Tips to help get a top ranking. part 1

[Czar]

I have heard much talk on people needing hits needing ranking ect... for there websites... so I went and did alittle reasearch for yall :-)

Here are some options for submiting your website to search engines and how they may or may not work for you.

1. Using a free submission service.

Basicly this is by far the worst way to go...free submission sites sound like a good deal but their actualy not... sites use algorithems to configure ranking... free submission services submit the same information to every site which actualy lowers your chances of being found.

2.Using a low-cost automated submission service

In the long run its not much better then the free submission service... it gets your name out to probably 900 sites but again its the same information that isn't specific to the particular search engines requirements. Some even say that they resubmit from time to time but you could end up loosing your spot as well as perhaps getting band for spamming. BE CRITICAL.

3.Manually Submitting Your Web Site Information To Each Individual Search Engine

This is one of the best free ways to do it. By tailoring what is added to the submission you are insuring that every site is getting just what it needs to be success full in the ranking scheme of things. However. This does have its down sides it can be very time consuming and labor intensive and also has no pros involved to make sure your keeping up to date.

4. Use A Professional Search Engine Consultant

This option is by far the most effective. By using professionals you are guaranteed to have everything submited tried and tested with little effort on your part. On the down side this service doesn't come cheep. Prices ranging from 600-1000 dollars in order to have it done properly with the feed back you diserve/require.

Again be sure to be CRITICAL check their references and listen for word of mouth.. not everything is full proof or honestly what it seems.

5. Using submission software.

This isn't something that comes highly recommended. Versions come and go as well as the technology and information needed to have this operate successfully. Their is no promise that this method is either successful or even worth while.


Something that I have Stressed through this post is being Critical... if something sounds to good to be true it probably is. The main bit of advice that has been passed around is choose the proper keywords they will make all the difference.

I hope this helps

Czar

[internetbasedmom]

How about not submitting at all? Just build quality incoming links to your site and the spiders will find you. It is a viable option.

In my opinion, it's really not necessary to hire anyone to submit your site to a search engine. Sure, you can hire a professional to optimize your copy, incoming links, meta tags, etc....but submission really is the least important part of the SEO puzzle.

Of course, when it comes directories, you will need to hand submit. These are edited by critical human beings. You need to read all the guideliness posted on the website and in the case of the Open Directory Project (http://dmoz.org), you may want to visit the forums for some help.

Alice

[Johann]

Submission and SEO or Search Engine optimization are not the same. If your site is not optimized increased submissions is not going to improve your ranking.

You can even live without the submission to the crawling engines, as long as you have some amount of incoming links to get you indexed. Hand submit, hand submit.

Another issue is "Traffic is not the same as Business" If your traffic is not targeted your sales conversion is going to be low. You can even end up with high traffic site and no business.

Start with planning your site. Who you want to visit the site? What do you want them to do when they arrive?

Do keyword analysis before you start anything else.
Write the copy for the people above to get them to do what you want. Then it's time to optimize and submit.

This is a simplified version, but I see too many sites that haven't even decided why they built the site in the first place.

[Wacky]

Feedbacks on Webposition Gold? They've been around for some time haven't they?

[alienzhavelanded]

I've always submitted my sites by hand and coded them to be spider friendly. Seems to work just fine, so I don't bother myself with any "extras" for submitting and getting indexed.

The Martian

[Jim-Grill]

Feedbacks on Webposition Gold? They've been around for some time haven't they?

I've used Web Position Gold for many years now. I have also been getting their newsletter for many years and have come to respect them for their honesty and integrity.

I use the page critic feature of WPG to get a good idea of what I could correct on my pages. It's a good reference and good place to start. The page critic can also download a competitor's page and do a comparison. That is a nice feature as well.

I don't however, recommend the automatic submission tool - or any automatic submission tool. As a start, it's better to hand submit to the major SE's. As everyone else has also mentioned, all you need are some good incoming links and you'll get spidered.

All said, WPG is a good tool to have in the old web-dev tool box, but it's only a tool - not to replace hard work and experience.

(back on topic)
I think the number one way to start on a top ranking is to 1) optimize your pages for your relevant keywords, and 2) start building incoming links with other sites.

I have been in business on the web now for many years and have seen good times and bad. I've had top ranking pages and also had them disappear. In my experience one thing is very evident: submitting is probably one the most over rated and misunderstood aspects of search engine optimization. Link popularity is obviously the more important aspect now days.

[namita]

What is incoming links? And how do i do that?

Namita

[showerherbaby]

Okay. To say that I am a newbie, is a complete understatement. I am trying to learn all that I can, but WOW it is all so overwhelming. I had someone build my website for me and I honestly thought, "great, as soon as he is done with my site I will have people from all over flocking to my web site to buy all kinds of things." (Please see underlined above). So after I tried searching for my web site and couldn't find it, I expressed my concerns and said that my site must not be "turned on yet" because I can't seem to find it...anywhere! After he probably was able to keep a straight face, he then directed me to the "free" search engines to submit. I did that. (Luckily though, that is how I found this web site). So anyhoo, now that I have already done that, what should I do next? I have read all of the articles on submitting your site, (I think) but I am unsure of which way I should go since I have already submitted. I am ready to roll up my sleaves and do the work, I just need to know what to do next.

