3 Tips To Better Google Rankings

carlsore

Quote:

What exactly do people mean when they say a "properly formatted text" within your site's written content?

I would say exactly as Ivinni has posted. You want your content to be grammatically correct. Not that the SE's put incredible weight into this but you need to develop content for a visitor. Keyword stuffed content that runs on and on is a common tactic for search engine spammers.

Quote:

A website that's a flash site has no chance in being high on the Google rankings? If so, is it because the spider doesn't recognize the content inside of a flash site?

I wouldn't say they have no chance.... Google claims they index flash sites now. flash on a contractors site is good in for small graphics etc... NOT designing the entire website in flash.

Carl

SethHoldren

Amen, Carl.

Flash is still very limiting for SEO.

If you can somehow secure tons and tons of high quality backlinks to your Flash-based site, you might get to the top of Google.

The problem is, the typical contractor's website won't attract links to that degree.

So, by using Flash (for more than just adding a little sparkle in your header or something) you limit yourself.

Google is supposedly indexing Flash now. But the problem is you can't do all the latent semantic optimization, internal linking, and other on-page optimization with Flash.

With Flash, your site looks hip for 6 months. But your optimization avenues are limited. And that still affects your rankings big time.

So I highly recommend resisting the urge to design with Flash. You'll rank the highest by focusing on writing content focused on providing value to your visitor. Forget about tricks, shortcuts and "self-congratulatory" graphics.

Providing relevant value to the visitor: that's Google's ultimate goal anyway. (Besides taking over the world.)

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Ivinni

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rbsremodeling

Can you estimate how many links a construction site would have to have to it to help its ranking??

Does it have to be all quality links or could volume of links make up for quality of links?

I have over 2000 links is that good?

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Ivinni

Quality = Relevance

I had rather have 100 quality links than 2000 irrelevant links.

But here is a rub for you, you must continue to get relevant links in order to "remain" relevant.

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rbsremodeling

But does the relevance of the links really make a difference. I have held the same keyword positions that are important to me 1-3 or better positioning for over 7 years

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carlsore

I would say as little as 5-10 backlinks for most contractor sites to get you up on the first page. There is surprisingly little competition aside from major cities.

Quality will beat out quantity nowadays... It didn't use to be that way though when link farms etc... were working for people.

You actually have 95 from what I can see and only a fraction of those have your anchor text (or anchor text suitable for you) Your ranking although you've had it quite a while wouldn't be a difficult ranking to beat.

Carl

will575

I really want to thank several of you guys who have posted on this thread and some other similar ones recently. My site has gone from being somewhere in the "abyss" to being on the first page for a couple of relevant searches, (in Las Cruces, NM metro pop about 100k) second page on a couple and like the 7th page on some others. I still have a long way to go, but I'm moving pretty quickly in the right direction. I have a few questions:

The above mentioned results are for google. I still seem to be in the abyss on Yahoo. Any ideas???

Is there anything wrong with building a site using Joomla? I think it uses HTML.

Based on results from tools like backlink checker, most if not all of my backlinks are from my url being in my signature on this site and another forum. (yes I know it's not in my signature now, I took it off pending fine tuning and getting some more answers) If a bunch of links show up from the same site (ie a link everytime I post) I am assuming it won't help more than only having 1 link from 1 site. Is this true? Can a bunch of links from 1 site actually be a negative? I see some of you more "savvy" guys don't have your url in your signature.

I have registered in a ton of places like switchboard, hot frog, superpages, @list, etc, etc, etc. None of these links seem to be showing up. I have run my competitors websites through tools like backlink checker and they have links showing up from places like these. Any ideas? Do links from places like that do any good anyway?

I've had my kids link to my site from facebook, my space etc. nothing has showed up as links. ???? (again based on backlink checker & similar tools) would these do any good any way?

These results are after about a month of playing and having been crawled (by google) (according to website grader) about 4-5 times.

Other than what has already been said in this thread, is there anything to avoid like the plague when building (trading) backlinks.

