Odd results need your thoughts

[toddb]

Hi,
I am pretty new and have a weird result for my site.
The search is "widgetworld" and instead of www.widgetworld.net. I get www.widgetworld.net/bluewidgets.html. So my main page with PR6 and several thousand links is below a PR4 page that is one off the main. Not only is the main page lower but it is not in the first one hundred searches. In this case widgetworld is not a highly competitve word and know one is using SEO to get the phrase or word. I use it in the title but since it is a widgetworld.net I use the .net in the title does that throw it off as for as widgetworld? Widgetworld is used about 5-6 times in the text etc but not as a H1 or anything. Have I lost relevance to my own URL? 2 of my pages are top 3 but seems dumb to have someone looking for me and have to get in the backdoor as it were. The main googles well on more commercial phrases that I target. Also the site has been in google for a year or more.

[jdMorgan]

toddb,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]!

This does sound odd. Since your other two pages are highly-ranked AND you main page is PR6, it leads me to question what other problems might exist to "demote" your home page; Using ".net" in the title and not having an H1 doesn't "feel" like enough of a shortfall to cause this problem.

Take a hard look at those three pages, and ask yourself "What is different about the home page?"

I would suggest dumping the .net in the title - because visitors who reach you really don't care about your TLD, .com., net, .whatever - non-techies don't care. They do seem to expect everything to end in ".com", and I can understand your desire to "remind" them that it is .net, but maybe you should experiment with making it less prominent - Like a title of "Widgets in blue green and red at WidgetWorld: shop WidgetWorld.net," or just mention WidgetWorld.net in your on-page text a few times.

Best case: Next month the home page rises in the SERPs.
Worst case: Next month the home page sinks more - but you still get your traffic from the unintended "doorway" pages.

Not much downside in experimenting with it to try to gain some visibility for it...

Speaking of on-page text, I'd suspect that might be the difference between the home page and the other two - Is there more text - "spider food" - the the other two pages?

Check out Brett's Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone [webmasterworld.com] in the WebmasterWorld library for a lot of info on building a Google-friendly site.

HTH,
Jim
<edit>Corrected broken link</edit>

[edited by: jdMorgan at 4:39 am (utc) on Jan. 5, 2003]

[toddb]

Thanks for the response. I did notice that I have the "widgetworld" in several places but maybe if I alt some of the "widgetworld" images. I checked some backlinks and my main page has some "guestbooks" but with PR6 it seems unlikely that is it. And will add a h1 with widgetworld as I want to add that anyways as I have none at this point. Just seems odd is all. Chalk it up to the google gods I guess. I had read some great threads that were recommended and I am trying to add all the stuff.

[Lots0]

Just a thought here toddb,
Have you validated your HTML on your PR6 page? If not you might want to give it a try.

[Marcia]

>>2 of my pages are top 3

toddb, how competitive are the search terms for those other 2 pages? And do the search terms for those pages appear in the file names or link text?

>widgetworld

Let's back up to this. Are we mainly talking about the compound word widgetworld or separately, widget world? How does it appear on the page - and how about in the link text, both within the site and in your inbound links? When people type in the search by site name, will they be looking for widgetworld or widget world?

Are there graphics back to the homepage in the navigation? If so, what's in the "alt" attribute? How about the site link text - and the "title" attribute if you've got them?

Look closely at the issue of the compound word and see what you can come up with. It might give a clue.

[percentages]

I believe Google has given more relevance to on-page criteria.

Previously PR and off page criteria carried more weight, now I see on page criteria coming back a little. This explains why some lower branch pages might out rank the higher PR pages, simply they have better on-page optimization.

IMO this is a good move by Google and improves the general SERPs :)

[MHes]

percentages -

I think you may be onto something. I have noticed the same. I now have deep pages doing well which have poor titles, low pr but very good content. The spider has ranked me well for 'on page' phrases deep in the body text.

I remember Googleguy keeps saying something like, "forget seo, just produce good quality content". Perhaps anchor text links in, H1, titles and all the other stuff has dropped in importance.... I hope so. Links in generating PR should not be as important as Google has made it in the past. I know their whole strategy has centered around PR, but it no longer makes sense. The theory is that people will link to a site and in effect 'vote' for it. But 99.9% of people on the web do not own a website, so how can they 'vote'? Therefore the 'votes' come from other website owners and lets be honest, most don't like linking to other sites or only do it for pr purposes. If you have a good google presence, links from other sites produces proportionally tiny traffic. The real benefit of links is for search engine tactics, and so a webmaster with rubbish content could get good rankings by searching for links with likeminded webmasters. The result of this is poor serps.

If google is paying more attention to simple good quality body text, then they will be finding the sites built by informative people with no knowledge of seo. These sites may be helpful to thousands of people who do not have a website to link back to them. Therefore the logical conclusion, if google wants to rank these sites, is to lower the significance of pr.

[piskie]

I have no evidence but have heard quoted that a "Full Stop" in the title tag truncates it. This would result in nothing after the "Full Stop" being indexed.

As I say, I have no evidence but having read several oppinions that it happens, I steer clear of "Full Stops" in my title tag. And it is so easy to do normally.

[cornwall]

Previously PR and off page criteria carried more weight, now I see on page criteria coming back a little

I would go along with that thought. Google is always tweeking the algorithm, and my feeling, looking at my various sites movements on serps pages following last update, is that your observation is correct.

End of the day you have to optimise all of your pages all of the time, that way you protect yourself against algorithm changes. If it is not part of the algo this month, it may be next month. ;)

[toddb]

It is the compound widgetworld with widget being very competitive but the compound not being that way. I am not in the top 200 and when I search inside the reults I am pretty sure I am not listed. I will check the HTML rigth now. I did changemy title twice last month just minor tweaks. Bad coding is a possiblity.

[toddb]

That was it thank you for your help. My </head> had gotten goofed at some previous hack attmept by me so was not listing my tags and title correctly. At least I hope this was it but we will see.

[Lots0]

Glad I was able to help :-)
Sometimes in the world of SEO we forget the simple things.

Validating your HTML is IMO one of the most important things you can do and one of the most over looked.