Also, how do I go about finding what my ranking is? Someone checked for me once and it was like (Four katrillion) or something close. (heavy sigh). I guess I should mention that my web site is for baby shower everything, and gifts. I would sure appreciate your input. (crossing fingers and saying please...please...please).

Sherry
www.showerherbaby.com

[aquamarina]

Ditto everything from Sherry at showerherbaby.com! And I am so frustrated! From what I've read (a lot), it seems that keywords are the thing to crack .... but how do you balance the need to get as many of these into your site, without producing a site which doesn't read well (showerherbaby seems to do this better than I did so if that's the only factor, what is the problem????). I'm a yacht charter broker, and when I wrote my site, I needed to end up with something which read well, like a brochure ... it's partly a tool which backs up my other marketing activities. But I do need to generate direct business from my website....but (yep, another 'but') don't want to sacrifice readability and presentation for something which just crams as many keywords into the homepage as possible. I've submitted (paid) the site to all the major engines, (and had good rankings on msn for main keyword phrases until two weeks ago, when I suddenly vanished! ..... WHY??????) Google adwords generated a few enquiries, and convinced me, after those enquiries turned to sales, that I can actually do what I set out to do and shouldn't give up altogether! I've also linked to as many yacht sites as I can .... but these sites need to be reputable in the industry, and when I consider my whole marketing plan, this is a highly competitive business but one where you need to be a bit cool imagewise.

What I want to know is:
1. Is a part of this whole thing that you have to be patient with a new site and wait for the spiders to find you over and over? And does this improve your listings/rankings over time? (my site has only been up since April).
2. Can you succeed with a site with great content, or do you really have to stuff it with repeated, repeated, repeated keywords which spoil the flow of your text? (Which if I have to, I will ....)

And a separate moan .... how FRUSTRATING is it to have to compete with poor quality, badly produced sites which appear above yours in the rankings?????!!!!!!!!!! But that's the nature of the beast, I know.

Any thoughts out there? ... I am such a new kid on the block with regards to all this but I am sure that I'm not the only struggling with these issues.

Karen

PS. Sherry ... your site looks great to my (inexperienced in these things) eyes!

www.aquamarinayachts.com

[Gary Golden]

Put up a link page then exchange link with sites that would draw business, go to the link exchange part of this site.
The key to any sites success is market, market, market. He who waits gets no business and if you are looking for a short term windfall, forget it! But operating a website is a learning experience and you need to learn everything about your site if you want to stay in business. Web business is like brick and mortar business, if you hire everything done then your overhead will swallow you up. The information on this site is all free, read and learn. I have been online for 3+ years on one of my sites and just over a year on the others, my profit is 0 but it does now pay for all paid advertising and hosting and I work my site 7 days a week just like my brick and mortar business in hopes that some day I will be able to live on this business and not physically work so much. So I say good luck and stay focused and get up a link page on your site or sites, not on someone elses site. Build doorway pages that lead in to your main site, each with different titles and keywords but all relevant to your main site. The more the marrier, but this means developing content to build each page with. Another idea is buy more domain names relevant to your site as they only run $7.00 - $10. per name and attach them to the various pages.
I have over 20 domain names, all of which give me access to different areas of my business offering me a wide range of keywords to build on.
The rest you will learn by trial and error, but good luck to you!
Once you have a link page feel free to link my sites and offer a link back.
Additionally you want to link to people that work their site as I hope you will. Anyone who sets their site up and never works it is not worth linking to as you are doing all of the work and they are recieving the benefit. How do you know this? by everthing that I have mentioned.
Keep you site updated and refreshed also as a stale sight will not get good rankings. I am sorry to ramble on but when you usually do several things at the same time you tend to jump topics quite regularly.

Thank you,
Have a great day!

[BrandsAndNovelties.com]

I have been online for almost three years now. I cant say I am a professional in this field, but I just wanted to let you all know of a WONDERFUL resource for Search Engine Submission and Optimization.

http://selfpromotion.com/?CF=tryall

Please note: I am note related to the owners or administrators of this website, I am ONLY telling you about it bec I believe it is one of the MOST VALUABLE FREE resource in this field.

Best Regards

[janeth]

I have read a lot of post by ohioadman and as always he gives great advice.
I would like to add one thing t what he said.
Here are a couple things to keep in mind while exchanging links.
There is no one thing for any site but link popularity may be the thing that will give your site the edge over your competition.

Start by increasing the number of links to you site the more quality links the better.

Links from popular sites will be given a higher vote then one with a lower popularity ranking.

