getting priority on major search engines

[HOC]

Does anyone have any experience or advice for getting our site priority when relevant topics are searched on sites such as google, yahoo, msn?????

[Zapper]

I know a lot of people really don't want to hear it (and a lot of times don't really believe it) but the best way to increase your ranking for search engines is to have relevant site content.

[HOC]

thank you for your response.

by 'relavent content' do you mean the words that people use to search are in the text of our site?

[Zapper]

Well, since Google is the largest, most folks want to "optimize" for Google.

They are very plain about what kinds of things they look for in a site:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

One important thing to keep in mind... (look toward the bottom of the Google page)...

"If a site doesn't meet our quality guidelines, it may be blocked from the index."

In other words, it can and does happen that sometimes the more you try "tricks" to increase your page rankings, the lower they can go.

I had a customer a few months ago that fell into this trap-- he spent untold hours tweaking, and researching and "optimizing" his site, and much to his consternation, his rankings just kept getting lower and lower! And his site kind of lost track about what it was really about. (He is now slowly coming back, though.) I would suggest designing your website for your customers-- the ranking will follow.

I will offer the single best tip I have ever seen, and the one that a LOT of people don't know about:

If you want a search term to show up in Google searches, make sure that that term is on your web page! You would be amazed at how many people wonder why they can't find "so-and-so" in Google searches for their site, but don't even have "so-and-so" anywhere on their website!

[ianc13]

It has also been said that not only do you need your website to be keyword and search term friendly, but you also need to have incoming links and traffic from a reputable source to encourage the search engines to list your site higher in the area you want. A friend of mine has a method that helps to achieve this. He limits his intake to 100 subscribers a month, and is currently full until May, but it is worth going on the waiting list for it. I have used his techniques very minimally so far, but it has got my sites indexed faster than anything else I have tried, and the potential is huge for getting excellent rankings. Check it out HERE (http://www.moneypumps.com/members/gsx750esd/index.html) and if you are interested then put your name on the waiting list. It really is worth it!

[brianoz]

It has also been said that not only do you need your website to be keyword and search term friendly, but you also need to have incoming links and traffic from a reputable source to encourage the search engines to list your site higher in the area you want. A friend of mine has a method that helps to achieve this. He limits his intake to 100 subscribers a month, and is currently full until May, but it is worth going on the waiting list for it. I have used his techniques very minimally so far, but it has got my sites indexed faster than anything else I have tried, and the potential is huge for getting excellent rankings. Check it out HERE (http://www.moneypumps.com/members/gsx750esd/index.html) and if you are interested then put your name on the waiting list. It really is worth it!This sounds potentially dodgy. What techniques does he use? Is he a friend, or is he you?

[ianc13]

Hi Brian, There is nothing dodgy about the techniques used in my friends method, it just requires some focused thinking and perseverence using a couple of tools including "my space" to get targeted prospective customers to your site. The techniques are all above board and effectively use the power of blogs (similar to the way forums do) to achieve search engine rankings. If you look up the "who is online" area on this forum you will constantly see search engines spidering it, works in a similar way. Nothing wrong or bad about it mate. Oh..... and it is NOT me, though I wish I had come up with the technique a few years ago.

Cheers

[brianoz]

Thanks for sharing. Apologies for the skepticism.Sounds remarkably like blog spam! :)

Be careful with some of these methods - they can end up blowing up in your face over time as the search engines discover what's been going on.

[lowlands]

Hi,

I am a Stomper (if not familiar then Google Stompernet). I am fairly new to the the internet marketing game but I am fast learner.

Reading this post got me thinking. There must be quite a few SohoLaunch users with a decent Google pagerank. Somewhere between PR 3 and 6. Here's the idea. Now one way links is the best way to go to increase your pagerank. But reciprocal linking is a nice start.

Is it possible (Mike?) and does someone have enough time on their hands to
- create an invitation members only forum on the soholauch forum as an incentive to contributers.
- create a bunch of categories and subcategories e.g.: management, health & wellness, e-commerce etc.

So that:
- members can post a number of (deep)links, lets say at least 5, to their site in the appropriate category.
- other members search for links that relate well to the topic of their site.
- they can copy and paste a link into their links page (call it something else like 'More fun reading').
- when you pick up a link PM the siteowner involved with a link (and text!) to your site for him or her to put on their site.

This should help to get better rankings.

Theo

[draknet]

Thanks for sharing. Apologies for the skepticism.Sounds remarkably like blog spam! :)

Be careful with some of these methods - they can end up blowing up in your face over time as the search engines discover what's been going on.

I'm with you - this whole discussion just makes me queasy considering how much my servers are hammered with this kind of crap.

