Hi Seamus39 ~
I can understand your puzzlement over the seemingly inconsistent
search engine results placement (SERPs) - I know those roller coaster
results can get pretty frustrating at times.
You asked, "I'm wondering if this pattern is going to continue and
why?" Please remember that Google Answers Researchers are independent
contractors. We are not employees of Google, and we do not have any
insider information about Google's closely-guarded search algorithms.
Google is the only one who can answer that with any degree of
certainty, and they're not going to explain their methods and
algorithms beyond what they explain in "How does Google rank pages?
The basics":
"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
details. Due to the nature of our business and our
interest in protecting the integrity of our search
results, this is the only information we make available
to the public about our ranking system."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html#A1
And it further explains its technology in "Our Search: Google
Technology":
"The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for
ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page
and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we
have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect
of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to provide
the basis for all of our web search tools."
and its PageRank in "PageRank Explained"
"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."
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank,
which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of
course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't
match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with
sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that
are both important and relevant to your search. Google
goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a
page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and
the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if
it's a good match for your query."
- ://www.google.com/technology/index.html
==============================
So Why Are Your SERPs
Bouncing Around Like That?
==============================
It is probably no consolation, but it isn't unusual for SERPs to shift
as you have noticed - and it seems to be happening with a great number
of people who are wondering the same thing.
Google explains the changes in their "Changes from one index to the
next":
"Each time we update our database of web page (about once
a month), our index shifts: we find new sites, we lose
some sites, and site rankings change. If your site was
dropped from Google and you have not made major changes
to it in the last month, we will likely pick it up again
in our next index..."
"You may want to check and see if the number of other
sites linking to your URL has decreased. This is the
single biggest factor in determining what sites are
indexed by Google, as we find most pages when our robots
crawl the web and jump from page to page via hyperlinks.
To find out who links to your site, use Google's link: tool."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#B1
Information on Google's link: tool can be found here:
- ://www.google.com/help/features.html#link
Other reasons could be that your site wasn't accessible to the Google
crawler (aka "Googlebot") when it tried to index your site or that
"other sites were found and assigned a higher rank"
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#B1
Others are noticing it, too. If you take a look at the Google News
discussion board on Webmaster World, there are numerous discussion
threads about what you are noticing:
* Really strange results
site fluctuating considerably in serps for past 3 months
- http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/16625.htm
* High Links-High On-Page Optimization--Low Rank
Re-Optimized and Dropped in Ranking
- http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/17354.htm
* Why does a PR '0' get top listings?
I can't work it out
- http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/17549.htm
So whatever is happening is no doubt related to the Google algorithms
refining themselves to produce what the searcher is looking for ...
the most 'relevant' sites for their search terms.
==============================
Page Rank for essayplus.com
==============================
Using the Google Toolbar, I see that www.essayplus.com has a PR of
3/10.
Searching for www.essayplus.com produces the following results:
"College Essay:Writing an effective admissions statement. . .
Berkeley and UCLA graduates will edit your college essay. ...
Google can show you the following information for this URL:
* Show Google's cache of www.essayplus.com
* Find web pages that are similar to www.essayplus.com
* Find web pages that link to www.essayplus.com
* Find web pages that contain the term "www.essayplus.com""
- ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=www.essayplus.com&btnG=Google+Search
Clicking on "find web pages that link to ..." gives one link
Clicking on "find web pages that contain the term ..." produces 37
results
This is usually because those sites under "find web pages that contain
the term ..." either have a PageRank themselves of less than 4 or they
are not using your full URL, that is: http://www.essayplus.com, but
some abbreviated form, such as http://essayplus.com. They both get to
your page, but for the time being, that seems to be why this is
happening.
It wouldn't hurt at all to establish some more relevant links to help
with your PageRank.
===========================
Establishing Links
===========================
Google's PageRank is based on the number of pages which link to your
site.
"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." (SEE Google's
" How Do I Get My Site Listed on Google? - 2. Submitting Your site")
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/1.html#A1
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, currently ranked as
the number one search engine is good rule 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
Notice both articles offer 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.
"Link Building Is Important", which discusses link building from A to
Z and also provides a good reference page with linking resources.
- http://www.linkingmatters.com/WhyLinkingIsImportant.html
The information contained in the above articles offer suggestions
which can be easily adapted for use on any website without resorting
to link farms. The differences in "good links" and those which may be
harmful are discussed, and the articles offer simple ways to get
started to the kind of linking search engines prefer.
