Hi Uleaw00 ~
You weren't kidding when you said the search term "Park City real
estate" was competitive! A search for that term (without the quotation
marks) returns about 1,900,000.
- ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=park+city+real+estate&btnG=Google+Search
When using the quotation marks, we get about 3,320 results
- ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22park+city+real+estate%22&btnG=Google+Search
The problem with that search, though, is that most people aren't aware
of how quotation marks can help in a search. And that's a LOT of
returns to try to wade through!
===============================
Re: www.debhartley.com
===============================
Since your sites are about Park City, it would seem that somewhere in
there you *should* show up, yet a search on google for
www.debhartley.com produces the following results:
"Sorry, no information is available for the URL
www.debhartley.com/
* If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by
clicking on the following link: www.debhartley.com/
* Find web pages that contain the term "www.debhartley.com/""
[quoting from search results]
- ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=www.debhartley.com%2F&btnG=Google+Search
Clicking on "Find webpages that contain the term ..." returns nothing.
Since both sites are identical, it is hard to determine if you have
www.debhartley.com pointing at the www.jimlea.com site, or if you
actually have two identical sites, just different domain names.
If you are pointing www.debhartley.com to the jimlea.com site, it will
not be listed in any of the search engines, since search engines can
only list those sites that have a physical site.
If you *so* actually have two identical sites, just different URLs,
you could possibly be penalized for this. Google specifically warns
against this in its "Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:"
"* Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains
with substantially duplicate content.
* Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines,
or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate
programs with little or no original content."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
and from "Other Reasons" your site may not be listed:
"Your page was manually removed from our index, because it
did not conform with the quality standards necessary to
assign accurate PageRank. We will not comment on the
individual reasons a page was removed and we do not offer
an exhaustive list of practices that can cause removal...
setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling
search engines may result in permanent removal from our index."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#B3
My strongest recommendation for getting debhartley.com listed in
Google's search index is to create separate content for that site (you
can even link to the jimlea.com site), and not totally mimic the
jimlea.com site. You can share some of the information, but it is
important that they are distinctly different, and not one identical to
the other.
If you don't care whether or not debhartley.com is listed in search
engines, then you can "point" or "redirect" that domain to the
jimlea.com site and work toward maximizing the jimlea.com site for
search engine friendliness and visitor-friendliness.
===============================
Re: www.jimlea.com
===============================
The good news is ... when I perform a search for "www.jimlea.com"
(without the quotation marks), there is a return for the site.
- ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=www.jimlea.com
Unfortunately, clicking on the "web pages that link to www.jimlea.com"
produces no results:
- ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=link:CyEdWOL9dgcJ:www.jimlea.com/
And clicking on "Find web pages that contain the term
"www.jimlea.com"" only produces your own jimlea.com site.
With no links *TO* the site, the PageRank for the site is 0. You can
check your site's PageRank by downloading and installing Google's
Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com).
===============================
Other Search Engines -
===============================
Search Engine debhartley.com jimlea.com
============= ============== ===========
The Open Project (DMOZ)
- http://search.dmoz.org/ no no
All The Web
- http://www.alltheweb.com no no
AltaVista Yes - all links Yes - but no
- http://www.altavista.com are internal links
HotBot
- http://www.hotbot.com no Yes - 2 pages
Netscape
- http://search.netscape.com no no
Teoma (Ask Jeeves)
- http://s.teoma.com no Yes - 2 pages
Yahoo!
- http://www.yahoo.com no no
Your sites are pretty invisible in what you so correctly described as
a "highly competitive market". There are ways to design search
engine-friendly sites which are also visitor friendly, which should
help you reach your goals.
==================================
Understanding Google's Page Rank
==================================
To ensure your page does get listed under the search terms you want,
you need to build a series of links to and from your site. Here are
some of Google's recommendations and suggestions.
From "Getting Listed"
======================
"The best way to ensure Google finds your site is for your
page to be linked from lots of pages on other sites.
Google's robots jump from page to page on the Web via
hyperlinks, so the more sites that link to you, the more
likely it is that we'll find you quickly."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/1.html#A2
From "How does Google rank pages?"
===================================
"Google's order of results is automatically determined by
more than 100 factors, including our PageRank algorithm.
Please check out our "Why Use Google" page for more de-
tails."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html
And from "Our Search: Google Technology"
=========================================
"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web
by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an
individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a
link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B.
But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or
links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts
the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important"
weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
- ://www.google.com/technology/index.html
With no external sites linking TO your sites, it is unlikely that
Google will list them under the terms you wish.
============================
How To Get Listed In Google
============================
Since Google's indexing is based on a complex algorithm which weight
over 100 factors, among them PageRank, they offer recommendations on
how to build a Google-friendly site. No one hand places or determines
Search Engine Results Placement (SERPs) as Google points out:
"Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with
our results extremely difficult"
- ://www.google.com/technology/index.html
==============================
Google's Webmaster Guidelines
==============================
You should become acquainted with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
For instance, the "Design and Content Guidelines:"
"* Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every
page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
* Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the
important parts of your site ...
