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I'm not sure my site is set up properly for Google rankings. It has a flash intro page and uses lots of meta keywords, both of which a web traffic company said is bad. I'm not sure if they were just trying to sell me or what, but they sparked my interest. I did some research on this site and just got more confused. My main questions are:
1) Should I get rid of the flash intro page (which I was thinking to do anyway)?
2) Am I using too many keywords? If so, how many should I limit them to?
3) What else should I be doing to improve my Google rankings? I read about robot.txt file but I don't understand what that is or even if I have it.
4) I don't link to any outside sites - is this bad? Outside sites do link to me.
I appreciate any/all help. Thanks in advance.
Mark
Hello,
1) Should I get rid of the flash intro page (which I was thinking to do anyway)?
2) Am I using too many keywords? If so, how many should I limit them to?
3) What else should I be doing to improve my Google rankings? I read about robot.txt file but I don't understand what that is or even if I have it.
4) I don't link to any outside sites - is this bad? Outside sites do link to me.
Well, let me bump this up and answer a couple on the way...
I don't like flash intros. As a dial-up user, they infuriate me and I'll frequently not want to dip into a site with Flash content, for fear it will be slow all round.
[/gripe!]
If you don't know what a robots.txt file is, then you'll be OK. You only need them to exclude search engines, not to welcome them!
I'm not sure that linking to other sites makes a lot of difference, at least for some of the small sites I've seen. But it's nice for visitors to be able to leave your site on *your* recommendation of where to go next - they'll appreciate you for it.
OK - so now I've started a few answers, let's hope more will follow me.
DerekH
Some here believe that Google basically discounts keyword density (and most other 'onpage factors') while still others believe there's a maximum that can trigger a filter. I'm personally struggling with this as well as I rank well for one KW phrase and don't rank at all if you reverse the keywords and plural endings. Meaning I rank decent for blue widgets, but don't show at all for widget blues (the industry standard).
I've got about 16% density for widgets which (generally) doesn't sound like it would set off a filter or other air raid style sirens. I've ALSO got over 500 words on the page in question which means that keyword is repeated quite often to maintain that density. It reads just fine believe it or not, but I'm afraid there's a maximum KW USE limit in addition to (or rather than) a density limit.
Add to this the newly implemented keyword stemming and the plot thickens even more.
But honestly... who knows? Maybe I just don't have anywhere near enough backlinks.
Don't bother spamming the meta kw's, just put in 4 - 8 that cover the subject. Google doesn't even bother with the things.
Link out to pertinent sites, for sure. Imho it helps. This PR change that just happened, we went from 5 to 6, but a research centre I'm associated with had their's stay at PR5 even though they have more quality backlinks. They are terrible at linking out with maybe 3 external links on the entire site, (1 to us buried many pages down).
Content, man. All the SE's love words... that's what they eat.
If you aren't in the ODP and Yahoo directories yet, try to get in. Go for pertinent categories that don't have too many entries.
Only try to get quality backlinks, not dodgy ones, and be careful who you do link out to... check the site first and make sure it isn't suffering because of suspect SEO strategies.
You had some great tips for linking in that post. But for those that actually try and follow that careful strategy, how do they end up with literally THOUSANDS of links? If people do all you suggest, surely there not going to find that many quality sites to link to and (hopefully) have them link to you are they?
You know where this is going don't you? The age old, "how many links do I need" question?
I read about robot.txt file but I don't understand what that is or even if I have it.
It might be my own web paranoia, but I feel that a truly accessible (to both users and spiders) web site needs a robots.txt file and more importantly have passed a HTML validation.
You can get by without either, but it shows good form, and I hear that the spiders like good form. I, for one, don’t really know what the spiders are looking for or what puts them off, so better to do all that is possible.
Don’t shoot me but that includes meta tags. ;)
jb
You want to know why this has happened? It's because I started feeding a stray cat yesterday that's been hanging around. I'm in Canada right now, in the boonies, temp of -5, muchos snow... I had to take pity on that poor cat. And I got a PR6 out of it... :-) What goes around comes around. I think I'll go do some x-cntry skiing.
Funnily enough I've moved from PR6 (index) PR 5 (sub pages), to PR7 (index) PR6 (sub pages) and I threw a cat out into the snow yesterday. Can you describe the one you rescued ;)
However, there is some justice, as it hasn't improved my SERPs one bit as far as I can see.
As regards to "quality links" I would suggest only other sites having something to do with yours that share a common theme. Don't focus on Page Rank.
Keep in mind too that Google is not the only search engine you want to find your site, so while meta tags like keywords may not be very important to Google (and if there is no other indexable text they do come into play - at least they did a little while back), they may be useful to others. In general it's just good to keep on theme without overdoing it to please the spiders.
