SE ranking - any experts in here?

"William Tasso" <SpamBlocked DeleteThis @tbdata.com> wrote in message
news:boro39$1h5e6b$1@ID-139074.news.uni-berlin.de...
 > Rocky wrote:
  > > One of my sites is getting a surprisignly low SE ranking, any
  > > _experts_ in here care to comment - or point me to a good forum?
 >
 > news:alt.internet.search-engines - crossposted.
 >
  > > I run two gaming sites, they are both very similar, just for
  > > different but equally popular games. They are both established long
  > > running sites, with Google PR of 5 and 6 and both have the same
  > > amount of backward links, around 180.
  > >
  > > While one site gets a top 3 result for it's main keyword - the other
  > > site is so far down the result pages it is not even funny. Sites
  > > listed ahead of it are either not relevant, out of date, or sites
  > > that are not even dedicated to the keyword like mine. It's a mystery
  > > to me why one of my sites is so poorly ranked, it has backward links,
  > > a decent PR, is updated regular, and is content driven.
  > >
  > > It does get good results for certain key phrases, it's just the main
  > > keyword that is letting me down (
  > >
  > > The site is <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.agr-s.com" target="_blank">www.agr-s.com</a> and the keyword it needs a good ranking on
  > > is "Raven Shield".
  > >
  > > Any tips?
 >
 > one thing that was immediately apparent is that you have a directory
called
 > 'html_pages' which would probably serve you (and your visitors) better if
it
 > was named 'raven-shield'
 >
 > --
<font color=purple> > William Tasso - <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://WilliamTasso.com</font" target="_blank">http://WilliamTasso.com</font</a>>

No problem.
Yours is a big page with lots of really good content.
You are ranked #4 and #5 for "2003 raven shield posted" so there is nothing
seriously wrong. You just need to rebalance the word distribution.
Cut down drastically on "2003" and "posted" and enhance "raven" and "shield"
instead.
You use "2003" 37 times and this needs reducing to less than 17 (take out
20+).
You use "posted" 23 times and this needs reducing to less than 13 (take out
10+)
For "raven shield", add up to 10 more mentions of each, but no more than
this.

If you really must have the words "posted" "2003" so many times on the page
consider making these words into tiny gif files so they are no longer seen
by Google. I would cut out 2003 altogether and use a little coloured gif
image for "Posted:" When typing the month you can use half and half "Nov"
and "November" to avoid either word becoming dominant if you get too many
posts in one month.

If you are targeting just two keywords then you need a distribution shape
like:
raven 6%
shield 6%
aaaaa 4%
bbbbb 3% etc
where the top two are significantly more than the 3rd and lower ones.

It would help to put "Raven Shield Mods" inside <h1> </h1> heading brackets.

Make sure all incoming links to the page are text links with "Raven shield"
in the anchor text.

Best regards, Eric.
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: SE ranking - any experts in here? 

William Tasso wrote:
 > Rocky wrote:
  >> One of my sites is getting a surprisignly low SE ranking, any
  >> _experts_ in here care to comment - or point me to a good forum?
 >
 > one thing that was immediately apparent is that you have a directory
 > called 'html_pages' which would probably serve you (and your
 > visitors) better if it was named 'raven-shield'

1. Many of the keywords on the home page are graphics, not text.
2. You've got javascript links everywhere. Google doesn't like these - is
this deliberate?
3. Google's crawlers don't like long URIs that look like this
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.agr-s.com/forums/index.php?s=4f0d23c899750d5064a80decb8b933f4&act=ST&f=3&t=158&st=345&#entry4639" target="_blank">http://www.agr-s.com/forums/index.php?s=4f0d23c899750d5064a80decb8b933...act=ST&</a>

....and if you check, you'll find that very few of your .php pages are
actually in the Google index.
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.google.com/search?q=-zzzzzz+site:www.agr-s.com" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/search?q=-zzzzzz+site:www.agr-s.com</a>

Try fixing your forums to get rid of the long URIs, Google with then crawl
all the pages, and I'm sure you'll see an improve in ranking due to all that
extra content.

James<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: SE ranking - any experts in here? 

"James" <james DeleteThis @exim.dyndns.org> wrote in message
news:bosokb$71p$08$1@news.t-online.com...
 > 1. Many of the keywords on the home page are graphics, not text.

