High ranks on search engines 1

[new2vb]

I was wondering if anyone would be willing to share tips to get high ranks on the search engines. I posted my site,

http://bearcollect.server5000.net

last week to 40 engines, and it only comes up on Alta Vista when I enter "bearcollect". None of my other keywords pull it up. I am using frames, but I added my &lt;head&gt; to my &lt;noframes&gt; section, since I've read that some search engines don't access frames pages. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!!!<br>
<br>
TIA,<br>
Treece

 

[DarkMan]

If you just submitted last week, you'll probably need to wait quite a bit longer. Altavista usually lists your site by the next day, and Infoseek within 3 days or so, but the rest of them take anywhere from one week to 8 weeks (for Yahoo!). <br>
<br>
In order to get high rankings, you need to figure out which search phrases people who are looking for your type of site will use, such as "Teddy Bears", "Stuffed Animals", etc, and use them in your meta keywords tag, in comment lines, headers, links, and throughout the body. The higher up on the page you use them, the better.<br>
<br>
You should also consider putting your welcome information on a non-framed page and using this as your default page. Many of the search engines do not handle frames easily (or at all) so if you are counting on the search engines for traffic it is best not to use frames as your default page.<br>
<br>
In your particular case, you may want to consider getting rid of the frames altogether and just include the navbar on all the pages in a table layout. To do this, just follow the following outline:<br>
<br>
&lt;table border=0 cellpadding=4 cellspacing=0&gt;<br>
&lt;tr&gt;<br>
&lt;td width=150 valign="top"&gt;Put your navbar code here&lt;/td&gt;<br>
&lt;td valign="top"&gt;Put your body code here&lt;/td&gt;<br>
&lt;/tr&gt;<br>
&lt;/table&gt;<br>
<br>
This will get rid of the extra scrollbar and shouldn't add much to the page's download time, since the graphics on your navbar should cache as the visitor goes from page to page. Doing this will also allow you to submit all your pages to the search engines, giving you more opportunities to rank well with each topic. You will do far better to optimize your "Gund" page for the search engines with just the keywords specific to Gund than trying to submit (and dilute your keyword prominence) all your keywords in one page.

 

[new2vb]

Thank you, Doug.<br>
Your reply is VERY helpful, and it reminded me be more specific with my keywords for the individual manufacturers. I think I will play with tables and see if I can get something going <br>
Thanks again for your advice,<br>
Treece

 

[robherc]

Did you use your &lt;meta&gt; tags??? They are now just about the ONLY way to get good rankings with top engines!<br>
<br>
below are the two MOST important tags for you to use:<br>
<br>
&lt;meta name=description content="A quick, 255 character or less description of your page"&gt;<br>
&lt;meta name=keywords content="a, comma, separated, list, of relevant, keywords, for, engines, to register, you, with (you have 255 characters here too)"&gt;<br>
<br>
<br>
-Robherc<br>
robherc@netzero.net

 

[new2vb]

Thank you Robherc...I have used both tags. A quick question on the keywords tags. I've read that you should spell in all lower, all caps and a combination, but I've also read that using the same words multiple times causes some search engines to stop searching your page. Which is true? I will wait and see if my site shows up in the next week or two and work on a non-frames page in the meantime. Would a search engine search down to your noframes tag, or do they ignore you as soon as they see the frames tag?<br>
Thanks again, Treece

 

[robherc]

First; you NEED to put your meta tags in the header and ABOVE the first frameet tag.<br>
As far as the caps/small and repetition thing; you should list all of your keywords as they are MOST LIKELY to be entered yb someone who is looking for your site, THEN, you should put in some common misspellings, THEN you should put each word in with the FIRST LETTER in a different case than previously (the case of the other letters doesn't matter).<br>
MAKE 100% SURE that you don't repeat the same word in 2 different phrases! (this is just the same as plain repetition; they'll stop when they get to it.<br>
<br>
I hope I haven't caused you any confusion; feel free to ask if you have ANY more questions.<br>
<br>
<br>
-Robherc<br>
robherc@netzero.net

