Hi there,
I doubt that there is anything wrong with your site and its ranking in
Google search results, but there are a number of things that you can
do to improve the situation.
GoogleBot
---------
Although Google is constantly evolving, the visiting cycle of the
GoogleBot has remained fairly consistent: once a month.
The following cycle reflects how long it takes for a new link or
content to show up in search results (the dates are made up, as an
example only):
Less than one month to appear:
May 1 - Google updates index
May 1 - May 28 - Googlebot crawls the web and records what it finds
May 6 - You create a new webpage
May 12 - GoogleBot visits your site
May 30 - Google updates their index with the new page included
More than one month to appear:
May 1 - Google updates index
May 1 - May 28 - Googlebot crawls the web and records what it finds
May 6 - GoogleBot visits your site
May 12 - You create a new webpage
May 30 - Google updates their index with the new information from GoogleBot
June 1 - June 28 - Googlebot crawls the web and records what it finds
June 11 - GoogleBot visits your site, and sees the new page
June 30 - Google updates their index with the new page included
Some sites get visited every second day by the FreshBot, if they are
deemed worthy, but they are an exception.
I use a free service that lets me know exactly when each robot visits,
and I recommend it wholeheartedly:
Crawler Alert
http://www.crawler-alert.com
Google's index was updated a couple of weeks ago. It did not include
the 3 new pages your site has. If they are more than 2 weeks old,
expect to see them in the next update, which could occur in the middle
of March, but you never know.
Ranking
-------
In the last few months Google have made their most radical changes to
search results ever. A lot webmasters saw their sites plummet from the
top ten to worse than #1000. Today I found that your ranking was:
jazz band for wedding - #22
jazz band - not top 30
jazz band for wedding party - #1
party band for wedding - not top 30
Regardless of your prior ranking, this is still pretty good. There are
many, many sites out there that would be a better match for "jazz
band" than your site. Your site is unlikely to be relevant to anyone
outside of the UK, for example. Even within the UK, there will be lots
of jazz bands or related businesses with websites.
Relevance aside, there are basic search engine optimization techniques
that can help your site to rank better...
META Keywords and Description
-----------------------------
Forget about META keywords, they have been abused by webmasters for
years, and are all but ignored by good search engines. Leave them as
they are, and forget about them.
The META description is worthwhile. It can appear in search results,
and some directories will use it instead of writing their own
description. Make it a couple of sentences long, accurate &
descriptive of the content of the page. Try and write a different
description for each page of your site, and make the description
keyword-rich while still being readable and making sense.
Page Title
----------
This is the most under-rated aspect of page design and SEO. Good
search engines like Google give a lot of weight to a page's title.
This is because, along with the domain name and file name, it is
visible to the public, and cannot contain many words. It is your
one-off chance to describe your site succinctly.
The closer your title fits a search query, the better it will rank.
Many webmasters make the mistake of jamming their title with keywords.
Not only is it ugly and useless for your visitors, it doesn't work as
well with Google.
Apart from search engines, titles are used when someone saves your
page as a bookmark/favorite, and the title is what someone sees in the
search results.
WEDDING MUSIC WEDDING PARTY JAZZ BAND FOR WEDDING SOUL BAND WEDDING
MUSIC AGENCY FRANK SINATRA
The above title is not going to attract many people to your site when
they see it in search engine results, nor will it inspire them when
they see it in their favorites folder.
- Try to keep each title to 2-4 words
- Make sure that the title reflects the content of the page
- Make sure the title phrase also appears somewhere on the page
- Use a different title for each page of your site
- Don't use all caps
For example, I would do the following for your home page:
TITLE: Jazz Bands for Weddings
IN THE PAGE TEXT SOMEWHERE: The agency specialises particularly in
jazz bands for weddings...
Content
-------
Quite simply, the more written content your site has, the more words
and phrases it has, and the higher the likelihood of your content
matching someone's search query. It is also possible that Google
determines that sites with more content are more likely to have useful
content that smaller sites.
If possible, make your site bigger. This page could become four pages:
http://www.jazznotjazz.co.uk/Bands_main.htm
Tell us more about each band. The same goes for venues. Each venue
could have its own page, with a photo (a photo of a jazz band at the
venue would be great) and a description.