There are so many posts and threads going in the same topics. Everyone has different opinion. You either need to have your own, or you pick one to follow.
Following advice from senior members would be smarter.
Froogle is starting to appear on some SERPs. Designed to automatically scan the web to retrieve products and prices - it can obviously identify a commercial site.
I've checked my SERPs on all other engines, and I'm near the top. It's a quality site, no spam, with good anchor text. A search -nonsense indicates that Google rates it too (privately!), and it now has a PR of 7. It is beaten into the top hundred by PR 2s!
I think we've been wasting our time Ladies & Gentlemen, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with our sites, or indeed much we can do, to improve the Google rankings of our formerly successful commercial sites.
Feel free to disagree, but it looks like the tide of events is against us. I've held out strongly against the commercial filter concept - I now think I've been proved wrong.
<edit: whoops - should have been 'Ladies and Gentlemen' - my apologies >
[edited by: superscript at 7:26 pm (utc) on Dec. 6, 2003]
p.s. I feel guily about throwing Stefan's new cat out now. I wasn't sure I could afford to feed it over winter :)
p.s. DRGather - here's a quote from you, message 3
others believe there's a maximum that can trigger a filter
;)
How can you possibly separate Google ranking from the Florida update!
Don't mention the word update? LOL.
Seriously though, the topic started down the road of general "good practice" and may have skirted the update with some "but some good practice may have changed recently". It would just be nice to have a thread that didn't focus almost exclusively on the Adwords conspiracy, or the IPO conspiracy, or the Froogle conspiracy, or whatever conspiracy happens to be in vogue. Not only would it be nice, but it would more closely answer the origninal question that started the topic.
You're right, I did mention a filter, but my mention had nothing to do with THE filter that everybody is talking about. The idea of a keyword stuffing trigger/filter has been around for AGES and has nothing to do with Florida.
Again... ymmv and that's just my opinion (and for the record, my opinion hasn't counted for much lately.)
If this is correct, then there is a danger of barking up the wrong tree, and messing around with sites to improve ranking, when there is no point in it.
edit: I never dreamt that my site would one day have a PR7 ranking - but it has ultimately done me no good in Google!
Should I get rid of the flash intro page
Indiana627,
I have a two-way satellite connection, and I still back out of pages with flash intros because they're usually slow - even using a fast connection.
Beth
[edited by: Indiana627 at 6:26 pm (utc) on Dec. 10, 2003]
You should remove that URL, (owner edit). I checked the company. I'd rather not make a comment while their URL is there, (and plus it's against the Terms of Service to post it).
Cheers
Not only do you not need to use the services of a company like that to rank well, by doing so you might wind up killing any chance you have of ever ranking well. Some of the techniques they use can cause problems, imho. Plus, you're putting your site in someone else's profit-seeking hands and I don't know if that's a good idea in the first place.
Brett years ago posted a lot of good suggestions on how to have your site do well. You can find it here:
[webmasterworld.com...]
It all still applies. Why don't you try an approach like that first before you sign on with a company like the one you were looking at.
I agree. Search Engine Optimization, even. Nice thread by the way :)
>> pages with a link
These pages are called "doorway pages" - the primary reason that people advice against them is that they're against Google's guidelines for webmasters [google.com]. Do read that page, it's not all negative; there's also some good advice and recommendations.
Here's some information on SEO and Google: [google.com...]
That page might not seem very positive towards SEO. You shouldn't see that as a sign that SEO is bad, only that it's sometimes a little "wild west like" with some firms optimizing their own wallet more than the sites of their clients. A lot of the things they write on that "guidelines" page is actually SEO, so SEO is not a bad thing. Do note the sentence "Many SEOs provide useful services for website owners.."
>> The more I read the more confused I am.
This place is currently easy to get confused by. I'd recommend not putting too much weight on anything written in recent threads (about a month or so).
Try the site search on top of the page, type in "flash", or "robots.txt", or "doorway", or any of the other issues you think about, it's all been discussed thoroughly. The Google guidelines and the post Stefan supplied a link to above is really all you need. The site search and all the other posts will be useful tools later, but do get the basics right - you might not even need anything else.
>> I don't link to any outside sites - is this bad?
Earlier it was considered bad to link to outside sides at all by some people. It wasn't then and it isn't now.
This does not mean that it's bad not to link to outside sites. If you're in doubt if you should link to one specific site because of something (anything, really), or if you just can't find other sites that might be relevant for your visitors, then don't link out. I know some highly valuable pages that doesn't have one single link on them, and i know others that are nothing but links.
/claus