All links must be from a different url several links from one site will only count as one vote.

Make sure you use your key words in the link and not just your site name.

Get directory Listings. Links from large, human powered directories are weighted very heavily.

Make sure you link to sites in a related category to your site.

Make sure your link is high on the page. If your link is after 30 other sites then it could end up not even being counted. Try to be as high on the page as you can get.

[showerherbaby]

Thank you to everyone for your valuable input. The first chance I get, I will be setting up a links page. Since I had someone build my site, am I able to edit my keywords, links pages, etc... or will I have to go through him to do this?

Ohioadman, you said that hiring everything done will swallow up all of my profits...(so to speak) and I am finding this out. I have thought about doing the pay-per-click, but if I can add some valuable link pages, would that still be necessary?

Samer, thank you for the info, I will check them out.

Janeth, I have read your posts as well and you always seem to offer good advice. I will make my links pages soon.

Aquamarina, I wish you the best of luck. I visited your site and it was wonderful. I love the way it is set up. It's not cluttered and with the colors and pictures you chose it is very relaxing. (My newbie opinion) but I think everyone will agree:)

Thank you again all.
Sherry
www.showerherbaby.com

[showerherbaby]

Sorry, one more thing I forgot to add. I have 5 other names that are linked back to my site. I should put some content on these other linked urls as well, right?

[paulwbaker]

The best way for any site to find 'customers' is to exchange links with other sites, you may lose some business but that'll only last as long as you need those sites to attract business for your needs. You'll just have to have a little price war until you’re up and running then lose the links page if your uncomfortable with it.

Word of mouth - get it in the paper, post the site info through doors and tell everyone who you know who walks through the door etc.

Next is keywords, not too many but enough to get those spiders looking for you so think what you want the site to achieve and then find the right words!

[showerherbaby]

Hi Paul,

I visited your site, but please keep in mind that I am very new to all of this. One thing I was wanting to know was why you chose to write about the Hussars? Will anyone that visits the site already know this? I would like to see on the first page, after the intro, who you are and why you chose the Hussars to write about. What is your interest in all of this? Something like that.

I love the way the Hussar Regiments script follows as you scroll down the page, but it makes it a little hard to read the text. I know that you said you lightened the page up, but maybe you could bold the text, or make the text darker.

I have to scroll to the right to get all of the page in view, is there any way of shrinking that up a bit?

I love all of your pictures and I like the old world look to it. It is very informative, but still I (as a reader) would like to know why you developed this site, i.e. your interest in this.

The intro was cool, but I like the look and feel of your first page better. Maybe you could use the Hussar Regiments Script in the background of the intro.

I know this may sound odd, but when I visit a site, the ones that really grab me are the ones that use text and colors and script that match the theme of the web site. For an example, Aquamarina's site, I feel like it sets the mood for what she is offering. (the color of blue that was chosen reminds me of the waters). Your site does this very well also.

[showerherbaby]

oops! Sorry. I hit the wrong button. I hope I didn't sound to negative because all and all I like your site.

www.showerherbaby.com

[paulwbaker]

The site has been set to 100% and should be all within the screen. I have looked at the site and can see no reason for it to work as it should?

I have been thinking about losing the intro as it is rather distracting and it was just done to see if I could do it. As for the text? I have tries to do it several ways and the problem remains, I may have to rethink the layout and do it all again shortly.

Thanks

Paul

[paulwbaker]

Is it just the main page or the whole site?? I have noticed that the menu bar was set to pixel rather than percent, could you have another look and let me know please.

Paul@hussars.org

[aquamarina]

Thank you! This is all the most useful, informative, and UNDERSTANDABLE advice on the internet marketing quagmire that I've EVER received .... and I shall be taking a lot of this advice (especially on reciprocal links and from then on as much as I do understand it!) and keeping up with new posts.

And thank you, Sherry, for your encouragement about our website ... and I wish you all the very, very best for your business.

It seems to be that to succeed one of the keys is that you know your site, your product and market, and how to promote it YOURSELF not using a third party; it's just that it takes time.

Patience, they say, is a virtue ....

Thank you all again.

www.aquamarinayachts.com

[kitchengarden]

Wow! This stuff is really an eye opener. I am relatively new to web stuff and have, apparently, made some blunders I hope I can recover from. My web host offers a search engine placement service with monthy resubmits which I thought was great. Now I realize it may be why I haven't shown up very well in rankings. Meanwhile, I have taken some advice and redesigned my site for spiders to find better.
I would appreciate any feedback on the site I can get: http://www.kitchengardenfoods.com

I have worked hard to get link-backs, but it is easier said than done. I am now about to send out a second round of emails to sites to ask--even beg--for a link placement. I am almost sure that many sites have filtered my email thinking it is SPAM, rather than legitimate business email. It is more than frustrating. I have never understood what the majority of people you email with questions never acknowledge if they even recieve the email--a simple SOD Off would do. At least you would know they got the text and don't care to deal with you.