I don't see that...are you looking at agr-s.com? Raven Shield appears 20
times in text, I don't see it anywhere in graphics....? Twenty times is
adequate, I would have thought...?

 > 2. You've got javascript links everywhere. Google doesn't like these - is
this deliberate?

There isn't javascript everywhere...... there is a download table that pops
up a javascript window with details of the mod, that's the only javascript
employed on the page that I can think of. I don't think that can have much
bearing on the SE ranking, as the other site I have has the exact same
format, javascript and all, and yet is a top3 result.

 > 3. Google's crawlers don't like long URIs that look like this
 >
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.agr-s.com/forums/index.php?s=4f0d23c899750d5064a80decb8b933f4&act=ST&f=3&t=158&st=345&#entry4639" target="_blank">http://www.agr-s.com/forums/index.php?s=4f0d23c899750d5064a80decb8b933...act=ST&</a>

Uhm, that's a forums link, google doesn't seach forums (in the main), that's
not what I am looking for results on... its the home page result I am
looking for.

 > ...and if you check, you'll find that very few of your .php pages are
 > actually in the Google index.
<font color=purple> > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.google.com/search?q=-zzzzzz+site:www.agr-s.com</font" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/search?q=-zzzzzz+site:www.agr-s.com</font</a>>

The only php is the forums! I don't need them crawled by Google.

 > Try fixing your forums to get rid of the long URIs, Google with then crawl
 > all the pages, and I'm sure you'll see an improve in ranking due to all
that
 > extra content.

There is nothing needing "fixed" in the forums, they are PHP forums,only the
very latest forums have search engine compatibility built in. The main
content of the site is the actual html pages throught, not the forums. If
there was alot of worthwhile content in the forums, yeh sure, getting that
indexed would be great, but there is not alot to be gained in there at the
moment. But I digress.....Google already crawls all the site pages (except
the forums), and will return a good result for some keywords searches. Like
I said in my post...

"It does get good results for certain key phrases, it's just the main
keyword that is letting me down"

Main Keyword being the main thing, for some reason the iste is ranking low
for "Raven Shield", ridiculously low, however, it ranks great for "raven
shield downloads" - how can that be?

Thanks for the post James - but I need to focus on that elusive "raven
shield" result.

Alistair<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: SE ranking - any experts in here? 

"Eric Johnston" <eric.johnston.TakeThisOut@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:rimsb.1048$a%.737@news-binary.blueyonder.co.uk...
 > No problem.
 > Yours is a big page with lots of really good content.

Thanks.

 > You are ranked #4 and #5 for "2003 raven shield posted" so there is
nothing
 > seriously wrong.

Yeh, that's what I figured, for example an important keyword phrase for me
is "raven shield downloads" - and I get a top 3 position for that (all I did
was change the page title to achieve that). So I knew the site should be
capable of getting onto the front page for the main keyword.

 >You just need to rebalance the word distribution.

Ah, I see - the date is giving the page an uneven balance.... got ya.

 > For "raven shield", add up to 10 more mentions of each, but no more than
 > this.

It already appears 20 times, you think I should up that to 30.. yeh?

 > If you are targeting just two keywords then you need a distribution shape
 > like:
 > raven 6%
 > shield 6%
 > aaaaa 4%
 > bbbbb 3% etc
 > where the top two are significantly more than the 3rd and lower ones.
 >
 > It would help to put "Raven Shield Mods" inside <h1> </h1> heading
brackets.
 >
 > Make sure all incoming links to the page are text links with "Raven
shield"
 > in the anchor text.

Great feedback, thanks for your time - I will try these out and record the
ranking improvement, and post back on how it turns out, cheers.


--
Alistair
ICQ UIN 41113560
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.GhostRecon.net" target="_blank">www.GhostRecon.net</a>
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.AGR-S.com" target="_blank">www.AGR-S.com</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: SE ranking - any experts in here? 

Hi,

I disagree with most of what you say below (at the very bottom). It's
not that it's wrong, just a lot of work for very little gain that can
be obtained much, much easier.

Ignore your keyword density, put your main phrase in the title (this
is very important), <h*> (<h1> being most important), <b> as many
times as you can get away with near the top of the page. I then
wouldn't worry too much about what is going on near the middle/bottom
of the page (though long term you should tweak it).

Don't worry about words you aren't going after too much (like
November), but avoid putting them in the title, <h*>, <b> as it
dilutes the benefit to your keywords.

