Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I have a new site. There is enough information on each page but all of them are about half full. I assume that it will take about another few months for me to add the rest of the content to the pages. What I think I can do now is to add some general descriptions, guidelines etc to the pages, perhaps divide the site in groups so that I can add different description texts to each.
I heard that Google does not like duplicated content, but is duplicated content better than little content? Will they treat a site with many duplicated content as a spam site?
If you start blurring each page's distinct focus with duplicated filler text, you're likely to create troubles - especially until you can depend on frequent spidering.
[edited by: tedster at 6:43 am (utc) on July 9, 2008]
A page can be as long as you like - though there are practical limits for both spidering and the ability of browsers to download and render it.
But you don't have nothing. You have a basic content developed by yourself; if you can make it grow in the next months to have a full and orginal site wich people loves, search engines will follow you.
Search engines are interested in give better answers to their users.
If you has original and detailed content about an interesting topic (without breaking some basic SEO rules, i.e.: set titles properly), search engines will pic your pages for their results; then natural links will come and the machine will work alone.
It is; and that horrifies all those people looking for a free lunch.
I don't know about others, but I see primary SEO as correcting (or not making) mistakes in the basics. With properly-used on-page elements, good inbound links, and good content, you may not need any of the "tricky SEO" stuff at all.
As a simple example, take two pages with good content and decent inbound links; The difference in ranking and performance between the one titled "Fuzzy widgets in red, green, yellow, and blue from WidgetCo" and the one titled "WidgetCo home page" may be quite dramatic. Yet, we find this simple mistake on half of the sites on the Web today -- They somehow think their company name and "home page" is more important than the type of product they offer! Which do you suppose more people will search for?
So to put it in less-than-polite terms, the basics of SEO lie in not making dumb mistakes, to start with. And that may be all you need if you have great content and good inbounds.
Jim
Thanks for the information. I checked my site and found that <title> tags are set to the best I can. <h1> ~ <h3> tags are being used on all pages for titles at different levels, I even feel that I am over using <h3> tags in some. <description> tags is what has been missing. My entire site use one description information and that is probably the reason why I am not getting reasonable numbers of users considering the number of pages I have indexed by Google. I have fixed most of them but still need to be indexed by Google again. Hopefully I am not put in the sandbox because of my last mistake (one description for all pages)
I like your example a lot. I understand it as treating each page or groups of pages within a site as one independent website by emphasizing the information each page or group is focusing on, I hope I am understanding this correctly; if so, I think I can safely assume I am doing ok in this part because this is how I have been treating the site, basically each page has a unique <title> that says exactly what the page is about.
I am a beginner in this SEO thing, while I dont expect myself to do magic but yes, I should do my best to avoid making simple dumb mistakes. The site was launched only about 2 months ago and it looks like I still need to give it some time to get inbound links (I do have a few but they are not yet showing when I do link:domain.com in google...)
It looks like right now I just have to give google some time to show the changes I made..but I am still so nervous haha...
"make no dumb mistake", that should be my motto for a while to come. Thanks again!
The better the search engines get at telling good content from bad content, the less SEO that will need to be done, and the less it will help sites with less-than-good content (I'm being polite again). The search engines' goal is to make SEO irrelevant, so that sites that make all the dumb on-page and linking mistakes but do have good content will eventually be ranked well despite their technical errors. That's the goal, but of course we're not quite there yet -- not even close. :)
Duplication of the <title> and <description> tags is a very large contributor to sending your pages into Google's Supplemental index. Fixing them (making them unique and relevant to each page) can get you back out and quite often that's all that's needed.
Jim
Thanks again! I will remember what you said and learn from my own mistakes. Reading your post makes me feel hopeful again. Many thanks.
I did somehow feel that having duplicate descriptions is not a good thing when launching the site but I was lazy and thought that I can come back to the description tags after I get other thingsdone...obvoiusly I was wrong...and I see it with my own eyes how search engines are merciless to lazy people lol
As for now, I want to stay with the basic while read more about SEO when I can...perhaps I will need that one day when the site is more established..
"That's the goal, but of course we're not quite there yet -- not even close. :)" comment sounds very interesting =D, I would love to hear more =)
If you have a lot of essentially empty page templates, you're squandering the little bit of PageRank you have at the beginning on duplicate pages that aren't going to be productive. Much better, I feel, to start with a smaller number of pages to be indexed and have a shot at ranking, and then add content as your site's reputation grows.
I'm working with several clients right now where we're putting a lot of effort into planning a logical expansion path, so we don't have empty pages just to pad out a structure, and the existing structure doesn't feel like it has holes in it. We're also looking ahead at file naming conventions... even envisioning the evolution of site graphics... so we change as little as possible as we move ahead.
About the inbound links: In my case, I do need to have all the information available all at the same time to make the site useful and actually worth something. I am pretty sure that no one will be interested to link to my site at all if I only have parts of the total site available....I wont link to one myself that's for sure.
I do try to add information to the site bit by bit but I am adding new layers of information to each page instead of adding new pages/chunks of site every time as I go...i am not sure if this is the best way to go when we think of SEO (several people already told me that it's not and that I should slowly increase the number of the pages) but for the production part, it did save tons of my time doing it this way (and with surprisingly low number of errors in the files considering it was all done by one person with low tech skills)
..sorry if i sound stubborn (i am not...lol) but at this stage of my project, it is hard for me to go back and do it in different way....
I am still waiting for google to re-index my pages...it feels like forever...
** It is; and that horrifies all those people looking for a free lunch. **
LOL...the need for SEO shouldn't even exist ;)
[edited by: Simsi at 7:09 pm (utc) on July 13, 2008]
I know many people resent having to learn such foundational, tecchie stuf when they'd rather be focused on creating content, shipping orders, and so on. But there's a parallel in the physical world that I'd say is quite close.
When I worked in retail management, what I wanted to do was get products on the shelf and sell them. Maybe create a good ad campaign. The last thing I expected was what I sometimes ended up spending lots of time on - building codes, construction techniques, lighting systems, paint quality, tax laws, HVAC requirements, phone systems and on and on. But in order to run a really good group of shops, that's exactly what was required. Not total mastery, no, but definitely a certain depth of knowledge beyond the layman's level.
It's the same with server tech and all the technical underpinnings of the web itself. To do really well on the search engines, you do need to know something about DNS, http, url structures, server settings, etc, etc. This foundational level, along with jdMorgan's basics of page construction, is often the winning combination with no further strain on the brain.
The Internet has its own language. We need to speak that language with some fluency if we want to communicate effectively to the search engines. Just as we would not try to operate a boutique in Madrid without having some Spanish under our belt, or hiring someone who does.
