Sunday 25 February 2007
Page ranking on my website
Mixed blessings today, I noted a few days ago that my website , not THIS blog...was showing google ranking of 2/10 on some pages rather than the initial '1' which seemed to take so long to acheive! However, my home page is still 1/10. There are elements of my website that get increased traffic as I actively post URLs here and there on the internet - these are not necessarily my home page, so I assume the extra ranking point is due to the traffic these pages get. My aim is to get to 3 or 4/10 as I think this seems to be the average for reasonable sites (I'm not THAT ambitious!!). If you want to know the rankings for your own pages, download the google toolbar and enable the page rank icon. This will then report a page rank for every page you visit - might be a bit of an eye-opener!The pages on my site that get the higher ranking are my :'DIY' section, my download page, and my section concentrating on microphones. To be honest I don't drive THAT much traffic to the 'studio' section, so that one came as a bit of a surprise, however I can also report that this section of the site appears to yeild a better price per adsense click which makes me think I should try and drive more traffic there!!
Monday 19 February 2007
SEO - keywords and other meta tags
The old Keyword has been so overused, it has more or less disappeared up it's own meta tag.. Most search engines will use your 'title', 'description', headings and first paragraph of content as priority indicators for searching. Of course, nobody (who is allowed to say) can know the full hysteresis for Web-site ranking, so most of the advice given is mainly hypothesis. It is possible that minor search engines are using keywords, and I think it is reasonable to assume proper use of keywords won't do any harm..
(NOTE I HAVE HAD TO REVERSE THE SYMBOLS TO POST THEM HERE.. FOR '<' READ '>' etc..)
The correct format in HTML is:
>meta name="keywords" content="mylist, of keywords, here with, variations, similar words, and anything else, I want to put here"<>title<>/title<>meta name="description" content="This is my chance to describe what my web site is all about and I am not going to waste it."<>/meta<>' etc..)
(NOTE I HAVE HAD TO REVERSE THE SYMBOLS TO POST THEM HERE.. FOR '<' READ '>' etc..)
The correct format in HTML is:
>meta name="keywords" content="mylist, of keywords, here with, variations, similar words, and anything else, I want to put here"<>title<>/title<>meta name="description" content="This is my chance to describe what my web site is all about and I am not going to waste it."<>/meta<>' etc..)
SEO - Ghost domains
Duplicate sites can help to raise your website profile.
Search engines rate the domain name very highly when it comes to matching a query, thus if you buy additonal domains which contain your keywords, you may harvest more traffic.
If you have, for example a website for mobile phones, let's say it's called 'mobilephones.com' you could also mirror your website on 'cellularphones.org' or 'cellphones.net' etc.. etc.. This would help to pick up hits from searches which contain the terms 'cellular phones' or 'cellphones'. You could just use a redirect on the homepages of these domains, or configure all the links contained in the site to jump back to your main site.
Although this may seem an unwieldy promotion tool, bearing in mind the reasonably low cost of domain hosting nowadays, it is probably fairly cost effective. I would recommend duplication of the entire site and linking every page back to your main domain, this way you get a combination of the new domain name and your existing content to boost your ranking - it would make sense to have a link to your new domains on your link page just to complete the circle for reciprocal linking. Make sure you submit your new sites in the same way that you submitted your main domain for maximum impact.
Search engines rate the domain name very highly when it comes to matching a query, thus if you buy additonal domains which contain your keywords, you may harvest more traffic.
If you have, for example a website for mobile phones, let's say it's called 'mobilephones.com' you could also mirror your website on 'cellularphones.org' or 'cellphones.net' etc.. etc.. This would help to pick up hits from searches which contain the terms 'cellular phones' or 'cellphones'. You could just use a redirect on the homepages of these domains, or configure all the links contained in the site to jump back to your main site.
Although this may seem an unwieldy promotion tool, bearing in mind the reasonably low cost of domain hosting nowadays, it is probably fairly cost effective. I would recommend duplication of the entire site and linking every page back to your main domain, this way you get a combination of the new domain name and your existing content to boost your ranking - it would make sense to have a link to your new domains on your link page just to complete the circle for reciprocal linking. Make sure you submit your new sites in the same way that you submitted your main domain for maximum impact.
Tuesday 13 February 2007
Indexed Now!
Ok, a little under three weeks and this site is now indexed by Google.. I think you can pay to get faster indexing, but for a blog at least, I would rather wait...
Wednesday 7 February 2007
Google Adsense
I have noticed that there are a lot of questions about Adsense around, and although I have mentioned Adsense before, I note that I haven't really talked about it in length.
Adsense is a Google product for placing adverts on a website. If you are looking for an additional stream of income for your website, you may want to consider what Adsense has to offer.
Adsense matches your site content to the large database of adverts that it has. Keywords in the content will trigger specific adverts. If you want to see this in action, you can see how the content of my site: http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk is refelected in the adverts that appear. My site is all about converting old style audio cassettes into CD's, the adverts offer hardware and software for this very purpose. If you visit the 'studio focus' pages: http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/studio you will notice that the adverts are now aimed towards microphones.
If you are worried about a competitors advert appearing on your site, you can exclude their specific URL using the 'filter' section.
It is impossible to predict earnings using Adsense because of the variable nature of the cost of adverts. Google offers adverts to customers without a specific charge, allowing the advertiser to control an advertising 'budget'. The rate of pay per click could be anything from one cent to several dollars. The trick is to get high-paying advertisers on to your site (I don't know HOW you do it...but this will be your aim).
