More on Web search terms

I've been looking more into the issue of how people find Web sites and
how Web site owners can optimize their sites to make them findable.
Search engine optimization, also called search engine marketing, is
actually a huge issue for commercial sites, more so than with hobby
sites such as the coin sites I and others here have created. But it's
still interesting to explore all this.

Google is the way most sites are found -- about 85 percent of them are
found this way, according to one expert I talked with. Google owns the
current Web search market, with its technology being used by other
search sites, such as Yahoo, AOL, Netscape, and iWon.

What makes Google so popular among searchers is the relative relevancy
of its results. It achieves this through sophisticated algorithms that
take into account more than 100 different variables, some of which a
site owner can control, some he can't.

The most important variables in the way that Google ranks sites is how
many other sites link to them and how many sites link to those sites
(link popularity).

But Google also factors in the way you code your site, particularly
your title tag and any headline or subhead tags you use. Many site
owners make the mistake of not even using a title tag or using a
useless one such as "Welcome to my site!" This says nothing about your
site and does nothing for your search results (you can welcome
visitors otherwise, in the text).

It's interesting looking at how Google ranks coin sites when you type
in a search term or terms. Type in "coins," and the first site
presented is an odd one, "The Coins and History of Asia." The U.S.
Mint's site is second, a more logical choice. But Web searchers
typically type in more than one word when trying to find relevant
sites, and this is the recommended way to search.

With my sites, my Google rankings have been changing, interestingly.
Google now presents one of my sites as the first choice when you type
in the following search terms:

coin appreciation
coin consumer
coin consumer protection
coin fraud
counterfeit coins
coin toning
best coin holder
pocket pieces
first coins
Draped Bust coins
Bust coins
Bust dollars
Saint-Gaudens double eagles
Thracian tetradrachms

One of my sites is the second choice with the terms "Medusa coins,"
third choice with "coin authentication," fourth choice with "coin
slabs," and 14th choice with "coin grading." My sites are not among
Google's first 50 results with "coin holders" and "coin price guides"
-- the commercial coin sites dominate this space.

One thing you shouldn't do in coding your site is "keyword flooding."
If you include too many of the same terms, Google will actually
penalize you for this. Also, with Google anyway, it doesn't take into
account the meta keyword tag, something that many Web site owners
don't know.

Google does use the meta description tag, but not to rank sites,
primarily. Instead, it uses it as part or in full (depending on
length) for what it displays as a description of your site in its
search results.

There are actually Web sites out there that help you choose the right
tags for your sites. I know one free site -- Wordtracker
(www.wordtracker.com) -- and one pay site -- Overture
(inventory.overture.com) -- but I haven't explored this area. And
there are Web consultants that you can hire to do the whole business
of search engine marketing for you. It's a big business for those in
business on the Web.

--

Email: (delete "remove this")

Coin Collecting: Consumer Protection Guide: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Glomming: Coin Connoisseurship: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Bogos: Counterfeit Coins: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos

Reid Goldsborough spoke thusly...
I've been looking more into the issue of how people find Web sites and
how Web site owners can optimize their sites to make them findable.
Search engine optimization, also called search engine marketing, is
actually a huge issue for commercial sites, more so than with hobby
sites such as the coin sites I and others here have created. But it's
still interesting to explore all this.

Pretty good info. It is always changing, as I imagine you know. Just
last week (week before?) google went through a major update and changed
the algo again. There is quite the furor on the SEO forums.

Some are calling it the anti-SEO update, others the content is king
update. Apparently it is still in a litle state of flux but people have
been dropping in and out of rankings quite a bit and, for the people
that put bread on the table ith it, it is causing hundreds of hand-
wringing posts ont eh major forums. :-)

My site has fluctuated in the last week or two but that was my own fault
for messing up the Title Tag when I updated (I didn't query the database
for the page title). Now I have a couple of hundred pages in the Google
index all with the same title which kills off some of my keywords. It
will take a few weeks or so for it to straighten out. No biggie.

One other penalty that I didn't see you mention that I have heard of is
Duplicate Content Penalty. Ie: you have two sites with the same content
on each, google supposedly penalizes you. Right now, I have that going
on as I redirect from the old to the new but I can't tell if there is a
penalty associated.