Is there somewhere on this forum where people can trade backlinks? seems kinda obvious.......


Thanks,

Will

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Aiken Colon

You have the age of site factor there as well though.

JJ

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SethHoldren

Here's an interesting list of...

100 Ways to Get Backlinks

FAIR WARNING: Some of these ideas are sarcastic, some are unethical, some are legit, some could harm your rankings, and some are just downright funny.

For example, here's my favorite one:

"41. Put bumper stickers on your car with your link on it."

But the point is, if you read the whole list, it will get you into a link-building mindset so you can come up with more creative ideas to get backlinks to your site.

Happy link building!

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Aiken Colon

1. Put your signature back. If you lose backlinks that is not good. Getting many backlinks from a site like this one won't hurt you. Getting 1000 backlinks from the same cheesy www.freelinksdirectory.com (not intentended to be a url but it probably is a real one) is another story.
2. Social media sites (the main ones) use what is called a "no follow" link. Actually the bigger ones run it through some type of java code. Either way, you cannot get backlinks from those sites. That is a whole other subject though, and social media can pay off. It just takes longer, but IMO it is the future of marketing.
3. Dump using all the crazy free SEO tools for backlinks etc. Sign up for google webmaster tools. You will get accurate backlink listing within it, and it is from the source that actually matters. It normally updates your backlinks monthly. This is about the only free type of tool I use http://www.nevew.com/domain.php , and it is more for the alltheweb and altavista backlinks information. I currently have 3584 backlinks in google webmaster tools. There is not a single free checker that I know if that shows anywhere near that.
4. If you want to rank in yahoo you really need to join the yahoo webdirectory and yahoo's own version of their webmaster tools. The directory is 299 a year for businesses. It is up to you. Currently we get around 350 unique hits a day. Out of that 200 are google and 10-15 are yahoo. So at that point you need to figure out if it is worth your money. For me the answer is yes because it only takes 1 big ticket item to pay for 5 years worth of the yahoo directory. I would think for construction the answer would be yes, also due to the fact you are selling a big ticket item. Plus the backlink from their directory never hurts.
5. Register at www.dmoz.com. It is free, and MSN, AOL, and many other search engines use it as an index for sites. The only problem with dmoz is, it takes upwards of a year to get your site listed. So only submit once and wait it out.

JJ

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Ivinni

I'll answer when the wine wears off

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SethHoldren

Here's the kicker: Google will give you serious rank juice if you pay to register on Yahoo. http://dir.yahoo.com/

Yes, it's widely recognized in SEO circles that Google really does seem to be taking that into account right now, believe it or not.

It might have something to do with the fact that paying $300 is a sign that you are committed to your website. And Google likes that, I guess.

If you can afford it, register on Yahoo and you might see some good results. (Of course, don't just do this and forget to do all your other SEO stuff.)

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Ivinni

And there is the rub.
Good info.

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Max Nomad

This might be late but, for all intensive purposes, a search engine spider does not properly recognize a website that is mostly or totally Flash-based. The main reason for this is because HTML is only used to load an SWF file that contains everything else.

To keep this post simple, I'm going to grossly oversimplify what's happening here. The SWF file is basically a vector graphic file that is it's own self-contained program that can either play in linear fashion like a movie, operate like a machine, or both. For example, if you had a Flash page with the phrase "United States of America" above a picture of the U.S. Flag and the Star Spangled Banner was playing as background music, human viewers would see them as three different elements (text, an image, and a song) that are all symbolic of America. Because of intelligence and ability to interpret what we see and hear, the average person would have no problem classifying the page.

To the average search engine spider, however, all three elements on that Flash page would be indistinguishable from one another because they are all chunks of binary data inside that SWF file. It would be like a person trying to guess what's inside a random block of cement. In a nutshell this is why search engines don't do well with websites that are completely based on Flash.

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coolflatroof

Calr, great post!