Avoid unnecessary trickiness
----------------------------
On your homepage, the links at the bottom are very hard to see. Google
has a policy against this:
"Avoid hidden text or hidden links."
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
It is worthwhile reading all of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
The following is repeated throughout your site. Personally I quite
like it from an aesthetic point of view:
"Swing. Soul Band. Jazz Band. Jump Jive. Music for Wedding. Jazz for
Wedding. Party Band for Wedding. Jazz for Reception. Jazz for Cocktail
Party. Jazz for Book Launch. Jazz for Store Opening. Jazz for Party.
Cool Jazz. Dixieland Jazz. Swing. Jump Jive Motown. Stax. Commitments.
Blues Brothers. Party Band. Frank Sinatra. The Rat Pack..."
However Google's search algorithm may decide that the repetition is
excessive, and ignore those words. I suggest keeping it on your
homepage, and removing it from the other pages - optimization works
best when each page of your site has different content.
Get Links
---------
The power of Google is due to the importance it places on links.
Google counts links to a site as votes of usefulness and importance -
the more votes a page has, the higher it will rank.
Getting links is very difficult. Here are some tips:
- If you swap links, try not to do it very often. Less than 30% of
links pointing to your site should be reciprocal.
- Links from pages with a high PageRank are much more valuable to have.
- Sometimes if all the links pointing to your site use the same
wording, you can lose ranking. Where possible, make sure link text
varies
- Getting listed in Yahoo, Open Directory (well done), Looksmart and
Business.com can improve your ranking
If any of my answer is unclear, or if you have further questions on
this topic, just ask for a clarification and I'll get back to you.
Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga |
Clarification of Answer by
robertskelton-ga
on
03 Mar 2004 15:40 PST
Hi again,
1) The reasons you are ranking well for "Jazz band for wedding party" are:
- All the words are in the title
- All the words are in the page, near each other
- Your site's PageRank
Your page fulfils those criteria better than those ranked below you:
://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=jazz+band+for+wedding+party
I believe that the following page would rank better than yours if they
simply had the phrase "wedding party" in their page text. Proximity of
keywords is important:
http://www.cambridgejazz.co.uk/booking.htm
Regarding "jazz agency" - it's a great example of the power of having
keywords in your title. If you look for web pages that have "jazz
agency" in their title (as a phrase), there are very, very few for
Google to choose from:
://www.google.com/search?as_q=&num=30&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=jazz+agency&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=title&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=off
When you don't rank as well, it's simply because in general there are
other pages that meet the criteria better.
2) Meta Description is part of the HTML code, and not visible to
someone visiting your site. Its purpose is to succinctly describe the
content of the page. Some search engines and directories use it, but
it won't noticably affect your ranking at Google.
How to Create a Meta Description Tag for Search Engine Optimization
http://www.highrankings.com/metadescription.htm
3) Different bullet points on each page would work great. Some
repetition is fine, just not the same block of words on each page.
4) Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm. Factors that may
have caused your site to drop in ranking include:
- More opposition. With time more businesses are going online
- Opposition improving their websites
- Opposition getting more links pointing to their sites
- Sites linking to yours either disappearing or losing PageRank
- Google used to place much more emphasis on keywords within and
surrouding the text of links pointing to a page. If you had some links
to your site with your keywords in them, the value of those have
probably decreased
Nobody except for Google Engineers know the exact reasons, all the
rest of us can do is guess.
5) Every Search Engine Optimizer has a different opinion when it comes
to titles. Mine is based on running many websites and working as a
professional searcher. If you search for Blue Widgets, and there are
two pages that are exactly the same in every way, including incoming
links etc, but they have different titles:
Blue Widgets
Blue Widgets, Green Widgets, Yellow Widgets for Sale
... the shorter title will rank higher - because it more succinctly
fits the query. It also stands out more in the search results. If your
site consisted of just one page, then having many keywords in the
title might be the way to go. But the power of multiple pages is that
you can use each one to target a different keyword or phrase.
It is hard to gauge, because most optimizers cram the title full of
keywords, and because all the rest of their optimizing works, their
pages rank well.
(thanks for the 5 stars!)
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