This title-

<title>Keyword1 Keyword2</title>

Is much, much better than-

<title>The Keyword1 on Keyword2 and something</title>


As is this-

<h1>Keyword1 Keyword2</h1>

Is much, much better than-

<h1>The Keyword1 on Keyword2 and something</h1>

Keep this in mind when editing pages and your ranks should improve.

More important that all of this is anchor text of incoming links, get
your keywords as the anchor text for all links. Avoid adding extra
unimportant words to the anchor text as again it dilutes the benefit.

David
_
Free Search Engine Optimization, SEO and
Search Engine Placement Tips (updated 10/10/2003)
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123/search-engine-optimization/" target="_blank">http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123/search-engine-optimization/</a>

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 08:36:34 -0000, "Eric Johnston"
<eric.johnston RemoveThis @blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

 >You just need to rebalance the word distribution.
 >Cut down drastically on "2003" and "posted" and enhance "raven" and "shield"
 >instead.
 >You use "2003" 37 times and this needs reducing to less than 17 (take out
 >20+).
 >You use "posted" 23 times and this needs reducing to less than 13 (take out
 >10+)
 >For "raven shield", add up to 10 more mentions of each, but no more than
 >this.
 >
 >If you really must have the words "posted" "2003" so many times on the page
 >consider making these words into tiny gif files so they are no longer seen
 >by Google. I would cut out 2003 altogether and use a little coloured gif
 >image for "Posted:" When typing the month you can use half and half "Nov"
 >and "November" to avoid either word becoming dominant if you get too many
 >posts in one month.
 >
 >If you are targeting just two keywords then you need a distribution shape
 >like:
 >raven 6%
 >shield 6%
 >aaaaa 4%
 >bbbbb 3% etc
 >where the top two are significantly more than the 3rd and lower ones.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: SE ranking - any experts in here? 

Rocky wrote:
 > "James" <james.DeleteThis@exim.dyndns.org> wrote in message
 > news:bosokb$71p$08$1@news.t-online.com...
  >> 1. Many of the keywords on the home page are graphics, not text.
 >
 > I don't see that...are you looking at agr-s.com? Raven Shield
 > appears 20 times in text, I don't see it anywhere in graphics....? Twenty
times
 > is adequate, I would have thought...?

Personally, I think the page is *way* too big! It's 54.4k, and due to your
use of tables for layout, a substantial part of that is mark-up, not
content. Have you considered either (a) splitting the content up over
several pages, or (b) using CSS to get the mark-up out of the page?

You mention the phrase "Raven Shield" 20 times, but in a page 54k in size
that seems to me like a drop in the ocean. I tried to wade through the
source, but got a little lost. Are you mentioning "Raven Shield" in H1 and
H2 tags? You ought to.

For reference, I've got pages under 4k which mention my keyphrase once in
the <title> tag, twice inside <h1> tags, twice inside <h2> tags, and eight
times spread through five paragraphs of body text (and as <title> and <alt>
for an image, for good measure). I don't feel like calculating the keyword
densities right now, but yours is *way* too low.

If you strip out all the markup from your page, it comes down to 10.5k
(check out <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://exim.dyndns.org/" target="_blank">http://exim.dyndns.org/</a> too see what I mean).

  >> 2. You've got javascript links everywhere. Google doesn't like
  >> these - is this deliberate?
 >
 > There isn't javascript everywhere...... there is a download table
 > that pops up a javascript window with details of the mod, that's the only
 > javascript employed on the page that I can think of. I don't think that
can have
 > much bearing on the SE ranking, as the other site I have has the exact
same
 > format, javascript and all, and yet is a top3 result.

Some crawlers barf on Javascript; it was just a thought.

You could certainly move the script out of the <head> of your page into an
external file; another small measure to improve your page's focus.

Your page doesn't validator either, add a DOCTYPE and character encoding
declaration.
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.agr-s.com%2F" target="_blank">http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.agr-s.com%2F</a>

Even forced to ISO-8859-1 and HTML 4.01/Frameset (which is a pretty
forgiving doctype) the page has dozens of html errors.