[janeth]

Hi kitchengarden,
Make sure you put that you want to exchange links in the subject and do something like this it should help.

Good quality sites will already have a high ranking in Google. So what you would do is type in one of your key words for example say you build websites you could type in web design. This will give you a list of all the web design companies listed in Google. Now pick out the top ten and type in their address with link: in front of it.
For example link:www.geeksonsteroids.com this will give you a list of all the sites that are linking to that company.

Now you know these people will exchange links because they have already given your competition a link. So now take a look at their site and see if it is one you would like to link to. If it is send them a letter something like this.

I was just visiting your site and found it to be a wonderful site. I also found the content both valuable and enjoyable. My site visitors would appreciate your content as I think your would appreciate mine. My site is www.geeksonsteroids.com and we build websites. If you would add a link to my site www.geeksonsteroids.com building custom websites. We would love to add a link back to your site.

Sincerely,

Janeth Duque

[showerherbaby]

Hi All,

First, Paul I went to your site again, but was unable to get on. I will try again later. Thanks for the info above on linking, I am finally realizing the importance in all of this.

Aquamarina, You are welcome and I wish you the best of luck as well:)

Kitchengarden, I went to your site and it is very nice. Love the pictures, Set up very nicely, Color, text, everything. Not cluttered, informative. Very nice. Good Job!

Janeth, Thank you for the letter writing info. I was never quite sure how to put it into words. I usally am to informative and tend to ramble:) Your's is simple, sweet, and to the point.

Thanks everyone,
Sherry
www.showerherbaby.com

[snj2236]

Hi all,

I'm fairly new at this, too and it is a bit daunting.
When you are requesting a link exchange with another site, shouldn't you pay attention to the pagerank of the other site's "Links" page? If Google doesn't know it exists, then is there any point in having a link there, no matter how high the main page of the site is ranked?

Thanks
Shannon
www.mauiembassy.com

[janeth]

Hi Shannon,
Yes your are right page rank has a lot to do with exchanging links. If the page is not pr4 or higher then it does not count. But there are a lot of sites just starting out. My site went from a pr0 to a pr5 in the first month. So it gets a little tricky a pr1 could be a pr6 in 6 months. So would you want to turn down a link with a site that could be a pr8 next year.
The other thing is this a link from a pr4 with only one out going link would be better then a pr6 with 100 out going links.
Then you have to worry about how high your link is on the page. If it is to low it will not get counted.
There is no one thing for any site but link popularity may be the thing that will give your site the edge over your competition.
But at the same time there are some many things to be added in I think it is easer to just find sites with good content and link to them.
Done right you can get more hits from your links then you can from the search engines.
Of course you can always try to write some really good articles and try to get people to link to them. Then you would not have to link back.

[Black Knight]

Sorry to have taken a while to find this discussion, but I usually expect to find the discussions about search engines in the dedicated Search Engine Discussion (http://www.webproworld.com/viewforum.php?f=2) forum here at WebPro World. ;)

There's a few things that actually need correcting in the above, so I'd better start with that.

Then I'll give you all a good reading list to really learn your SEO in a clear way that makes sense. As you'll see, just taking one forum discussion alone can lead to conflicting advice, and possible confusion, so some good links will help you cross-check.

Corrections first:


Links from popular sites will be given a higher vote then one with a lower popularity ranking.

This one is simply about how you define popular. There are sites that are awfully popular in terms of traffic and users that will do you no good at all because they themselves are banned by the search engines. A site with no Google PageRank can't pass any to you, even if it has ten million visitors per week. It can still pass you customers through those links though, so links should never be seen solely as about rankings or SEO.


All links must be from a different url several links from one site will only count as one vote.
On which engine? This certainly is not true of Google or AllTheWeb or many other top-tier search engines. Google looks at pages, not sites. My own backlinks, shown by Google, include hundreds of pages from one particular domain. And from my own domain. Internal links (those on your own site) count towards PageRank just as links from other domains do.


Make sure your link is high on the page. If your link is after 30 other sites then it could end up not even being counted. Try to be as high on the page as you can get.

This is a myth from ancient times, back when Altavista was king of the roost, and it wasn't true then either.

Have a look at the PageRank papers, or any of the numerous pages that explain PageRank in plain terms, and you'll see that the amount of weight given through any one link is the weight of the page that the link is on, (minus a damping factor) divided by all the links on that page. In other words, it has to count all the links in order to know how much weight to pass through any of them. If it didn't count them all, it couldn't help any of them.


If the page is not pr4 or higher then it does not count.

This isn't true either. All pages count, but Google filter the backlinks that are shown to people who search using the link:domain.com approach. If you use simpler or more advanced methods you'll find that all backlinks on PR1, 2, and 3, pages are indexed, they are simply filtered out of being shown to those searching for them on that specific advanced search method.

