Optimising for Google

ballooba

I recently completed two of sites. These were the first ever that I have been responsible for completely. The clients are happy with everything apart from the fact that they are not listed in google.

The sites are at:
http://www.foodwastesolutions.ie
http://www.foxrockinstitute.ie

I have submitted them to google and the netscape open dir project at http://dmoz.org

Is the fact that there is no text on the Foxrock Institute homepage causing a problem?

MrNuked

Having no text on that homepage is a bad idea, but I don't think it should prevent it from being listed. I think maybe it will just take a little while until your page gets spidered maybe?
you can download the google toolbar which will show you your sites' pageranks, and if they are ineligible for google or anything.
It would be straightforward, and a very good idea, to use text with a stylesheet, and, if necessary, layers, rather than graphical text. Google won't search graphics. Text links in particular are thought to be a major contributor to Google rankings.

mishmash

Posting the links here was a good step

One thing you need is lots of other sites linking to yours. For two reasons:
1. Improves the chances of the search engine spider finding a link to your site to follow.
2. Improves your ranking on the results page when you do get listed.

The lack of text is a problem, because there is nothing for search terms to match on that page. More importantly as there is no text, and no alt tags, you have to consider how visually impaired people, or those using a web browser without images would use these pages.

You, or the organisations you are working for may be opening yourselves up for prosocution due to your lack of consideration of accessibility issues, see http://www.frontend.com/ . This may be of particular importance if you are working in the public sector.

There are many many further things that you can do to make your sites more ammeminable to search engines - this area is much more important than the visual appearance of the site.

Using META tags - for at a minimum keywords and description would be another useful step.

I also note that the e-mail links on the Foxrock institute site are non-functional. You might want to try and fix the errors shown http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxrockinstitute.ie to ensure compatibility with all browsers...

There are many many many more "tricks"... you can even buy books of them:

This book on "Google hacks" contains some good advice, but is probably focused more on programming and scripting than you need, but if you want to jump in at the deep end... this book might be better for an introduction, but still taking you to reasonable level. or better still get both!

Another way to learn would be to type "sex" into google and try and identify the things that make the top result the top result. If you can crack that one there's millions and millions to be made...

http://www.webshop-ireland.com

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

ballooba

Mish Mash,

Cheers for the tips.

You have confimed what I thought already.

I have promised the client that I will put alt tags in on those link images. Just haven't got round to it yet because i'm studying for an important exam.

I heard that thing about getting linked from a many pages as possible before. I'm working on it.

I thought google didn't use meta tags?

mneylon

ballooba wrote:

I thought google didn't use meta tags?

It may not use them for ranking/spidering but it definitely uses them for search results.

mishmash

daveirl wrote:

This post has been deleted.

It is not just pagerank which determines the order that results of a Google search appear. It is possible / probable that the number of backlinks matters, additionally the text of links pointing to a site is used by Google.
Also there are other spiders than google, and getting spidered by one can have knock on effects with others and eventually Google.

MrNuked

Not quite true. Having a large number of backlinks is one of the main influences on pagerank. I think the maximum pagerank you can get with only one or two backlinks is 4 or 5.

andersde10

MrNuked is spot on, you gotta get rid of the images and replace with text. You can easily achieve the same effect with CSS and text as you are getting with the images. One of the major advantages with text is that it is really easy to change in the future - i.e. much easier to change the text than it is to change images. Once you have a decent amount of text you should eventually get yourself spidered by the search engines, only then do you need to start worrying about links, back links and so on.

ballooba

Forgive my ignorance but what do you mean by back links?

andersde10

Backlinks are simply links from other sites that go to yours, essentially links back to your site. For example if you type link: yourdomain.com into google you'll see all other sites that link back to yours.

mishmash

Backlinks are just links to your page from another page. The ones that are important are those that Google is aware of - google backlinks.

See:
http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=link%3Awww.boards.ie&meta=

for an example and

http://www.mymommybiz.com/seo/googlebacklinks.html

for some more...

The methods google uses to order its results are constantly changing, and no one other than Google knows what they are, and what the relative importance of the various components are - so we're all guessing here. One thing I've noticed they're taking more notice of recently is the timelyness of the pages, recently updated pages might make the top results despite poor pagerank...

damien

mishmash wrote:

One thing I've noticed they're taking more notice of recently is the timelyness of the pages, recently updated pages might make the top results despite poor pagerank...

That's been happening for a few years now.

gom

Add it to Browse Ireland
I've had unbelievible boosts from sites being listed there.
Also getting linking. Use ALT and TITLE. Don't be afraid of linking competition

mishmash

gom wrote:

Don't be afraid of linking competition

That probably works for a few reasons,
* Your "neighbours" on the web appear to matter to Google.
* Link text in links to sites with high page rank appear to matter to Google.
* Having links to sites with high page rank appears to help your page rank.

Knowing that could help you create benificial outgoing links without linking to the competition

http://www.gaggia.blogspot.com

MrNuked

Yes, but as you say, your "neighbours" influence your rankings. Linking to similar sites, such asthe competition, will increase your ranking in the most relevant searches.
A good way of increasing internal links without spamming is to include a site map. This also ensures you keep a good (shallow structure). Ideally your site should have a depth of less than 3 (users can get to any page on the saite in three clicks). Pages at a lower depth will probably not be searched by the spiders.
It just occurred to me that it is possible to block bots from running on your site. If your server is doing that, they will be preventing google from searching your site *at all*. It is probably a good idea to make sure the server is allowing bots.

ballooba

mishmash wrote:

http://www.gaggia.blogspot.com

Can't say that I admire your marketing strategies but your ideas are good.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

gary_s

ballooba wrote:

I have submitted them to google and the netscape open dir project at http://dmoz.org

Note: I submitted a new page to Google recently (via the Google website), but it didn't actually include it in its search results...

Until a few weeks later I created a link to it from another page already in the Google index and bingo, it was listed within a few days.

ballooba

Put links like this on http://www.entslink.com which has a pagerank of 5:
Food Waste Solutions
Foxrock Institute

Added alt tags for the links on the Foxrock homepage but still fails W3C validation.

Will an alt tag on the image not mess up the alt tags on the image map?

mm2

An empty alt tag is perfectally OK for things like your image maps - it shows that they images that are structrually part of the page:

<img src="picture.gif" alt="" />

Will validate as OK - it shows you've considered adding a description and decided it wasn't required.

The other snags are just a case of deleting the offending sections I believe...


==
(Also can anyone point me to instructions on how to get my original "mishmash" account unbanned?? I can log in, but can't post, due to three people objecting to my posts... I can see I have a PM, but can't read it because I'm banned....presumably in the PM there are instructions..... )

Seth Brundle

gary_s wrote:

Note: I submitted a new page to Google recently (via the Google website), but it didn't actually include it in its search results...

Until a few weeks later I created a link to it from another page already in the Google index and bingo, it was listed within a few days.

It can take a while to get listed on google - http://www.google.com/webmasters/1.html#why

tomED

Hello Everyone....

Both sites are actually listed on google..............
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=site%3Awww%2Efoxrockinstitute%2Eie

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=site%3Awww%2Efoodwastesolutions%2Eie

The problem you are now facing is optimsation of the sites - which include as people have said links, keywords, meta content etc.

Google does still use the meta description tag, but it does get as high a score as it used to.

What everyone is missing is "KEY PHRASES"!!!!!!!
There's no point in doing all the work just to be found for say "Foxrock Institute", you need to carefully research and create keyphrases relating to the business you are in. Get thos first .... then optimise!