* Create a useful, information-rich site and write pages that
clearly and accurately describe your content.
* Think about the words users would type to find your pages,
and make sure that your site actually includes those words
within it.
* Try to use text instead of images to display important names,
content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text
contained in images.
* Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and
accurate.
* Check for broken links and correct HTML."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
===========================
Establish Links
===========================
There are many practical ways of establishing links which are
beneficial to you in your endeavor to get respectable position
placement on search engines. These methods may take time, but they
also help in establishing credibility and help with your page rank.
Approach like-minded or complementary businesses about linking to your
site (with a reciprocal link from your own). This works without
harming search engine positioning or page rank.
A WORD OF WARNING:
==================
Google specifically warns "Don't participate in link schemes designed
to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid
links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own
ranking may be affected adversely by those links." (See Google's
Quality Guidelines - Basic principles)
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
It stands to reason that what's good for Google are good rules to
follow for other search engines.
Articles on Link Popularity
===========================
A couple of excellent articles on how to establish the right kind of
links are available in Traffick's "Ten Steps to Building Links to Your
Site", Craig Fifield - 5/3/2002
- http://www.traffick.com/article.asp?aID=77
and "The Right Way to Improve Link Popularity", By Paul J. Bruemmer
-4/14/2002 -
- http://www.traffick.com/article.asp?aID=41
Both articles may seem dated, yet they offer excellent suggestions
which can be easily adapted for use on any website without resorting
to link farms. They both point out the differences and offer easy ways
to get started to the kind of linking search engines prefer.
=================================
The Basics - HTML
=================================
Shari Thurow, one of the leading authorities in web design and search
engine optimization (and author of the book "Search Engine
Visibility"), recently made the following observation with regard to
HTML:
"Clean HTML is absolutely imperative for search engine
indexing. Browsers are extremely forgiving when it comes
to displaying pages with "unclean" HTML (unclosed tags,
no quotation marks, etc.). Search engine spiders are
not so forgiving. Even something as simple as a missing
quotation mark on the <.a href="page.html"> can cause a
spider to not index text or a link." (See: Link Exchange
Digest, July 3, 2003, "Clean HTML")
- http://list.audettemedia.com/SCRIPTS/WA.EXE?A2=ind0307&L=led&D=1&T=0&H=1&O=D&F=&S=&P=282
She explained how errors in HTML can affect your ability to be
indexed, and ultimately, ranked.
Below are some HTML elements which are often overlooked or omitted,
but which play an important part in your visitor's experience when he
visits your site. A good rule of thumb is always "what's good for the
visitor is good for search engines." The following, considered
"basics" for the best visitor experience are:
1. DOCTYPE Declaration
----------------------
DOCTYPES are essential to the proper rendering and functioning of web
documents in compliant browsers. It is also essential for the search
engines to understand and follow the coding contained on your pages.
DOCTYPE is explained and discussed further in "A List Apart",
- http://www.alistapart.com/stories/doctype/
and in Web Design Group's article, "Choosing a DOCtype",
- http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/doctype.html
While you have used a Doctype declaration, your page does NOT conform
to the doctype you used, and will not validate with either the W3C
HTML validator:
- http://validator.w3.org/file-upload.html
or with Search Engine Guide's HTML validator:
- http://www.searchengineworld.com/validator/
This problem starts with the declaration at the very top of your
coding:
"<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">"
I cannot determine what you used to build this page with, but I
suspect you may do better with one of the transitional HTML DOCTYPE
declarations.
2. Robots.txt
-------------
You do have a robots.txt file on the server which validates on Search
Engine World's Robots.txt Validator
- http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/robotcheck.cgi
Please remember that the robots.txt file is one of those "courtesy"
files. It doesn't necessarily stop any well-determined robot or
crawler, but the 'good guys' will usually respect a robots.txt file.
It also keeps your web stats from showing a non-existent robots.txt
file when it searches for it.
Your robots.txt has a first line which is a comment and begins with:
"# Allow all"
There has been a lot of discussion regarding whether that first line
comment is effect, and since it is a comment, it is certainly
unnecessary.
A good rule of thumb is "if you don't need it, don't use it". I'd get
rid of that first line and just leave the bottom two lines. There is
some further discussion in the links at the bottom of the Search
Engine World page. There's no agreement about whether or not it is
useful, but there is agreement it's not needed.
- http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/robotcheck.cgi
Since you have a perfectly good robots.txt on the server, I would
eliminate the robots.txt tag from each of your pages as well.
3. index.html (main/home page
===============================
As I was exploring the site, I had a very interesting occurrence when
I tried to go 'home' ... I got some code that ran for minutes without
producing anything and then my browser froze. I found I was looking
for index.html, while your home page is index.htm (without the l). I
wish I could tell me where it was trying to go, but as I said, it
froze my browser.