  >> 3. Google's crawlers don't like long URIs that look like this
  >>
 >
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.agr-s.com/forums/index.php?s=4f0d23c899750d5064a80decb8b933f4&act=ST&f=3&t=158&st=345&#entry4639" target="_blank">http://www.agr-s.com/forums/index.php?s=4f0d23c899750d5064a80decb8b933...act=ST&</a>
 >
 > Uhm, that's a forums link, google doesn't seach forums (in the main),

Google's quite happy to search forums if you set up your forums correctly.
Check out <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.webmasterworld.com" target="_blank">www.webmasterworld.com</a> and you'll see all their forums are
indexed.

 > that's not what I am looking for results on... its the home page result I
am
 > looking for.

Yes, but if you got Google to index your forums, you could make sure that
each forum page (of which there could be 100s or even 1000s) has the right
text-links back to your homepage - e.g. Raven Shield - and
remember that large sites generally do better than small ones; Google thinks
your site is much smaller than it really is because it can't/won't read your
forums.

  >> ...and if you check, you'll find that very few of your .php pages are
  >> actually in the Google index.
<font color=green>  >> <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.google.com/search?q=-zzzzzz+site:www.agr-s.com</font" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/search?q=-zzzzzz+site:www.agr-s.com</font</a>>
 >
 > The only php is the forums! I don't need them crawled by Google.

I'd politely suggest that this is a major mistake.

  >> Try fixing your forums to get rid of the long URIs, Google with then
  >> crawl all the pages, and I'm sure you'll see an improve in ranking due to
  >> all that extra content.
 >
 > There is nothing needing "fixed" in the forums, they are PHP
 > forums,only the very latest forums have search engine compatibility built
in. The main
 > content of the site is the actual html pages throught, not the
 > forums.

You might think that, personally I would disagree. You've got people
talking about your site in the forums, and presumably they mention the
keywords and phrases (?) - why don't you want this content indexed?

 > If there was alot of worthwhile content in the forums, yeh sure, getting
 > that indexed would be great, but there is not alot to be gained in there
 > at the moment. But I digress.....Google already crawls all the site pages
 > (except the forums), and will return a good result for some keywords
 > searches. Like I said in my post...
 >
 > "It does get good results for certain key phrases, it's just the main
 > keyword that is letting me down"
 >
 > Main Keyword being the main thing, for some reason the iste is
 > ranking low for "Raven Shield", ridiculously low, however, it ranks great
for
 > "raven shield downloads" - how can that be?

Maybe your competitors didn't optimise for "raven shield downloads" (45700
pages in Google) but for "raven shield" (310000 pages in Google).

Overture logged 151 searches for "downloads raven shield" in September 2003,
and 13292 for "Raven shield". Looks like the latter is what people are
looking for... which is why it's harded to do well on.

 > Thanks for the post James - but I need to focus on that elusive "raven
 > shield" result.

If I were you I'd start here:

1. get the page size down below 10k,
2. get the page to validate,
3. add the words "Raven Shield" inside some <h1> and <h2> tags, and
4. make sure *all* the other pages on your site link back to the homepage
with a this link: Raven Shield and see what that does for
you.

With those changes, I'd bet you'd be *much* higher up the Google SERPs
inside three months.


James<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: SE ranking - any experts in here? 

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 15:18:57 +0100, "James" <james DeleteThis @exim.dyndns.org>
wrote:

  >> The only php is the forums! I don't need them crawled by Google.
 >
 >I'd politely suggest that this is a major mistake.

Monumental mistake, your forum pages are a resource you are currently
wasting. Change your forums so they are indexed and have every page
link to your main pages, I'd recommend your top 5 to 10, pages along
the bottom of every page using relevant anchor text for the page they
are linking to.

This alone could make a dramatic difference if there are a lot of
archived forum posts.

David
_
Free Search Engine Optimization, SEO and
Search Engine Placement Tips (updated 10/10/2003)
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123/search-engine-optimization/" target="_blank">http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123/search-engine-optimization/</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: SE ranking - any experts in here? 

"James" <james.TakeThisOut@exim.dyndns.org> wrote in message
news:botfg9$6k1$07$1@news.t-online.com...
 > If I were you I'd start here:
 >
 > 1. get the page size down below 10k,
 > 2. get the page to validate,
 > 3. add the words "Raven Shield" inside some <h1> and <h2> tags, and
 > 4. make sure *all* the other pages on your site link back to the homepage
 > with a this link: Raven Shield and see what that does for
 > you.

