Would this help SEO?

purplemartinart · April 9, 2009

I posted this in feedback section but no comments. Maybe it belongs here anyway.

I am trying to improve my SEO of my site at http://purplemartins-r-us.com

and was wondering if I added informative text/content below the featured items- if it would help?

I am worried that it will mussy or muddle up the front page and may start to get confusing for the customer.

But the SEO contributions, articles full of content are NOT helping. In a market that is not a huge market by any means, I still am showing up 100+ on google searches.

So would adding text (can I add a box?) in the center below featured products, help me at all??? If so what file would I alter???

http://purplemartins-r-us.com

Thanks all

♥geoffreywalton · April 9, 2009

I just had a look at the source of your page.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<head>

Have you configured Header Tags SEO ?

purplemartinart · April 9, 2009

I thought I did. What have I missed?

I am still low on the learning scale. unfortunately...

purplemartinart · April 10, 2009

I just had a look at the source of your page.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<html dir="LTR" lang="en">

<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

<title></title>

<meta name="Description" content="" />

<meta name="Keywords" content="" />

<meta name="googlebot" content="all" />

<meta name="robots" content="noodp" />

<meta name="slurp" content="noydir" />

<meta name="revisit-after" content="1 days" />

<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />



Have you configured Header Tags SEO ?

WHen I look at my source, I see this

<title>Purple Martin houses supplies gifts and information - Purple Martins Superstore</title>
<meta name="Description" content="Purple Martin Houses, Supplies and Gifts" />
<meta name="Keywords" content="purple martin, purple martins, purple martin house, purplemartins, Purple Martin gourds, Gourd house, bird house, Birdhouse, purple martin art, supplies" />
<meta name="googlebot" content="all" />
<meta name="robots" content="noodp" />
<meta name="slurp" content="noydir" />
<meta name="revisit-after" content="1 days" />
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<!-- EOF: Header Tags SEO Generated Meta Tags -->

Is there an error in this?

JBourke · April 11, 2009

I took a look at your website.

A huge problem that I found is that each page has the same meta keywords and meta description. The words "purple" and "martin" are repeated multiple times. Search engines treat this as SPAM and will ignore your meta tags. These words should appear once only and only on pages that have the same words on the actual page.

You would do far better to install a dynamic meta tag generator that will generate unique meta tags based on the actual page content. Google in particular loves these.

I notice also that you are using URL rewrite. This should be removed as it will hurt your rankings. Google and other search engines can build a true picture of your site structure with standard URLs. URL rewriting makes this impossible and they are unable determine your site structure. They are just a way for SEO companies to take your hard earned money.

Once you have cleaned up your meta tags and URLs, install a google sitemap generator. Then create a Google webmaster account and add your site and sitemap. Here you can monitor its performance and see anything you need to correct.

Links from other relevant websites to your own website will help.

Jack_mcs · April 11, 2009

I took a look at your website.

A huge problem that I found is that each page has the same meta keywords and meta description. The words "purple" and "martin" are repeated multiple times. Search engines treat this as SPAM and will ignore your meta tags. These words should appear once only and only on pages that have the same words on the actual page.

While domain names shouldn't be used in the titles and meta tags, unless they are branded, there is nothing wrong with using a word several times is the title or tags as long as it is not simply repeated. If it is part of a different phase, that is perfectly OK and, actually, the correct way to do it if those words are being targeted.

You would do far better to install a dynamic meta tag generator that will generate unique meta tags based on the actual page content. Google in particular loves these.

That contributionm unless it has been fixed lately, will generate too many keywords and the wrong ones for the page. To properly setup a page, it needs to be done manually.

I notice also that you are using URL rewrite. This should be removed as it will hurt your rankings. Google and other search engines can build a true picture of your site structure with standard URLs. URL rewriting makes this impossible and they are unable determine your site structure. They are just a way for SEO companies to take your hard earned money.

Every part of this is incorrect. While google has made changes to handle dynamic urls better than they used to, having rewritten urls will not hurt a pages rankings. In fact, tests have been done that show the opposite is true. Google doesn't want the urls changed to where important information is removed from it, which some shops do when they rewrite their url's but that is not the case with the Ultimate SEO contribution.