I have a PR4 - my husband, who gets way less hits than me, has a PR3 - and neither one of us, ever, engaged in any of this kind of stuff. We just worked really hard on having content, and lots of it. I haven't looked at my meta-filters in years - which I probably should do.

But if it ain't broke. (shrug)

This manipulating the system stuff just rubs me the wrong way, I guess. Especially since it's the first step down a slippery slope.

[lowlands]

Hi draknet,

I'm with you - this whole discussion just makes me queasy considering how much my servers are hammered with this kind of crap.

Hope you're not also referring to honest reciprocal linking although I feel you do :(

I do agree with the comments about content. Using keywords correctly etc. I am all against trying to manipulate the search engines. I rember the 'Google Slap' of august of last year very well. I wasn't a victim myself :) because what I do and preach is not trying to outsmart the search engine people. Because it may work for a short period of time but then at the next change of algorithms your site will dissapear into obscurity never to be found again.

Having said that I remember what a golf pro once taught me: "Make sure you know the rule book like the back of your hand and use it to your advantage". I play the internet game by the rules set by Andy Garcia and Brad Fallon. What they preach is what I stated above.

- Make sure to do your key word research
- Make sure you have good quality, natural and original content
- Make sure your page is structured well use all tags and include your keywords.
- Make sure to include your keywords in your page description, first sentence and then include them several times in a natural fashion in your text.
- Get relevant links to your site.

That is playing by the rules risk free.

Theo

[draknet]

Hope you're not also referring to honest reciprocal linking although I feel you do :(

It depends - two friends that know each other exchanging links, ok. But if I had a nickels for every email that starts "HI, I saw your site and though this link would be great for your visitors, it's blah blah blah", I could retire from web hosting. For the past 4 years, they're by automated spam requests, sending out a non-personalized form letter , usually demonstrating in the email they have no clue what my site is about, or that we really don't have a links page.

Anything that smacks of it, or smacks of it for pay, is just totally disingenuous to me - but then again, you're talking to someone who started a free hosting service many moons ago and refused to put any ads on there at all because it smacked of exploitation, and who quickly found herself saddled with 15,000 sites that nearly sunk my pay business because of that decision. So, I do see both sides.

But man, it's that first slippery slope step that leads to the next, and the next, and the next...


I do agree with the comments about content. Using keywords correctly etc. I am all against trying to manipulate the search engines. I rember the 'Google Slap' of august of last year very well. I wasn't a victim myself :) because what I do and preach is not trying to outsmart the search engine people. Because it may work for a short period of time but then at the next change of algorithms your site will dissapear into obscurity never to be found again.

Having said that I remember what a golf pro once taught me: "Make sure you know the rule book like the back of your hand and use it to your advantage". I play the internet game by the rules set by Andy Garcia and Brad Fallon. What they preach is what I stated above.

- Make sure to do your key word research
- Make sure you have good quality, natural and original content
- Make sure your page is structured well use all tags and include your keywords.
- Make sure to include your keywords in your page description, first sentence and then include them several times in a natural fashion in your text.
- Get relevant links to your site.

That is playing by the rules risk free.

Theo

Agree with you there.

[lowlands]

Hi Draknet,

It depends - two friends that know each other exchanging links, ok.

That is why I suggest 'member by invitation only for true contributors'. This way you can:

- stimulate contribution to the forum (where only serious contribution gets you credits).
- handpick the people that come across as serious and knowledgeable.
- set the rules upfront and not obiding by the rules leads to loss of membership.
- one rule being that you can not add more than 2 links per week to your site to keep things natural.
- links will be offered but members will have to invest time themselves to pick out the right ones for them in the relevant categories. Instead of the other way around.

Many of us are in this game to make a buck or two or even to make a living ;) . So good page ranking counts. It's a bit awkward at times but I do play this 'game' with one eye on the keybord and the other on the 'rulebook' .

Regards,

Theo

[Asiadeep]

Trying not to oversimplify the very complex industry of SEO the two most important factors with getting your site anywhere in the search engines is the content that is relevant to your desired keyword and also the links that point into your webpage. The proper combination of both will get you into No.1 eventually.

[Rob]

is there a way to create this 'silo linking structure' that is recommended by Charles Heflin's Master Plan?

In other words, there is a program out called Themematic (http://www.themematic.com) that creates sites that follow The Master Plan's recommendations for linking pages across the site in a way that prevents theme bleeding (which means, from what I understand, that the menu links off of your home page go to what are called 'silos', which are like mini-sites within your main site where all the pages are related to the main 'theme' of the silo).

I want to create a ecommerce shopping site and incorporate these techniques using Soholaunch, but I don't really understand how to control the linking between site pages to this degree in Sololaunch.

Can this be done?

