Greetings, Bethany!
First of all, if anyone here falls down while laughing at you for not
knowing a lot about computers, and I happen to see it, I will
personally whap them upside the head.
There is nothing wrong with you not knowing how to program, and not
understanding all the ins-and-outs of website development.
That is why Google Answers is here, to help people do things that they
don't know how to do.
However, I DO have a very serious concern: you mention your "Web
Master". If a friend or relative designed this site for you out of the
goodness of their heart, that's fine, and they've done a pretty nice
job so far. But if you are PAYING someone to design your website for
you, in my opinion, you should seriously consider demanding that they
give you half the fee back, and here's why (and you'll have to please
pardon my bluntness; on the day that they handed out tact, I was at
home sick):
You have a lovely, eye-pleasing site. It's simple, not cluttered, and
fairly user-friendly. However, the way that it has been coded, it is
virtually invisible to Search Engines, and as far as I'm concerned,
half of a Webmaster's job (probably the more important half) is making
sure that a website is visible and friendly to Search Engines -- as
well as making sure that the site gets submitted to and listed by the
major Search Engines. If a paid Webmaster hasn't done those things,
then they've only done half of their job (or less). A fabulous,
beautiful website isn't worth a cent if the Search Engines won't index
it.
Now, First Things First:
Awhile back, 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. For this reason, I encourage you to get the rest of your
pages up and running as soon as possible, so that when you submit to
Search Engines, they have a lot of good content to index.
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 Bethany Campbell - Romance and Suspense Novels
Spider meta desc No description available.
Spider meta keywords <blank>
Spider Text
Click to enter Le Chat Noir Cafe
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Spidered Links
= spider this link with current settings.
= keyword density analyze this link.
Link"
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This does not look good, for several reasons.
The first is that the ENTIRE content (text) of this page consists of
the words "Click to enter Le Chat Noir Cafe". A Search Engine is not
going to find this of much interest, and may not even index your site
at all because of it.
Now for the second reason: a well-designed site *can* get away with a
very minimal front page, IF a Search Engine Spider can follow the
links on it and find a lot of content on the rest of the site. But
although your front page contains one link -- to enter the actual site
-- the Spider Simulator doesn't think you have any links. If a Search
Engine Spider can't see your links, it won't Search and index the rest
of your pages. It is likely for this reason that the Googlebot has not
indexed your site because it doesn't think that you have any content.
Thirdly, the title of your page is "Bethany Campbell - Romance and
Suspense Novels". That's fine for your front page. However, ALL your
pages have that exact same title. The title of a page is what will
show up first in Search Engine Results, possibly followed by an
extract of some of the text on that page.
Finally, you have no <meta> description or keywords listed for your
site. <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, for the purposes of Search
Ranking, the Googlebot and most other major Search Engines no longer
look at <meta> tags, because webmasters tried to skew their Search
Results by "stacking" their meta tags with hundreds of keywords, many
of which were totally unrelated to the content of the site. However,
the latest word is that Google and some other Search Engines still
look at <meta> tags as a way to cross-check the validity of the actual
text on your site, so you will want to do a good job with yours.
So, let's get to fixing your site up a bit:
PAGE TITLES
-----------
This is a **very** important part of getting your site's pages noticed
and indexed by Search Engines: it differentiates the pages on your
site to Search Engines, and it increases the odds that **at least
one** of your pages will come up in a Google Search for your relevant
keywords.
Each page on your site should have its own title, and that title
should be fairly brief, but very descriptive of the contents and/or
function of that page. On your Main Page, your Title should include
the name of your business or the overall subject of your site.
Notice that in a list of Google Search results, the underlined,
clickable Header preceding each text excerpt comes from the Page
Title. Click on the Search Link below, then look at the underlined
Headers on the Search Results page:
Romance and Suspense Novels
://www.google.com/search?q=Romance+and+Suspense+Novels
Then click on the underlined Header for the first result, and notice
that it matches the Page Title at the top of your Browser:
Marti Phillips, Author of Historical Romance, Mystery Suspense Novels
http://hometown.aol.com/Romnovelst/books.html
This Header Title is created by the following html statement inside
the Header definition for the page:
<title>Marti Phillips, Author of Historical Romance, Mystery Suspense
Novels</title>
So your title might be something like:
<title>Bethany Campbell, Author - Historical Romance and Suspense
Novels</title>
<META> TAGS
-----------
Now, for your <meta> description: This should be one or two sentences
in correct English grammar such as <meta name="description"
content="Bethany Campbell (aka Lisa Harris), Author of Historical
Romance, Mystery, and Suspense novels published as Harlequin, Crystal
Creek, Intrigue, Romance, SuperRomance, Temptation, and Bantam
Books">. For each page, choose whatever you think best, as long as
it's not too lengthy and is specifically descriptive of the content on
that page.
