WHY ISN'T MY SITE SHOWING UP IN SEARCH ENGINES?

[LAURA]

i used the keywords section in dreamweaver and put in all the right key words....when i try and type in any of the key words my site does not show up in google or yahoo, not even on the second or third page....i just put them in two days ago...does it take awhile or something? suggestions?

lAF

[YellowDart]

A lot of search engines don't use meta tags anymore. The big ones are all content search engines. They'll search the content of your webpages (the copy, not images) and will display their findings. You can also pay some of the engines to get your site displayed more prominently as well... I'm pretty sure my company pays Google to get our publications higher on the engines' results pages.

Try adding more content to your site. If your site is primarily image-based, you'll need to add more copy in there for the search engines to see.

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[LAURA]

thank you, i will try that, great advice.....


lAF

[Ryan8720]

After you submit your site it takes usually at least a month to index your site. There are tons of things involved in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There are whole companies devoted to it. Like YD said, most SE's don't put meta tags in very high regard anymore. Although having the keywords match the content of your page helps. Google gives higher rank with it's own PageRank system which counts gives ratings based on the amount of other high PageRank sites that link to you. So you have to be patient, and most likely you won't get to high on the SE's, especially for popular words.

BTW, you can't buy a higher rank on Google. Although paid AdWords customers are shown to the boxes to the right of the results and two paid ones are always above the results.

http://www.edgewebdesign.org/images/misc/ryan_shadowmetal.gif (http://www.edgewebdesign.org)

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[YellowDart]

Ryan said...
After you submit your site it takes usually at least a month to index your site. There are tons of things involved in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There are whole companies devoted to it. Like YD said, most SE's don't put meta tags in very high regard anymore. Although having the keywords match the content of your page helps. Google gives higher rank with it's own PageRank system which counts gives ratings based on the amount of other high PageRank sites that link to you. So you have to be patient, and most likely you won't get to high on the SE's, especially for popular words.

BTW, you can't buy a higher rank on Google. Although paid AdWords customers are shown to the boxes to the right of the results and two paid ones are always above the results.


Maybe that's what our systems admin guy meant... I was under the impression they would get pushed higher on the SE results pages... but maybe they did by AdWords space.

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[Matt_M_]

The best way rank higher for your keywords is to get a bunch of sites to link to you using your keywords as the anchor text. for example: <a href='http://www.yourdomain.com'>Your keywords</a>

http://www.mattmdesign.com

[East of Beautiful]

check out www.sethkahan.com (http://www.sethkahan.com) for an example.. he ranks high on google now.

www.eastofbeautiful.com (http://www.eastofbeautiful.com) - My Portfolio
www.eobmusic.com (http://www.eobmusic.com) - My Band

[BB]

i try and write catchy works on my front page..

And colour them in white...

so invisible to the eye.


http://www.funkboutique.com/logo.gif (http://www.funkboutique.com)

[East of Beautiful]

contrary to popular myth, search engines know when text is the same color as the background... and they dont include that text in their search queries.......

www.eastofbeautiful.com (http://www.eastofbeautiful.com) - My Portfolio
www.eobmusic.com (http://www.eobmusic.com) - My Band

[lkw]

BB you are doing is called cheating in seo world... and if google or any other search engine finds out about what you are you doing, which is placing same colour text on same colour background... you will be ban from their search engine.

what Matt_M said is correct, getting backlinks - links from related sites is the best way of improving your ranking on search engines... those sites that are ranked very high on their keywords usually have 1000s of backlinks, but that is not the only thing you have to do to get high ranking...

to learn propersearch engine optimization, it takes a lot of trials and error... i suggest you try http://forums.seochat.com/

Post Edited (lkw) : 12/6/2004 2:10:04 AM GMT

[Ryan8720]

Yeah, same color text is the oldest trick in the book, and will get you banned in a flash.

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[Big Perm-dizzle]

two spanks for BB - very very bad

www.hirethisdesigner.com (http://www.hirethisdesigner.com) - portfolio
www.conceptprint.com (http://www.conceptprint.com) - the company I work for

[Ulysses]

Adding onto BBs 'naughty' and 'unrecommended' suggestion ... why not just make the key words normal links, but just use css to hide them. As far as a search engine is probably concerned, it will detect them as legit content, but your user won;t see them. I've not tried this myself (as I say, I don't condone such tactics), but it really should work.

Alternatively, you'll just have to put some serious time and effort into it. That still seems to be the only reliable way to market a website properly and effectively (hence one of the reasons why marketing companies charge so much).

Personally, I leave marketing alone. I design and develop ... that in itself takes all my time up. Marketing I leave to the client, or outsource if requested, to people that really know what they're doing.

[lkw]

'but just use css to hide them'

this is another seo no no... you will get banned as soon as they find out. One way search engine will find out is your competitors will look at what you are doing to increase your ranking (ie. pagerank) and if they find out you are using css to hide your content or any other form of cheating tactics, they will report to search engine... and your site will be BANNED for life.

