CSS and Google

[sparkiem]

Does anyone think that Google may think the code below is a trick of some kind??

<style type="text/css">
<!--
H1 {font-family: arial,helvetica; font-size: 12pt; color: black}
</style>

Still fishing for reason I have lost my ranking in Google.

[SPC]

No, but your code is wrong. You have a start comment code, but no end comment code. The whole page, below the start comment, may be treated as a comment if there isn't an end comment code anywhere in it.

[JuniorOnline]

Ola my friend,

could you please give us some info? for example, what keywords did you rank for and got dropped? and which pages were showing for that keyword? that way I might get some idea and will be able to help.

at the moment, looking at the main homepage, I would recommend the following:

- instead of having the History details at the end of the page, where no one can see, create another page and call it (about us) and add the details there. That way you can increase the internal linking of your site, which does help in ranking.

at the moment you have under (about us) contact details. these should be added to the contact us page ;)

- instead of having a box that says (my fav sites), create another page and call it that - link to it across your pages. again this will help in internal linking.
- instead of having the clock image to the left as you do at the moment, right align it and place it on the right side of the page.

- add a border around the page, and align ur text to the left, this should make it more organised and creates a better look and feel to the main page.

- for the product pages you will need to make use of the <h1> tags more. at the moment, for the titles you are using this: <FONT size+1>Genuine Leather Tote Bag /w rollers"
I would recommend using more of the <h> tags, and you can always modify the look of them through CSS by changing the font size and colour. right?


some of the above comments are not related to rankings, while internal linking is. Use your keywords in the internal links, and make use of them so that it won't irritate your visitors..

good luck:)
T

[ADAM Web Design]

You may also be experiencing problems because your menu isn't crawlable. This ties in with JuniorOnline's internal linking suggestion since there's no crawlable away to get back to your home page, which is where your ranking will come from and subsequently be distributed.

[freehits]

Where do your product pages come from?

Are they dynamic from a database? or you make each new products page by hand, as it appears from the .html filetype?

[sparkiem]

Originally Posted by hoptoo

Where do your product pages come from?

Are they dynamic from a database? or you make each new products page by hand, as it appears from the .html filetype?

Thanks for your reply
I make them by hand.

[sparkiem]

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

You may also be experiencing problems because your menu isn't crawlable. This ties in with JuniorOnline's internal linking suggestion since there's no crawlable away to get back to your home page, which is where your ranking will come from and subsequently be distributed.

Thanks for your reply
I read this same thing before, but did not really understand it, but the way you put it I can now see what the other thing I read was talking about. I am going to work on a new menu.

[sparkiem]

Originally Posted by JuniorOnline

Ola my friend,

could you please give us some info? for example, what keywords did you rank for and got dropped? and which pages were showing for that keyword? that way I might get some idea and will be able to help.

at the moment, looking at the main homepage, I would recommend the following:

- instead of having the History details at the end of the page, where no one can see, create another page and call it (about us) and add the details there. That way you can increase the internal linking of your site, which does help in ranking.

at the moment you have under (about us) contact details. these should be added to the contact us page ;)

- instead of having a box that says (my fav sites), create another page and call it that - link to it across your pages. again this will help in internal linking.
- instead of having the clock image to the left as you do at the moment, right align it and place it on the right side of the page.

- add a border around the page, and align ur text to the left, this should make it more organised and creates a better look and feel to the main page.

- for the product pages you will need to make use of the <h1> tags more. at the moment, for the titles you are using this: <FONT size+1>Genuine Leather Tote Bag /w rollers"
I would recommend using more of the <h> tags, and you can always modify the look of them through CSS by changing the font size and colour. right?


some of the above comments are not related to rankings, while internal linking is. Use your keywords in the internal links, and make use of them so that it won't irritate your visitors..

good luck:)
T

Thanks for your reply.
Grandfather clocks is the main keyword pharse that I was #15 on Google for.
I am also going to try some of your suggestions as soon as I have some time, it has been pretty busy here during X_MAS

[sibagraphics]

It may be productive if you corrected your style sheets taking into account the warnings noted here:

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/v...kesthings.com/

particularly the lack of background colours.

Otherwise Google may think you are employing hidden text and penalise you accordingly.

[Weedy Lady]

This is completely off the subject that you posted, but I never buy anything from a site that does not have an actual physical address.

A phone number does not convince me that it is a legitimate business. An address and a picture of your store (if you have a physical store) would be most helpful to a prospective buyer.

[davebarnes]

<META NAME="generator" CONTENT="Web Studio, Version 4.0 SP3 for Windows">

[Orion]

Google seems to really place a HUGE emphasis on links lately, your site seams to have about 1300 links recognized in google whereas the number one site has 6900 and even site number 20 shows about 2900 inbound links.

also... everything else that was mentioned.

A top ranked site should be 'well formed' from a technical coding aspect; accessible and have all the wonderful usability features in the design; content needs to be verbose, unique, and targeted to the keywords (write about what you do, A LOT).

After all that find a ton of sites to link to you.. An idea link is someone in your industry or related industry thinks that your site has such valuable information that they link to your site from their site. (This is the crux of the idea that a site with a lot of incoming links should rank higher).

Hope that helps! Best of luck!

[espectations]

Put your style in an external style sheet. I read that during the Jagger update, Google penalized the sites with on-page styles more than those with external style sheets.

