Is this ranking any good?

[sem_services]

Hi All, Im a noob to all this. With that said my site ranked around 17th in Yahoo,Aol,and Google. My search was: Bathtub refinishing michigan. Im a bathtub refinishing company located in michigan and want to gain exposure for this area. I also had similar results with other key words.

This is my first site. Any suggestions to bring more clients to this site from michigan would be appreciated.

www.bathtubs.20m.com

[rlrouse]

Hello sem_services.

You need a couple of paragraphs of text on your home page using your main keywords and the word Michigan a couple of times each.

Your title is a bit too long IMO. I would shorten it to no more than 5 or 6 words, something like: Professional Bathtub Refinishing In Michigan.

I would remove these metas as they really don't do anything to help your page or your ranking:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="ALL">
<META NAME="DISTRIBUTION" CONTENT="GLOBAL">
<META NAME="CONTENT-LANGUAGE" CONTENT="EN-US">
<META NAME="RATING" CONTENT="GENERAL">
<META NAME="RESOURCE-TYPE" CONTENT="DOCUMENT">
<META NAME="REVISIT-AFTER" CONTENT="15 DAYS">
<META NAME="REPLY-TO" CONTENT="WEB SITE">
<META NAME="AUTHOR" CONTENT="SEM Specialty Services">
<META NAME="REVISIT-AFTER" CONTENT="15 DAYS">
<Meta name="Generator" content="Notepad">

There are other tweaks as well but these will get you started. I hope this helps. Good luck with your new site!

[sem_services]

Thanks rlrouse,
I agree with the home page, it needs work. My question is the meta, theres no need for them or are you saying the context is more important? Also when I remove them do I need to resumit my site?
Please go easy on me, I only learned from what I read on the internet.

[rlrouse]

My question is the meta, theres no need for them or are you saying the context is more important? Also when I remove them do I need to resumit my site?

There is no need for those particular metas at all. They just add more bytes for your users to download without providing any real benefits. They also push your content further down on the page which isn't good.

I went back and checked your incoming links (backlinks) on Google. You don't have any. You need to get some links to your site from other sites so that you can get some pagerank and some traffic.

The links will also ensure that Google's spider will keep crawling your site periodically. If you have at least one site that is already in Google linking to your homepage you'll never have to (nor should you want to) submit your site again.

[sem_services]

Thank you for the helpful advice. I'm removing those metas and adding more content to the the home page. The link thing is another story. Should I do a link exchange from this site or do a google Adshare, or both?

Thanks again for your help

[mm99]

You should submit to dirs as well. Once you're listed you can forget about it and it has the same effect as incomming links because that's exactly what they are. I have some listed on the left side of my sig website. Just do 'em all. Avoid auto-submitters.

peace...Paul

[sem_services]

Hi all,
Ive updated a few things suggested in this thread. I changed the title and shortened it up, removed the metas as suggestion, Increased my content, and I got approved today for the google ad. I have the banner up, but I need to get the filters setup so competition doesnt advertiise. Hopefully this will help.

Thanks again

[simonm]

You might do a search for "Bathtub refinishing michigan" but will your customer?

Try this link (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/) which shows what people search for on overture.

A similar level of intelligence can be achieved with adwords alongside the chance of people clicking through to your site.

What I do to find out what search terms to use is both analyse the site stats showing the search terms people use to access my sites and the site search stats to show what terms they use once they are on the site.

Suggest targetting more generic publicly terms that the non professional might use though I do see that the search suggestion tool shows that 4713 people looked for "bath tub refinishing" during October. 1157 looked for "bath tub reglazing"

[sem_services]

You might do a search for "Bathtub refinishing michigan" but will your customer?

Suggest targetting more generic publicly terms that the non professional might use though I do see that the search suggestion tool shows that 4713 people looked for "bath tub refinishing" during October. 1157 looked for "bath tub reglazing"

Thanks for your info. I have thought about this in great depth. When I do a search "bathtub refinishing"
I was ranking 200 or so "not PR", so I put alot of emphasis on improving that number.

When googlebot visited me last time, actually the first time, I had a different home page with poor content rich words. Plus my meta keywords just had too many that weren't relevant to my content. My density is alot better now, not perfect though.

I guess I'll just sit back til googlebot visits again and see how this has helped.

[eggman]

The page title, (some) meta information and structure are critical to getting listed with the appropriate keywords. Your PR (Page Rank) is perhaps the greatest determining factor on where you appear in the results for these keywords. That's just Google.

My suggestion is to focus on getting your HTML right by using meaningful headings, the appropriate comments, descriptive image alts & titles and more than anything...good content! The "how to" part of it can be tricky, but if you build it from a standpoint of making sense it will turn out right. Basically what I am saying is to build it for your customers to find the info they are looking for, not for Google. Do this and it works more often than not.

Next is PR. It's somewhat tricky, but Google does explain it well. It's about getting good links (the right ones) in from high PR sites while limiting links out in general. It's far more complex that that (http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/), but in short that's it's essence.

It takes some skill to get good with Google, and it takes a bit of knowledge, but build it for your customers if you want your customers to come. Out of doing that people will want to link with you...because good sites are often times hard to find.

Bottom line: build a good site for your customers. Ceteris Paribus, good sites win in the long run.

[minstrel]

The page title, (some) meta information and structure are critical to getting listed with the appropriate keywords. Your PR (Page Rank) is perhaps the greatest determining factor on where you appear in the results for these keywords. That's just Google.
Actually that's not always true - maybe it depends on the category and/or specific search words but it isn't uncommon to see sites listing high in the Google SE results with lower PR than those listed later on.

