Forum Moderators: mack
I have my own business which I've been working on the website for. I've never done this before and have a website designing program. At this point, hiring someone is out of the question...money.
My initial questions are:
1) Is there a way to help me get the cabinet side recognized? My site is being picked up by the spiders of MSN as well as (sometimes) Yahoo. But not Google. Actually Google went through way back in Sept 04 when I didn't have anything really done on my site. While it is being picked by those it's displaying only a few pages which are not my main focus. I'm a Cabinetmaker (Kitchen Cabinets) and I also deal in other products like outdoor furniture. I believe that since there aren't many outdoor entertaining/furniture sites that the spiders are showing me (although not on the first page) when a search is performed. When it comes to my cabinets, I don't even rank. I've done the key word research and added these to my heading, content as well as metaname keyword. It's a fairly new site and I'm working on it daily but I have noticed from that MSN has picked up the updated pages up every week.
2) Is there such a thing as too many links(?) or direction buttons or? you should have as your menu?
3) My site isn't necassarily geard for e-commerce but it is to help bing in more clients. Should I have certain info or wording on my site for this?
4) I've been reading in other posts, things like popularity sliders, url wrapper, H1, etc. Is there dictionary somewhere that explains all this and how to use them?
5) This H1 thing...Since I'm using a website design software, can I edit without messing up anything?
6) How do I get the mouse to show wording as it passes over a picture? I gather this is what is meant by mouseover? I read something about that but I'm usure where exactly to paste it.
I have more questions but I'll leave them for now and go back to reading past posts.
Thanks for any advice in advance. I hope that's not too much for my initial post.
If it's proper I'll list my business name for anyone who would look and give me advice.
Geoff
Building your early site(s) is never going to be easy, it's a bit of a learning curve but hopefully we can try and give some advice that will point you in the right direction. :)
Your first question is a very relevant question to a lot of us, how do we actually make our site visible and get it raked well. There really is no "set in stone" answer, but lets try some of the basics.
If you feel you are not ranking as well as you would like to be for certain results try looking through those results to see just what other sites are doing. Sometimes this can give you little tips and trick that you may wish to try for yourself. Very often however you will find sites that are just Spam, they where built to attract the user and rank well. These type of sites will eventually get caught up and drop put of the results. Many people complain about this type of site, personally I just think "if it's that obvious then users will click back when they get there"
The biggest single factor you need to work on is getting inbound links pointing to your site. The more the better, get listed in as many directories as possible. Every link you can get will help you out a lot in the medium to long term. Not just in terms of direct click through traffic but in terms of search engine results. There is a pretty complex relationship between search engines and the number of inbound links you have. In general terms the more the merrier.
Is there such a thing as too many links(?) or direction buttons or? you should have as your menu?
Generaly design your navigation for your users. Keep is simple and usable.
My site isn't necassarily geard for e-commerce but it is to help bing in more clients. Should I have certain info or wording on my site for this?
This type of site is very common, it is used to good effect to help with branding and getting potential customers to know you exist, they drive sales indirectly. On this type of site the main info you need to provide is the obvious stuff, address and phone number. It may also be a good idea to have a feedback or "contact us" form , although in many cases an email address will do.
This H1 thing...Since I'm using a website design software, can I edit without messing up anything?
Without knowing exactly what software you are using I cant say for sure. Generally html editors allow you to edit your page from an editor view and an html view. If you can view your html during development then you should be able to do this. If now you could edit the files using notepad or any other text editor.
How do I get the mouse to show wording as it passes over a picture?
this is done using the "alt" attribute...
<src="http://www.example.com/photo.gif" alt="text goes here">
Hope this gives you some ideas. :)
Mack.
The fact that you are not yet featuring in Google may be because you are in their "sandbox". Since Feb/March 2004 most new sites that are launched don't feature in Google for up to a year or more.
Mack...I went in and was able to work the wording for the pictures no problem after reading that. Thanks!
DeeDeeDubbleU..."sandbox" eh!? Oh well, I guess that means I sit and waite for them!
I've been looking at other's websites and have actually copied some of the metaname keywords. I have a lot of code wording at the top of my page which the software adds in for the background and such. After that my Header "name", "keywords" and "tagline definition". Would that rank me lower? Kitchen Cabinets is saturated with many busineses when you search. Or would it just be that I'm a fairly new site?
Once you've got the site up with some easy navigation, make sure you're phone number is listed prominently on every page.
Then, head over to the links section of this site and spend the next two days reading (I'm quite serious). Your next step is probably getting some traffic from incoming links while you're waiting to rank in Google (and it will help you in Google too).
