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! -RainMaker

Are you referring to Search Engine Optimization? -Jeff Blackwell

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 -RainMaker

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

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? -RainMaker

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

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.

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." -Jeff Blackwell

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? -RainMaker

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.

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.

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.

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." -Jeff Blackwell

Thank you. This was very helpful. MOST of my pages are not indexed. A few random pages seem to be. How can I improve this? I have always been baffled by the aspect of "link popularity" when we have attained good rankings for pizza coupons and there is nothing special about the activity of our links. Also I see my home page WithCoupon.com is NOT directly indexed (only a couple pages in subdirectories are indexed).

This is very surprising to hear, as our rankings have always followed a round of submissions (done through a software program designed to assist in the process.)

Ok. possibly the software asks for this information in order to track rankings for certain search terms.

I'm still working my way through SEO Guy and I know his tutorial gets heavily into that.

Sure.

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

Is this a problem for me and any suggestions on how to correct it? -Rainmaker

Search engine spiders follow links to and from a page. If you have pages within your site that cannot be reached from other pages within your site (internal links) or from pages on another site (backlinks) then these pages are essentially invisible to the SE spiders.

This is the reason for good internal linking and the use of a "site map." These two (2) practices ensure that they SE spiders can smoothly navigate all of the pages within your site.

As for the two different versions... I would recommend having your host set up a 301 redirect so that the Non-WWW version redirects to the WWW version. -Jeff Blackwell

I am familiar with the term "web hosting" but am unsure whom you are referring to in this situation. Is this the domain registrar? I have a dedicated server and am paying a colocation fee to have it sit in a building with a bunch of other servers. They will manually reboot or load software disks into my drive when occasionally needed, but that is the extent of their involvement. -RainMaker

My post assumed "Shared Hosting."

Since you are the "host" it would be up to you to make the changes.

If you don't mind me asking, what prompted you to consider a "Dedicated Server?" -Jeff Blackwell

It was necessary because of the mapping software that is integrated into our sites. From pizzacouponsnow.com, if you want to pull up restaurants that deliver to your address, this can be done because we actually draw the pizza delivery maps into our software. While the site may appear very simplistic from the end-user point of view (that was intentional, by the way), the searching features are actually very complex and far superior to a simple zip code search. -RainMaker

That sounds like an interesting piece of software. Is it custom? -Jeff Blackwell

Yes. I'm an odd mix of high-tech and low-tech, huh?

Our problem is the orginal programmer has become "unavailable" now that he finished the big project and cashed our check He has moved on to other projects and can't be bothered with small follow up projects or answering any of our technical questions when they arise. Hence...Rainmaker of 1000 questions picking the brains of her new-found friends on salespractice.com.

(I try to offset my insatiable quest for knowledge by sharing what I can, as well. An you gotta admit...that action-filled avatar adds a lot of color to your pages--ha ha) -RainMaker

This has been my experience on more than one occassion with custom software.
Your presence is always welcome. :) -Jeff Blackwell

I found this site by search engine. After my initial visit I forgot all about the index page and continue to come straight to the forum page. Is the purpose of that page for SEO? -RainMaker

99% Yes. ;)

There is more to that page than meets the eye. I have to admit that it could use a little help visually. It's on my "To-Do" list. :) -Jeff Blackwell

OK. I've read the entire SEO guy tutorial. (haven't fully digested and implemented, but am at least familiar with his strategies.) I have a couple specific questions for you. 1). What is the significance of the first line of your code on your index page? I did not see any reference to this in the tutorial. I see other high ranking sites have this also. 2). Meta name=keywords...does this mean that your keywords are on an external page that is being referenced as opposed to listing them directly on your page? -RainMaker

Are you asking about this?
No. Meta information such as "keywords" and "description" is defined in the "head" section of a document. -Jeff Blackwell

Yes, that is line I am asking about.

And where are your keywords listed? -RainMaker

That is a document type declaration (DOCTYPE).

"The document type declaration names the document type definition (DTD) in use for the document." -Jeff Blackwell

I was curious because I didn't see a list of keywords. For example, this is #2 on Yahoo for the search term "sales":

<META NAME = "keywords" CONTENT = "Sale Creators,consultants, marketing, sales, business, retail, sales and marketing consultant, sales consultant, marketing, CONSULTING, SALES,starting a new business, new business, Internet design, Internet marketing, Internet promotion, better web site, maintenance of Internet site, more sales, promotions, sales training, Spokane, Washington, positive sales environment, marketing campaign,.... "

It goes on for 10 more lines... -RainMaker

Exactly! ;) -Jeff Blackwell

OK, Sneaky Pete! I'll stop poking. -RainMaker

People view my source code all the time. I don't mind... as long as they don't copy my code of course.

As for SEO, I can't tell you how much misinformation is out there. :( -Jeff Blackwell

That's an understatement. Thanks for letting me pick your brain as I know you have achieved high ranking for sales and marketing and provide quality content for those terms (an admirable achievement). I'm not trying to steal your trade secrets, but I thought you might be able to point me in the right direction. I figured you wouldn't mind, as I am not a competitor for you (unless, of course, you suddenly decide to go into the coupon business :) )

Off topic a bit, but I'm curious if you have ever experienced this before: I had a flukey day where my site received 20 times the typical traffic. I was flooded with email and coupon requests that day. It was very exciting, but I have no idea what caused it. It must have had something to do with search engines, but it only lasted a day. -RainMaker

Believe it or not, I offer free SEO advice to competitors in my industry [real estate] at RealEstateWebmasters.com. :eek: I also offer SEO advice at DigitalPoint.com. If you visit either forum my username is "ResaleBroker."

Sure, that happens all of the time. I too would attribute a spike like that to a change in search engine placement. It just goes to show you how much traffic can be generated from the Search Engines. ;) -Jeff Blackwell

Jeffrey,
1)have you encorporated these on-page and off-page optimization tecnhiques into your page (salespractice)?
2)Do you feel certain techniques carry more weight (are more effective) than others, if so which ones? and
3)Is there anything you would add to this tutuorial, that you feel has been overlooked?
I getting ready to pay my programmer to begin a project intended to meet my SEO goals and the individual goals of my subscribers, and much of my plan was taken from this tutorial and your posts. -RainMaker

There has been little-to-none "off-page" work done for the SalesPractice home page. These questions are not easily answered within the confines of a post.

If you want to post or PM your page changes I'd be happy to take a look and give you my opinion. ;) -Jeff Blackwell