SEO Tycoon

#1 (permalink)

Hi,

I hope you can help a newbie in webmastering, as I have just made a web site and need some help please.

I finished my site and have uploaded it to my web server (using coreftp lite in sftp mode), and it is on the internet (pardon my not wanting to share yet, but I think it needs some alterations before I would want to show it to experienced people like you).

Anyway, after uploading my web site and asking google to crawl it, I have realised it needs to get onto google with search terms that are likely to get it to near the first page. I have researched it a bit and originally thought I need to add meta tags to each page, but have been told that this is not required for google ??? I am confused about that, as I thought you input that which you think your client base would type, and then if typed into google, it would look at those meta tags and match them up. I realise it is more complicated than my limited knowledge understands, but I still thought this was pretty much what meta tags are for.

Secondly, I think I need a site map for google, and have looked at google webmaster tools where they suggested a few third party tools for this, but do not know which is best to use. I made the web site using wysiwyg web builder version 8, and this has a facility to make a site map automatically. Does it make much diffrence which one I use ?

I should explain at this point that I do not know how to write html, hence the use of a wysiwyg type software.

Thirdly, I have enabled hotlink protection at the server for my images (as I am on a shared server with a bandwidth limit), and I would like to know if this would preclude google showing those images in the search results, images page ?

Should I rename all my images to be recognisable names that describe the image (at the moments they are just numbers), again, for google to index them better, or does this not matter.

My last question is about managing the web site; when I want to make changes, do I just alter the original on my computer then upload the entire web site again, and does that then overwrite the existing web site in the server (obviously presuming that the web site page file names are all the same), just as it would do in windows if you made another file of the same name where it would ask if you want to overwrite it ?

I am nervous about how to tackle the above alteration when I know what to do, which is why I am asking about site management.

I tried to ask these questions on the forum for the software as I thought they would know the answers to some of these questions, however, they did not help much, hence my asking here.

If you could offer any advice at all it would be very much appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

#2 (permalink)

Nope search engines haven't used meta keywords for the past TEN years. Good quality, unique CONTENT is what USERS want, and oddly enough that is EXACTLY what search engines like to find as well.


Nope, XML site maps are NOT necessary and are not especially useful.


As said on may occasions you NEED to know HTML to put right what the WYSIAWYMG messes it up.

No, No and Yes it doesn't matter.

Yes, Yes and yes it would.

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#3 (permalink)

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer every one of my questions; It's really very much appreciated.

Obviously I need to do a lot more research, as some of my ideas on these matters seem to be all wrong.

On the subject of what you said about content where you said :-

"Good quality, unique CONTENT is what USERS want, and oddly enough that is EXACTLY what search engines like to find as well."

I do not understand how this works, when the site in question is a business web site such as mine. I do not understand what original content would have to do with product selling ? I have written about our commitment to our customers satisfaction, and the types of things that are for sale on the front page, and there is obviously a description of each item next to each item for sale, but other than that, what sort of content can I add ?

If I search for an item I want to buy using Google, then I get results based on the item I am looking for, so I don't understand how I am supposed to get my items to come up in a search in that way. Can you explain how this all works as I am quite confused ?

Thank you very much.

#4 (permalink)

Quite simply, search engines find a site and follow the links to index each page. (That's partly why site maps used to be liked - now just make sure you don't have pages that aren't linked to somewhere on the site "orphan pages".)

The search engines evaluate a page based mainly on content as to what the page is about. They also compare content with pages from other sites (Google especially does this) and will rate pages lower if they think they are duplicate content. Do note: "pages", not "site".

The rating according to meta tag was discontinued as everyone got wise to it and tried stuffing keywords in the tag.

You can manipulate headings and text on a page to include phrases that are commonly searched for. The aim is to rank higher than other pages for "little blue widgets with curly bits" if that's a product of yours. Many people overdo this and use the keyords (the phrase) clumsily, giving a page that doesn't read well to visitors. Additionally, they can overuse the keywords - "keyword stuffing" and the likes of Google will downgrade their rating.

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