 

[new2vb]

So I can't have "artist bears", "teddy bears", and "english bears"? Would you mind looking at my page source at

http://bearcollect.server5000.net

and letting me know what you think? I'd really appreciate it!!!<br>
<br>
Thanks AGAIN, Robherc!<br>
Treece

 

[robherc]

A much better meta keywords tag for your site would be:<br>
<br>
&lt;meta name="keywords" content="Bears, bears, Barbie, barbie, Barbies, barbies, Bear, bear, teddy, Teddy, Teddyr, Artist, artist, Canterbury, canterbury, Dakin, dakin, plush, Plush, English, english, Gund, gund, beanie babies, Beanie Babies, NAB, nab, North American, north american, Paddington, paddington, Raikes, raikes, RJ Wright, rj wright, Steiff, steiff, Muffy Vanderbear, muffy vanderbear, canterbery, canterbary, rakies, Rakies, raikies, Raikies, Stieff, stieff"&gt;<br>
<br>
The only problem now is that your tag is a WHOPPING 438 characters long! (most search engines only tag the first 255 char. of keywords, but I guess it's better to be over & maybe get more thatn to be under & not stand a chance <br>
<br>
<br>
One more note: I noticed that your had a misspelling in your title:<br>
"Collectible" needs changed to "Collectable" (I think...but then again, I may just be off on some "perfect spelling" kick again [oh-yeah; we're talking ENGLISH here] sorry if I'm wrong...glad if I'm right <br>
<br>
<br>
-Robherc<br>
robherc@netzero.net

 

[new2vb]

Thanks again, Robherc! I think I'll change my keywords while I'm connected to my FTP client, and get that up tonight!<br>
Treece

 

[DarkMan]

Also, if you are planning on taking the rest of the site out of frames, you will probably want to trim those keywords and move them to the specific pages that they go in. Ex: put the Gund keywords only in the Gund page....<br>
<br>
Shorter content tags give more "weight" to each word contained in them ("bear" is worth more in a 5 word keyword tag than it is in a 50 word tag).

 

[robherc]

-Doug<br>
<br>
Are you sure about that? (not questioning you; just a little curious) I'd never heard anything like that before...all of the HTML checking programs I've used have said to use up as much of your 255 char allowance as you possibly can.<br>
<br>
<br>
-Robherc<br>
robherc@netzero.net

 

[new2vb]

Okay, I wrote a page with tables instead of frames and it can be viewed at

http://bearcollect.server5000.net/tables.htm

Please have a look and let me know what you think I also have a question: I like the look of the vertical line on the right side of the navigation buttons at

http://www.hopefortoday.org.

I tried to mooch the code, but I couldn't figure it out. Any suggestions? <br>
<br>
I want to thank both of you again for being so generous with your advice. You''ve been a great help!!<br>
<br>
Treece

 

[DarkMan]

