Despite the fact that I rarely update my blog, the template is horrible (about 50% done with integration to my main site design) and I have very few posts on it, since I set it up it has become my number one entry point, in fact, my post about you is so far number three. While people rarely find my main content through google (thus far, I think it will change within the next couple of months) people are finding my blog through google. This leads me to believe that google must place some level of importance on it over my main site.

Why is that? Everyone keeps telling me I need a blog, and I don't really see much value to having one? Is it the feedback and sense of community you can build through comments? The informal nature of a post? Or something else I'm not thinking of?

In Datagg's particular case, the idea of using a blog for information purposes promotes goodwill and is a lot easier to get people to sign up, post, and become customers. Blogs used for shameless plugs look tacky.

I see Vasity got banned.

Originally Posted by vangogh

The blog looks good, though I would add a more prominent link for it, preferably in the main navigation just like the articles. It's hard to find now and I think most people visiting the site will miss it.

It sounds like everything you're doing is fine. One thing to know about anchor text is you want to vary it some. If all of your anchor text pointing to a page is exactly the same it will eventually throw up a red flag. Vary the text around a common keyword theme.

By the way you inspired a post on my blog the other day.

Thank you. say I have the word chemise in a article 12 times, how many times should i anchor that? Before its spam?

What a safe number of times to anchor a keyword or phrase that to the intended section.?


Thanks im so glad you gave it the thumbs up.

I think you may have paid too much attention to Vasity's talk of anchor text while he was here.

I think you know links into your site are important. The clickable text of a link is anchor text and that text is looked at when determining where a page will rank. So if you linked the word chemise and pointed it to a page it would likely improve that page's chances of ranking for the work chemise.

However if all too high a percentage of your links pointing to a page are using the same keywords it might set of a spam flag. It's not natural that every link pointing into a page would use the exact same anchor text.

In regards to keywords you also need to think beyond a single word. A single keyword will have more competition and while in the case of chemise it might be safe to assume they searcher is looking for something lingerie related that's no always the case with single words. Even with chemise you can't assume that everyone searching the word is looking to buy anything.

The article you have mentions the word chemise 12 times. I assume you want to link that article to a page selling chemise. You really don't need more than one link for that. Maybe you link it twice. Once at the top of the page and once at the bottom of the page.

Your goal isn't to try to use ever mention of a potential keyword as a link. As a human being looking at your page if I saw the same exact word or phrase linked 12 times to the same page it would tell me you were trying to manipulate something. There's no reason you would need to do that. While I can't tell you definitively how a search engine algorithm would see those 12 links I get the feeling they would see it the same way as me.

You can over optimize a page. That won't help you with search engines and it won't help you with people. Write your content naturally with the idea that a human being is reading it. Keep the main phrases you'd like the page to rank well for in the back of your mind while writing. When it makes sense to use them do, but don't try to sneak them in just for the sake of getting them in.

Same for when you link. When it makes sense to add a link d so. And sure pick the appropriate phrases that include your keywords, but don't overlink and don't always use the same exact words.

Also anchor text likely plays a larger role in external pages linking back to yours. It probably has less impact when used on internal pages of your site.

Originally Posted by vangogh

I think you may have paid too much attention to Vasity's talk of anchor text while he was here.

I think you know links into your site are important. The clickable text of a link is anchor text and that text is looked at when determining where a page will rank. So if you linked the word chemise and pointed it to a page it would likely improve that page's chances of ranking for the work chemise.

However if all too high a percentage of your links pointing to a page are using the same keywords it might set of a spam flag. It's not natural that every link pointing into a page would use the exact same anchor text.

In regards to keywords you also need to think beyond a single word. A single keyword will have more competition and while in the case of chemise it might be safe to assume they searcher is looking for something lingerie related that's no always the case with single words. Even with chemise you can't assume that everyone searching the word is looking to buy anything.

The article you have mentions the word chemise 12 times. I assume you want to link that article to a page selling chemise. You really don't need more than one link for that. Maybe you link it twice. Once at the top of the page and once at the bottom of the page.

Your goal isn't to try to use ever mention of a potential keyword as a link. As a human being looking at your page if I saw the same exact word or phrase linked 12 times to the same page it would tell me you were trying to manipulate something. There's no reason you would need to do that. While I can't tell you definitively how a search engine algorithm would see those 12 links I get the feeling they would see it the same way as me.

You can over optimize a page. That won't help you with search engines and it won't help you with people. Write your content naturally with the idea that a human being is reading it. Keep the main phrases you'd like the page to rank well for in the back of your mind while writing. When it makes sense to use them do, but don't try to sneak them in just for the sake of getting them in.