The reason? Possible to fool SEOs and make it harder to work out how many links the competition really have. Remember how PageRank works though. For a PR1 page to have a PR score, it has to have been through the PR calculations, and if so, ALL of its links were indexed and counted. Otherwise Google couldn't know the PR of any page.

Now for the reading material.

Start with Search Engine Watch - www.searchenginewatch.com - which has been the semi-official mouthpiece for the entire SEO industry pretty much since it began. There are plenty of articles, and although the best stuff is subscription only, you should read, think on, and reread this site until you know it by heart. Then subscribe to get the juicier stuff. It is more than worth it. Subscribe to the free newsletters, both the Search Engine Report and the SearchDay one.

SearchEngineWorld (http://www.searchengineworld.com/), Pandia (http://www.pandia.com/) and SearchEngineGuide (http://www.searchengineguide.com/) should also be on your must-read list, and when they agree on something, it is almost as good as having tested and proven it for yourself.

Take everything with a pinch of salt. Even if you hear a thing said often, think about it and try to test it (safely of course). If Christopher Columbus had asked in a forum, he'd have been told that of course the world was flat, and couldn't be circumnavigated. :)

[janeth]

Hi everyone,
There's a few things that actually need correcting in the above, so I'd better start with that.
Google limits what they will read in a lot of areas for example title tags Google will read about 59 characters (including spaces) in a Title.
You should also be sure to include relevant keywords in the text of all your pages. Also, try to keep them near the top of your pages - Google may not crawl all the way down your page.
How many times have I read that.
I have also read that googlebot reads only first 101KB of each page it visits.
So again if your at the bottom of a link page you could get left out.

So if spiders read top to bottom, left to right, and give more weight to what they read first. Then if your at the bottom of the page you could get over looked.
It's important to note that every engine is different.
Page Rank has nothing to do with the number of page in your site. Page rank is the importance of the page which is indicated by the number of off site pages link to your pages.

If the number of pages in your site can affect PR of your site, everybody will have a million page to get a PR10!
I also believe that it's best to not put more than 30 outbound links to a page. Any more than 30 per page makes each reciprocal link virtually worthless because with each added outbound link, the value of those links go down to the receiving sites.

[Black Knight]

Page Rank has nothing to do with the number of page in your site. Page rank is the importance of the page which is indicated by the number of off site pages link to your pages.

PageRank doesn't know about sites, only pages. PageRank looks at all pages, and counts how often one page is cited in other pages. It allows proxy voting.

Let me explain this with a very simple example you can all test.

If 10 sites were to link to your homepage and earn you a PageRank score of 5, but no sites were to link directly to your 'About Us' page, how does your About Us page get any PageRank?

The answer is that your own internal links pass PageRank. PageRank is about links to pages, and whether that page is on your own site, or on another's makes no difference to the published algorithm.

The full maths of the original algorithm were made public and are available for anyone to see.

http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html provides not only a detailed explanation, but also a calculator that shows you how to use your internal link structure to either focus PR in particuylar areas of your site, or to spread it evenly throughout.

The reason that sites don't build millions of pages is because that would only spread their own pagerank over those million pages, because the pages can only pass the amount of pagerank they actually have to pass. However, larger sites do tend to benefit more through PageRank, partly in sheer scope and volume of links internally (because the link text still matters - though this is a separate part of the algorithm to actual PageRank) but also because broader content offers more stuff for people to link to.

One of my specialities is in working with dynamic sites, with many thousands of pages, and these give tremendous strength in terms of SEO.

[janeth]

Hi Black Knight,
The paper starts off saying
"and it is probable that Google uses a variation of it but they aren't telling us what it is. It doesn't matter though, as this equation is good enough."

The problem is that it is hard to tell what Google is doing.

But I have this question for you.

Do you think or are you saying that once a site gets enough out side links say enough to become a pr3 then he could move to a pr6 and compete for a key word like web design with only links with in his on site pages.

If so how many pages would it take to do this?

Also according to what your saying I would get a higher link back to me because with in my site I can have only one link back to my home page rather then be on a page with 50 other links. So it would also be better to go threw my site and remove all other links to any other pages and directing all the links back to my home page. Or maybe only have links to two or three pages from each page and not every page on my site.

Would not be good for my visitors but would allow me to compete better. Also if my page has two links on it to the same site one at the top and one at the bottom does that site get two votes or one?

If you only answer one question how many pages do you think it would take to go from pr3 to p6 if all the pages are in my own site.

[spamfilter]

If you submit your site URL to search engines, then never, never not submit your site to FFA Serach engines.

I submitted only once to one FFA site and now in every day I get up to 20 spam emails to my INBOX.

[Czar]

Greetings all,

I'm glad you all have taken a liking to this post. My whole idea is to do this in parts displaying all of the diffrent aspects and tactics used for ranking/traffic/ect.

