Getting a site to appear in a Google Search

DeaconFrost

DeaconFrost

[H]F Junkie
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Sep 6, 2007
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I understand, somewhat, the point of using meta tags, but is there a good/better way of getting a website to show up in a relevant Google search? I designed a website for a family friend for his business, a fishing charter in Cape May. When he googles fishing charter and Cape May, his competitors come up, but not his site. I currently have nothing in the meta tags, as it was just designed. Would putting relevant terms in the meta tags solve the problem, are am I looking at some sort of product to buy?
 
well adding meta tags would certainly help. I believe though that Google's ranking system puts a lot of weight on how many other sites are linking to your's. The more links you have to your site from other sites, the higher up the rank you'll go.
 
Do not saturate pages with tons of keywords, especially irrelevant ones. Google's algorithm will know if you're trying to cheat.

The best thing to do on your end is to utilize meta tags (keywords), page titles, and good content, but maw is right about referral links. The more sites linking to yours the better, although the algorithm will compare keywords and content to see how similar the sites are.
 
Let's make one thing clear: the only way to guarantee good results is to pay them.

Don't waste your time with meta data -- it is virtually useless in the context of internet based search engines (such as Google).

As someone mentioned, there is a large emphasis on the number of other sites that link to yours. As for "keyword searches", they put emphasis on specific aspects of your code. In other words, a keyword that exists in your URL will yield a better result than the same word in a meta tag. Similarly, a key word found in an <h1> tag will score better than a keyword found in a <p> tag... Even more surprising, the line of code the keyword exists on also matters. For example, 2 identical pages will score differently if the <h1> tag from one page sits on line 10 of the code, and the <h1> from the other tag lives lower on the page...

Food for thought...
 
Ok, what about a site that is completely designed with Java/XML that pretty much uses one page for all of the pages within the site. Look at avcmarine.com and you will see what I am talking about. I have been trying to get this site to come up in the google search for a while now and have got crappy results. I am still going thru all of the code to see what the guy did before me. I started working on this site over 1 year ago in its current design. I designed the first site and had pretty good results in google because I designed it page for page. It has come a long way now that I have figured out most of his code. Some of the java is still new to me. The last resort would to pay them but we are trying not to go that route right now.

Any input would be great :)
 
Atl530i said:
Ok, what about a site that is completely designed with Java/XML that pretty much uses one page for all of the pages within the site.
Click to expand...

Are there real pages anywhere or is it a javascript/ajax mess?
 
My sites have all gotten highly ranked in google just by putting up good content and being patient. You do have to get out there a bit as well (linked to from other relevent sites).

Remember too that competing for very popular keywords is big business and thus many times not easy to do. Sometimes abnormalities do show up though, like how if you google "psp leather case" my site is the #5 result above many other much more popular sites all because of one review I posted. But it is not a popular search either ;)
 
nefarious986 said:
one word .. sitemap
Click to expand...

Just signed up for the Google Analytics / Webmaster Tools stuff. Is there a decent, automatic sitemap builder? It looks like some of the content can't be generated automatically (at least for a new site), like frequency of updating / importance of a page, but . . . that sure looks like a lot of XML.

And I hate writing XML :(.
 
If you use some sort of engine like Joomla, Wordpress, etc. there are usually addons that can do it easily.
 
Grentz said:
If you use some sort of engine like Joomla, Wordpress, etc. there are usually addons that can do it easily.
Click to expand...

My engine is emacs :(. Sigh.

Fake edit: Although knowing emacs, it probably made a sitemap for me. Before I made the site, probably before I was born.
 
I rebuilt a site for a lawyer I know. Her old site barely showed up in Google.

I did all the normal things with metadata, page titles, etc. But I also added ALT tags on the images on the front page.

Within a week her site became the first site in Google. I was shocked.
 
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