Search Engine Optimisation

[Simmy]

I've added a bit more content as you suggested nonchalant and I will add some more in time. I've also validated my entire site using html strict 1.0 and validated the style sheet. There are no dead/missing/unreachable links and alot of the pages/directories have been renamed to be more relevant to the sites content.

Is the link directory definitely worth while? They're asking me for $49 as my site has a PR of less than 3 When you say remove "bristol computer repair", do you mean the individual keywords?

I've made a few changes to the directory structure of my website and as such, alot of the links on google are now out of date and don't link to anything. The site has been reindexed a couple of times since the changes were made but the old links still appear on google (they've been deleted from my web space). I've setup 301 redirects in htaccess for all of these pages - is this likely to affect my ranking at all? Will google eventually index my site properly so I can delete the redirects?

I've made so many changes that i've dropped to page 2 again Hopefully it will jump back up! This SEO business is actually really interesting and hopefully rewarding when you get it right

 

[RyanMeray]

This thread is full of good stuff. When I was designing my webpage, SEO-friendly code was one of the requirements, so my menu system is plain text, my URLs have words in them and not abbreviations, and once I get the code finished, I'll have text-image replacement on all the major graphic portions along with breadcrumbs and that sorta thing.

A question about meta tag keywords, though. Am I supposed to be putting key combinations in single quotes, like 'city computer repair', or is it enough that I have city,computer,repair in the keywords, not necessarily next to each other?

Do single quotes link multiple words into a single keyword phrase or something?

Or should I ditch this altogether? A lot of the stuff I'm seeing these days says "Google doesn't use meta keywords anymore," etc.

 

[nonchalant]

A question about meta tag keywords, though. Am I supposed to be putting key combinations in single quotes, like 'city computer repair', or is it enough that I have city,computer,repair in the keywords, not necessarily next to each other?

Im not sure theres a definitive answer for this (unless of course you work for Google & know how their algorithms work). The way I see it is go for keywords/phrases that are part of your site name/title/headings eg: if your website is called 'city computer repair' use that phrase. This way you get the benefit of searches for all 3 words individually AND a high search result for the phrase. Use the site I referenced to test your results. You will see that using this phrase AND the keywords separately adds nothing to your optimization. So in view of this your better off using the phrase. Also, what do you think your ranking would be for the keyword 'computer' on its own anyway and when you think about it who would search using that keyword on its own? What would they be looking for? At the same time, using a phrase would list you in the search results for 'computer repair' even if the word 'city' isnt in the search.

 

[nonchalant]

Simmy,

first off, your site looks much better

I like the extra text on the homepage. Your links under 'services' look really good. You've made excellent use of pictures on each page too to detract from the text.

Add more content though. When I enter a page often only half of it is filled. Its true people dont like to scroll, but then they also like content so double it up in some areas, spamming your most important keywords where possible. Googlebot likes text. Think of it as pacman. It gobbles up text & keywords and looks sideways (to some degree) at pictures. Lots of text and a few pictures (with Alt-tags) to break it up makes for a happy robot AND a pleasant browsing experience.

Is the link directory definitely worth while? They're asking me for $49 as my site has a PR of less than 3 When you say remove "bristol computer repair", do you mean the individual keywords?

The $49 is worth every cent in my opinion. I have over 600 links now and at least 300 of them would be from BRL at a guess. $49 for me is less than an hours work (or the equivalent of selling 2 antivirus licenses).

And yes, I would remove bristol, computer repair, pc, onsite & laptop, as they are already in your title or description meta-tags. (try removing them then run the SEO tool - you should still be at 100%). Removing these duplications will free up room to add some more words not already covered by your title/description meta-tags. Use the tool to find other common words on your site (one I see straight away is 'bristol onsite repairs'. Perhaps you could add this phrase as 'bristol onsite computer repairs', but make sure this term is found several times at least on your site (including the word 'computer').

Rather than keep the keywords that are left I would try using words such as - virus removal, spyware removal, mobile pc repair bristol, & pc networking bristol (also emphasis these services a bit more on your site). But make sure you check the result of adding these keywords with the SEO tool. If you need to, add these keywords/phrases a few more times on your site. It seems these are the main type of services you offer so spam them on your site & link them to keywords in your meta-tags.