Same for when you link. When it makes sense to add a link d so. And sure pick the appropriate phrases that include your keywords, but don't overlink and don't always use the same exact words.

Also anchor text likely plays a larger role in external pages linking back to yours. It probably has less impact when used on internal pages of your site.

Thank you... I will tone down on the anchor %'s for the same phrases.

As always, thank you so very much

I'm glad to help. Remember that your first goal with your site is to make your visitors happy. All the traffic in the world is meaningless if your site doesn't perform well.

That's not to say you shouldn't be optimizing the site. There's a lot every site can and should do. I just don't want to see you get caught in the trap in thinking every single work or line of code needs to be written solely for a search engine.

Search engines are in the end looking to present the best and most relevant result to a given query. (Ok they probably have their own additional motivations too that go beyond their users). if you think of it as trying to be the best result to the query 'chemise' you have a better chance being that top result than if you try to manipulate how a search engine might see the page.

Originally Posted by vangogh

I'm glad to help. Remember that your first goal with your site is to make your visitors happy. All the traffic in the world is meaningless if your site doesn't perform well.

That's not to say you shouldn't be optimizing the site. There's a lot every site can and should do. I just don't want to see you get caught in the trap in thinking every single work or line of code needs to be written solely for a search engine.

Search engines are in the end looking to present the best and most relevant result to a given query. (Ok they probably have their own additional motivations too that go beyond their users). if you think of it as trying to be the best result to the query 'chemise' you have a better chance being that top result than if you try to manipulate how a search engine might see the page.

Brah, is there a huge difference in the link structure. Tight now by default, wordpress uses ?ID

i can convert it to another type. I did this for my dynamic urls for Girlfriends Lingerie, but should i do something similar to the blog, or doesn't it matter.

Here are the standard setting it woudl allow me to do via the admin panel

Default
» /lingerie/?p=123
Date and name based
» /lingerie/2007/07/06/sample-post/
Numeric
» /lingerie/archives/123
Custom, specify below

Also, I downloaded a plugin for the blog to do a sitemap.xml on the fly. i allready registered it with google. if you have the time, could you take a brief look at it and make sure its ok . Dont want to do anything at tthis stage to mess things up.

The url to that is http://www.girlfriendslingerie.com/lingerie/sitemap.xml

Thanks brah...

Originally Posted by vangogh

I think you may have paid too much attention to Vasity's talk of anchor text while he was here.

I was about to write the same thing. You can't "anchor" the text that's on the page you want to optimize. I mean, I guess you could <a href=ThisPage.hml>lingerie</a>, or even maybe href=#, but I don't think that would actually help, and it'd be a pain to click on.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Even with chemise you can't assume that everyone searching the word is looking to buy anything.

My wife has some chemise stuff. She found the answer before there was such a thing as Google, but at first she didn't know if it had to be dry cleaned, or if it can just go through the wash like everything else. Case in point.

I thought chemise was French for sweater.

Inh, what do I know?

Datagg: you're getting there slowly. The lingerie articles are a little more apparent. You've got a lot more work to go, though.

Im just about ready to rip my hair out...As mentioned , got a plugin for wordpress to do a site map ...Put it up last night, today google has indexed soem of it, and its in supplemental... take a look

site:www.girlfriendslingerie.com/lingerie

I dunno, perhaps i shouldn't even have a site map for the blog...when registered in google it acts like its the same thing as the main domain..... yet reside in a different folder.....

Ive just about had all I can take....every step, seeems like is just another slap in the face from the big bad G

Dan you do want to use permalinks. The date option is pretty common. WordPress will then generate your .htaccess file so the links are redirected properly. If your .htaccess file isn't writable or the folder it's in isn't writable then you'll have to copy the code WordPress gives you and create the file or modify the one you have if you have one.

I think that's the one situation where you can make the change without having to do anything further. If you switched from the date option to the number option I think you'd need to map the old URLs to the new ones and add a lot more to .htaccess, but I think on the first use of permalinks you'd be fine.

I've never created an XML sitemap to submit to search engines. Usually an html sitemap page you create on your site is enough to do the same thing. I think it's fine to submit one, though I have seen mixed opinion on how useful they are. I've seen people think they're great and I've seen others think you should avoid them at all cost. My guess is the truth lies somewhere in between.

Submitting the sitemap wasn't going to change anything as far as the supplemental index was concerned. The sitemap will just make Google aware of pages they might not have been able to find because of coding issues on your site.

I'm pretty sure the reason your pages are supplemental is not enough incoming links for the number of pages on the site.