The above isn't meant as a personal attack but such misinformation can damage a lot of shops so the mistakes needed to be pointed out.

Jack

Jack_mcs · April 11, 2009

I posted this in feedback section but no comments. Maybe it belongs here anyway.
I am trying to improve my SEO of my site at http://purplemartins-r-us.com

and was wondering if I added informative text/content below the featured items- if it would help?

I am worried that it will mussy or muddle up the front page and may start to get confusing for the customer.

But the SEO contributions, articles full of content are NOT helping. In a market that is not a huge market by any means, I still am showing up 100+ on google searches.

So would adding text (can I add a box?) in the center below featured products, help me at all??? If so what file would I alter???

http://purplemartins-r-us.com

Thanks all

Generally speaking, the more relevant text you can add to the site, the better, as far as the search engines are concerned. You sometimes have to be careful where you add it so as not to take away from the site. But you have room at the bottom of the page which people will generally ignore. The title of your home page is "Purple Martin houses supplies gifts and information." Is that something someone is searching for? How do you know the articles are not helping? If they aren't, it might be because the title for all of those are the same as the home page and have nothing to do with the article. If the version of Articles Manager you have installed is not 1.5.7, then you have to manually edit the Header Tags entries for it. If it is 1.5.7 and you have Header Tags SEO installed, you can do that all from admin. Either way, they need to be setup correctly to help.

Jack

Valley Star Techs · April 11, 2009

SEO + web ranking = lots of work ahead

purplemartinart · April 11, 2009

The title of your home page is "Purple Martin houses supplies gifts and information." Is that something someone is searching for? How do you know the articles are not helping? If they aren't, it might be because the title for all of those are the same as the home page and have nothing to do with the article. If the version of Articles Manager you have installed is not 1.5.7, then you have to manually edit the Header Tags entries for it. If it is 1.5.7 and you have Header Tags SEO installed, you can do that all from admin. Either way, they need to be setup correctly to help.

Jack

yes, that is searched for. maybe not as one sentance.

I am becoming quite convinced that I am not able to setup the header tags. Any suggestions? I am not even sure what I am doing wrong.

satish · April 11, 2009

seo urls generally result in key words and phrase going into Your URL which is what google likes.

So seo url use id a must.Follow it by making sure that SEO urls generated have preper key words within it.

Satish

Jack_mcs · April 11, 2009

yes, that is searched for. maybe not as one sentance.

I am becoming quite convinced that I am not able to setup the header tags. Any suggestions? I am not even sure what I am doing wrong.

Have you read the various doc files in the contribution that try to explain setting up the keyword? It's important to research keywords and know what you are targeting. Google has you at position number 3 for "purple martin merchandise." That's an excellent position but may be because not many people are searching for it or may not be what you want to place well for. But since google has you listed well, it will be easier to rank well for other keywords. You just need to decide what they are and adjust your site to go after them. But that is the hardest part of SEO so you have a lot of research to do.

Jack

JBourke · April 12, 2009

purplemartinart - the above posts are typical from so called "SEO Experts" and much of what they say is complete nonsense and should be ignored.

Search engines like Google are only interested in what is actually on your page and as it is structured on your page.

In regard to header tags, this can be achieved with a well written dynamic header tag generator (I did not recommend any in particular, but avoid the one in one of the above poster's signature, since it is not dynamic and introduces a massive amount of manual management). A good generator will generate well structured tags without any management whatsoever.

Trying to create artificial tags with repetitive words or phrases that don't exist on your page are a total waste of time. Google loves well structured tags that reflect ACTUAL page content. Anything else is treated as junk and ignored.

In regard to so called "search engine friendly URLs", perhaps you should read what Google technicians have to say about them: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...tatic-urls.html

Take what they say for what it is worth and ignore "interpretations" of it that try to contradict what they clearly say. You can ignore most of the comments below that article, since most are from so called experts freaking out :)

Also ignore link exchange programs that people recommend. Ultimately they will hurt your rankings. Instead, you should generate incoming links by good marketing.