Thanks for the tips, I will follow them up.

I'll also check out the validator, I gave it a quick run though and it flags
up things like forum links i.e.

"reference to entity "s" for which no system identifier could be generated
" .../forums/index.php?act=ST&f=14&t=671&s=20613fae3c255d6db1f2dca248b8a72e"

that's a link, not an HTML error... AFAIK...?

and

"there is no attribute "TARGET" ...ttp://www.tacticalgamer.com/"
target="_blank">

the target attribute looks okay to me, so I don't know why it flags them up
as errors, but I guess this is a whole new discussion and learning curve.

I'll go through each "error" until I understand them all, cheers.


--
Alistair
ICQ UIN 41113560
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.GhostRecon.net" target="_blank">www.GhostRecon.net</a>
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.AGR-S.com" target="_blank">www.AGR-S.com</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: SE ranking - any experts in here? 

"SEO Dave" <ooar123SP DeleteThis @AMntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:55h4rv4a0rjhih66qqustda95g5h5t0l30@4ax.com...
 > On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 15:18:57 +0100, "James" <james DeleteThis @exim.dyndns.org>
 > wrote:
 >
   > >> The only php is the forums! I don't need them crawled by Google.
  > >
  > >I'd politely suggest that this is a major mistake.
 >
 > Monumental mistake,

I notice the latest version of the fourms I use, has built in search engine
compatibility, with a control panel to control spider access etc - I'll look
at upgrading, thanks for the tip.


--
Alistair
ICQ UIN 41113560
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.GhostRecon.net" target="_blank">www.GhostRecon.net</a>
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.AGR-S.com" target="_blank">www.AGR-S.com</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: SE ranking - any experts in here? 

"SEO Dave" <ooar123SP.TakeThisOut@AMntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:1fh4rvo6p13mgfpiaoenaiq7etv3id0isv@4ax.com...
 > This title-
 >
 > <title>Keyword1 Keyword2</title>
 >
 > Is much, much better than-
 >
 > <title>The Keyword1 on Keyword2 and something</title>

Currently the code is

<title>Raven Shield news and downloads</title>

So, I'm not far off, but you think I would be better dropping the "news and
downloads" text, I'll try it.

Thanks for the tips I'll give it a go.


--
Alistair
ICQ UIN 41113560
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.GhostRecon.net" target="_blank">www.GhostRecon.net</a>
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.AGR-S.com" target="_blank">www.AGR-S.com</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: SE ranking - any experts in here? 

Rocky wrote:
 > "SEO Dave" <ooar123SP DeleteThis @AMntlworld.com> wrote in message
 > news:1fh4rvo6p13mgfpiaoenaiq7etv3id0isv@4ax.com...
  >> This title-
  >>
  >> <title>Keyword1 Keyword2</title>
  >>
  >> Is much, much better than-
  >>
  >> <title>The Keyword1 on Keyword2 and something</title>
 >
 > Currently the code is
 >
 > <title>Raven Shield news and downloads</title>
 >
 > So, I'm not far off, but you think I would be better dropping the
 > "news and downloads" text, I'll try it.

Do you think people actually search for "Raven Shield News", or is it more
likely to be just "Raven Shield"? Check at <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://inventory.overture.com/" target="_blank">http://inventory.overture.com/</a>
if you want to find out what people are actually searching for...

James<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: SE ranking - any experts in here? 

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 18:23:56 -0000, "Rocky" <Rocky.DeleteThis@GhostRecon.net>
wrote:

 >Currently the code is
 >
 ><title>Raven Shield news and downloads</title>
 >
 >So, I'm not far off, but you think I would be better dropping the "news and
 >downloads" text, I'll try it.

Hi,

At least you have the main phrase in there, I see so may sites with
Welcome or home or a company name that's not got keywords in it!

From Overture you get 13292 for raven shield other phrases start at
just 2000 odd, so the best for search engine traffic is <title>Raven
Shield</title> for the main page.

The only time you wouldn't do this is if you think visitors won't
click the link in Googles SERPs. I don't see a problem based on
related searches.

 >Thanks for the tips I'll give it a go.

No problem.

David
_
Free Search Engine Optimization, SEO and
Search Engine Placement Tips (updated 10/10/2003)
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123/search-engine-optimization/" target="_blank">http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123/search-engine-optimization/</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: SE ranking - any experts in here?