One thing a want to add about # 3 - links page, and I find it to be very important:

Not only a website should ave a link exchange page, but the page should also be a "quality" one. Links page should provide value for link exchange partners. If it does not, you will never get quality links to your site.

Link exchange is (ideally) and equal trade. Don't expect to get many and quality links if your links page is crap.

How to distinguish crap links page and decent. Well, 1st measure most webmasters use (and i do too) is the Google PageRank or PR. But not all links page have pr and it take time to get it (took me 5 months, but we got pr2 right away).
For new websites, that do not have pr (yet), to make your links page attractive for other webmasters, you can do the following:

1 - Make your links page "more of a content" page. Put up 2-4 paragraphs about cosntraction, contractors, and other stuff relevant to your biz. and your website.

2 - DO NOT link to sites that you think are irrelevant (video games / prOn / software...), look like spam, link farms, sites with no content, etc. Link to sites with in you line of work - for us, pretty much any thing to do with construction and home improvement is relevant.

3 - Link to resources that you think are valuable for the "potential visitor" of your links page. Example - ToolBase.com is a greate site to link to - you will never get a link from them, but, remember, you are posting a valuable and quality LINKS.

At the same time, do not link to GAF / Elk, Certainteed, Tamko, etc.... It just looks too funny and i do not think those are quality links (unless they are "in-content" links - e.g. you are describing the benefits of GAF shingle on a roof installation page.

4 - Create a DIRECTORY, not just link exchange page. Categorize links. Do not mix plumbers with roofers - create a Roofing Links page and Plumbing links page. Place the Best links on the main Links paig, as it will be the first one to get pr.

5 - Place a link to your Links/Directory at the bottom of every page on your website.

6 - you should limit the # of links to about 20 / page ( my personal opinion), and those that do not fit, can go into a separate category.

All of the above worked for my website, and worked VERY well. I put a lot of time into our directory, and now it ranks highly, therefore, provides "link juice" to our link partners (even categories with no PR, rank for many keywords)

Another advice - diversify your links portfolio. Just like with investing, don't keep all eggs in one basket. Get and give one-way links. Use articles directories, free directories, 3-way exchange, etc.

I strongly suggest against paid Press Release websites - it creates 100s of identical pages with identical link titles - very bad, and it will actually hurt your site.


One last advise - guys, you have a tremendous potential for links exchange right here - USE IT - exchange links !

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Aiken Colon

Good advice on all those other ones, but this one personally would highly disagree with. I am not sure if you meant free press release sites, or paid. Free press release sites I would also say to avoid, but not a paid one. I highly recommend marketwire. We have done a ton of press release with them. I don't even care about the SEO aspect of it, it blasts your competition off the front page. When you have; MSNBC, Reuters, Boston Globe, Google News, Yahoo Finance, Market Times, IBD, and the list goes on, with your press release and a nicely written title to the release it takes over.

Try the search for Facebook Visa. Those are two super competitive terms. Not because people want them necessarly, but think of all the message boards and blogs out there referring back to facebook. Then think of all the sites that have visa accepted, or visa security, credit card fraud, so on and so forth. Yet for that search 4-6 of those results (it changes each time you refresh) are either press releases or articles about facebook and visa teaming up on their new business to business social media site.

JJ

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coolflatroof

JJ, you may be correct about paid ones.

Truly, I've never played with them. Paid once I don't want to pay for , and free ones... well, I've seen what they did to my main competitor in our market

Thanks for the insight.

Leo

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rajdeep.rathod

To a better Google ranking
1. Make sure that each page has a different title

2. Ensure that each page has a different and informative description

3. Don't overstuff your keywords meta tag with too many keywords

4. Make sure that your webpages validate at the w3c website

5. Make sure that each page in your site has interesting content

6. Don't use a splash page for your site

7. Avoid using Javascript menus which search engines aren't able to crawl

8. Make sure you don't place valuable content in images

9. Make sure that if your site is dynamically generated, that you are not using too many URL parameters (3 maximum)

10. Don't use bulk search engine submission programmes or services