♥geoffreywalton · April 12, 2009

I had a little dig around and found this

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...rter-guide.html

It contains a link to The SEO Starter Guide, http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/sear...arter-guide.pdf, which contains 22 pages of good hints.

Unfortunately I can't copy the images but this bit covers URLs, it makes more sense with the examples included

Improve the structure of your URLs

Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on your website can not only help

you keep your site better organized, but it could also lead to better crawling of your documents by

Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008, latest version at Google Webmaster Central

search engines. Also, it can create easier, "friendlier" URLs for those that want to link to your content.

Visitors may be intimidated by extremely long and cryptic URLs that contain few recognizable words.

A URL to a page on our baseball card site that a user might have a hard time with

URLs like these can be confusing and unfriendly. Users would have a hard time reciting the URL from

memory or creating a link to it. Also, users may believe that a portion of the URL is unnecessary,

especially if the URL shows many unrecognizable parameters. They might leave off a part, breaking

the link.

Some users might link to your page using the URL of that page as the anchor text. If your URL

contains relevant words, this provides users and search engines with more information about the

page than an ID or oddly named parameter would.

The highlighted words above could inform a user or search engine what the target page is

about before following the link

Lastly, remember that the URL to a document is displayed as part of a search result in Google, below

the document's title and snippet. Like the title and snippet, words in the URL on the search result

appear in bold if they appear in the user's query.

A user performs the query [baseball cards]

Our homepage appears as a result, with the URL listed under the title and snippet

Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008, latest version at Google Webmaster Central

Below is another example showing a URL on our domain for a page containing an article about the

rarest baseball cards. The words in the URL might appeal to a search user more than an ID number

like "www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/article/102125/" would.

A user performs the query [rarest baseball cards]

A deeper page, with a URL that reflects the type of content found on it, appears as a result

Google is good at crawling all types of URL structures, even if they're quite complex, but spending the

time to make your URLs as simple as possible for both users and search engines can help. Some

webmasters try to achieve this by rewriting their dynamic URLs to static ones; while Google is fine

with this, we'd like to note that this is an advanced procedure and if done incorrectly, could cause

crawling issues with your site. To learn even more about good URL structure, we recommend this

Webmaster Help Center page on creating Google-friendly URLs.

Good practices for URL structure

• Use words in URLs - URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure

are friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be

more willing to link to them.

Avoid:

• using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs

• choosing generic page names like "page1.html"

• using excessive keywords like "baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.

htm"

• Create a simple directory structure - Use a directory structure that organizes your content

well and is easy for visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory

structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.

Avoid:

• having deep nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/

page.html"

• using directory names that have no relation to the content in them

Thought it was so useful I've added this link to my "About Me" page.

purplemartinart · April 13, 2009

You have done a pretty good job with seo. I would suggest reducing the amount of keywords and make them much more specific and relevant...they are a bit too vague/cluttered. Also pay attention to image names.

http://foliovision.com/2008/03/26/seo-google-images/

I went through and tried to configure the header tags seo contribution a bit better over the weekend, so I hope I made changes for the better.

I found some glaring errors on my part and changed a few things.

I also added a cute bit of code (thanks GLcustoms!!!) that adds some content below the featured products. so I will see how it goes.

I think I am still having issues configuring the options on the header tag seo contribution.

mattb348 · June 2, 2009

I had a little dig around and found this

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...rter-guide.html

It contains a link to The SEO Starter Guide, http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/sear...arter-guide.pdf, which contains 22 pages of good hints.

Unfortunately I can't copy the images but this bit covers URLs, it makes more sense with the examples included

Improve the structure of your URLs

Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on your website can not only help

you keep your site better organized, but it could also lead to better crawling of your documents by

Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008, latest version at Google Webmaster Central

search engines. Also, it can create easier, "friendlier" URLs for those that want to link to your content. A good example of user friendly URL's can be found on this airsoft sniper rifle website; it has the relevant keywords in the url, rather than php based urls, which makes the urls make alot more sense to the users.

Visitors may be intimidated by extremely long and cryptic URLs that contain few recognizable words.