You can choose how the adverts will look on your page, and you can combine different types of advertising, though there are limits to how much you can put on a single page. You get to choose colours and whether the ads run vertical, horizontal or as a list of links. (note that the list of links only pays when a click is made on the SUBSEQUENT list of adverts).
I can only talk about earnings in relation to my own experience, I currently get (according to Google) about 160 page impressions a day, leading to approx 7 or 8 advert clicks, yielding approx $1 per day... not a fortune admittedly, but pays towards the running of the site.
To make any real money you will have to have lots of page impressions and have adverts that your visitors are going to click on. Ideally you want to attract high-paying adverts to your website, but I have no insight of how this can be achieved.
Now, it is important tp point out that Adsense does not pay out until you reach $100, which to be fair could take some time....at the rate of $1 a day, this is going to take more than three months.
In order to use Adsense you will need to register with Google, which is in itself, not a bad idea as you can access all sorts of other tools for your website.
Adsense is a Google product for placing adverts on a website. If you are looking for an additional stream of income for your website, you may want to consider what Adsense has to offer.
Adsense matches your site content to the large database of adverts that it has. Keywords in the content will trigger specific adverts. If you want to see this in action, you can see how the content of my site: http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk is refelected in the adverts that appear. My site is all about converting old style audio cassettes into CD's, the adverts offer hardware and software for this very purpose. If you visit the 'studio focus' pages: http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/studio you will notice that the adverts are now aimed towards microphones.
If you are worried about a competitors advert appearing on your site, you can exclude their specific URL using the 'filter' section.
It is impossible to predict earnings using Adsense because of the variable nature of the cost of adverts. Google offers adverts to customers without a specific charge, allowing the advertiser to control an advertising 'budget'. The rate of pay per click could be anything from one cent to several dollars. The trick is to get high-paying advertisers on to your site (I don't know HOW you do it...but this will be your aim).
You can choose how the adverts will look on your page, and you can combine different types of advertising, though there are limits to how much you can put on a single page. You get to choose colours and whether the ads run vertical, horizontal or as a list of links. (note that the list of links only pays when a click is made on the SUBSEQUENT list of adverts).
I can only talk about earnings in relation to my own experience, I currently get (according to Google) about 160 page impressions a day, leading to approx 7 or 8 advert clicks, yielding approx $1 per day... not a fortune admittedly, but pays towards the running of the site.
To make any real money you will have to have lots of page impressions and have adverts that your visitors are going to click on. Ideally you want to attract high-paying adverts to your website, but I have no insight of how this can be achieved.
Now, it is important tp point out that Adsense does not pay out until you reach $100, which to be fair could take some time....at the rate of $1 a day, this is going to take more than three months.
In order to use Adsense you will need to register with Google, which is in itself, not a bad idea as you can access all sorts of other tools for your website.
Monday 5 February 2007
SEO - Google overview...
Google is not limited to business use, but you will get more business than from any other search engine.
Search Technique:
Google is ‘interested’ in density of information and quantity of repeated words – each word is a ‘vote’ as far as the search engine is concerned. Google uses a ‘deep search’ technique requiring substantial information – associated (reciprocal) links will improve your Google. The search engine will follow all the links around the host website looking for links back and forth, and will follow links to other websites – the information which it encounters along the way will add to your rating if there is a return link to your own website.
To improve repeatability and to provide a bigger network of links (and thus a higher rating) include a glossary of terms (ie a page opening links up in a separate window explaining words appearing in the main website). Also use a site map with links to each page and corresponding links on each page back to the site map. This may seem over-kill, but it WILL ultimately increase your rating.
Google will also index the media it finds on web sites, calling the pictures by their proper names rather than default jpeg names. Ie: ‘ford_Capri.jpeg’ rather than ‘SMG0036.jpeg’ - Results of media searches reinforce the overall rating (be careful of using too much media on the homepage as download time will also affect your rating).
The ALT tags (box that comes up when your mouse passes over a picture) can also be scanned by search engines.
It is important that the title of your homepage is relevant to your market – this is what the searcher will see in the search results – Your homepage title should probably read something along the lines of a short ‘mission statement’ otherwise the first x number of words of body text will be displayed which may not capture the essence of the site.
Search Technique:
Google is ‘interested’ in density of information and quantity of repeated words – each word is a ‘vote’ as far as the search engine is concerned. Google uses a ‘deep search’ technique requiring substantial information – associated (reciprocal) links will improve your Google. The search engine will follow all the links around the host website looking for links back and forth, and will follow links to other websites – the information which it encounters along the way will add to your rating if there is a return link to your own website.
To improve repeatability and to provide a bigger network of links (and thus a higher rating) include a glossary of terms (ie a page opening links up in a separate window explaining words appearing in the main website). Also use a site map with links to each page and corresponding links on each page back to the site map. This may seem over-kill, but it WILL ultimately increase your rating.
Google will also index the media it finds on web sites, calling the pictures by their proper names rather than default jpeg names. Ie: ‘ford_Capri.jpeg’ rather than ‘SMG0036.jpeg’ - Results of media searches reinforce the overall rating (be careful of using too much media on the homepage as download time will also affect your rating).
The ALT tags (box that comes up when your mouse passes over a picture) can also be scanned by search engines.
It is important that the title of your homepage is relevant to your market – this is what the searcher will see in the search results – Your homepage title should probably read something along the lines of a short ‘mission statement’ otherwise the first x number of words of body text will be displayed which may not capture the essence of the site.
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