google ratings question

cubix

A mate is setting up a website to promote his business (floor screeding). When someone puts in a search into google for floor screeding how do you get your company profile to come up near the top of any searches??

Thanks

zAbbo

Search Engine Optimisation, increasing your chance of appearing high in search results for certain keywords.

Goog places to start

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

Sully

Designing in terms of SEO can sometimes help also.

Liam Byrne

Main tips:

1) Don't build the entire website in Flash
2) Have separate pages for separate sections
3) Add the standard stuff (descriptions & keywords) but also have semantic markup (proper headers, etc, styled using CSS to improve their look, but use the h1, h2 tags)
4) Name all page names and image filenames meaningfully, and tag all images with captions (title & alt attributes)
5) Have sufficient text with the main keywords and alternative words referenced, but reference these in proper sentences; while Google ignores "other" words, it does check to make sure that keywords don't make up too much of the percentage of a paragraph....
6) Ensure that the page passes the validator
7) Minimise the page markup vs actual content ratio by using CSS & stylesheets

e.g. "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"

will register higher for the keyword "fox" than

"fox fox fox fox fox fox"

zAbbo

Offsite SEO would far out way any of those onsite 'tips' (no offence Liam)

Ensuring the wedsite conforms to standards etc. is important, but incoming links will be a huge benefit for your keywords (as they are not overly competitive)

If whoever is designing/developing the website has not mentioned any of this - it's a bad sign.

cubix

Different post/different forum/ me bad :}. Appreciate all the tips even though I dont understand them all, but will google them

Thanks

Sully

cubix wrote: »

Cheers lads, worth looking at DID as they are doing it for €1162.45 at the moment with free nation wide delivery and 5yr warranty;). Did not check if this is parts and labour

Eh?

Liam Byrne

zAbbo wrote: »

Offsite SEO would far out way any of those onsite 'tips' (no offence Liam)

Ensuring the wedsite conforms to standards etc. is important, but incoming links will be a huge benefit for your keywords (as they are not overly competitive)

If whoever is designing/developing the website has not mentioned any of this - it's a bad sign.

Interesting opinion........we have plenty of sites registering very highly (a good view in the top 3) based on the above alone.

Incoming links will help, of course, but aside from a few well-thought-out incoming links, none of the ones registering highly above have any "offsite SEO".....they're just well designed and they work.

Axwell

cubix wrote: »

Cheers lads, worth looking at DID as they are doing it for €1162.45 at the moment with free nation wide delivery and 5yr warranty;). Did not check if this is parts and labour

Hahaha thats great deal..and warranty...but eh whats it got to do with SEO??

aidan_walsh

cubix wrote: »

Cheers lads, worth looking at DID as they are doing it for €1162.45 at the moment with free nation wide delivery and 5yr warranty;). Did not check if this is parts and labour

I'm guessing this was for a different thread?

Dades

While this is being discussed...

Does it affect your google ranking if your site is from a redirected URL?

i.e., I have a site which is accessed via it's own domain - but the content is hosted on another domain and found using 'framed redirection'.

It's a really old site I made for a relative, and is nowhere on google, despite me adding basic metatags, and there being some relevant content.

Dades

^^ Sorry lads - just bumping this question. ^^

forbairt

yes it probably does as your actual domain has no content on it ... the frame has all the content but thats a completely different site ?

Dades

forbairt wrote: »

yes it probably does as your actual domain has no content on it ... the frame has all the content but thats a completely different site ?

Yes, the frame - hosted on a different domain - has all the content. Was done to save hosting costs (i.e. piggyback on my hosting plan).

So creating a hosting plan for the actual domain, and losing any redirect might have more success in Google?

Liam Byrne

It'll affect the DOMAIN, as Google will see the real site and direct users to that, making the domain irrelevant.

But if the site being redirected to is yours, with your contact info, etc, then it shouldn't matter to you in real terms.

forbairt

Dades wrote: »

Yes, the frame - hosted on a different domain - has all the content. Was done to save hosting costs (i.e. piggyback on my hosting plan).

So creating a hosting plan for the actual domain, and losing any redirect might have more success in Google?

way I understand it the content isn't actually on your site so google will know you've the domain XYZ ... but it'll see all the content on the other domain therefore no actual content on your site (someone may correct me on this but thats my understanding)

Liam Byrne wrote: »

It'll affect the DOMAIN, as Google will see the real site and direct users to that, making the domain irrelevant.

But if the site being redirected to is yours, with your contact info, etc, then it shouldn't matter to you in real terms.

Real Terms it would matter as it will affect your ranking for various keywords .. you also won't be able to rank sub pages of your site as pretty much subpages don't exist ? all that exists is the main domain

Dades

Thanks for the thoughts, guys.

In practice none of the pages appear in Google - either via the domain - or as single pages in folders on my own domain.

I'm thinking I'm going to have to suggest a cheap hosting plan to 'consolidate' the domain + content. PITA, as the site is a piece of crap and I know that I'm going to be asked to "do it up". Relatives, eh? :pac:

Liam Byrne

forbairt wrote: »

way I understand it the content isn't actually on your site so google will know you've the domain XYZ ... but it'll see all the content on the other domain therefore no actual content on your site (someone may correct me on this but thats my understanding)

Real Terms it would matter as it will affect your ranking for various keywords .. you also won't be able to rank sub pages of your site as pretty much subpages don't exist ? all that exists is the main domain

What I meant was that if there's a page / sub-page on the other site, Google should find that and direct people to that, bypassing the "empty / framed redirect" domain completely.

So if that second site is HIS, just a second domain, he'll still get the traffic; it'll be as if the "empty / framed redirect" domain didn't even exist.

If, however, the framed content contains the navigation or other info, that's a completely different story, as Google would pick up orphaned pages with no contact info or links.

Sully

Just a quick search put up this;
http://www.theinternetdigest.net/archive/301-redirects-seo.html

Ill try put together something over the next few days regarding common SEO questions and a guide which might help.