=========================
Search Terms
=========================
You said, "In the first week of september my site ... was listed in
the top ten of the Google Index ..."
You didn't say which search term you were using, but let's say for the
sake of argument, you are using the term "college essay", which is in
your keyword metatag.
A search on "college essay" returns over 3 million results:
- ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=college+essay&btnG=Google+Search
Now ... think about what your visitors will "really" enter in that
search bar. My first guess is you're not sure, but I doubt that is the
term I would use to find help with writing my college essay.
You might want to spend a day with Wordtracker to see what the popular
terms for searching are and then work those words into the content on
your site. For the heck of it, I ran "college essay" through
Wordtracker, and got some of the following results, with "college
essay" not coming in first:
college
essay
editing
writing
essays
college essay
personal statements
application essay
admissions
help
essay editing
application
college application essays
university
With the kind of competition you're facing for some of the search
terms, any tool you can use to your advantage seems as if it would be
worth it.
=======================
About that HTML ~
=======================
Another suggestion which does really matter is to clean up your HTML.
For instance, you have an entire row devoid of anything but empty
cells. I understand that the reason for this might be spacing, but
there are better ways of achieving that without adding a row with 18
empty <td></td> tags.
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
the basics of 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. Make it easy to for the search
engines to get to the heart of your site and index it with relevant
text.
Google recommends:
"* 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."
[From Google's Webmaster Guidelines]
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
By paying attention to Google's Webmaster Information and Content
Guidelines, you can show up where you *should* be and that will no
doubt increase your PageRank.
=====================
Aesthetics
=====================
One other thing, Google recommends designing your page for your
Visitors. I had a great deal of difficulty reading the text on your
site. That's because you are using an uncommon font (Eurostile) that
not all your visitors will have installed on their own computers. As a
result, your visitors' browsers will use their default fonts, and I
promise it will NOT look as you want it to look.
Commonly installed (and usually found) sans-serif fonts are Verdana
and Arial for Windows-based systems and Helvetica for Mac-based. In
addition, you should at least name whether the substitute should be a
serif or sans-serif font.
You might also consider the length of the text lines. The human eye
can only comfortably follow a text line of about 440 pixels maximum.
After that, it is difficult to follow AND absorb the content. It has
to do with forcing neck and other muscles into play just to read the
text. You might want to take that into consideration for your
visitors. The point is to make it easy for them to visit and
ultimately use your site.
============================
Some Google Links
For Your Reference
============================
Here are some important links from Google's Webmaster Information and
Webmaster Guidelines. Although I've covered linking and content, you
should be familiar with the recommendations contained in these pages.
Webmasters who follow the guidelines and avoid Google's "Thou shalt
nots" usually have no problem getting listed.
* How Do I Get My Site Listed on Google?
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/1.html
* My Web Pages Are Not Currently Listed (a good 'primer'
on how and why Google works so well)
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html
* PageRank Information (covers both Google's PageRank and
SERPS)
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html
* Webmaster Guidelines (contains both the dos and don'ts)
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
* Google Facts & Fiction (can you buy your way to a
high ranking in Google?)
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html
* Search Engine Optimizers (some good advice on what to look
for if you're going to hire a Search Engine Optimizer)
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
* Frequently Asked Questions (pretty much what it says, but
definitely worth wading through)
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/faq.html
I am sure from your question that you are familiar with them, but it
never hurts to check back occasionally to see if anything important
has changed or been added.
=====================
Other Sources
of Information
=====================
There is also 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.
=====================
Summary
=====================
You wanted to know about your site's bouncing around in the search
engine results placement - is it likely to keep happening?
The answer is that only Google knows - but there are certain things
you CAN do to help keep a more consistent return. You need to combine
rich content that includes the terms under which you want to be found,
links TO your site from important *relevant* sites, and good HTML to
help ensure your site won't bounce around.
Google - and all search engines - wants to return *relevant* content.
If you want your site included, it is your responsibility to design
your site to deliver that in the best user-friendly and search
engine-friendly manner.
While this didn't answer you question, it should supply you with the
information you need to keep from bouncing around so badly, even if
your competition does!
Search terms -
In addition to the searches listed above, I relied on bookmarks and
other resources used on a daily basis.
Good luck and best wishes,
Serenata
Google Answers Researcher |
,
0 Comments
)