about three years as google has surpassed the need for it. + i think it is better to do a search and click the link as it means that the result gets a good click through rate which is better for you.

Not to sure on plurals and caps varitation, I think that the engines are capable of understanding the differance so I dont normally bother.

put this into your act_primary template inbetween the <head> </head> tag and upload the catalog

<meta name="robtos" content="index,follow">

Cheers

J

[jxm28788]

<meta name="robtos" content="index,follow">

I assume that should say robots, but what does it do?

[prosite]

sorry yes it should say robots.

In a nutshell it tells a robot (metacrawler, spider, googlebot etc) to index this page in its results and follow all links on that page. It is a bit like creating way points in GPS you say mark this point and then follow on to the next point (only in this case multiple points). It is not essential as the very nature of the robot will do this, you are just saying ok mark this page for indexing and I dont mind if you follow (and index) all the other pages. Think of it as giving a helping hand.

J

ps. failed english ;-)

[jxm28788]

ps. failed english

me too. I blame the goverment.