Before rating this Answer, if you have questions about the information
that I have presented, please post a Request for Clarification, and I
will be glad to see what I can do for you.
Regards,
aceresearcher |
Clarification of Answer by
aceresearcher-ga
on
26 May 2004 10:55 PDT
WHOOPS!
Here's the *whole* text of that Answer!
Greetings, friedi!
The home page for http://www.oph.de consists entirely of images.
This site *has* been visited by the Googlebot:
://www.google.com/search?q=www.oph.de
However, because your heading and menu consist of *pictures* of words,
rather than actual words, the Googlebot can not read them, and it does
not think that there is anything on this page. So instead of indexing
the rest of the site, it just quits and moves on to another site.
What's more, any visitor to this site may see only the picture (and
the picture of the words "Othmarschen Park Hamburg" which appears
above it). That's all I see when I first go to this site with my
browser window at *maximum*. I have to scroll down to get to the menu.
Many visitors will not notice the scroll bar, and they will think that
the site consists simply of a picture.
Here are my recommendations for you, to make your site more friendly
to the Googlebot so that it will do a better job of indexing the site:
1) Replace the current home page with a home page which contains a
much smaller version of the picture currently on the home page, and a
description of the property. The site is really broken down into
smaller pieces than it needs to be (or *should* be).
The home page is not only what visitors will see first when they come
to the site, it's what the Googlebot will index, and what it will use
as part of the determination of the site's Page Rank, so it's
**really** important that this page be done well.
The big picture on this page could perhaps be added under the pictures
on the "Objekt" page; then put a smaller version on this page with a
description of exactly what the property is, as well as the features
that make it desirable (it's okay to list here some of the same
information that appears in the "Lage" page paragraphs):
http://www.oph.de/index.html
In addition, I don't think that this site makes it immediately obvious
that these units are for purchase (rather than rental), so you will
want to make sure that the main page makes that clear.
with the following subpages as they are now:
- http://www.oph.de/Lage/Lage.html
- http://www.oph.de/Objekt/Objekt.html
- http://www.oph.de/Grundrisse/PS-Rollover/Grundrisse.html
- http://www.oph.de/Kontakt/Kontakt.html
and these two pages should be eliminated:
The contents of this page should be incorporated into the description
on the home page:
- http://www.oph.de/Ausstattung/Ausstattung.html
The contents of this page should be placed at the bottom of the home page:
- http://www.oph.de/Impressum/Impressum.html
2) Make the words at the top of the page ("Othmarschen Park Hamburg")
and in the menu *text*, rather than images.
3) Change the listings of the area measurements to text, not images:
http://www.oph.de/Grundrisse/Bilder/TextI.jpg
http://www.oph.de/Grundrisse/Bilder/TextP.jpg
http://www.oph.de/Grundrisse/Bilder/TextM.jpg
http://www.oph.de/Grundrisse/Bilder/TextN.jpg
4) Use "alt" tags to attach descriptive words or phrases to *all* of
the images, for example:
<img src="../OPH/GarbeLogo.gif" alt="Garbe Unternehmensgruppe"
width="220" height="117" border="0">
5) Get the site listed in directories of similar sites, such as:
http://dmoz.org/World/Deutsch/Regional/Europa/Deutschland/Hamburg/Bezirke/Altona/Wirtschaft/Immobilien
(*Don't* submit to DMOZ until changes are made and tested!)
It would be even more helpful if you can get the sites of city
businesses to link to www.oph.de .
If you first make these changes, *then* resubmit the site to be
crawled by the Googlebot at:
://www.google.com/addurl.html
I think you will find that the site has much better luck in getting
indexed by Google.
Before rating this Answer, if you have questions about the information
that I have presented, please post a Request for Clarification, and I
will be glad to see what I can do for you.
Regards,
aceresearcher
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
friedi-ga
on
27 May 2004 08:34 PDT
Hello aceresearcher.
First of all: thank you very much for your very detailed and helpful
answer (I never expected that from this service)!
When I decided to use pictures rather than text, I had assumed that
the googlebot would look mostly into the meta-data, so I put all of
the pertinent keywords there (<META NAME="keywords"
content="Eigentumswohnung, Wohnungseigentum, Hamburg, ....). Doesn`t
that work anymore?
The problem is that the cusomer is very satisfied with the site
(except that Google does not find it), so I would rather not change
the layout. Is there another way to include invisible text to the
homepage which is inspected by the bot???
Best regards
Friedi
|
Clarification of Answer by
aceresearcher-ga
on
27 May 2004 09:09 PDT
Friedi,
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an always-moving target. There are
techie webmasters who spend all their time tweaking web pages and
analyzing the resulting changes in Page Rank and Search Results
Ranking, in an attempt to decipher the Googlebot's secret complex
algorithms. In the meantime, the Google techies are continually
tweeking the Googlebot's complex algorithms to defeat tricks thought
up by webmasters of pages with little useful content, while still
assigning importance to sites with genuine content.
The truth is that SEO as it was known a year ago is dead. With the
"Florida" update, Google introduced radical changes to their
algorithm, and the Googlebot now crawls the web continuously rather
than updating once every 1-2 months.
One of the major changes includes the handling <meta> tags. While
Google and other search engines may still look at these as a kind of
double-check verification for the text content on a site, because
webmasters were stuffing these tags with loads of unrelated words in
an effort to obtain better Search Results Ranking, the Googlebot (and
many other search engines) no longer indexes <meta> tags as a part of
a website's content.
Another change is the refinement of the Googlebot's techniques for
detecting invisible text and keyword stacking. It is believed that the
use of these little cheats can get sites removed from the index.
Stacking a page with a lot of miscellaneous keywords at the bottom, or
using a font size=0 or font color="clear" are **big** no-nos.
In real estate, the bottom line is "location, location, location".
With Google, it's "content, content, content". Concentrate on doing a
good job with this -- for instance, add pages with pictures and
information regarding nearby shops and attractions -- because it is
what will ultimately determine a page's importance as seen by the
Googlebot.
(Be sure that any content you add is original, not copied from another
site. To save time but avoid copyright infringement, you can also pay
or get permission to use someone else's content, but be aware that the
Googlebot algorithms also include formulas for detecting sites with
duplicate content.)
With a little effort and judicious use of fonts (if you're going to
use special ones, I recommend embedding them so that viewers who do
not have those fonts resident on their computer will still see the web
pages as they were designed), this site can be redesigned to use text
instead of pictures of text -- and still look very much the same.
But really, that image-only "doorway" page has *got* to go.
Explain to the Customer what I told you -- that design considerations
for best Search Engine Ranking have changed radically in the last year
or so, and that if their site doesn't change as well, they'll be left
behind -- and I think you'll find that they are willing to agree to
modifications to their site.
Remember, too, that if you publicize yourself as a "Website Developer"
to current and potential clients, a pleasing layout is only half of
your responsibility. The other half is to become educated about -- and
stay current with -- the things that make a website friendly to Search
Engines, and to use those things in developing new websites **and in
maintaining old websites.**
While there is a fee to belong to WebMasterWorld and SearchEngineWorld
(the two sites are affiliated), it is quite reasonable and well worth
the money to purchase a membership and visit those sites frequently to
update your knowledge and keep it current.
http://www.webmasterworld.com
http://www.searchengineworld.com
Best Wishes,
ace
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