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#1 2007-03-18 15:28:03
- Stratford Guide
- SEO n00b
- Registered: 2007-01-05
- Posts: 2
Banging my head against google wall
Hi
I have been workiong on my web site - www.thestratfordguide.co.uk for a while now and it has been an interesting learning curve.
I think my content whilst still needing to grow a lot to be to the level I want the site to be is more relevant than a lot of the sites that come up before me in the search engines (Not just google)
I have tried to get links from other relevant webs ites, easier said than done, and a local tourist attraction has listed me under their links pages.
I was having some success from MSN and Yahoo under www.theeasyguide.co.uk which does open the same content, ironically this never faired well under google when it was the only URL.
I know have my correct URL www.thestratfordguide.co.uk set-up I am told as the main URL (not sure how you check this) with www.theeasyguide.co.uk set as a subdomain.
This seems to have wiped away the traffic I was getting from the other search engines normally MSN and Yahoo, and although I am now listed in google if you search for main URL it doesnt come up if you search for more general searches
i.e. restaurants / Hotels / attractions in Stratford Upon Avon.
Thye annoying thing is that although their are a few great web sites that are polished and have good content that I can understand still showing ahead of me, there does seem to be loads of sites that don't really match the search still coming in way ahead of me, in fact I dont really appear at all.
I am a novice at building a web site this being my first attempt and I am sure I am missing some obvious things that would help me get my web site up the list. (I am not expecting miracles, pages 5/6/7 would be a good start)
Any ideas what is worng with my site that is making it return so badly in search engines.
Andy
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#2 2007-03-22 15:24:37
- clivewalker
- SEO Guide
- Registered: 2006-11-02
- Posts: 11
Re: Banging my head against google wall
I had a quick look...
Some or all pages seems to contains iframes. I am not a big fan of iframes for main website pages and frames-based websites have several disadvantages for search engines. In fact, frames-based website have passed their sell-by date for several reasons. I would create individual pages that have individual content without the use of iframes.
Assuming you can get round the frames problem, the next thing I would do is make sure that every page has a unique page title. Presumably each page has different content, therefore each page should have a unique page title.
Secondly, I would try and ensure that all pages are reachable using a normal link from the homepage. I noticed a JavaScript menu. I'm afraid that search engine bots like Googlebot will not be able to follow JavaScript menu links so you need to make sure that they can find the other pages by using standard links.
There is a duplicate menu at the bottom of the page. This might be what you have done to ensure that search engines find your pages. OK.
However, personally, I would create a single menu system using cascading style sheets (CSS). In this way, you can build an attractive styled list [with sublists for the pop-out menu items] that is easily indexed and followed by search engines.
Hope this helps...
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#3 2007-06-02 22:30:17
Re: Banging my head against google wall
Hi,
I have just analyzed your website www.thestratfordguide.co.uk...
Don't bang your head, it won't help you.
Your site has a very poor optimization.
First of all you stuffed the keywords meta tag with 127 unnecessary words. Leave just few keywords. Use "Stradford" as the main(first) keyword and "Stradford upon Avon" as the second.
Download a free keyword suggestion tool here:
http://www.goodkeywords.com/
You will find out how many times per month people search for your keywords and get some suggestions. Your keywords should be relevant to your page content. The density of the main keyword shouldn't be less than 20 per page.
Search engine crawlers inspect pages from the top left corner to the bottom right corner. It's a good idea to place the name of your site, containing word "Stratford" above the date. Write more about Stratford, so that you will be able to stuff content with your preferred keywords. Add the bottom menu again to your site using text links. And place a text link containing "Stratford" at the right bottom corner.
The second comment is about the title. The title tag should be placed right under the <head> tag. Also edit the title and exclude web address. Thus you will increase the keyword weight in title.
You don't use H1 - H6 tags at all! You must place your main keyword or keyword phrase between
<h1> keyword</h1> tags.
The second keyword must be placed between
<h2>second keyword</h2> tags.
Google as well as the other search engines love valide and clean code. Run online validator and correct the mistakes: http://validator.w3.org/
It's better to replace the DOCTYPE as well with the following:
/* <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
Close all tags such as meta, img, br.
I strongly recommend you to download the WEB CEO: http://www.webceo.com/download/
It is a top webmaster's must have tool. It allows to
- find keywords
- optimize and edit pages
- submit urls
- find link partners
- manage ppc campaigns
- check rankings
- analyze links popularity
- etc.
You see, you have to work very hard, but it worth. Optimize each page properly and you will boost your traffic.
Good luck
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