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Q: better position for website damianos.com ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   0 Comments )
Question  
Subject: better position for website damianos.com
Category: Business and Money > Small Businesses
Asked by: gingie-ga
List Price: $45.00
Posted: 28 Feb 2003 14:18 PST
Expires: 30 Mar 2003 14:18 PST
Question ID: 168516
Our website  damianos.com    is coming up #13 when you search for
bahamas real estate.  Can you tell me what I need to do in order for
it to be within the first five that come up?
Answer  
Subject: Re: better position for website damianos.com
Answered By: robertskelton-ga on 28 Feb 2003 21:30 PST
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
Hi Gingie, 

There are a number of things you can do to improve your web site's
position in search engine results. Here are my suggestions, in order
of importance:


1. Get Linked To
================

An integral part of Google's ranking algorithm is link popularity.
Basically, the more web sites that link to yours, the higher yours
will rank. If they are "important" sites like Yahoo, their link to you
is a more impressive vote for the quality of your site.

The importance of a web site is measured by PageRank. The best way to
see the PageRank value (between 0 and 10) of a web site is by using
the Google Toolbar:
http://toolbar.google.com/ 

Your site has a PR of 5, which is very good, and is a big reason why
you already have quite a high ranking. This is almost totally due to
being listed within Yahoo and Open Directory. To improve your PR you
need many more links to your site, preferably from sites with a
PageRank of 4 or more. The quickest solution is to see who is linking
to the sites that rank above you. For example:

link:http://www.knowlesrealty.com/
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=link:http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eknowlesrealty%2Ecom%2F

Try and get your site mentioned wherever your higher-ranked opposition
are mentioned. If the links pointing to your page have any or all of
the keywords in, or next to the link, that is better.

I notice that you have lots of unique tourist information content on
your site. Consider getting more links to those pages as well. Try
getting this page:
http://www.damianos.com/AboutUs/PhotoAlbum.asp

into this category at Open Directory:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Caribbean/Bahamas/Travel_and_Tourism/


2. Keywords on the page
=======================

It is important to have the targeted keywords on your page. You have
them in your page title, and as the first words on the page, which is
very good. There are three ways to do it a little better:

- Reduce the title to Bahamas Real Estate at Damianos Realty, or just
Bahamas Real Estate. Webmasters tend to cram keywords into the title
tag. Google prefers shorter titles. I recently reduced the title
lengths at one of my sites and the pages are now ranking higher.

- Place the keywords within H1 tags at the top of the page, instead of
the plain text you presently use. If you don't like how the words
look, use CSS to change how an H1 is displayed. Don't change the H1
tag to plain text - that would be cheating.

- Have the keywords appear a second time in the page. 
http://www.sunshine-real-estate.com/ have done it in a natural way
with "Members of the Bahamas Real Estate Association" at the bottom of
the page.


3. Become Fresh
===============

Weblogs often get higher rankings than they deserve, because Google
likes sites that constantly update their content. It is worthwhile
thinking of ways in which your site changes every day or two. The
obvious way for your home page is to change the featured listings, or
have a "recently added" list. Updating the page less than every two
days is important. Every time you update the page, submit that URL to
Google - soon they will get the idea and visit more regularly than
once a month. Fresh sites usually get re-indexed every second day, and
this presents a nice opportunity to tinker with keywords on the page.


4. Create a Site Map
====================

Create a simple page that links to every other page of your site, or
the most important 100 if you have more than 100 pages. Call it
sitemap.html. Whenever you update multiple pages, just submit the site
map. When I do this with a web site, the site map usually gets the
same PageRank as the home page.


5. Reduce the depth of sub-directories
======================================

Ordinarily, with each level of directory, the PageRank will drop by
one for those pages. For most of your site this probably doesn't
matter. I suggest that the tourist info should be as high up the
directory structure as possible. A sub-domain would be perfect, such
as guide.damianos.com

My best ranking site has everything in the top level - it makes it
harder for me to work on, but the individual pages get higher
PageRank.


6. Target a variety of keywords
===============================

Your site has a lot of pages; use some of them to experiment with.
Create a couple of pages of unique content (can be anything - if it's
not appropriate to your business, only link to it via the site map).
Play around with other keywords. Most webmasters target a single
phrase. If you look at your referral logs, you will notice the huge
variety of searches that ended up at your site. Targeting less
searched for keywords and coming in at number one, is better than
being on page two of a more popular keyword.

Use a keyword suggestion tool like the one at Overture:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?term=bahamas

The best for deciding on keywords is WordTracker, which has a free
trial:
http://www.wordtracker.com


Don't!
======

Don't join any link exchange schemes. 
Don't use any search engine submission service which promises to
submit your site to hundreds or thousands of search engines.
Don't use Web Position Gold (or any similar software) to check your
ranking at Google.

Do!
===

Be patient. Any changes you make now will probably not change your
ranking until roughly the end of March.

Visit http://www.webmasterworld.com - free and easy registration opens
up the best resource for search engine optimization there is... the
experiences of others.


Search strategy: personal experience


If you have any further question on this topic, just ask for a
clarification, and I'll do my best to help you out.


Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

Request for Answer Clarification by gingie-ga on 03 Mar 2003 08:26 PST
Dear Robert Skelton:
I rated your answer 5 star.  Then I made the comment that I need help.
 Would you have the name of a computer/website person to help me.  I'm
a little concerned that the lady in my office might find this a bit
overwhelming.
Thank you.
Virginia Damianos Premock
Damianos Realty Co., Ltd.

Clarification of Answer by robertskelton-ga on 03 Mar 2003 21:53 PST
Hi again,

Thanks for the rating.

There are a number of companies in the Bahamas who might be able to
help you, they are listed here:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Caribbean/Bahamas/Business_and_Economy/Internet/
gingie-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars
Your advice makes sense, I just need help to get it done!

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