Keywords such as - upgrades, computing problems, slow, blue screens, crashing, onsite, home callout are too general. Your never going to rank high for these keywords. You want hits for people searching for your services in Bristol so team this word up with your services. Its all about figuring out what keyword terms people in Bristol are using when searching for your services. Someone in India may search the keyword 'blue screen' but they may be looking to fix the problem themselves & their not going to come to you if they dont find a fix. It can be hard but it really is a case of understanding the psyche of potential customers in your area, and what keywords or search terms they use when looking for a local repairer. You could delete all of your remaining keywords & add some new ones emphasising specific services and still get a 100% result in SEO.

I've made a few changes to the directory structure of my website and as such, alot of the links on google are now out of date and don't link to anything. The site has been reindexed a couple of times since the changes were made but the old links still appear on google (they've been deleted from my web space). I've setup 301 redirects in htaccess for all of these pages - is this likely to affect my ranking at all? Will google eventually index my site properly so I can delete the redirects?

I really wouldnt worry about this. Google will sort out its caching over time. The main thing is your current links work. I notice your 'remote support' link is dead. This is something you need to fix (if your not working on it already). A current sitemap will help google update its links to reflect your current site.

I've made so many changes that i've dropped to page 2 again Hopefully it will jump back up!

Again, I wouldnt worry. My site did the same after I made some changes. In my case, I removed a number of categories that I was linking to on BRL, as I read relevancy was important. Ive since put them back. If my PR goes back up it proves the number of links to my site is more important than relevancy.

This SEO business is actually really interesting and hopefully rewarding when you get it right

Yea I agree.

Edit: I also notice you have a heading 'Our services' on your homepage. Make this heading a hyperlink to http://www.bristolcomputerrepair.co.uk/bristol-computer-repair/computer-repair.php - this will save a visitor having to scroll back to the top of the page & click 'services' (people are generally lazy when it comes to web browsing). You could also link the homepage heading 'Bristol PC repair service' to http://www.bristolcomputerrepair.co.uk/bristol-computer-repair/onsite-pc-repair.php and on this page put your phone number and email address (at the top) or better still add another link on the 'onsite service & repair' page to your 'contact us' page.

 

[RyanMeray]

I've made a few changes to the directory structure of my website and as such, alot of the links on google are now out of date and don't link to anything. The site has been reindexed a couple of times since the changes were made but the old links still appear on google (they've been deleted from my web space). I've setup 301 redirects in htaccess for all of these pages - is this likely to affect my ranking at all? Will google eventually index my site properly so I can delete the redirects?

You did the right thing with the 301 redirects. You shouldn't have a hit due to those.

 

[RyanMeray]

Holy SEO, Batman! My site, which until a couple days ago consisted of exactly two pages (and even now is like...5? 6?), has a 3 pagerank! WOOHOO!

Now I just gotta get some content on it. lol

 

[JRDtechnet]

Here are some of my google rankings

NJ Computer repair: 2
New Jersey computer repair: 4
remote computer repair: 12
remote pc repair: 8
onsite computer repair: 17
laptop repair new jersey: 5
computer repair: 57
dc power jack repair: 20
pc repair: 33
Forked River computer repair: 1st local business, 6 organic (but im the first actually business site rest are directories) - this is my home town
Toms River computer repair: 3 (biggest municipality in the county)
ocean county computer repair: 9
computer repair onsite: 9
computer repair remote: 10
computer repair in new jersey: 6
dc power jack repair nj: 3
new jersey onsite computer repair: 2
cosmetic laptop repair: 3
it tech for onsite virus removal nj: 3
ocean county nj computer: 9
laptop repair nj: 4
laptop repair ocean county: 1
notebook repair nj: 2
new jersey laptop repair: 5

There might be a few more. I must be doing something right because everyone loves to copy my techniques. I started titling my site 'New Jersey Computer Repair...' and everyone else followed suite.

