Getting the most from your website

[Team-Green L&L]

I have been working with search engine optimization for 2 years now and can now see why, the majority of, the companies on here aren't getting the hits and traffic to increase sales.

DVS Hardscaper, I'm gonna use your site for an example here, sorry. www.outdoorfinishes.com is a beautiful flash site that would sell anyone who already knew to go there or learned through another medium of advertisement, but it is "flash" and when you use the search term: "keedysville landscaping" on Yahoo it's nowhere to be found. This is how a potential "cold" client will find you.

The point here is this. A site is only as good as it's visibility! With a poorly optimized site, it is necessary to spend more money to get people to the site. Imagine being in a mall with 10 billion stores, how would you find what your looking for? You would use the map in the center of the mall, correct? That is what Google and Yahoo are.

Invest some time into making your site visible and you will find that it is much more useful than "closing the deal".

If you are interested in Search Engine Optimization, but don't have a clue about technique, I may be able to help there. PM me and we can discuss it there.

[topsites]

Oh you don't gotta tell me, first you build it...
Then you rebuild it just for the engines (or so it would seem).
That's after you done rebuilt it 12 times already, of course.

But truthfully speaking, some of the biggest pitfalls are bloated graphics (not optimized or not optimized enough OR plain using the wrong graphic), and improper code (either with errors, non w3-compliant, or both).

So, once the proper balance of the correct images (think in terms of tiny files, like 500k for a button, 1-2k for a logo, 15-20k for a picture max) has been achieved, and the code is in an error-free standardized format (think hand coding arrrg), you're basically ready.
As a rule, it takes a newcomer a couple of years...
With mine, it's still taking more than a year (and it's my 2nd).
Just because, everything has to be perfect.

Some folks will argue about meta tags and google this and that.
But if the site is ready, she's ready.
Once I get to that point, I pay the $300 or so it costs to get reviewed (and hopefully listed) in Yahoo's Directory.
It's one-stop shopping, once approved you will not worry about traffic again.

That's how I do it, then regular reviews and updates on my part, keep things working, check up on things.

p.s.: my site's load times:
Connection Rate / Download Time
14.4K / 22.26 seconds
28.8K / 11.23 seconds
33.6K / 9.65 seconds
56K / 5.87 seconds
ISDN 128K / 1.94 seconds
T1 1.44Mbps / 0.35 seconds

It's barely in specs, 12 seconds @28.8k is the most I'll accept for mine.
You can check any site here:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/index.html

[WebMan]

Once I get to that point, I pay the $300 or so it costs to get reviewed (and hopefully listed) in Yahoo's Directory.
It's one-stop shopping, once approved you will not worry about traffic again.


I wrote a longer reply to this but evidently didn't save it right...Don't pay that money!
It's a total gimmick, it does nothing to improve your rankings anywhere, and you can get just as good of search results on Yahoo without paying that... it is a gimmick they use for those who don't know better! And they make a cool $300 for little or nothing.
Search engines are so competitive these days each one has all the listings the others do...it's just a matter of time and where they rank you.

There is one little mentioned search engine all webmasters know, for getting listed on every search engine well. No one has ever mentioned it here (I think I did in a post long ago) but it's free, you submit your site once, and all other search engines use it for reference if they accept you there.

That's after the site is 100% finished. One mistake many people don't know to do is to put a "robots dissallow" file in their new web site immediately when you start and are "on-line".

Google is so fast these days I have seen them pick up unfinished sites that have only been on-line a week or less. Then (because the site is just started) you have a lousy Google index so stopping all the search engines from seeing an unfinished site is a most important 1st step.

Only after you are finished do you remove that file and allow the search engines to "see" your site. Then (and by using the submission site I mentioned) all the engines will pick you up as best possible for what you have done.

[JKOOPERS]

hey web man where do i enter that info to allow robots

[Team-Green L&L]

hey web man where do i enter that info to allow robots

A robots.txt file is uploaded to the root directory on your server. Do you have the coding you are looking for? Are you allowing "all robots" to crawl?

I just read the post about paying for submissions. Don't EVER pay for submissions. If you want to spend money, give it to a SEO expert and get submitted to hundreds of directories for the same price. PM me for answers to any Q's.