Just in case this isn't boring enough, I put some recent search
statistics from my new site on the web:

http://www.coinpeople.com/misc/stats1.htm

http://www.coinpeople.com/misc/stats2.htm

I think that is a week or two worth and it is low because the site is
not fully indexed yet but those are the terms that get people to my site
(and mostly through google).


--
Stujoe
Coin Grading,Coin News, Forums and more...
http://www.CoinPeople.com

Reid Goldsborough spoke thusly...

The most important variables in the way that Google ranks sites is how
many other sites link to them and how many sites link to those sites
(link popularity).

You might also want to include the terms 'back link' and 'page rank'
when describing this depending upon the audience.

But Google also factors in the way you code your site, particularly
your title tag and any headline or subhead tags you use.

Another boost can be given by thinking a little about the actual url too
when designing your site.

For instance:

http://www.sitename.com/buffalo-nick...alo-nickel.htm

is better than

http://www.sitename.com/buffalonicke...falonickel.htm

and much better than

http://www.sitename.com/bufniks/bufnik.htm

You get a boost for having keywords (in this case buffalo, nickel and
nickels) in your url and folder / page names and it helps to have them
separated by a '-' or a '_'. At least it used to before last week. Not
sure now.

--
Stujoe
Coin Grading,Coin News, Forums and more...
http://www.CoinPeople.com

On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 14:18:12 -0600, Stujoe
wrote:

One other penalty that I didn't see you mention that I have heard of is
Duplicate Content Penalty. Ie: you have two sites with the same content
on each, google supposedly penalizes you. Right now, I have that going
on as I redirect from the old to the new but I can't tell if there is a
penalty associated.

I don't follow the discussions in search engine optimization forums
like you do, though I have read articles and Web sites about this and
have interviewed in depth one SEO consultant. The point you make above
highlights the reality that all this is as much art as science and
that there are no, or few, hard and fast rules. I have my Coin
Collecting Consumer Protection Guide site mirrored because the first
host I used at the time was down a lot. This hasn't seemed to have
affected my Google rankings at all.

What you wrote about URL names is something I hadn't heard about, but
it makes sense. It will be interesting to see how the advice changes
when the dust settles.

--

Email: (delete "remove this")

Coin Collecting: Consumer Protection Guide: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Glomming: Coin Connoisseurship: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Bogos: Counterfeit Coins: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos

Reid Goldsborough spoke thusly...
On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 14:18:12 -0600, Stujoe
wrote:

One other penalty that I didn't see you mention that I have heard of is
Duplicate Content Penalty. Ie: you have two sites with the same content
on each, google supposedly penalizes you. Right now, I have that going
on as I redirect from the old to the new but I can't tell if there is a
penalty associated.

I don't follow the discussions in search engine optimization forums
like you do, though I have read articles and Web sites about this and
have interviewed in depth one SEO consultant. The point you make above
highlights the reality that all this is as much art as science and
that there are no, or few, hard and fast rules. I have my Coin
Collecting Consumer Protection Guide site mirrored because the first
host I used at the time was down a lot. This hasn't seemed to have
affected my Google rankings at all.

I skim and lurk the forums from time to time. Most of it is very
uninteresting and consists of "Google is broke because my page isn't #1
any more.". Other parts of it is just interesting enough to be useful.
:-)

The penalty for duplicate content is something that gets talked about a
lot but does it happen? Dunno. I have seen on my site that (within the
site) duplicate content is not a problem. Google indexes each thread on
my site post by post because each post has a different url even though
they are all on one page. It seems to me that google then just picks one
of the pages and displays it in a search and ignores the others. I don't
notice any penalty but how do you really tell? Dunno.

What you wrote about URL names is something I hadn't heard about, but
it makes sense. It will be interesting to see how the advice changes
when the dust settles.

http://www.webmasterworld.com is probably the best and biggest of the
SEO forums (a good web site design and technical reference too). They
are very techie oriented so getting basic questions answered can be an
iffy proposition (Do A Search Before Posting and such) but it is a
pretty active forum...especially during google updates.


--
Stujoe
Email: http://tinyurl.com/wu00
Grading Challenge, Coin News, Virtual Coin Museum and mo
http://www.CoinPeople.com