 

[JRDtechnet]

Oh Simmy, get those crap links off your page (like that google page rank checker) google is punishing you, you don't get a pagerank of 0 unless your doing something google doesn't like. Everyone starts out with a no page rank, a grey bar in google toolbar and then after awhile google will assign a pagerank of 1. Normally pagerank doesn't affect serps but it the violation is serious google may dock you. Oh and put a no-follow attribute to every outbound link.

Another thing, your meta description is way too short. Are you using google webmaster tools? most important things in google in no particular order: 1. url, 2. site title, 3. meta description. 4. First paragraph of site 5. header tags (change those h3 tags to h2 and use css to adjust the font size if you want it to be the same size)

 

[RyanMeray]

Okay, from a usuability perspective, I'm a little torn with how to organize my services section.

I want to segment the pages for home and business services, so having separate documents to break those down goes without saying. I figure from a simplicity standpoint, I offer a page, say "/services.html", which contains a brief rundown of the business services and home services, with links on the page to go to "/business/services.html" and "/home/services.html"

Let's take the business page as an example. I've got 6 or so services I'll be enumerating there, now do I want to write teaser summaries on each, and then force them to click another link to take them to a page that ONLY covers that service, or do I just want to list all of the services on the page togther?

From a usability standpoint, the less clicks the better, and if there's shortcuts at the top of the page for the stuff further down, then the page length shouldn't be an issue.

But on the other hand, from an SEO standpoint, having one topic per page, and vastly increasing the number of pages in my site would seem to have some nice SEO dividends.

Would there be a penalty for redundant information, if the services page contained all of the information, but also contained link to standalone pages with each specific service?

I hope this wasn't too confusing. I can't think of a better way to describe the question, so apologies in advance.

 

[Simmy]

Oh Simmy, get those crap links off your page (like that google page rank checker) google is punishing you, you don't get a pagerank of 0 unless your doing something google doesn't like. Everyone starts out with a no page rank, a grey bar in google toolbar and then after awhile google will assign a pagerank of 1. Normally pagerank doesn't affect serps but it the violation is serious google may dock you. Oh and put a no-follow attribute to every outbound link.

Are you just referring to the 2 links in the footer (which i've now made hidden)? Or the other links like (info) aswell? I only put them on yesterday and I heard a computer related link exchange directory would help?

Another thing, your meta description is way too short. Are you using google webmaster tools? most important things in google in no particular order: 1. url, 2. site title, 3. meta description. 4. First paragraph of site 5. header tags (change those h3 tags to h2 and use css to adjust the font size if you want it to be the same size)

Yep, I'm using webmaster tools. I heard that the shorter the description, the more emphesis it placed on the words (ontop of the order of the words being important). If I was to pad it out just to make it longer, wouldn't that detract from the main keywords I want to use? Cheers, I forgot I was using h3 tags

 

[Simmy]

Keywords such as - upgrades, computing problems, slow, blue screens, crashing, onsite, home callout are too general. Your never going to rank high for these keywords. You want hits for people searching for your services in Bristol so team this word up with your services. Its all about figuring out what keyword terms people in Bristol are using when searching for your services. Someone in India may search the keyword 'blue screen' but they may be looking to fix the problem themselves & their not going to come to you if they dont find a fix. It can be hard but it really is a case of understanding the psyche of potential customers in your area, and what keywords or search terms they use when looking for a local repairer. You could delete all of your remaining keywords & add some new ones emphasising specific services and still get a 100% result in SEO.

So if I add "bristol blue screen" or "pc networking bristol", is that not duplicating a keyword already in my meta description?

I notice your 'remote support' link is dead. This is something you need to fix (if your not working on it already). A current sitemap will help google update its links to reflect your current site.

Sorry, which remote support link is that?

 

[Simmy]

Holy SEO, Batman! My site, which until a couple days ago consisted of exactly two pages (and even now is like...5? 6?), has a 3 pagerank! WOOHOO!

Now I just gotta get some content on it. lol

Nice one Is your domain name relatively new?

I can't really offer any advice on your other query I'm afraid. I've put a brief description of my services onto one page and then put 10 or so other pages to describe each service in greater detail. But then my site is PR 0 so I probably wouldn't listen to me But more content, more pages and duplicating your important keywords sounds like a good thing to me. I would avoid copying the wording on the services page onto the individual pages - perhaps rephrase each service description so google doesn't see it as a copy.

