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1-The customer has a very large web site but he does not appear in any of the top 20 places for any of the keywords related to his products.
2-The domain has been registered with google.com and Verisign Surelist Search listing; however, there were no significant improvements during the 1 year subscription we paid.
3-The meta tags have all the products and services the company sells.
4-He is constantly asking me why is his web site is not in the top 20, even if we search for the name of the company, the name does not even come up in any of the searches on google nor in yahoo. We even paid google for those adds on the right, to display the name and services of the company.
5-The company has a robots.txt, if it helps, it also has a site map, the only thing that goes against being search is the title of the pages, since they are dynamically created by an ASP script.
6-We have been considering paying the 299 fee, to get into yahoo, but how long would it take for the web site to be searchable and also would it be worth to pay that much money when services such as Overture can get you the top places for less money.
I have tried almost every little trick in books and websites to make this site searchable, but I'm having no luck at all. I am in the verge of a nervous breakdown with this search engine promotion thing. Can you guys give me some advice on what things should I do and don't in order to make this web site searchable.
Thanks in advance
welcome to WebmasterWorld, try starting here [webmasterworld.com...] once you've read that then you may have some more ideas
:)
You ask some great questions, glad you felt comfortable with jumping in.
newbie stuff, but I am sure all of us have been in this place quite a few times
I think many of us are finding out that revisiting information we think we already know is probably in our best interest so we all benefit from ‘newbi’ questions.
I’ll give my input on a few of your concerns:
The meta tags have all the products and services the company sells.
Ah, meta tags. I remember when they really ‘meant’ something. What they are good for is when you take your linking to the next level. Many second level and alternative portals use them for indexing so it is best to get them in place correctly. Make each set fit the actual page they exist on. I use them as a sort of outline of what is to follow on the page. Don’t list every keyword the site is targeting, just the essential keywords for that page.
He is constantly asking me why is his web site is not in the top 20, even if we search for the name of the company
Isn’t that interesting. I would be looking at the sites that are raking for the businesses name and determine why. Many times it’s as simple as getting outside linking that utilizes the business name in the anchor text of the link leading back to your site from other sites. This also helps to establish authority for specific keywords so be sure to also use your most important keywords in the anchor text. This also works for internal linking.
the name does not even come up in any of the searches on google nor in yahoo.
Do you have a listing in OPD (Open Directory Project or dmoz.org)? Are you getting links from related industry portals?
the title of the pages, since they are dynamically created by an ASP script.
Even with dynamically generated sites I believe it’s in the best interest of the website owner is to create static pages on the site as well. You may want to consider that as an option.
I think it’s in the best interest of most sites to pay the $299 for Yahoo, at least for the first year and then reevaluate when the listing comes up for review the following year.
Good luck and again, thanks for your post.
I'd be very interested to have a look at the structure of the site in question. Sometimes, even when frames have not been used, spidering can be blocked by JavaScript or Flash navigation, and I have known DIVS to mess things up too.
I like a challenge.
(This is not an introduction to a professional service. In accordance with the rules of this forum, any help given by me as a result of this post would free of charge).
[edited by: agerhart at 3:12 pm (utc) on Sep. 22, 2002]
[edit reason] No URLs, please use sticky mail instead [/edit]