On the other hand, I agree with the many of the comments in the rest of your post, especially


My suggestion is to focus on getting your HTML right by using meaningful headings, the appropriate comments, descriptive image alts & titles and more than anything...good content!... build it for your customers if you want your customers to come. Out of doing that people will want to link with you... because good sites are often times hard to find.... Bottom line: build a good site for your customers. Ceteris Paribus, good sites win in the long run.
Also, thanks for the link to this article - seems very thorough and I have saved it locally to read in more detail when I have time:

http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/
I think it's always wise to remember that what we "know" about Google ranking is based on (1) what Google is at any moment willing to reveal about how they do things, which we must understand will never be all of their "secrets" and may well change at any moment in the future; and (2) on a "best guess" as to what Google hasn't revealed about how they do things.

[minstrel]

Case in point:

This may seem self-serving since it involves my own website but it's an example that comes quickly to mind of the point in my last post here.

Do a Google search for "ottawa psychologist", without the quote marks.

The site listed first for these keywords is a single page "site" with PR=3 and 10 backlinks. However, he has those keywords in that order prominently positioned in his <title> tag.

The site listed second is mine, a 100+ page site (haven't counted them all recently) with PR=4 and at last check 671 backlinks.

I'm sure others can find many other similar examples.

[eggman]

Actually that's not always true - maybe it depends on the category and/or specific search words but it isn't uncommon to see sites listing high in the Google SE results with lower PR than those listed later on.

Listed vs. Ranked - I was saying that the title, headings, and so on determine what words you are listed on whereas PR is more a determinate of where you appear in the results of the listed words. Of course the one with the higher PR wins, but the words it wins on would be more determined on the page itself.


I think it's always wise to remember that what we "know" about Google ranking is based on...
Agreed! I can only add to this by saying that they frequently change considerations (slightly) as well. It's always a guessing game, and I assume it always will be.

[minstrel]

Listed vs. Ranked - I was saying that the title, headings, and so on determine what words you are listed on whereas PR is more a determinate of where you appear in the results of the listed words. Of course the one with the higher PR wins, but the words it wins on would be more determined on the page itself.
Sorry to be obtuse here, but I'm not sure I see how the distinction applies. In the example I gave, the "winning" page, i.e., the one listed first/appearing first for those keywords, has a lower PR. So, "PR is more a determinate of where you appear in the results of the listed words" and "Of course the one with the higher PR wins, but the words it wins on would be more determined on the page itself" are the parts I am questioning (or requesting clarification about - maybe I need more coffee).

[rlrouse]

Inbound link anchor text and onpage factors win out over PR in ranking sites for a given keyword/phrase. At best, PR is a tie-breaker if all other factors are equal (which of course they rarely are).

[eggman]

I based my assessment on both my experience, what Google says combined with the initial whitepaper about Google (assuming it hasn't changed altogether).


So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. http://www.google.com/technology/

Then about the text-matching:

For most popular subjects, a simple text matching search that is restricted to web page titles performs admirably when PageRank prioritizes the results (demo available at google.stanford.edu).http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

After reviewing this I stand corrected to a point. What I get from both this last quote and my own experience is that it matches relevance (from content) then prioritizes by PageRank yet balances out over time on relevance.

[minstrel]

Thanks guys...

Sometimes I'm left scratching my head and thinking, "am I missing something here?", and more often than not, I am... :-)

[sem_services]

Thanks guys...

Sometimes I'm left scratching my head and thinking, "am I missing something here?", and more often than not, I am... :-)

I agree with that remark, whoa. Great information!!
Its funny how you optimise your site for hundreds of hours and then wake to know it's gone!!! Yes, thats what I woke up to. I thought it couldn't be me, but after going to my sub domain server I realized, it was gone. No problem, I'll upload from my back up???
EEEEk, no back up!!!Not good. Well, I learned a lesson; save, save, save.

Any how, I must say, all this info has inlightened me and my business to better my rankings and more profits.

Profits you say? Yes !!! $478, just off the web site,not including local ads.

Thanks for all your info peeps, your the best

[sem_services]

Well after making some changes, as suggested here, seems google dropped me all together for my two key word phrase "bathtub refinishing" . My three word phrase "bathtubs refinishing michigan" moves up and down, but usually aroung 16th. My question is : Why does google have my old cache, which isnt my home page any more. These updates Im doing arent showing up at all. I dont think Ive been crawled, not deep crawl, in over a month in a half. Can someone inlighten me as why this could be.

Thanks

[rlrouse]

If you get a few quality inbound links, your changes will likely be evident within the next Google update or two. Low PR sites (your home page is at PR0) don't get regular visits from Googlebot. You'll just have to be patient (I know it's hard to do when you're waiting to see how your changes worked).

[sem_services]

Rlouse
When you say "inbound links" does that mean link exchange?

Thanks

[rlrouse]

Inbound links are links into your site from other sites, reciprocal or otherwise.

[sem_services]

Thanks Rllouse,

I thought thats what it meant. I'm working on it as we speak.

Thanks again for all advice

[sem_services]

Boy what dumb luck. All the time I'm waiting for googlebot to show up and I had my pants down. I was working on my site and all the bot got was a cache of the page while I was updating it, so I only show up under a search of my url. Whats the chances of this happening at the same time? Could only happen to me. Oh well, just have to wait for another visit.