search engine ranking

I am seeking current advice on the great art of search engine submission. If anyone can direct me to a resource that is up to date and helpful (not overly complex and technical) or has experience they can share, I am all ears!

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Originally Posted by RainMaker

I am seeking current advice on the great art of search engine submission.

Are you referring to Search Engine Optimization?

I am not "lingo-saavy", I believe that would be the term. After posting this, I saw a related thread and your forum postings. I am looking at those, also. Thanks

Essentially, when it comes to ranking well in the Search Engine Results Pages [SERPs] it comes down to "On-page" and "Off-page" optimization.

Here is a quick SEO Tutorial.

That tutorial looks GREAT. THANK YOU!

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainMaker

That tutorial looks GREAT. THANK YOU!

If you have any questions about the tutorial let me know.

I have a question for you, Jeffrey. Let's see if you have a recommendation. Our clients are small businesses. We make them a custom HTML page on our website that is linked to their coupon page on our website. We register the client a domain name, which we forward to their HTML page. They bring in traffic to their HTML page through their domain name (which then goes to their coupon page) and we bring in some traffic from OUR homepage which goes to their coupon page (and is then linked to their HTML page).

In an effort to improve the benefit to our customers, we are striving to drive more traffic to their websites. Can we submit each customers page seperately to the search engines to get them their own ranking independent of our homepage? Note that there is a thread about domain registration and domain name redirects that has some relevance to this topic, and quite honestly, it went over my head. Our domains are currently using a 200 redirect, which salesPro has noted is a problem with SERPS. Do you have any suggestions?

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainMaker

We make them a custom HTML page on our website that is linked to their coupon page on our website. We register the client a domain name, which we forward to their HTML page. They bring in traffic to their HTML page through their domain name (which then goes to their coupon page) and we bring in some traffic from OUR homepage which goes to their coupon page (and is then linked to their HTML page).

So basically you host a "page" for your clients within your site.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Can we submit each customers page seperately to the search engines to get them their own ranking independent of our homepage?

The purpose of "submitting" a page to the search engine is only to get it spidered which leads to indexing.

BTW, most SE's request that only the top-level page be submitted.

How a page "ranks" in the search engine results pages [SERPs] depends on the search engine algorithm [Yahoo, MSN, Google, etc.] which takes into account "on-page"and "off-page" factors.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Our domains are currently using a 200 redirect, which salesPro has noted is a problem with SERPS.

Two (2) things:

1.) A "Status 200" isn't a form of redirect. That is a Server Response Code that means "The request has succeeded." With that said, if a page has been redirected and your Server sends a "Status 200" that indicates that the redirect is not a "301 Redirect" which is the redirect of choice for what you're trying to achieve.

2.) Keep in mind that if you are "redirecting" domain "A" to domain "B" then the Search Engines see domain "A" as domain "B."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Blackwell

1.) A "Status 200" isn't a form of redirect. That is a Server Response Code that means "The request has succeeded." With that said, if a page has been redirected and your Server sends a "Status 200" that indicates that the redirect is not a "301 Redirect" which is the redirect of choice for what you're trying to achieve.

2.) Keep in mind that if you are "redirecting" domain "A" to domain "B" then the Search Engines see domain "A" as domain "B."

My domain registrar calls this "URL FRAMING" some companies call it "masking." Can this type of redirecting be converted on my end to a 301? SalesPro put a link into that same thread with a post about converting to a 301 redirect for IIS server, but I was unclear on the purpose (and also fuzzy on the directions). Sorry for my seeming stupidity for a person whose business is web-based, but my background is as an entrepreneur, not a computer techie.

I do know that if I type in very specific search criteria (ie: Rico's pizzeria sarasota) on the search engines, these HTML pages are not showing up in the results.

On another angle...can I submit my homepage (top level page) for many different search terms. For example, on the pizza coupon website, all the participating restaurants have a similar product and general terms like "pizza coupons" bring a nicely targeted market, but in our new site WithCoupon.com, our new customers have all types of businesses and don't necessarily share the same market. Can I make multiple submissions for different types of coupons (in addition to trying to rank under the broad term "coupons" with is a lofty goal). ie: meat markets or framing or tanning salons?
One more question (am I wearing you out??) SalesPro also commented in a post that my non-www version of my urls were not being directed to my www version of my urls. I asked him what that meant but he never responded. Can you explain this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Can this type of redirecting be converted on my end to a 301?

This will be determind by how your account is set up. Primary domains can always be redirected via 301. I would recommend that you talk with the respective host as they should be able to handle the redirects.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainMaker

I do know that if I type in very specific search criteria (ie: Rico's pizzeria sarasota) on the search engines, these HTML pages are not showing up in the results.

The first thing you would want to find out is whether that particular page within your site is indexed or not. If the page "is" indexed then your competition is winning the race on placement. If the page is "not" indexed then you have work to do on your internal linking structure.

To find out what pages in your site have been indexed by Google you can use Google's advanced operator "site:"

Here is an example. To check pages indexed within your site simply change the URL in the example to the URL for your site.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainMaker

On another angle...can I submit my homepage (top level page) for many different search terms.

Ranking has nothing to do with submitting.

Submitting the page only serves the purpose of letting the SE know that the page exists. Also, submitting doesn't involve "search terms."

Ranking has everything to do with algorithms, on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainMaker

I asked him what that meant but he never responded. Can you explain this?

Sure.

http://salespractice.com/ is not the same URL as http://www.salespractice.com/

One version uses the WWW and one does not. Yes, they resolve to the same IP address but that doesn't matter. To the spiders they are simply two (2) unique and different URLs who appear to be displaying "duplicate content."

search engine ranking

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