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="Bethany Campbell, Lisa Harris, author,
authors, writer, writers, novelist, novelists, novel, novels, book,
books, fiction, historical, romance, mystery, suspense, published,
publisher, Harlequin, Crystal Creek, Intrigue, Romance, SuperRomance,
Temptation, Bantam"> etc., you get the idea.
<ROBOTS> TAGS
-------------
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">
So, the html code at the beginning of your pages should look something
like this:
<html>
<head>
<title>Bethany Campbell, Author - Historical Romance and Suspense
Novels</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="description"
content="Bethany Campbell (aka Lisa Harris), Author of Historical
Romance, Mystery, and Suspense novels published as Harlequin, Crystal
Creek, Intrigue, Romance, SuperRomance, Temptation, and Bantam
Books">.
<meta name="keywords" content="Bethany Campbell, Lisa Harris, author,
authors, writer, writers, novelist, novelists, novel, novels, book,
books, fiction, historical, romance, mystery, suspense, published,
publisher, Harlequin, Crystal Creek, Intrigue, Romance, SuperRomance,
Temptation, Bantam">
<meta name="Robots" content="index,follow">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="10 Days">
</head>
........
</html>
ROBOTS.TXT FILE
---------------
Also, upload a text file (this can be created with Notepad) to your
server with the URL http://www.bethanycampbell.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
CONTENT/TEXT
------------
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.
However, as I said previously, you *can* get away with a very simple
entrance page if it's done properly. Take a look at this site:
Kimberly Moynahan Gerson - One Writer's Desk
http://members.rogers.com/kmgerson
Here's what the Spider Simulator sees when it looks at her front page:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Spider title Kimberly Moynahan Gerson:: One Writer's Desk
Spider meta desc A small collection of essays and creative non-
fiction written by Kimberly Moynahan Gerson
Spider meta keywords Kimberly Moynahan Gerson writer essay creative
non-fiction magazine science nature
Spider Text
Kimberly Moynahan Gerson One Writer's Desk
copyright 2002 Kimberly Moynahan Gerson
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Spidered Links
= spider this link with current settings.
= keyword density analyze this link.
Link
http://members.rogers.com/Page%20Gallery/Base%20Pages/KMG%2
0Home.htm "
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The main difference is that her link is attached to the html text
"Kimberly Moynahan Gerson" inside of a table definition <td>, whereas
your link is attached to a graphic *picture* of the word "Enter"
inside a map:
<map name="FPMap0">
<area coords="71, 315, 167, 364" shape="rect" href="Home.html"
alt="Click to enter Le Chat Noir Cafe">
</map>
According to Danny Sullivan, the Search Engine Guru and Editor at
SearchEngineWatch, in an article entitled "Search Engine Placement
Tips" (October 14, 2002):
"Avoid Search Engine Stumbling Blocks
Some search engines see the web the way someone using a very old
browser might. They may not read image maps. They may not read frames.
You need to anticipate these problems, or a search engine may not
index any or all your web pages."
The fix may just be a simple matter of attaching your link href from
the image map instead to the main page graphic, such as in changing
the current statement:
<TD>
<IMG SRC="cat-splash_01.gif" ALT="" width="245" height="396">
</TD>
to:
<TD>
<a href="Home.html">
<IMG SRC="cat-splash_01.gif"
ALT="Click to enter Le Chat Noir Cafe"
width="245" height="396">
</a>
</TD>
(Note that this would enable someone to click anywhere on your main
page to enter your site.)
I bet that if you do this, the Spider Simulator and the Googlebot will
be able to "see" your link, as well as your "alt" text, index it as
content, and follow the link to index the rest of your site.
"alt" tags are also an important part of Content: ANY graphic or image
on your site, whether clickable or not, should have an "alt" label
assigned to it, since the Search Engines index these as actual
content.
Now, about that keyword list: Even though the Search Engines don't
actually use your <meta> keyword list to index your site, that list
serves a very useful purpose: You can use it as a "checklist" to make
sure that your Text Content contains all of the words (and word
combinations) in your keyword list. The most important words on the
<meta> keyword list for each page should appear in the text of that
page at least 2 or three times (but don't go overboard -- the
Googlebot would almost certainly consider the appearance of "romance
novels" 50 or more times on just one of your pages to be a "spamming"
attempt to skew Search Results).
While some Webmasters used the technique in the past to improve their
indexing for non-relevant keywords, NOTE that the Googlebot also
notices, and frowns upon, the "trick" of listing lots of text keywords
in 0-point and/or invisible (same color as the background) or clear
font, and may drop a website from the index for doing this.
However, a perfectly legitimate technique to improve your site's
Content for Search Engines would be to add a line of your menu links
(including "alt" labels) at the bottom of your main page, below the
full-page graphic where it is not readily visible on the screen, and
thus not cluttering up the clean, simple appearance of that main entry
page.
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.bethanycampbell.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: Literature: Genres: Romance
http://dmoz.org/Arts/Literature/Genres/Romance ;
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, Bethany, and I am looking forward to seeing your site pop
up in the Search Results soon!
aceresearcher |