 

[JRDtechnet]

Are you just referring to the 2 links in the footer (which i've now made hidden)? Or the other links like (info) aswell? I only put them on yesterday and I heard a computer related link exchange directory would help?

Making it hidden is even worse!!
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66353

If you really have to have those links on your site unhide them and use the 'no follow' attribute.

 

[Simmy]

Some places say link exchange is good for your serp and others says it's bad. I'll try it with the link directory for a few weeks and see how it goes.

I can't set the 'no follow' attribute or the link exchange doesn't work. Plus I've unhidden it now!

 

[JRDtechnet]

Some places say link exchange is good for your serp and others says it's bad. I'll try it with the link directory for a few weeks and see how it goes.

I can't set the 'no follow' attribute or the link exchange doesn't work. Plus I've unhidden it now!

why won't it work with the no follow?

 

[Simmy]

The link exchange place verifies the html and if it's been altered they disable your link exchange account.

 

[RyanMeray]

Nice one Is your domain name relatively new?

I registered the domain when I first incorporated, in 2005, but up until late 2006, the only thing on the site was a "coming soon" image. I updated the site in late 2006 to include an index page with some basic text that described the company, along with more "coming soon" stuff. I also threw up the link to my Angie's List profile, and for a while, that was the only outbound link on my site.

Then a few months ago I added the marketing page with links to the profiles of my company on other sites. Until earlier this week, there wasn't anything more than those 2 pages, and no menu either.

I've been hammering out content now as fast as I can so I can have something to show before the next time the Google fairy visits. lol

 

[nonchalant]

So if I add "bristol blue screen" or "pc networking bristol", is that not duplicating a keyword already in my meta description?

It is, however, duplication of some keywords is almost unavoidable and if they really are 'key words' is acceptable, provided they are contained in a keyword phrase that is also found on your site. But your better off trying to find a few keywords/phrases that arent in your tags already.

If you want to use these keywords try phrases such as 'bristol computer networking' or ' bristol home computer networking' or ' bristol business computer networking' (just dont use all 3 phrases).

What you want to avoid is 'bristol pc repair' in your title meta-tag or description and the word or phrase 'pc repair' (for example) in your keywords. Its also not just the words but the order in which you list them in your tags compared to how they appear on your site that matters too ie if you have the term 'bristol computer networking' mentioned on your site dont use the phrase 'computer networking bristol' in your tags. You may have seen in google search results where a term you searched was noted in bold under a listing in your search results. This is commonly a direct 'snapshot' off the site listed and matches your search term exactly. Try doing the same with your meta-tags.

Sorry, which remote support link is that?

Link works fine now

 

[RyanMeray]

So here's my burning question now:

I ran across this one website (won't give them any traffic) where they had a frontpage link called "Cities," which points to a subdirectory on the site that is merely a listing of HTML files. About 200+ of them, with names in this scheme:

City-State-Zip-Computer-Repair.html

They basically enumerated every zip code in this city, and every surrounding city, and each page has the same content, except for the part in the page where it matches the URL's specific location.

So, just to make up an example, there's

Springfield-MO-44444-Computer-Repair.htm
Springfield-MO-44445-Computer-Repair.htm
Troy-MO-44470-Computer-Repair.htm

and so on. And if you click on the first one, in the text of the page, the only difference between it and any of the others is the part where they say "We offer Computer Repair in Springfield, MO 44444," or whatever.

Now, these guys have an Alexa rank that is about 30% higher than mine, they have 300+ indexed pages to my 3 or so. The only real advantage my site has is that since I'm on a lot of forums, and my sig contains my URL, I have an insane number of inbound links, probably 10:1 compared to them.

And their Pagerank is a 2. Mine is a 3.

Is it safe to assume that I only have a higher pagerank due to my inbound links, or do you think Google might be penalizing them for having 200 pages with essentially duplicate content?

I was contemplating doing something similar with this (I imagine it could be really easy if I generate the filenames in a spreadsheet, and call and parse the filename for display somehow using SSI), but I don't want to upset the almighty Google gods.

 

[MrMille]

Google is doing them for duplicate content