My advice on that is ... change your main page to index.html. The
priority of html protocol is that usually the browsers look for html,
then htm, and you might as well send them to what they expect to find
- it also saves your visitors from having something similar happen to
them.
[Note: the above recommendation is more personal than anything else. I
did NOT expect to have that happen and thought I should mention it.]
3. Accessibility
----------------
Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. 794
and 794d, set forth the minimum government standards for
accessibility.
Among these standards are such items as ALT and TITLE tags (as
discussed above), and website design which will enable those with
special needs to be able to access and understand your web site.
You might want to run each page of your site through Bobby, which will
give you a full context report of any portions of your site which do
not meet the minimum standards. If you make all the corrections
suggested, it will greatly enhance any search engine's ability to
crawl your website as well.
The Bobby analysis page can be found here:
- http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp
=============================
About those search terms
=============================
No matter how you look at it, that is a powerful lot of competition
for the terms you want your site to be found under.
I would really suggest spending some time at Wordtracker
-http://www.wordtracker.com - to seek out all the related phrases you
can, then write copy based around the best, most relevant terms.
Include those words in your Title tags and within the content of your
website accordingly. That will certainly help.
If nothing else, you'll get an idea of what search terms they are
really using when it comes to Park City and real estate.
=============================
Submitting to Search Engines
=============================
After you have established some links from relevant sites and worked
on the HTML to make the site more search-engine friendly, you may want
to submit to the important search engines and directories.
Google recommends, " ... you may want to consider submitting your site
to either or both of these directories. You can submit to Yahoo! by
visiting http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/. You can submit your site
to Netscape's Open Directory Project (DMOZ) by visiting www.dmoz.org.
Once your site is included in either of these directories, Google will
often index your site within six to eight weeks."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/1.html#B2
For DMOZ.org, you will want to dig down deep enough to get where you
more appropriately should be.
Some search engines gather their own listings for the main results
they display. For example, Google crawls the web itself for the main
results it shows.
Other search engines use third-party search providers for their
results. For instance, the main search results at AOL come from
Google's crawler-based listings, rather than from work inside AOL.
Below are the top search engines as determined by Nielsen Net Ratings:
- http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/
* Google -
- ://www.google.com/addurl.html
* DMOZ -
- http://www.dmoz.com/
* All The Web -
- http://www.alltheweb.com/help/webmaster/submit_site.html
* Hotbot & Lycos InSite (requires registration)
- http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/
* Yahoo! -
- http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/
* Teoma -
- http://www.teoma.com/
MSN's search submit is located here:
- http://search.msn.com/
which takes you to LookSmart, a "for-pay" listing, and can be found
here:
- http://listings.looksmart.com/?synd=zdd&sid=prt100933&chan=zddresults
If you are listed on other important engines, it is pretty certain you
will also be listed on MSN.com, or you can use the LookSmart
submission.
===============================
Other Sources of Information
===============================
There is good information from many of the top search engine
optimization experts, such as
* Detlev Johnson, Search Engine Guide
- http://www.searchengineguide.com/detlev/
* Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch
- http://www.searchenginewatch.com/
* Jill Whalen, High Rankings
- http://www.highrankings.com/
* Shari Thurow, Web Pro News (and quoted all over the Internet)
- www.webpronews.com/
who all have columns or newsletters to which you can subscribe and
keep abreast of the best way to use good content for better
positioning in search engine results.
In addition, Webmaster World - http://www.webmasterworld.com/ - has
discussion boards on most of the search engines. While some of the
discussions are anecdotal and/or questions for information, there is
usually enough discussion to keep abreast of what seems to be
happening.
There is an entire section devoted to Google at:
- http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/
It never hurts to keep track among these discussions, but remember,
trying to optimize for search engines only is like trying to hit a
moving target. You'll notice among the more experienced contributors
to the discussions - plus the SEO experts listed above - that there
really is no substitute for content, relevant links and good HTML.
Disclaimer
============
This is just a reminder that Google Answers Researchers are
independent contractors and not employees of Google. We have no inside
track on Google's closely-guarded algorithms. The closest you may come
to an 'official' word from Google is when GoogleGuy posts to the
discussions at Webmaster World. The information listed here is
generally acknowledged to be the best practices for good SERPs and
PageRank.
Search Terms
==============
In addition to the searches listed above, I relied on bookmarks and
other resources used on a daily basis.
It will take a bit of work, but working on the design, supplying rich
content, and establishing important links to your site will help your
site's visibility.
As a rule, I would suggest a search term or two you might work into
the text, and this would seem appropriate, since I have a branch
office in Salt Lake City just off 33rd South. But I am stumped on what
to recommend to help get your site listed and noticed among some of
the other listings there - and some of them aren't even in Utah!
Good luck and best wishes,
Serenata
Google Answers Researcher |
