Greetings, reneewood!
You have asked a great many questions. Bear in mind that one could
spend days -- and hundreds of pages -- answering them all in great
detail. For the purposes of this Question, I am going to answer them
in sufficient detail to meet your current needs, and within your
$15.00 fee.
1) Your "alt" tags are fine. Because Google and other Search Engines
index text -- and "alt" tags are text, it is recommended that you use
them for best search engine indexing. I might recommend that you
remove "sympathy gift..." from all your "alt" tags, since you have it
in the header on all your pages, so that only the name of the item is
in your "alt" tags. If you have labeled each image with its
description, the alt tags can certainly not be considered "spam".
2) Search Engines typically consider the first text words on a page to
be the most important. So yes, you may want to re-work your layout so
that "Sympathy Gift / Memorial Gift" are the first words on your page.
Also, because some Search Engines might have problems indexing the
word "Gift/Memorial" properly, I recommend that you insert a space
both before and after the slash, to make sure that search engines read
the words as "gift" and "memorial".
3) If your main words are "sympathy", "gift" and "gifts", you will
want to make sure that each of these words appears at least once ***in
the text*** on every one of your pages. Because some webmasters tried
to "stack" meta keywords tags with hundreds of unrelated keywords in
order to gain better ranking, Google and some other Search Engines no
longer pay attention to meta tags. However, some Search Engines still
do their indexing based on meta tags, so you do want to have them and
do a good job with them.
4) The commas in your meta keywords list are fine; however, you may
want to remove the trailing comma at the end. For best results, you
should list individual words as well as phrases, in case a web user
enters one but not both of your keywords: "sympathy, gift, gifts,
idea, ideas, memorial, memorials, condolence, condolences, comfort,
comforts, remembrance, remembrances, inspirational, company, jewelry,
candles, books, gemstone, sympathy gift, memorial gift, condolence
gift, memorial jewelry, garden stone, garden stones, inspirational
books, bracelet, gemstone bracelet"> should do the trick. Bear in mind
that if any single word ("gift" and "gifts" are different words)
appears more than 3 times in your keywords, subsequent occurrences are
likely to be ignored or even considered as spam.
5) Your "description" and "keywords" meta tags are really all the
comment tags you need.
6) You mention that you already use Webmaster World (
http://www.webmasterworld.com ) as a source for helpful information.
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
I also recommend the resources at Search Engine World:
http://www.searchengineworld.com
7) I do not recommend using scripts to check your search results
rankings. Search Engines can consider these "spamming" services, and
you run the risk of getting your site banned because of them.
Be wary of "submit-a-site", website "positioning", and "search engine
optimizer" services, and "link exchanges" (link farms). Such programs
(like WebPosition Gold and LinksToYou) are a good way to get your site
banned from Search Engines.
For Google, I recommend doing the following to check your search
rankings:
On the Google search page, click "Advanced Search" to go to the
Advanced Search form; enter the keyword(s) for which you want to check
your site's ranking in the Google search text box. Pull down "100
results" per page, and click "Google Search". This will bring results
up 100 at a time. You can use your browser's "Find" (usually <ctrl-F>)
function to look for "thecomfortcompany" (don't enter the quotes" to
see if you appear on a given page, and repeat to find any other
occurrences on that page.
8) Yes, there **is** hope for you. Stop stressing about your search
results, and just work calmly toward continuing to increase your
knowledge and improve your website.
9) I do not think that a template-built site will ever do as well in
the search engines as a site that you tweak and customize yourself.
However, you have already learned something about html, and you are
increasing your knowledge by making use of sites like Webmaster World.
Bear in mind that there is **NO** quick and easy fix to high placement
in search engines, regardless of what those flim-flam "SEO" companies
and link farms try to tell you. The rocket scientists at Google are
constantly becoming aware of the "tricks" these companies and other
webmasters try to use to improve their placement -- and tweaking the
Google algorithms to negate such tinkering.
To help you gain proficiency in html, I recommend that you make use of
the excellent WebMonkey Web Developer's resource site at
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey
10) You say that you are working on getting backward links for your
site. Remember that links from a few ***quality*** sites with related
themes who link to only a few other pages (including yours) will do
far more to improve your Page Rank than links from one hundred other
pages that link to hundreds of sites. You want to find pages with a PR
(Page Rank) of 4 or higher to link to yours; this will help increase
your own Page Rank.
For more information on how Google Page Ranking works, I encourage you
to
read the following excellent papers:
"The Google Pagerank Algorithm and How It Works" by Ian Rogers, IPR
Computing Ltd. (Last edited: 16th May 2002):
http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/index.html
"PageRank Uncovered" by Chris Riding on the Search Engine Optimization
Support Forums website:
a page of explanation and examples:
http://www.supportforums.org/pagerank
"PageRank Uncovered" by Chris Ridings
http://www.supportforums.org/PageRank.pdf
If you take full advantage of all the resources listed above to
increase your knowledge and proficiency as a webmaster, I am confident
that you will see it pay off in improved Search Engine Results.
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.
Best Wishes on getting your website Ranking high, with lots of search
hits!
Regards,
aceresearcher |