With any luck I will have part 2 put up in a few days. I'm not telling you what part 2 is because i don't want my idea stolen LOL. ;-)

enjoy

Czar

[Black Knight]

Do you think or are you saying that once a site gets enough out side links say enough to become a pr3 then he could move to a pr6 and compete for a key word like web design with only links with in his on site pages.

If so how many pages would it take to do this?

That's not exactly what I'm saying but this'll be hard to explain in a simple post or two. :)

If your homepage is the only page being linked to from outside your site, and it has a PR3 on its main URL, and you added 10 extra pages to your site (linked from your homepage), then those pages will each have a PageRank equal to that of your homepage, minus the damping factor (usually given at 15 percent), divided by the total number of unique URLs that you link to from that page.

So, 85 percent of your PR3 is divided between all those links, just as it was divided among the fewer links before. In other words, you've spread the same amount of PageRank more thinly among more pages.

But on the other hand, you now have ten extra pages worth of link-text which is used for calculating relevancy.

You also have ten extra TITLE tags on your site to target new keyword variations with, but each will have a little less PageRank than with the fewer pages.

However, now let's get real.

If you add ten pages of genuine content, you have just expanded the appeal of your site. You have made it more likely that someone will link to some page of your site (and those pages pass 85 percent of their PageRank around your site, through the links to other pages, just as the homepage does).

Lets say that you decided to add more pages and wanted killer content. Maybe you'd publish articles on the site, because even where you publish articles submitted by others, only one link goes in the credit, while all other links on the page go around your site. People link to good articles all the time. This can be a real help in building PageRank, and also in building up the number of people who bookmark your site too.

How many pages to boost your PageRank depends on how many pages it takes you to build content that attracts more links than a commercial site's homepage would. It can be as little as one great article, or as many as you want.

[Black Knight]

The simplest strength in having more pages for manipulating your PR is that you can choose whether to focus the PR heavily on your best performing keyword pages, (and spread less PR to pages that you needed to have, but are never going to attract good sales leads - like a privacy policy page), or whether to spread the PR widely throughout the entire site. The more pages you have, the more exact that control can be.

Use the PR calculator at www.webworkshop.net to experiment with how your own linking structures can affect the PageRank of your pages, either to boost one page, or to boost category level pages, or to distribute the PR down to the specific product pages where conversions may be highest.

[alienzhavelanded]

Aquamariana said:

What I want to know is:
1. Is a part of this whole thing that you have to be patient with a new site and wait for the spiders to find you over and over? And does this improve your listings/rankings over time? (my site has only been up since April).

I'm a little late here, but the answer to that one is yeah! LOL

2. Can you succeed with a site with great content, or do you really have to stuff it with repeated, repeated, repeated keywords which spoil the flow of your text? (Which if I have to, I will ....)

You can succeed with great content...This site gets more traffic than all of mine combined. It was submitted once manually, after that it was all about the spiders and content.
http://www.marznetproductions.com/computing

The Martian

[computergenius]

I've used Web Position Gold for many years now.

I am a little confused by WPG. It seems to tell me to create loads of doorway pages (because the results are different for each search engine) to my site, and I have read elsewhere that this is Not A Good Thing.

Is this what you do? And do you only use WPG on your home page?

[minstrel]

I've used Web Position Gold for many years now.

I am a little confused by WPG. It seems to tell me to create loads of doorway pages (because the results are different for each search engine) to my site, and I have read elsewhere that this is Not A Good Thing. Is this what you do? And do you only use WPG on your home page?

From Google's "Webmaster Guidelines":
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Quality Guidelines - Basic principles:

*Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users.
*Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
*Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
*Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our terms of service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:

*Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
*Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
*Don't send automated queries to Google.
*Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
*Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
*Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

[Pacific]

I had a bit of trouble last year when using (at the same time) the GoogleBar and WebPositionGold. I now turn off GoogleBar when using WPG to upload or search.

What happened was that I couldn't get Google.com to come up for a day or so - even the Canadian, Japanese, and UK versions! A very effective BLOCK.

Here is the transcript of my interaction with WPG customer service: (It's long, but very informative.)


Hello.

I used Position Reporter to see how 6 keyword phrases showed up on the top 6
SE and directories last night. Google.com was one of them. I used only 3
simultaneous queries at a time and the courtesy was set to "wait 15 to 70
seconds"

Today, I cannot access Google.com, Google.ca or Google.jp.

I believe Google has put a block for my computer for accessing their website
for using the WPG queries.. All other websites can be accessed normally on
my machine, and I checked with a neighbour that Google.com is truly still
accessible locally.

This happened once before, when I first started using WPG, but I attributed
it to "user error and ignorance". I have been reading a lot about using WPG
and it has some controversy because of some SE's not liking being overused.

I am presuming that Google will, over time, allow me to access to their
site again.

Have you ever heard of this happening before?

Is there anything to do about it?

Would you admit that this could be a problem even if it really is?

Do you have any thoughts or suggestions about this?