I am not knocking on anyone but i suggest people either offer valid suggestions or not at all. We are here to learn.

[Benjamin]

I'm sceptical as to how clever search engines really are at finding text hidden with CSS. It would mean that the robot has to trawl your style sheet too, and work out which elements are hidden, and which elements contain which other elements.

And anyway, if hiding text resulted in Search Engines penalising those pages, legitimate Image Replacement techniques would also be a no-no, since that's exactly what they do.

I imagine LKW is right, the real danger is that a human competitor will work out what you're doing then report you, which would get you penalised.

http://www.jackfruitdesign.com/
Om Namah Shivaya

[Ryan8720]

Right now, spiders don't look at the CSS, but one eventually they will have that ability. It's better to honest.

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[DavidLieb]

Getting your site ranked well in search engines is not as simple as "just do this" or "try that". There are many different elements, and details to those elements. I find that students at my school are more misinformed about search engine ranking than any other topic. Before you waste a lot of time, and possibly get yourself banned from the engines all together, I'd suggest that you either take a course on SEO (search engine optimization) or spend a whole lot of time at the forums dedicated to it. </o:p>


The forums I like are:


http://www.searchengineforums.com/apps/searchengine.forums/


and


http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/[/url]


You're going to have to start by deciding what keyword phrase you want to target. You may think you already know, but are people actually searching for the term you have in mind? is there a better term?


this is a nice tool to help you settle on a key word phrase:


http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/


Good Luck!


David Lieberman
[url="http://www.awdsf.com"]Academy of Web Design, Video Course (http://www.searchengineforums.com/apps/searchengine.forums/)
Add Web Design to your Skills!

[Troll]

The Internet has become one of the largest and
most heavily targeted advertising outlets. Because
of the nearly infinite amount of information available
on the Internet, most users find what they need by
using search engines. The reality of search engine
ranking is traffic drops off exponentially for every
step down in search engine placement. How can
businesses make the most of these powerful search
tools without spending so much time updating and
optimizing their Web sites to rank well?
Pay-per-click advertising has proven to be a good
solution. Pay-per-click advertising (also known as
sponsored links) allows for better control over search
engine placement, targeting visitors more accurately
and shortening the time it takes a site to appear
in search engine listings. Unlike standard listings,
pay-per-click advertising is not free but can be worth
the investment by increasing traffic to a site.
Through pay-per-click advertising a business can
bid on or buy a specific keyword or phrase that they
think users would be most likely to use when looking
for a specific product or service. The higher the bid,
the more prominently the ad will appear in the list
of sponsored links. This ad will only appear when
a user enters in the exact pay-per-click keyword
chosen. For example, if a business sold gourmet
cookies on their Web site they would register with a
pay-per-click company such as AdWords or
Overture, bid on or buy a keyword phrase such as
“gourmet cookies” and write a short piece of copy
(approximately 140 characters) that would appear
with the sponsored link to help describe exactly
what the company is selling.
Every time someone clicks a sponsored link, the
owner pays a fee based on the original bid. For
example: if a business purchased an ad for five
cents, they would pay five cents every time the
ad was clicked. However, some pay-per-click
companies charge less than the bid price as the
amount of clicks increases. One feature that most
pay-per-click companies offer is a daily or monthly
budget. This can be helpful if a business is working
on a limited budget. Once the daily or monthly
budget has been reached, the ad will not show up
anymore. An essential part of managing pay-perclick
advertising is to monitor and make adjustments
when necessary. Most search engines that use payper-
click advertising provide statistics to customers
so they can see how many people are clicking on
their ad. This information can be used to assess
how effective the ad is and if it is associated with
the right keywords. Optimizing a pay-per-click ad
can help a business maximize return on investment
by driving the right customers to their site.
Pay-per-click advertising is a great way to increase
traffic to a Web site and is becoming an essential
marketing strategy in e-commerce. However, this
exposure will not make up for a site that is poorly
designed, does not function well, or simply has
misleading information. The combination of a good
pay-per-click strategy and a quality Web site can
enhance the prospects for success in advertising

[Chris_D]

The Search engines actually publish guidelines on what is acceptable - and what isn't.

Here are some good places to start - for Google and Yahoo:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-18.html

The key issues these days revolve around inbound links and use of semantically correct markup. And still, one of the most overlooked fundamental issues is that search engines are text based browsers - they index words.





Cogentis Search Engine marketing (http://www.cogentis.com.au/)

[jordan]

I haven't read any of the above but i find the best way to get your site in the rankings is to:

1) Wait a while
2) exchange links (bots track your site the more external links to it that they are)
3) Use a few free promoter things (but these usually end up in spam or being listed low on rubbish engines)
4) Try and pick good descriptive words... unlike 'design' which every man and his dog uses!!!

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