No. 1 position in Google

[gators]

Hey all - This is my first time posting to Webmaster World. However, I am a web designer and have several clients so I too , have been watching all of the Google issues. I have one client whose site seems to have fallen off the face of the earth where it formerly had a top 10 ranking for most of its key words. This client is not happy!

However, I was also very surprised to see that just last Thursday, I put a new web site online. In designing it, I did all of the usual key word optimization that I had been doing over the past year to help my sites with Google. (This was before I had begun to read all about the Google woes). I was very worried about the site I was building, wondering if I should de-optimize it or 'go with the flow' that I usually had been doing.

I decided to 'go as usual'.

Anyway, it was officially online as of December 5th. I promptly submitted it to the usual engines.

Anyway, using my client's primary key word phrase, and checking our stats , I was floored to see that already this site is listed as Number #1 in Google and Number #1 in Yahoo for key word phrases.

I have NEVER had a site get listed in Google that fast. This goes against anything that people say about Page Rank and Back Links because it was a brand new site!

It is a commercial site, by the way.

Any thought as to the subject.

Also, I don't keep the Google toolbar installed too much on my computer. It annoys me. So occasionally I install it, and then un-install it.

But on that tool bar, can somebody please explain to me just what are 'back links' and how can you tell how many you have? Are 'back links' just another way of saying 'other sites that links to yours'?

thanks

[seofreak]

Did you have any enternal links to that site? Maybe google came from there and not submission?

[John_Creed]

I've had similiar success with individual new pages, but never with a whole new site.

Sounds like Google found your site via freshbot. I wouldn't expect it to stay in that position for too long.

[wellzy]

I have had newer sites come up really well at Google at first, then settle down after a few days. Never know though, maybe you just got it right ;)

[takagi]

But on that tool bar, can somebody please explain to me just what are 'back links' and how can you tell how many you have? Are 'back links' just another way of saying 'other sites that links to yours'?

Clicking on the 'Backward Links' on the Google Toolbar will result in the query like

link:www.mydomain.com/page123.html

The shown links are not only from other sites, it is just a list of links to the page that was open on Internet Explorer when you clicked on 'Backward Links'. This function can also be used without the toolbar. The list is not complete since it is very well possible that Google knows more links to that page. Even if the SERP has the text

Your search - link:http://www.mydomain.com/page123.html - did not match any documents. 

then it is still possible Google knows links to that page (somehow also depending on the PR of the page with a link and the PR of the page being linked).

[Web Footed Newbie]

Since no one has said it,
I'll say it.....
Welcome to WebmasterWorld, gators!

It has been my experience and the experience of others that a new site can jump quit rapidly, only to settle down after the next re-fresh.

As for the back links on the TB (toolbar), this usually displays the links that are PR4 and higher to that particular page. To find out more links, try using ATW, where it usually shows more links (or at least, links to your site with lower PR (pagerank).

Good luck with the upset client, you have some work to do!;)
Again, welcome to WW.
WFN:)

[finer9]

Is the #1 ranking phrase very specific, more than two words, or non-competitive?

[Dayo_UK]

Welcome Gators :)

Is this a whole site that got listed or just the one page?

Do you happen to know when the crawl was - I had a massive crawl over sunday night (uk time) for a couple of new sites and am eagerly waiting for the results.

[SirFroggZ]

I to fell off the face of google for most of my keywords. Now here is the tricky part. I have gotten more sales from the use of their adwords than i did with their search engine. Very very strange.

[johnser]

We've had dozens of no. 1's in the last couple of weeks across different sites.

Our experience is that they tend to stay top for several days before falling. Expectation is that once an update happens, they'll be boosted towards the top again.

J

[ericli]

If you choose very unique keyword or pharse that is uncommonly used by others then it will be much easy to get list on top. If you choose a very common keyword or pharse the situation will be harder I believe.

For example, if using "Qquat akskep kkdkdkd" in a brand new page/wite, it is guranteed it will be listed in no.1

[Chndru]

ericli, read carefully. gators (in his msg#1) mentioned

using my client's primary key word phrase

[giggle]

Gators

Would you please do me a favour and take over my clients sites please.