Alan Pattinson

(250) 339-2687
Toll Free:1-866-726-0788
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
WEBSITE HELP
Need help with your web site?
Not getting enough visitors?
Too much email spam?
http://www.PacificWebsites.com
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
----- Original Message -----
From: Alan at Pacific Web Sites
To: help@firstplacesoftware.com
Sent: December 16, 2002 1:16 PM
Subject: Re: Position Reporter blocks Google use [WPS2002121300002080]

========================

From: help@firstplacesoftware.com
To: pacificwebsites@shaw.ca
Sent: December 15, 2002 4:18 PM
Subject: Re: Position Reporter blocks Google use [WPS2002121300002080]


Hello Alan,

Google states that they do not like automated queries to be run on their
service. They say accessing their service with a browser is fine, but all
other tools that automate searching are not. We updated WebPosition a year
or more ago to emulate a browser as closely as possible to avoid unfair
discrimination toward WebPosition users. There is no other tool on the
market that does a better job of emulating a browser than WebPosition.

You may hear of a Web site being banned by Google, but normally it takes
some form of spamming on the person's Web site for that to happen, not
simply running WebPosition's Reporter. That's because WebPosition Gold
1.60 as well as WebPosition Gold 2 do NOT pass the user's URL to Google
when running keyword reports or verifying URLs. In the case of URL
verification, it does a query on a keyword phrase and then scans the
results for the user's domain name offline.

Therefore, Google's server cannot look at rank checking queries from your
IP address and say they belong to a particular Web site which is on another
IP and ban it. Although they can certainly launch scare tactics to make
you believe that if you check your rankings your Web site will be banned,
that has not been the case as we've observed it. If it were, we'd be
hearing a flood of complaints from our customers about being banned and
that is just not happening.

Earlier versions of WebPosition Gold 1.x, mainly at the end of 2000 and
first month or so of 2001 did pass the domain on URL searches but this has
long since been changed. Most people saying that using WebPosition will
get your IP blocked are basing their belief on those incidences. The
browser emulation problems that led to a small number of people being
banned have long since been corrected. Even at that time, less than 1% of
WebPosition customers were even affected. However, the rumors continue to
circulate anytime someone is dropped from a search engine (which happens
all the time whether you use WebPosition or not) that WebPosition must be
responsible. WebPosition's Page Critic will actually tell you how to avoid
accidentally spamming a search engine, which is by far the easiest way to
get banned by a search engine.

As a side note, FirstPlace Software has made numerous communication
attempts to Google's management in response to their complaint at the end
of 2000. For a period of six months, those attempts were ignored and put
off. After extraordinary efforts, we did eventually receive a single
response from a Google VP. We sent a detailed proposal of how we might
work together to encourage the reduction of queries on their service,
discourage abuse, promote their Web marketing services such as AdWords, and
address other issues they might have if they could clearly spell them out.
Some of these things required cooperation on their end to accomplish.
Unfortunately, our proposal was not responded to by their VP. So
considering the six-month history of calls, faxes, and letters being
ignored, we deemed that the matter was in reality not that important to
them and thereby dropped the matter. Since we updated the product long
ago, we've had no substantiated reports of WebPosition customers being
blocked or banned simply for running rank checks or for submitting, so it's
been a non-issue.

If you do use an automated tool of any kind, you should try to be sensitive
to the needs of a search engine and not abuse their service. More
specifically:

a) Avoid excessive numbers of queries if you choose to monitor your
rankings on Google. Most people do not have time to improve their rankings
on 100's of keywords. Therefore, don't rank check on 100's of keywords if
you don't have the time to do anything about all those rankings anyway.
b) If you choose to run queries, run your queries at night and during
off-peak periods, which is something Google has suggested in the past.
This is when many of their servers are presumably standing idle, waiting to
handle the increased volume during peak periods. Our scheduler makes this
easy to do. The scheduler ease of use and flexibility have been improved
in WebPosition Gold 2 to further this goal.
c) Do not run your queries more often than is really necessary. Since
Google normally doesn't update their entire index more than once a month,
you should not have a strong reason to check your rankings more often than
that.
d) I have heard that some people who are concerned about Google's
statements choose to monitor their Google positions via the Yahoo Web Pages
option in the Reporter. Although these rankings can vary a bit from
Google.com, normally because the index is not always as up to date, it can
be a reasonable alternative for some people.
e) Avoid spamming on your Web site (same color text as background,
excessive keyword use, etc.) since this is by far the quickest and easiest
way to get yourself red-flagged whether you use WebPosition or not.
WebPosition's Page Critic gives extensive advice in this regard and is
updated monthly so you can achieve top rankings through "search engine
friendly" web pages.
f) We admit that we do have some concerns that Google's Toolbar program
that some people use could be used to set cookies or other things to help
identify people conducting certain activities. We have seen a forum
posting earlier this year that indicated that Google may have used the tool
to track down the author of a product that reported PageRank outside of the
official toolbar program and demand he stop publishing such a tool.
Therefore, although WebPosition does not record cookies or things that
could easily associate your domain name to queries you do, we cannot vouch
for what information the Google toolbar could communicate to Google's
server. If you want to error on the side of caution, consider using the
toolbar on a separate machine and IP from all your other SEO work, whether
using WPG or otherwise, or not using it at all. (If you never downloaded
their toolbar and installed it in your browser, then you don't need to be
concerned about this).