[Duekster]

My site does pretty well. I just wish I was more graphically inclined.

[Team-Green L&L]

There is one little mentioned search engine all webmasters know, for getting listed on every search engine well. No one has ever mentioned it here (I think I did in a post long ago) but it's free, you submit your site once, and all other search engines use it for reference if they accept you there.



You aren't referring to the great ****.org engine are you Webman?

[Duekster]

I wrote a longer reply to this but evidently didn't save it right...Don't pay that money!
It's a total gimmick, it does nothing to improve your rankings anywhere, and you can get just as good of search results on Yahoo without paying that... it is a gimmick they use for those who don't know better! And they make a cool $300 for little or nothing.
Search engines are so competitive these days each one has all the listings the others do...it's just a matter of time and where they rank you.

There is one little mentioned search engine all webmasters know, for getting listed on every search engine well. No one has ever mentioned it here (I think I did in a post long ago) but it's free, you submit your site once, and all other search engines use it for reference if they accept you there.

That's after the site is 100% finished. One mistake many people don't know to do is to put a "robots dissallow" file in their new web site immediately when you start and are "on-line".

Google is so fast these days I have seen them pick up unfinished sites that have only been on-line a week or less. Then (because the site is just started) you have a lousy Google index so stopping all the search engines from seeing an unfinished site is a most important 1st step.

Only after you are finished do you remove that file and allow the search engines to "see" your site. Then (and by using the submission site I mentioned) all the engines will pick you up as best possible for what you have done.

I write most of my web files off line then upload the whole thing.

[grandview (2006)]

For my snow plowing I come out #2 on google.

[BSDeality]

SEO is the most important thing you should focus upon after your website is built. I was #1/2 on google, msn, aol, yahoo for a number of key searches that I designed my site for. It does work. I'm going to be starting another SEO crusade to get some more results for spring 07. If you don't have the time to do it yourself pay someone to get good search results. I've sold tens of thousands of dollars of jobs from my website in the past year.

[WebMan]

Uh Grandview...I don't know what terms you want (or use to get that #2) but I almost never found you on Google (tried 3 of your key words...what looked good with no results) finally found you only by searching for the domain grandviewlandscaping.com directly.

You have no Alexa rank, only 2 outside links, and no Alexa page rank. Probably because of a couple of semi-fatal errors:
You "doubled" a Google bot tag & they hate that, one is plenty...but mainly your syntax was off so the Google bot tag is useless (you don't need to specify Google, it will "play" like any bot). It's also way down at lines 61 & 66 and you have a generic robots tag at 55 (making 3) but they all have the same flaws...all the tags have a trailing slash "/" which negates them.

A robots tag should be at the first just below your W3C and either above or below the title (preferably above) not way down in the 50's and 60's (and that's WAY too many lines in a <head> tag anyway).

For the person that asked somewhere about the no robots tag I'll use it as an example of proper syntax. This should be just below the <head> if you don't have a charset or W3C tag yet:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
Yours ends like nofollow"/> note the slash? Those don't go in bots tags. Also your noarchive is really of no use, better a no-cache if that's what you want or a specific revisit if that's what you want.

For the earlier question that tag goes where I said and leave it there until you are finished, then just take out the letters "no".
That's a robots tag.
A robots file that's also needed is a text file in the public directory which starts with

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

That stops them all. You don't want to allow them all because some folders on your site should be private & not seen by robots so do not do an "allow all" type file later, learn or get help on a robots file. (Or just delete that one & change the tag)
This file is saved in plain text and called robots.txt
You can make it in notepad (a plain text program not a word processor like Word or Word Perfect), just paste or copy the 2 lines above just that way, save it as robots.txt and upload it to your public directory (same place all your files like index.html are; browsers can't see it but robots can)
That's it.

Also doesn't anybody read?
Somebody posted "pay to get listed in 100's of directories". Think about that... How many search engines are used by every last person you know-total?
Probably not more than a half-dozen at most...so what are these hundreds? A scam to get some easy $$. Like I said once (please read this time) Search engines & directories today are super competitive, they will find you in a few weeks after you let them unless your site is really bad...but once any major finds you, they will all have you soon enough.
Google & Yahoo, & MSN, & AOL, etc. etc. all look at each other all the time to make sure they aren't missing something..they will pick your site up for free. And yes especially if you get the one I mentioned and it does end in org :)

[Team-Green L&L]

I saw you mentioned Alexa, so I assume you're using the same software I am.

