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kali
Joined: Jan 18, 2004
# Posts: 56
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Posted: 2004-Feb-02 22:04
Google has really thrown me for a loop lately, so I thought it a good idea to start a thread on how to get back up to the top of the SERPs, giving some of my advice and asking for you to do some analysis on your own and share it with the rest of us.
The first thing that I've noticed from a searching perspective is that adding a +a to your query returns what I consider to be good results more often. I've gotten to the point that I use it whenever searching google now, but I can't expect my end users to do the same.
I've also noticed that querying google.de or google.it returns better results, but I'm of the mindset that google simply has not installed their new search filters on foreign language sites.
PageRank seems to have less of an affect as two weeks ago - my personal site is a PR6 and it has dropped from the rankings.
What has struck me as odd is that large sites (1000+ pages) are ranking highly for my keywords even though they might not even mention them in the same sentence. Google seems to be giving too much weight to sites with a large amount of pages. Tip #1, size matters.
Inbound links with good anchor text don't seem to help much either these days, but I wouldn't stop trying to farm them. Google will have to change their algorithm to recognize the value in inbound links once again. Tip #2, don't stop doing the things that got you to the top in the first place. (Good use of title text, keyword density, good use of headers{h1, h2, h3, etc.}.
Title text - here's something strange that I've noticed and I've experimented with it enough to think I've got something here. Having a title of "Keyword Phrase", might not get you a good ranking, but having a title of "Keyword phrase - other text" works well. It could be that google is discounting pages that specifically target a keyword. I came upon this because I was trying to squeeze above my competitor who had a very keyword stuffed title tag so I thought getting rid of my "- home page" text on my title tag would help my title keyword density, as it turned out I dropped 100 spots in the rankings. I jumped back up to the top immediately after returning that text to my title tag.
Improved inter-site linking. I've found that the pages near the top have very few inbound links, but those that do, have several in-site inbound links that use closely related anchor text. Pages with few or generic inbound links don't seem to rank as high.
Now here are a few things I've noticed about the higher ranked sites that I do not like, and can't bring myself to do:
Small page text. Really small. Some pages have less than 100 words and a flash thing or maybe a set of overture/adwords ads.
Spam. Keyword stuffed titles and heavily repeated text throughout the page are working for my competitors. I don't see why anyone would use a service that had a web page like that, but they are getting the good rankings.
That's all new that I have for now. Here are the nuggets that I used to get to the top in the first place:
* Target a small amount of keywords per page
* Use target keywords frequently, but not out of control
* Use your keywords in bold once or twice
* Use your keywords in header text (h1, h2) once or twice
* Use your keywords in metatags (some SEs use them, some don't. It doesn't hurt)
* Use your keywords in your title tag
* Work with related vendors for inbound links. (I've found a great deal of other local businesses to help me out)
* lot's of content. A 3 page site doesn't cut it. I was told start out at least a hundred pages. I worked and worked, and started out at 30.
* Don't make your site unreadable. If you can only repeat your keyword a few times without getting out of hand, then stop there. Remember people have to read the site too.
* Submit your site to directories
* Stick with standard html as much as possible
* Keep page sizes under 100K
* Have a good sitemap
===
Please add your tips here, and criticize mine. I'm 95% sure we are not in competition, and even if we were, it's good for the end user community to be able to find quality relevant content rather than what they are finding today.
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Rezac
Joined: Jan 25, 2004
# Posts: 817
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Posted: 2004-Feb-03 16:33
Kali,
That;s great advice. Do you have any sites you would like to share that are good examples of some of this stuff.
Like, pages with good header text and good site maps?
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2create
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 42
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Posted: 2004-Feb-03 17:05
I agree, Google does seem to put a lot of value in number of pages. In my situation, I've noticed that the top 5 sites for my keyword all have at least 80+ pages and pre Florida the top sites that lost their ranks were very small (under 10 pages).
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jimdomains
Joined: Mar 16, 2002
# Posts: 211
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Posted: 2004-Feb-03 17:42
Anyone know if Google counts dynamically generated pages? I have a site that has maybe 5 pages of content, 5 more of site maps and links and such, and 43,000 pages that are dynamically generated upon a search query.
