What's the secret to getting my site to show up in search results?
My site has been spidered by Yahoo and Google, but I cannot get any of my pages to appear within the first two or three pages of results, even if I do a search for the specific title of a page. Anybody who can give me some ideas on how to improve my search results ranking without resorting to some SEO scam site will have my gratitude. The one whose idea(s) have the best chance of working will get my "Best Answer" vote.
2007-01-09T23:22:56Z
My website is The Robinson Library, at http://www.robinsonlibrary.com
Neil2007-01-10T01:25:25Z
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Firstly, your site is still relatively young, your domain name was registered in July 2006 and expires July 2007. There is a belief that Google ranks websites that have a longer domain registration period i.e. it would be better if your domain name expired in July 2011 (five years), this gives your domain name more credibility as Google knows you aren't going anywhere (I mention Google because they have the monopoly amongst the search engines).
Secondly, you will need to continuously create more backlinks to your site (high priority of Google's algorithm). Advertising in directories is good for backlinks but they don't provide the traffic that they promise. As your site is still young I suggest keep being active in community forums like Yahoo Q&A and inserting links to your site wherever possible. Try networking at myspace (biggest online social network in the world), also forums that are related to your website etc... Basically get inside your target market's head... where will they be online? I think history students would be a good place to start?
You can't rely on search engines to provide organic traffic until your site is more mature. Don't panic though, it will come. However you will need SEO at sometime or other to get top rankings. I do provide my clients with free SEO reports as I was once where you were and know how you feel. Don't worry it's not a scam, I make my money through web design. Once you've read through the SEO reports you will know what needs to be done.
There is too much to mention in this forum, I have started a blog where I have some helpful links for marketing. It's still new though, I only began yesterday so please bare with me...
One more thing... Your site took quite awhile to upload, even with my broadband... I suggest decreasing your jpeg size or converting them to .gif format. This will make a world of a difference and will keep visitors clicking through your site without becoming frustrated.
go to http://ewbsmith.com for some free software to download. You have to have the right meta tags and you also have to be getting enough hits. It's kind of a catch 22. If you don't get the hits you won't be shown. If you're not shown, you won't get the hits. You have to be driving traffic to your site through other means like email campaigns and ads. It doesn't happen overnight. Place a free ad on Yahoo.
when u open any website, u will find "View" in the toolbar, click on it and go to "source".
Now when u create a website, u write in ur meta tags every possible words ur target market will use to search for ur industry/product/service. Will they use the word "library", etc etc.? Let the web "spiders" do the crawling for ur site. of course u can pay to get ur site listed on first or second. But u can have it listed on first page too when u have all the meta tags possibly used by ppl who will search for Robinson Library.
The next thing u wanna do is market ur website. This I think u will slowly learn by checking out websites that teaches u how to market ur site to ur target mkt.
Sometimes it takes a while....keep resubmitting it, also make sure all your meta tag and key words are relevant. Put words that appear on your page in these, also put variations of the words...it is somewhat time consumeing but WILL PAY off!! There is one place I found that searched my meta and key words to see if they were good!! Try putting all your divisions under your keywords........
I also put "add my site" and "submit site" or "search Optimization" under search on yahoo........Do this kind of stuff and you should be all good!!
GOOD LUCK!!!
PS Do link exchages and craigs list add your link on your myspace page......
Very easy: pay money to Google or Yahoo. How else do you think companies come up on top in the search list? The more you pay, the higher you end up in the results. No joke.