[WebMan]

Alexa is just a generic way to check page ranks & search results. Not perfect but a good free indicator of what's happening on the web.
I used a couple of other tools to find the errors in the tags.

[grandview (2006)]

Just tried again.

snow plowing wny in google

[WebMan]

How many (just curious) of your visitors use the term "wny"?
This could be good info for others here because:
I'm not from there so I used things like NY and New York...no-go...
BUT you DO live there so if people in your area are using "wny" often in their searches you have hit a good "localized" term. Something localized business should always look for...the old "if it works"...
:
Similar to the area around Austin TX being called the "Hill Country" there or Dallas-Fort Worth is called the "Metroplex" here so somebody from NY might never think of those terms but here typing "hill country real estate" or "metroplex landscaping company" would be common.
It's all in what your live stats are telling you (and your wallet) because if people are not using the localized term then being #1 is useless but if they are... :)

By the way from "research" which isn't as important to you as your actual results in your area "wny" would be a worthwhile secondary term (it is used) but isn't used that much overall related to western New York. Again..if your stats say that's how visitors are finding you and those visitors are signing contracts...payup

[Duekster]

How many (just curious) of your visitors use the term "wny"?
This could be good info for others here because:
I'm not from there so I used things like NY and New York...no-go...
BUT you DO live there so if people in your area are using "wny" often in their searches you have hit a good "localized" term. Something localized business should always look for...the old "if it works"...
:
Similar to the area around Austin TX being called the "Hill Country" there or Dallas-Fort Worth is called the "Metroplex" here so somebody from NY might never think of those terms but here typing "hill country real estate" or "metroplex landscaping company" would be common.
It's all in what your live stats are telling you (and your wallet) because if people are not using the localized term then being #1 is useless but if they are... :)

By the way from "research" which isn't as important to you as your actual results in your area "wny" would be a worthwhile secondary term (it is used) but isn't used that much overall related to western New York. Again..if your stats say that's how visitors are finding you and those visitors are signing contracts...payup

absolutely! You have to research what terms people search.

Example, My brother wanted an IT website. We found people searched for information technology vs IT almost 100 to 1. Sure we included IT but our seo efforts were on the key word used the most.

[Team-Green L&L]

How many (just curious) of your visitors use the term "wny"?


So very true. You can key in weird words and get high ranks, but that is just like driving out to the woods to find your store. People will not drive to the woods, you have to put a billboard up on the highway that tells them "Hey we're in the woods, come check us out!"

That is the key to SEO techniques. Good placement with GOOD keywords. We are listed:

1. Cincinnati Landscaping: #9 Yahoo (lost 4 places during construct.)
#15 Google
#3 MSN

2. Cincinnati Landscaper #7 Yahoo

3. Landscaping Cincinnati #20 Yahoo

There are quite a few other keywords we are highly ranked on, but these are examples of good keywords for our company.

[grandview (2006)]

Some people get so carried away with the site that they forget to advertise it or tell anyone about it.They think people with just find it on their own but you have to help them along.
There's a guy I know and he does a lot of adverting things and he said the same thing what ever you do have your web address on everything so people can find it fast.

I hope my crude chart comes through.

[WebMan]

I wish I had your "little crude chart" in time to make the handouts for my seminars the end of this month but they already went to print. Really good illustration (even if the art is a bit off-center :dancing:

I "tell" people but that's a good way to illustrate it. Another thing to remember is never use the http & stuff, people know that so don't waste space. The "www" screams "web site" so on all that "stuff" you can just put www.GrandviewLandscaping.com

Remember domain names are not case sensitive so capitalize the letters that make it easy to read, that one might be www.GrandViewLandscaping.com depending.

Good chart and VERY true!

[RHayden]

[QUOTE=WebMan;1670667]Remember domain names are not case sensitive so capitalize the letters that make it easy to read, that one might be www.GrandViewLandscaping.com/QUOTE]

Excellent tip.