Hi, Jo Ellyn!
You may be interested to know that my name is Jo Ellen, as well!
I checked to see if Google has indexed your website yet, by entering
http://www.jrackleff.com in the Search Text box on at
://www.google.com and clicking "Google Search". If Google has
indexed a site, it will show up on the results page. Unfortunately, it
does not look like Google has indexed your website yet:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=www.jrackleff.com&btnG=Google+Search
Recently we had a webmaster wondering why his website, which was still
under construction, had not been indexed, even though he had submitted
his URL to Google. Webmasters, who are understandably anxious to start
getting hits on their sites, sometimes tend to want to put the cart
before the horse. Google, DMOZ (the Open Directory Project), and other
search engines are quite adamant that they are only interested in
websites with useful content. So there isn't any point in submitting a
site to Search Engines before there is real content on it to be
indexed.
It's important to FIRST design your site to be as friendly and
desirable to Search Engines as possible. THEN you can worry about
getting the Search Engines to index you so that people will come to
your site.
With that in mind, the first thing we're going to do is take a look at
the content, design, and programming code of your website.
We'll enter your URL into the Search Engine Spider Simulator at Search
Engine World. This simulator shows something similar to what the
Googlebot sees when it indexes your site:
http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi
The simulator shows:
"Spider title The Art of Jo Ellyn Rackleff
Spider meta desc No description available.
Spider meta keywords <blank>
Spider Text
Jo Ellyn Rackleff "... A sorcerer with paint..." [The Washington Post]
Gallery Purchase Reviews The Artist Canvas Paper Woman In Butterfly
Chair Magpie in Blue Chair Bride Like a Cat Bowtie Click on Image for
Larger Version 1 2 3 4 Woman in Yellow Chair Running Home Yosemite The
Boy Who Loved Music Last updated 3/3/03"
<Meta> tags are "invisible" labels built into the html code of your
page that provide information to robots, spiders, and webcrawlers
about what your page contains. Now, the Googlebot no longer looks at
<meta> tags, because webmasters tried to skew its Search Results by
"stacking" their meta tags with hundreds of keywords, many of which
were totally unrelated to the content of the site. However, many other
Search Engines still look at <meta> tags, so you will want to do a
good job with yours.
The title of your page is "The Art of Jo Ellyn Rackleff". That's fine,
although you might want to make it something like "The Art of Jo Ellyn
Rackleff - Bold Paintings of the Hidden Self" or "The Art of Jo Ellyn
Rackleff, the Sorcerer with Paint" -- whatever you choose, as long as
it's not too lengthy and is descriptive of the content of your site.
This title is what will show up first in Search Engine Results,
possibly followed by an extract of some of the text on your home page.
Now, for your <meta> description: This should be one or two sentences
in correct English grammar such as <meta name="description"
content="The Art of Jo Ellyn Rackleff - the Sorcerer with Paint:
Experience the Calligraphy of Brushstroke and Bold Color, and
Encounter the Unknown or Hidden Self">. Again, whatever you choose, as
long as it's not too lengthy and is descriptive of the content of your
site.
Then for your <meta> keywords, sit down and think of all the words
that apply to your website and your artwork. My suggest for a start
would be:
<meta name="keywords" content="Jo Ellyn, JoEllyn, Rackleff, art,
artist, artists, artwork, paint, painter, painters, painting,
paintings, sorcerer, bold, color, colorful, hidden self, spiritual,
woman, women, child, children, white, black, Foxley/Leach, Foxley,
Leach, Gallery, Galleries, Florida, FL> etc., you get the idea. If
your painting could be classified as one or more types, such as
Impressionism, be sure to include those words, too.
To encourage Search Engine robots to crawl and index your page,
include the following robots <meta> tags:
<meta name="Robots" content="index,follow">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="10 Days">
Also, upload a text file (this can be created with Notepad) to your
server with the URL http://www.jrackleff.com/robots.txt which contains
the following:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
This file will also encourage Search Engine robots to crawl and index
your page; it tells robots that they are all allowed to index your
site, and that you do not forbid them to visit any area of it. To
ensure that your robots.txt file is done correctly, run it through the
robots.txt file validator at:
http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/robotcheck.cgi
Now, for your text. The best way to convince a Search Engine that you
have a lot of content is to put a fair amount of it on your home page.
So, my suggestion would be to keep the title and menu at the top of
your page, but put your gallery all on subpages.
Pick out the picture you like best (while all these pieces are
marvellous -- I'm a magpie, too! -- my favorite by far is "Bride Like
A Cat") and position a roughly 3" wide x 4" tall image of it below the
page title.
Then, put the text from your "The Artist" page below it (make sure
that the text starts within the first screen of the page, so that
viewers can see that there is text below the picture of the piece that
you have chosen, and thus know to scroll down).
If you feel that any of the words in your keyword list are especially
important, and you want them to be indexed by Google, make sure that
they appear once somewhere in this text (the Google notices, and
frowns upon, the "trick" of listing lots of text keywords in 0-point,
invisible font).
Finally, once you have made all these modifications to your site, it's
time to submit it to Search Engines to be indexed. Here's how you
submit your site to Search Engines:
Be sure to follow their instructions; for instance, some Engines
request that you submit only your top-level URL (www.jrackleff.com)
rather than every one of your pages. Failure to follow the
instructions can result in lowered rankings or even in being
blacklisted from a Search Engine.
Google:
://www.google.com/addurl.html
(Be aware that it may take anywhere from 1 to 3 months for your site
to start showing up on Google; however, since Google also uses DMOZ as
a guide to its indexing efforts, you might be able to speed that up a
little by also submitting your site in a DMOZ category as described
next.)
DMOZ (Directory Mozilla/Open Directory Project):
http://dmoz.org/add.html
(I recommend choosing one of the subcategories at
Arts: Visual Arts: Painting: Painters:
http://www.dmoz.org/Arts/Visual_Arts/Painting/Painters
once you're on the page for the category you choose,
click on the blue "Add URL" hypertext link in the
upper right-hand corner of the page)
HotBot:
http://ldbreg.lycos.com/cgi-bin/mayaLogin?m_PR=29&m_CBURL=http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/lite?step1.asp
AllTheWeb:
http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php
AltaVista:
http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new
Zeal (LookSmart/MSN free submission w/free registration)
http://www.zeal.com/users/register.jhtml
For more information on developing a Google-friendly website, I
recommend that you study the information in Google's Help Department:
://www.google.com/webmasters
Guidelines
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
Facts & Fiction (myths dispelled)
://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
://www.google.com/webmasters/faq.html
User Support Discussion Forum
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=google.public.support.general
Another fabulous resource is the forum at WebmasterWorld.com:
http://www.webmasterworld.com
and at Search Engine World:
http://www.searchengineworld.com
I encourage you to visit these sites and learn more about making your
site attractive and friendly to Search Engines.
Before Rating my Answer, if you have any questions about this
information, please post a Request for Clarification, and I will be
glad to see what I can do for you.
I hope that this Answer provides exactly the information that you
needed.
Best wishes, Jo Ellyn, and I am looking forward to seeing your site
pop up in the Search Results soon!
aceresearcher |