[GranPops]

ericli "Qquat akskep kkdkdkd" nice one

try epoxy mandarin toasters

[Dayo_UK]

Well - Webmasterworld will be top of the serps for :-

"Qquat akskep kkdkdkd"
"epoxy mandarin toasters"

In a few days :)

[gators]

Thanks for all the kinds words.
Yes, I must admit that this particular site
is not overly competitive. At least from what I could
tell prior to doing the site. That is one thing I recommend.
Before designing a site, visit other sites that are
the direct competitors and type in one set of key words and see what your competition is. The key word phrase consists of '3 words'.

I would love for everyone to visit the site , HOWEVER,I dont' think we are suppose to give links to sites on this board PLUS I would hate for anyone to jinx my so called good fortune.

However, on another note.

I have one site that has been online just short of a year. It has a .org domain name. Does Google index .org domain names? I am sure they do. My client, at the time, insisted that the site have one of those pull down DHTML layered menus that uses javascript. I tried to discourage them at the time but they simply knew what they had to have.

Anyway, I have tried everything. From using an external js to show the links, to an internal. I also have a site map that has all the links to each page (on the site map I did away with the layered menu all together in the hopes that would help).

On each page, I have a footer with links to all pages.

Anyway, Google will not pick up this site. However, I do see in my logs that Googlebot has paid the site a visit. But it never seems to link it. It is linked on AlltheWEb, MSN, several others. But nobody seems to use those engines these days, so this site, if lucky, gets only 2 or 3 hits a day. Not even worth it.

I did just the other day put a robots.txt file in there - set it up to allow all engines and allow all files. Don't know if that would help. Thoughts on robots.txt to allow everything? To my understanding, to allow everything, i should not need it. But maybe it is different for a .org domain name.

Does anyone have any idea of what I can do (& still keep the layered menu for the client)? could it be because it is a .org address?

Also, which is better for search engines.
To reference the links at the footer as

"page1.html" etc. or "http://mydomain.org/page1.html"

I even submitted "http://mydomain.org/sitemap.html" to help the engines. There is a link to the sitemap and to the index.html on every page.

Please help with ideas!

Any coding to insert? I must admit with the layout of the page, the actual text is way way down the source code BUT again, the layout is what my client wanted. Some people just do not listen.

[Powdork]

Go Gators! er.. I mean hi Gators.
Check in your logs for GoogleBots visits. The first request should have been for the robots.txt file. Can you see what header was returned? If the standard file not found 404 header was returned then Googlebot should take that to mean crawl it all, but if you're server is returning something other than the 404, googlebot would take that to mean disallow to all.
The good news is that if that was your problem you have already fixed it by creating a properly syntaxed (I hope) robots.txt file.
It would look like this in your raw logs.
"GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 404 204 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

[gators]

Before I added the robots.txt file I would see
this command:

"GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 404

But of course, it would deliver a 404 because the robots.txt file did not exist and I did not have a custom error page.

However, now I have a robots.txt file in place. My logs file does not give the domain name , so I don't know if it is Googlebot or not.

Does anyone know what IP address Googlebot would be. I understand there is a deepbot and a Freshbot.

This is what I'm showing now: Is this Google?
What does the 200 command mean? I had put my robots.txt file through a validator . (can't remember where I found it). It said it was 'okay'.

216.39.50.145 - - [09/Dec/2003:17:17:56 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 29

Also, I see stuff like this:
66.150.40.75 - - [09/Dec/2003:18:59:01 -0500] "HEAD /jobs.html HTTP/1.1" 200 0

What does the "head" command mean?

Can anyone recommend a good log analyzer. This log file is one that is automatically placed on my server. I have access to Urchin but to be truthful, it tells me nothing that I can deciper.

I also use the free version of Sitemeter. I like that, but not sure it would tell me when Googlebot visited or not.

thanks for everyone's help.

BTW, yes, the GO GATORS! is accurate! I am a 'Gators' fan. Don't hold that against me please. :-)

[gators]

BTW:

This is what I have for my robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Also, I think I read that it needed to be CHMOD a certain thing. Can't remember. I think I used 755. Would that be correct. I want to allow all engines to all files.

[coosblues]

The robots file does not have to be chmodded - you can always run your robots file through the validator to make sure all is well.