Does Google count the 43,000? Each page can be reached from two other pages within the site.
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kali
Joined: Jan 18, 2004
# Posts: 56
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Posted: 2004-Feb-03 19:44
A few things:
Example of good use of keywords: I did a search on Palm Pilot, and this site came up highly ranked: http://www.ratebeer.com/Story.asp?StoryID=267 They use the keyword Palm Pilot once in the title, in Header text, and 3 times in the first two paragraphs without going overboard.
As far as a good sitemap goes, I don't have an example, but you should have one that has a link to every page in your site. Some sitemaps spread this out over multiple pages, and that's not a good thing in my mind. The sitemap should be less than 100K in size, as the big G will ignore text beyond 100K typically.
I didn't want to use my site as an example because quite honestly, I bet my site could use a good tweaking and its certainly possible that I've overdone it in the keyword density department.
Google will search dynamically generated pages, but there are a few keys: 1) no session id or unique identifier can be in the url. 2) it must be able to find the pages, so a sitemap containing all the possible links is necessary. 3) each page should be linked to by other pages in your site. (not just a link in the sitemap). The shorter the URL the better in my mind - because a long URL might be interpereted as having a unique identifier and get ignored. Also - any redirects should be 302 redirects. I know that google follows 302 redirects. I'm not sure about others.
btw - I'm a relative newbie as far as SEO goes, and I'm basically regurgitating info that I've been given by others and read in these and other forums. My advice isn't the be all end all and I'm certainly open to correction by other more experienced SEOs. I've found that other boards in this arena are subject to either too much off topic noise or over-moderation to the point where good info disappears quickly, so I'd like for this board to become my main source to spit out and receive info. Threads like this one can go a long ways towards increasing traffic at a time like this, so please help us all out and fill me in on any mistakes I made and give a little bit of advice yourself. Any little bit of info can help us all out - even if its something that turns out to be bad advice because we'll all know what not to do.
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bhartzer
Staff
Joined: Jun 08, 2000
# Posts: 7042
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Posted: 2004-Feb-03 20:04
jimdomains, if the 43,000 pages you're talking about are spiderable, then they should be included in the index.
Kali, I would be very leary about what appears to be a good example of use of keywords. Google is showing us such horrible results now that there's really not any specific way to tell what is a good use of keywords and what is not a good use of keywords. As far as the site you mention, I don't see that url anywhere in the results for the term Palm Pilot. Please explain.
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kali
Joined: Jan 18, 2004
# Posts: 56
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Posted: 2004-Feb-04 00:16
bhartzer - actually the query I ran was "Palm Pilot +a" (without quotes).
I've gotten used to adding the +a to my results as it returns results which look to be from before the Austin/Hilltop/whateveryouwanttocallthelastupdate update. The example I used was the #3 result.
I didn't do that on purpose, just out of habit. If anyone else has a good example of keyword phrase usage that would be successful, please fill me in. I figured that a top 5 example from a competitive search term would provide a good starting point for analysis. (about 1.8 Million results)
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dibbern
Joined: Mar 22, 1999
# Posts: 17
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Posted: 2004-Feb-04 03:11
I had about a dozen pages that went south at the onset of Florida. They are all back, all in top 5 positions. The secret? I haven't a clue, since I only made necessary changes to copy and took out a keyword repetition here and there, and then resubmitted.
These are all travel related (example: us virgin island resorts) with about 600K results, so not a real biggy in competitivness. Almost all have the word resort or vacation in the keyword/search term.
The listed sites range from 1 single page to about 35 pages.
I'm pleased with the current status, but wish I could distill it down to something specific.
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watling
Joined: Nov 29, 2003
# Posts: 104
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Posted: 2004-Feb-04 04:24
Perhaps not the appropriate thread here, but thought this interesting:
Source: http://www.isedb.com/news/index.php?t=reviews&id=672
Title: The Latest on update 'Austin'
By: Serge Thibodeau
Date: February 3, 2004
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