Search engine issues

[kerryn]

Diving right in here, my website was listed in many websites and appearing in the first 50 listings for my keywords up until july - now Ive bombed and no where unless you count google adwords which just isnt the same.

I know I have issues with my keywords at the moment and thought Id ask for some outsiders views. At this time for reasons unknown to me my keywords appear to come from my side menu (just trying to fix this problem with my web techie)

Also some gentle critic on my site as outsiders would be useful - just pretend you are expecting a baby or planning to switch to cloth nappies...

Please dont bog me down with technical jargon - I employ a techie for that stuff - just want to know is the site working, any changes and what will make it appeal to search engines

Thanks http://www.snazzypants.co.uk

Kerry

[broadband-engine]

Hi Kerry

I can give you tips that have worked for my site...

1]
The first page of a site is the most important from a search engine point of view - the text on your "index.htm" page should total about 250 words. Into this 250 words pick a keyphrase that people are likely to search on, for the instance of my site I use "online shopping directory". I use this phrase six times (these terms can also be used in hyperlinks). Also, in the instance of my site the repetition of "UK" is used. It is important to incorporate these keywords into the site for search engines to rank it.

Note: I have used heading tags <h1></h1> at the top of the page with the text 'Shops Net UK Online Shopping Directory... No.1 Shopping Online' - this indicates to a search engine spider the start of the content and includes the keyphrase.

So what have I done here?
The repetition of keyphrases has made a positive indication to a search engine that this page is to do with an online shopping directory, the repetition reinforces that.

Your site has lots of content on the index which is good.

2]
The page title - I never use more than ten words, there is little worth writing more... I repeat the 'UK Online Shopping Directory' keyphrase here, that I mentioned in point 1. On pages further into the site I use different titles that are relevant to the page category or the product I am selling.

3]
Keywords:
Ideally each page should have different keywords but their importance has diminished considerably as search engines tend to look moreso at content rather than the keywords tag - so I don't go to too much trouble. If you do only use a maximum of 25 keywords, it is not worth typing more as a spider will not pick all of them up after a certain threshold limit. (I think)

Also, no word should be used more than three times, otherwise the effectiveness of your keywords may be diluted.

4]
Description:
Ideally each page should have different keywords but again the importance of the description tag has diminished considerably and it is not worth going to much trouble. Limit your descriptions to around 25 words.

5]
CSS: Always place CSS in an external file and call it in i.e.
<LINK
href="http://www.website.com/css.css" type=text/css
rel=stylesheet>

- if there is lots of CSS style sheet code on your site, this will cause search engines to perceive relevant text as being much further down the page, and therefore less important than it actually is.

6]
Images:
always make use of the alt attribute and give images a keyword specifiic name, i.e. if you have an image of a villa in spain call the image villa_in_spain.jpg

see the full tag below...

villa_in_spain.jpg

make sure that your images are also optimised for the web.

7]
Getting Reciprocal Links:

Then, when requesting reciprocal links stay completely relevant to your own subject area (and I tend to stay Country specific aswell - since I run a UK Directory) opinions may vary on this point.

Whilst images as reciprocal links look nice, they are not as powerful as keyworded text links - I request from other webmasters to have:

'Shops Net UK Online Shopping Directory' - (or variations of this)

as it strengthens the view that search engines will have of my page(s) - i.e. lots of incoming links saying the page is to do with shopping in the UK... compounding this is the keyword density of the phrases on the homepage that are saying the same thing. It is this combination that will make your search engine positioning move up the rankings.

All the Best, and I hope this is helpful
Phil

[gary]

Hi Kerry

Google regularly changes the way their search results are categorised and sometimes this can result in quite severe changes to rankings. Phil's advice above is pretty much spot on, though I would add that the Description meta tag is still used quite a lot. The page title and the content of the page are the most important, in conjunction with other relevant websites linking to yours.

Be patient - it takes a few months to really start doing well on search engines, and even then it's a continuous process.

Gary

[Ozzy]

Hi Kerry,
Have a look at some info I put down about Google on htp://www.ozzy.co.uk/seo.php

For the first time in almost a year the last update of Google has caused my website to drop from 1st to 3rd place for my main keywords, these things happen. Above all else though, do not flood your pages with keywords - your pages must always be human readable!

[Enigma121]

Much of Phil's advice is very good, but I'd have put the stuff regarding links to the VERY TOP.

Google's recent updates mean that inbound links are more important than on page factors. You need to make sure that the stuff on your pages is relevant, and this means relevant to the inbound links.

You should be looking for reciprocal links or even better one way links, that are of direct relevance to your own site.

Make sure your inbound links contain key phrases that are applicable to your site, not just your site's URL.

Google can drop you like a stone if you've been "bad", exchanged links with unrelated sites, bought in loads of links quickly, keyword stuffed your pages - the list goes on and on.

Hope this is of some use.

[MichaelG]

Phil - Very good tip/advice. ;)

[Jayne]

Hi Phil,

That was a brilliant answer, I understood it and that is something for me :D Keep up the good work, post some more.

Jayne

[broadband-engine]

Hey thanks guys, it was a while ago I posted that!

I'll have a think and post some more!

[epiphany]

I have some web pages set up specifically so I can analyse Google's algorithm changes. I can't say for certain if this is true but I am fairly sure it is - your sites ranking is being reduced for having a title that is too long. Go for under 50 characters.

[webit]

Both the ukshopsnet and Ozzys answers are rather too good to be kept hidden away in my recently viewed pages history.

Should this be edited and made into a sticky?