A URL to a page on our baseball card site that a user might have a hard time with

URLs like these can be confusing and unfriendly. Users would have a hard time reciting the URL from

memory or creating a link to it. Also, users may believe that a portion of the URL is unnecessary,

especially if the URL shows many unrecognizable parameters. They might leave off a part, breaking

the link.

Some users might link to your page using the URL of that page as the anchor text. If your URL

contains relevant words, this provides users and search engines with more information about the

page than an ID or oddly named parameter would.

The highlighted words above could inform a user or search engine what the target page is

about before following the link

Lastly, remember that the URL to a document is displayed as part of a search result in Google, below

the document's title and snippet. Like the title and snippet, words in the URL on the search result

appear in bold if they appear in the user's query.

A user performs the query [baseball cards]

Our homepage appears as a result, with the URL listed under the title and snippet

Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008, latest version at Google Webmaster Central

Below is another example showing a URL on our domain for a page containing an article about the

rarest baseball cards. The words in the URL might appeal to a search user more than an ID number

like "www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/article/102125/" would.

A user performs the query [rarest baseball cards]

A deeper page, with a URL that reflects the type of content found on it, appears as a result

Google is good at crawling all types of URL structures, even if they're quite complex, but spending the

time to make your URLs as simple as possible for both users and search engines can help. Some

webmasters try to achieve this by rewriting their dynamic URLs to static ones; while Google is fine

with this, we'd like to note that this is an advanced procedure and if done incorrectly, could cause

crawling issues with your site. To learn even more about good URL structure, we recommend this

Webmaster Help Center page on creating Google-friendly URLs.

Good practices for URL structure

• Use words in URLs - URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure

are friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be

more willing to link to them.

Avoid:

• using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs

• choosing generic page names like "page1.html"

• using excessive keywords like "baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.

htm"

• Create a simple directory structure - Use a directory structure that organizes your content

well and is easy for visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory

structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.

Avoid:

• having deep nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/

page.html"

• using directory names that have no relation to the content in them

Thought it was so useful I've added this link to my "About Me" page.

Hmmmmmm so if I read this right, having actual files on your website, named after your relevant categories or products, can be helpful? I remember reading this somewhere else, but I can't seem to find much concrete evidence about this. Does anyone else have any input on this? Also, does it even matter what file type it is? For instance, a PDF document, or a text file, or a zip or exe file???????

Also, I have "SEO URL", which makes the url's kind of long and (somewhat) spammy looking. The way it works is it puts the keywords in your URL, which are used in your category and product pages. Example: if you have a category named "electric dog training collars" it will put these keywords in the URL, in this format: www.site.com/electric-dog-training-collars/c1/index.html

Would this be a bad thing? I read toward the end of this post, that you don't want "excessive keywords" in the URL. Would 4 keywords in the URL be "excessive"? OR would it take like 6+ keywords to be considered to many???

Jack_mcs · June 2, 2009

Hmmmmmm so if I read this right, having actual files on your website, named after your relevant categories or products, can be helpful? I remember reading this somewhere else, but I can't seem to find much concrete evidence about this. Does anyone else have any input on this? Also, does it even matter what file type it is? For instance, a PDF document, or a text file, or a zip or exe file???????

Yes, having such pages is a good idea. There are contributions like Articles Manager and Info Manager, that allows you to easily add such pages. If you have Header Tags SEO installed too, it will allow you to set up the title and meta tags of those pages properly. The files need to contain text to be of any use so pdf and zip won't help at all.

Also, I have "SEO URL", which makes the url's kind of long and (somewhat) spammy looking. The way it works is it puts the keywords in your URL, which are used in your category and product pages. Example: if you have a category named "electric dog training collars" it will put these keywords in the URL, in this format: www.site.com/electric-dog-training-collars/c1/index.html
Would this be a bad thing?

Compared to what? The default url would be worse.

I read toward the end of this post, that you don't want "excessive keywords" in the URL. Would 4 keywords in the URL be "excessive"? OR would it take like 6+ keywords to be considered to many???

It's not the number of keywords that matter. As long as they are supported with text on the page, any number can be used. But most sites can't support more than three or four without becoming boring to your customers, which is never a good idea.

Jack

Would this help SEO?

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