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Nicole
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« on: June 28, 2006, 09:53:00 PM » |
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I read an e-book over Christmas called "Beginner's Guide To Search Engine Optimization" by Rand Fiskin of http://www.seomoz.org/beginners.php and found it very easy to read and understand from a beginner's viewpoint. Others will tell you it's all about "backlinks" and others again will become obsessed by them. But I decided to put my existing site through a bit of an upgrade using some of the techniques mentioned and while obviously picking some rather difficult key phrases like "Sydney Web Design" to rank with, I also obviously chose some good ones. It's taken almost 6 months, but this month (June), hits to my site through search engines has increased about threefold, not that I'm reaping any rewards as yet, but hopefully that will happen soon. I'm currently ranking 6 in Google for "custom made templates" and 48 ffor "frontpage templates" which sounds rather low, but I'm actually quite impressed considering the difficulty of that phrase. Anyway I'm not really typing this for any reason other than to let you all know of that e-book and to let you know that selecting the right key phrases, using them as headings and including them in your content can work allone, as I'm pretty sure nobody is linking to my site apart from a few area guides and the like. Nicole |
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Fallen Angel
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« Reply #1 on: June 28, 2006, 10:32:30 PM » |
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Hey that's great news Nicole! Just goes to show that it can be done with content (and you can have all the backlinks in the world but if you've not got decent content then there's pretty much no point in having a site).
You'll have to let us know how you get on with that.
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"No matter how hard you try, You're still in prison, If ya born with wings and you never fly."  |
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Nicole
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« Reply #2 on: June 28, 2006, 10:54:18 PM » |
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I used this http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ (how do I shorten links in this forum?) and picked relevant key phrases that had between 200 and 500 hits per month, more than 500 I considered to be too high and therefore too difficult to rank with. But just checking the term "Frontpage Templates" it came up with 5055 searches during May, and I rank 48, so maybe terms in the '000's aren't unachievable? I also wondered whether renaming images like "banner.jpg" to "web-designer-in-sydney.jpg" might help? I'm redesigning my site at the moment, so I might incorporate that, as well as hiding a <h1> behind my banner image. Will keep you informed. Nicole |
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Fallen Angel
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« Reply #3 on: June 28, 2006, 11:10:53 PM » |
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(how do I shorten links in this forum?) Put whatever text you want in place of the url between [ url ] tags (obviously without the spaces) (there's a button just above the smileys (bottom row, third from the left) that put's in the tags for you). I've heard a lot recently about the importance of <h1> tags, and how they're not any more, but as this points out, used in conjunction with other SEO techniques it could give you the edge. |
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« Last Edit: June 28, 2006, 11:13:44 PM by Fallen Angel »
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"No matter how hard you try, You're still in prison, If ya born with wings and you never fly." |
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Tailslide
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« Reply #4 on: June 28, 2006, 11:14:48 PM » |
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Definitely rename images that are called "banner.jpg" or whatever - they could well be blocked by over zealous firewalls. I've run into this several times and it's very annoying!
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Nicole
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« Reply #5 on: June 28, 2006, 11:19:01 PM » |
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Am I seeing double triple this morning?  I may be a complete novice with SEO, and maybe I just want to believe this because I believe it's "the right thing to do", but I'm kind of just smarting over having made those changes to my site back in January and sat back and waited. I check my stats regularly but don't worry about them too much, and while many others might be ranking for their key terms better than me, I just think I'm doing okay now for having done very little really. But I believe, correction "hope" that one day Google reverts to some kind of sanity and well written content with key words and phrases included becomes most important again. Sadistically I'd just love it to happen to see all those SEO freaks go bananas when their backlinks and things don't have them placed in the top 10 anymore. Nicole |
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Nicole
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« Reply #6 on: June 28, 2006, 11:21:10 PM » |
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Definitely rename images that are called "banner.jpg" or whatever - they could well be blocked by over zealous firewalls. I've run into this several times and it's very annoying!
I've heard that too Tail, and in a client site recently I suggested changing other images from "diagram1.jpg" to "diagram-of-the-eye.jpg" for instance. I also think this might help people who are searching google images. Nicole |
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Fallen Angel
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« Reply #7 on: June 28, 2006, 11:22:22 PM » |
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But I believe, correction "hope" that one day Google reverts to some kind of sanity and well written content with key words and phrases included becomes most important again.
Sadistically I'd just love it to happen to see all those SEO freaks go bananas when their backlinks and things don't have them placed in the top 10 anymore.
Amen to that. |
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"No matter how hard you try, You're still in prison, If ya born with wings and you never fly." |
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Fallen Angel
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« Reply #8 on: June 28, 2006, 11:25:59 PM » |
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I also think this might help people who are searching google images.
I'm in two minds about the usefulness of that as I'd imagine it's mainly used by people looking for 'free' images that never get credited... |
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"No matter how hard you try, You're still in prison, If ya born with wings and you never fly." |
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Nicole
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« Reply #9 on: June 28, 2006, 11:34:01 PM » |
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I also think this might help people who are searching google images.
I'm in two minds about the usefulness of that as I'd imagine it's mainly used by people looking for 'free' images that never get credited... I agree, but in the case of the eye diagram, people who are searching for an eye diagram are surely looking for, or interested in information about the eye, therefore my client's site might be useful to them? |
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Fallen Angel
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« Reply #10 on: June 28, 2006, 11:54:49 PM » |
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Hmmm, true. Guess I'm just too cynical about unscrupulous web types looking for 'freebies'
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"No matter how hard you try, You're still in prison, If ya born with wings and you never fly." |
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Caz
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« Reply #11 on: June 29, 2006, 12:26:09 AM » |
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There's the other thing about images which drives me nutty, idiots who hot link to them and use your bandwith for their own purposes.  |
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Anyone can create a usable website. It takes a graphic designer to make it slow, confusing, and painful to use.
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Taz
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« Reply #12 on: July 03, 2006, 03:54:22 PM » |
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There's the other thing about images which drives me nutty, idiots who hot link to them and use your bandwith for their own purposes. Tell me about it, my server bill just came in for last month and I ate through over 30 Gigs of transfer. Yup, you can bet your arse the majority of that was from people Hot inking to a desktop image that comes in at a few hundred KB, multiply that by however many times the page hotlinking it gets viewed by and you can just hear my wallet going ouch...  |
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Caz
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« Reply #13 on: July 03, 2006, 05:07:33 PM » |
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 and then there's My Space where the instructions for use actually tell the users to do exactly that.
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Anyone can create a usable website. It takes a graphic designer to make it slow, confusing, and painful to use.
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Taz
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« Reply #14 on: July 03, 2006, 05:09:25 PM » |
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It's not funny.  |
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Caz
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« Reply #15 on: July 03, 2006, 06:36:16 PM » |
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I didn't say it was, but it's just too darned hot to rant.
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Anyone can create a usable website. It takes a graphic designer to make it slow, confusing, and painful to use.
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Taz
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« Reply #16 on: July 03, 2006, 07:37:46 PM » |
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/thrives in the heat =]
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Fallen Angel
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« Reply #17 on: June 09, 2009, 08:40:03 PM » |
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Of course the other method is to sign up on a forum and post prolifically putting a "fake signature" with a link to all your sites in all your posts  ...which may work until the admin spots you and bans you... |
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"No matter how hard you try, You're still in prison, If ya born with wings and you never fly." |
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