In the case of WebPosition Gold 2, you can use the "Be courteous to the
search engines" feature on the Options tab of the Reporter so you do not
query their service so quickly. This gives you an added level of safety
you will not find elsewhere if you don't mind the missions taking longer to
run. The submitter has a similar feature to randomly submit at various
intervals to more precisely emulate manual submissions in your browser so
that you're not discriminated against simply for using WebPosition rather
than your browser to submit.

We recognize that online businesses have a fundamental need to measure
their search engine rankings and automate submissions to save time and
increase accuracy. This can be particularly true if you are paying a
search engine to be included in their index. You can't invest time or
money into a marketing effort without having a tool to measure your
results. Part of that measurement comes from measuring traffic, but
another part comes from measuring your rankings and whether they improve or
decline over time. Whether you choose to use a tool like WebPosition to
assist you in that, another tool, your browser, or not at all is ultimately
up to you as the marketing manager. Ensuring your Web site is visible on
the search engines is an effective, and for some businesses, essential
marketing method. The desire to be found on the search engines is not one
that is likely to ever change.

Keep in mind that if you do nothing, then your Web site is not likely to be
found by anyone on the search engines, so in affect, you are already
"banned" for all intensive purposes. WebPosition is the very best rated
tool out there for creating a search engine friendly Web site that will
rank highly. You can find many reviews and testimonials at the following
links:
http://www.webposition.com/testimonials.htm
http://www.webposition.com/product-reviews.htm

In conclusion, we are not receiving reports to my knowledge of customer's
IP's or Web sites being blocked or banned. I also want to say Google has
an outstanding service that should truly be applauded. The accuracy of
their search results are some of the best in the business! Therefore, we
by no means wish to promote the abuse of Google or any other service.

We do hope Google realizes that the same people that financially support
Google by buying advertising via AdWords and other services also have a
need to measure their rankings. If they don't do that with the tool we
offer, they will simply use some other tool, so this is not simply a
"WebPosition" issue. With that in mind, at least in the case of FirstPlace
Software, it is our desire to promote the responsible use of our product,
to discourage search engine spamming, and to work together with search
engines and the Web marketing community whenever possible. Most search
engines realize this, but in the case of Google, they have a different
viewpoint.

I hope this helps clarify things a bit. I apologize for being long-winded,
but I wanted to give you as much information as I could so you're better
informed and can make intelligent decisions on promoting your Web site.

Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

David Elliott
FirstPlace Software, Inc.
http://www.webposition.com/

=======================

Hello, David Elliott:

Thank you for your detailed reply. I had the Google toolbar installed on my browser at the time of using the WP Reporter. I presume that was used to ban my IP address from using Google.

Incidentally, my computer also lost access to Yahoo.com search function as well. The Yahoo.com website was still accessible, however.

The block came off the next afternoon, so the total time was about 18 hours. Access to all Google websites and the Yahoo search function became fully usable.

I will be REALLY careful next time, probably use another computer with different internet connection method to use the WPG program.

I am only a small 2-person web promotion and building company. What I like about the WPG program is that it saves me (and therefore my client's) time and money.

Thanks again.

Alan Pattinson

(250) 339-2687
Toll Free:1-866-726-0788
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
WEBSITE HELP
Need help with your web site?
Not getting enough visitors?
Too much email spam?
http://www.PacificWebsites.com
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

[Jurgen]

Wow, Black Knight.... thanks for the insite...
This "webworkshop" explained quite a few things to me as well. If I understood this correctly:
If you develope serveral pages with contents and target specific keywords, even so it could be different subjects, link them all together on your side, you could have a PR of ten without any in- and outbound links! Am I correct??????

I was thinking about that for the longest time to create different pages for different products and let the SE's find them later.

Please somebody confirm if I am right or wrong.

I sure love this thread, never got so out of the "SE discussion" forum.

Thanks guys, (and girls of course) :-)

Jurgen
www.absolutelyfabulousflowers.com

[Suezi]

This question is for "Golden"!! I have been to your website and would like more information on submitting an ad with your service. Is this the best way to go? I have a decent assortment of incoming and outgoing links but I am working diligently at trying to promote my business locally- I am on the first page of google under "wreaths". I have been handing out business cards right and left-Any ideas? This is my prime season of the year- as I specialize in holiday one-of- a kind wreaths. My current website is new and is 2 months old. I belong to several different groups which is why I have alot of links. Any ideas, or questions?

[alienzhavelanded]

As Google itself says, build your site for your visitors, not the SE's.

The Martian