It might just be an opinion - the advantage of an external style sheet is also that it shortens the code on the page giving the spiders more content immediately to crawl - it does not have to work through all the code to get to the content.

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by espectations

I read that during the Jagger update, Google penalized the sites with on-page styles more than those with external style sheets.

Will you kindly tell *where* you did read that ...?

Without any identifiable source, this statement will confuse more than it may help.

faglork

[espectations]

Actually on Webproworld

Poster williamc wrote:

Agreed, not all. But as rustybrick mentioned on his blog, it seems to be the ones using external stylesheets that that have not totally crapped out.

All the sites that I have found that use on-page css with visibility set to hidden were tanked, some are now coming back to pre-jagger results, which leads me to think google is tweaking some fast cleanup.

[espectations]

I read it in a thread on Webproworld

This discussion was about hidden div tags but I found it interesting when I read it that the author was of opinion that an external style sheet would've made a difference...something to think about and maybe investigate?

Point is that in the original post in today's thread the poster made a mistake in his code.

Question is - would it make a difference if he had his style on-page vs external style sheet??? (he uses external css btw)

I always recommend that everybody validates their code wether it is CSS or html which I noted he did validate his html so maybe he should validate the CSS too...CSS validator

I would love to hear the opinions on this...

Agreed, not all. But as rustybrick mentioned on his blog, it seems to be the ones using external stylesheets that that have not totally crapped out.

All the sites that I have found that use on-page css with visibility set to hidden were tanked, some are now coming back to pre-jagger results, which leads me to think google is tweaking some fast cleanup.

[sparkiem]

Hey,
Just wanted to let everyone know that I really appreciate your help. I have learned a lot about css and getting you pages to validate. I now have my home page passing html validation and css without any warnings. I realize my home page doesn't look that great, but I plan on working on that as I learn more about web design.
Anyway thanks to all, you have been a great help.

[freehits]

Mike your product pages have but one link on them and it says BACK and goes to the category page.
Perhaps a breadcrumb using keywords, or at least a link back to the homepage to pass some added weight to the front page of your site. Your homepage has the best content, it should get the most links pointing to it as well.

I like your site though as it reminds us what the internet used to be in better days, handmade pages for the small business and hobby driven webmaster. Preety cool stuff.

JUST MY 02

[sparkiem]

Originally Posted by hoptoo

Mike your product pages have but one link on them and it says BACK and goes to the category page.
Perhaps a breadcrumb using keywords, or at least a link back to the homepage to pass some added weight to the front page of your site. Your homepage has the best content, it should get the most links pointing to it as well.

I like your site though as it reminds us what the internet used to be in better days, handmade pages for the small business and hobby driven webmaster. Preety cool stuff.

JUST MY 02

Thanks,
I appreciate that and I am going to put a link to my home page on on all my product pages. Thanks again for the idea, I can use all the help I can get. I have a lot of fun learning this stuff. I put in somewhere between 48 and 56 hours on my regular job, so makes it hard to find the time for this, but I think everyone should have a little time to do things they enjoy. I am 53 years old and have only had a computer for about 4 years, so I have a lot to learn.

[greeneagle]

There are a number of good replies and great advice here, such as:

Weedy Lady:

This is completely off the subject that you posted, but I never buy anything from a site that does not have an actual physical address.

It is all about creating a trustful environment for a visitor/potential customer. I also recommend that anyone with a reputable business selling anythin on-line join www.bbbonline.org and display their logo and link to their records of how you conduct business.

Ken

Ke

[JuniorOnline]

did you want that border around the images?
you can get rid of it by using (border="0")

I really admire the fact your 53 and you enjoy website design:) Keep up the Good work.

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by espectations

I read it in a thread on Webproworld

This discussion was about hidden div tags but I found it interesting when I read it that the author was of opinion that an external style sheet would've made a difference...something to think about and maybe investigate?

Point is that in the original post in today's thread the poster made a mistake in his code.

Question is - would it make a difference if he had his style on-page vs external style sheet??? (he uses external css btw)

I always recommend that everybody validates their code wether it is CSS or html which I noted he did validate his html so maybe he should validate the CSS too...CSS validator

I would love to hear the opinions on this...

Sorry for replying late and quoting the whole stuff. But as you can see: The discussion you mentioned was about an entirely different problem - hiding DIVs with inline CSS. But you said in your post:

I read that during the Jagger update, Google penalized the sites with on-page styles more than those with external style sheets.

What you are infering - since the OP is not about DIVs and not about hiding - is that "google penalizes sites with inline CSS in general" which is not true. Inline CSS is OK, there are situations when it is even preferable.

I may sound picky, but in my opinion there is already too much speculation on this "Google and CSS" business, and we all have to be careful in our statements. The first newbie who reads the quote above, tells others that "Google penalizes sites with on-page styles more than those with external style sheets. I read it at WPW ..."

See what I mean?

faglork

[sparkiem]

Originally Posted by JuniorOnline

did you want that border around the images?
you can get rid of it by using (border="0")

I really admire the fact your 53 and you enjoy website design:) Keep up the Good work.

Hey JuniorOnline,
I appreciate that, that does make the images on the pages look a lot better. Check it out here.
www.mikesthings.com/grandfather.html