Most of the literature I've read says that in the meta keyword tag, you should have only the most important keywords that describe the site (or more specifically, the page). If the meta tag is worth, say, 10% of the weight of the page, the total weight of the keywords equalling that 10%. Each keyword is worth a portion of that 10%, with the words in front of the tag considered more important than the words at the end of it.<br>
<br>
In other words, if you have a meta keyword tag that has 10 words in it, the first one may have a weight of 1.5 and the last one may have a weight of .5, with the total of the weights being 10%... If the tag has only one word, it would be worth the entire 10%.... Complicated, I know, but I guess the easiest way to say it would be to put only the search phrases you think people would use to search your site in the tag, and put them in descending order of importance.<br>
<br>
More important are the title, headings, and first paragraph of the body, also links are important.<br>
<br>
On the Gund page, for example, it would be a good idea to put the most important keywords in the title, but not use more than 6 or 7 words, so a good title would be:<br>
<br>
&lt;title&gt;Gund Teddy Bears for Sale&lt;/title&gt;<br>
<br>
The description is great like it is.<br>
<br>
The Keyword tag should probably have Gund first, because that would give it more weight. Also, I would think that the "Teddy Bear" phrases should come next, because "bear" by itself might mix this page with pages about real bears..<br>
<br>
The heading tag is very specific, which is great.. You may want to make it "Gund Teddy Bears" though...(just a suggestion.<br>
<br>
You may also want to write a short paragraph about Gund just below the first header. It would definitely help as far as search rankings go. Keep the words "Gund" and "teddy bear" right at the beginning and try to mention those words a couple times in the paragraph...<br>
<br>
The use of the word "Gund" in the links is a very good way to help also. I noticed that you have them in the anchors. This will help your ranking. You may help it further if you include the word in some of the product links, like:<br>
<br>
"Gund Festival Bear"<br>
"Gund Festival Bear - black", etc....<br>
<br>
Also, on the background thing. The hopefortoday.org site uses a long graphic, with the table background on the left side and a lot of white on the right.<br>
<br>
To make a graphic like this, make it at least 800 pixels wide (so it doesn't tile sideways on an 800x600 screen, 1024 wide is probably better) and probably about 30 or 40 pixels tall. Use the first 120 or so pixels for the nav bar background (however wide you want it), and then just leave the rest of the graphic white, or whatever color (or pattern) you wish to have on the rest of the page. Use this in the &lt;body background="yourbackground.gif"&gt; tag.. For an example of what I mean, try saving the background for the hopefortoday.org page and take a look at it in a graphics editor......<br>
<br>
Your tables page looks good by the way..<br>
<br>
-Doug<br>

 

[new2vb]

Thank you, Doug for all the helpful info! Now I just need to implement it I think I'll play with the background in PSP later if I have time. Thanks again!!!

 

[DarkMan]

Let me know if you need any more info, and also, let us know how you end up ranking on the search engines...

 

[robherc]

Doug-<br>
Did you know that the search engines actually "break apart" keyword phrases anywise? when you use a phrase in your keywords tag, the search engine makes an entry for the PHRASE for "exact phrase" searches, AND it tags all of the wirds contained within the phrase SEPARATELY for all other types of searches. Thus a page with:<br>
&lt;meta name=keywords content="how are you doing"&gt;<br>
would come up on an "exact phrase" search for "how are you doing;" but it would also come up on a "free for all" search for anything that contained "how," "are," "you," OR "doing."<br>
<br>
Therefore, putting the "bear" keyword inside a phrase (ie. "teddy bear") would not disassociate it from any other search for "bear" of any flavor unless it was an "exact phrase" search.<br>
<br>
<br>
-Robherc<br>
robherc@netzero.net

 

[new2vb]

This is an interesting discussion of search engines I got my vertical line by redoing my background. The page loads a little slowly (I'm on at 26,400 ), but I think I solved my frames problem. Just have to get the okay from my client, and we're good to go. The URL is

http://bearcollect.server5000.net/tables.htm<br>

Thanks!<br>
Treece

 

[DarkMan]

Treece-<br>
<br>
The page looks great! I grabbed your background, and it is a bit large. I played with it and shrank it down to about 20% of what it was. I posted what I did at

http://www.thoughtsfortoday.com/bg3a.gif.

Test it out, if you like, on your background. It should load quite a bit quicker.....<br>
<br>
-Doug

 

[robherc]

I downloaded your background graphic, did some optimizing, then uploaded 3 highly-optimized versions:<br>

http://robherc.freeservers.com/bg3.jpg

(7.4KB)<br>

http://robherc.freeservers.com/bg3.2.jpg

(5.1KB)<br>

http://robherc.freeservers.com/bg3.1.jpg

(2.6KB)<br>
<br>
Check 'em out & see if you like any of them...let me know if you'd like me to try a higher quality setting! (I can probably make it look a little better w/o making it TOO much bigger if you're not satisfied with the quality of any of these)<br>
<br>
I hope this helps!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
-Robherc<br>
robherc@netzero.net

 

[DarkMan]

WOW!!! How'd you get 'em so small?