[sarathy]

i guess that depends on the traffic to your site. You have to lure people to your site otherwise, based on that it'll be listed in the top order in the search engines.

[Rob]

i guess that depends on the traffic to your site. You have to lure people to your site otherwise, based on that it'll be listed in the top order in the search engines.

One thing has nothing to do with the other. Luring people to your site doesn't get you listed top in the search engines. Unless I misunderstand what you are saying.

[lowlands]

Hi Rob,

I didn't get round to a reply earlier buying very busy.

As far as I can tell this silo thing is a bit overrated. Yes you have to give internal linking some thought to use it effectively. This certainly won't do you any harm. On the other hand priority should be getting good content and incomming links from other sites than your own ofcourse. There is some argument about this but links comming in from anothter server are rated good by the search engines. Whereas tons of internal links, coming from the same server, may even damage your search engine results/page rank.

If you want to use this silo structure you will need quite a large site to begin with that will let itself be split into silo's (themes). Next you would need to have at least two templates. One template using only #HMAINS# or #VMAINS# type menus for the home Page, pointing to the silo main pages. The other one only using #HSUBS# or #VSUBS# for the pages within the silo and a custom link pointing to the home page on the silo main page.

Another approach, and I think a better one would be to have more then one Soho install in subfolders or on subdomains using a custom link on your silo home page to the actual 'site home page'.

Regards,

Theo

[Rob]

OK, great - now I know how to implement this Silo Structure with Soholaunch.

What about the Shopping Cart portion? From what I can tell, the main page nav menu has nothing to do with the categories created for shopping cart items. Therefore, naming the shopping cart categories shouldn't have any affect, right?

And do I need to do anything special to have static pages created that get spidered with the proper linking structure?

As for the silo structure being overrated - the is a free report available on the themematic.com website (The Master Plan Primer) that has many case studies showing how a properly silo-ed website with theme density TRUMPS inbound links! Therefore, it seems like it should take top priority especially when designing a site from scratch!

[lowlands]

Hi Rob,

About Silo being a bit overrated. I have this on good authority. I am a Stompernet member ;-). Whereas the source you are pointing to are the people who are selling related software :hmm:

As to the shopping cart. This shouldn't have any effect on the menu structure.

I don't think you have to do anything outside creating the silo stucture. I would advize taking a look at a couple of plugins though: 'Search Engine Friendly Page names' by LWYAU and 'Search Engine Sitemaps' by ViaStep.

http://addons.soholaunch.com

Regards,

Theo

[Rob]

OK - I hear you about Stompernet, etc. But the free report on the ThemeMatic site is not from them, but from Charles Heflin of SEO2020 fame - and it's free, and he has nothing to do with ThemeMatic, so I don't think there is any misrepresentation of facts in that report - he isn't getting anything from it. Any the evidence to check for yourself is in the report - he shows domains that rank higher than huge commercial domains with TONS of incoming links simply because of the silo structure of the site - hard to argue with facts!

As to the 'search engine friendly page names' - I agree this would be better than the php parse string used by default, but I thought I read somewhere in the Soholaunch docs. that static pages are created by Soholaunch?

Also, did I also read that there is a 22 character (or ~22) limit on the length of page names? That kinda sucks, no?

[lowlands]

Point taken. I'll give it a read as soon as ... I have a holiday comming up :)

On page name limit.
Go to: http://forum.soholaunch.com/showthread.php?t=1463&highlight=22+character


Note that the first line of code is now on or around line 171 and reads:

<INPUT TYPE="text" <? echo $disable; ?> name="PROP_name" size="22" value="<? echo $PROP_name; ?>">

And the second line is on or around line 62.

As for the static pages you might take a look at:
http://forum.soholaunch.com/showthread.php?t=2061&highlight=static+pages


Regards,

Theo

P.S. Use the search feature of this forum!

[lwyau]

...but I thought I read somewhere in the Soholaunch docs. that static pages are created by Soholaunch?
Soho used to generate static pages in the form of pagename.html's. Those pages were never indexed by major search engines in my experience.

Soho is no longer generating these static pages.

[sarathy]

One thing has nothing to do with the other. Luring people to your site doesn't get you listed top in the search engines. Unless I misunderstand what you are saying.

Well that is what i have learnt with regard to Google. I am sorry if I am wrong. :uh:

[ianc13]

As far as I was aware, getting links into your site from other relevent sites and/or forums is the way to get good ranking. I have just started (only a couple of weeks old) a health type blog which I am posting on daily, but as the field is quite extensive, I am not sure if I am helping or hindering with my content. Saying to have good content is one thing, but how do you know what the search engines are going to make of it? How narrow does the focus have to be to get good ratings from the spiders?