Yahoo is showing close to 2,000 pages on the site with a total of 863 links into the site. Of those 863 links 684 are pointing to the home page, meaning Yahoo only sees 179 links pointing to close to 2,000 pages. I'm using Yahoo by the way because Google doesn't really show much link data.

Think about what the ratio of links to pages says. It says here's a pretty big site that not many people think is worth linking to. So from Google's perspective they figure if the pages on the site aren't all that important then they don't really need to keep it in the main index.

You are going to need more links flowing into the site to give your site more authority in the eyes of Google. As you do some of your pages will start to come out of the supplemental index. And then you can redistribute the value of those links (the link juice) so it flows to the pages you most want to rank well.

On the other side you could also tell Google not to index a lot of your pages. That will also improve the link/pages ratio and you'll find some of your pages moving out of supplemental and into the main index.

Not every page needs to rank well. For example having a privacy policy page rank well isn't going to bring many customers.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Dan you do want to use permalinks. The date option is pretty common. WordPress will then generate your .htaccess file so the links are redirected properly. If your .htaccess file isn't writable or the folder it's in isn't writable then you'll have to copy the code WordPress gives you and create the file or modify the one you have if you have one.

I think that's the one situation where you can make the change without having to do anything further. If you switched from the date option to the number option I think you'd need to map the old URLs to the new ones and add a lot more to .htaccess, but I think on the first use of permalinks you'd be fine.

I've never created an XML sitemap to submit to search engines. Usually an html sitemap page you create on your site is enough to do the same thing. I think it's fine to submit one, though I have seen mixed opinion on how useful they are. I've seen people think they're great and I've seen others think you should avoid them at all cost. My guess is the truth lies somewhere in between.

Submitting the sitemap wasn't going to change anything as far as the supplemental index was concerned. The sitemap will just make Google aware of pages they might not have been able to find because of coding issues on your site.

I'm pretty sure the reason your pages are supplemental is not enough incoming links for the number of pages on the site.

Yahoo is showing close to 2,000 pages on the site with a total of 863 links into the site. Of those 863 links 684 are pointing to the home page, meaning Yahoo only sees 179 links pointing to close to 2,000 pages. I'm using Yahoo by the way because Google doesn't really show much link data.

Think about what the ratio of links to pages says. It says here's a pretty big site that not many people think is worth linking to. So from Google's perspective they figure if the pages on the site aren't all that important then they don't really need to keep it in the main index.

You are going to need more links flowing into the site to give your site more authority in the eyes of Google. As you do some of your pages will start to come out of the supplemental index. And then you can redistribute the value of those links (the link juice) so it flows to the pages you most want to rank well.

On the other side you could also tell Google not to index a lot of your pages. That will also improve the link/pages ratio and you'll find some of your pages moving out of supplemental and into the main index.

Not every page needs to rank well. For example having a privacy policy page rank well isn't going to bring many customers.

Thank you brah. Didnt think of that as far as excluding non important sites. I shall start to exclude those pages.

So in your opinion, do you think i should get rid of the blog sitemap?

I will also, switch to the date format you mentioned above.

again, thank you so much... this is quickly becoming my bible of my to do list.

I wish I could tell you what to do with the blog sitemap. Like I said I've never used one to submit to search engines so I can't really tell you what will happen. I don't think you needed it though since you're problem wasn't that the pages weren't getting indexed. It was that they weren't going into the main index.

If Google couldn't crawl the site then submitting the sitemap could help, but since they seem to be able to crawl it I'm not sure it's going to do much for you.

I've never submitted a sitemap, or even seen one, and seem to do alright in the search positioning. I have plenty of room for improvement, but I don't see how a sitemap will help in that department. It's really just another way of publishing a table of contents, and really I don't think it's useful unless, say, your navigation was done purely in Flash or client script.

When Steve talks about links, think of it this way. You could tell Google ( with an xml sitemap ) that all 2,000 of your pages are wonderful. With links from other sources, you have someone else, theoretically a non-biased third party, saying your page is worth looking at.

Change your signature. You already have enough, or too many % wise, pointing to your domain itself. Change that one to point at the most important page you've got that doesn't have any incoming links. If your only trying to pull a URL back into the main index, the anchor text doesn't matter at all.

Not changing it could even have a benefit; this search gives me two of the top ten. It's not something anyone actually queries, and it's not very competitive. Sexy Lingerie is going to have a lot more competition, and it's generally better to make the anchor text reflect what someone is going to find on the other end of the link. But in some cases, you might want to keep the "child result" thing in mind, when the same phrase applies to more than one of your pages.

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

I've never submitted a sitemap, or even seen one, and seem to do alright in the search positioning. I have plenty of room for improvement, but I don't see how a sitemap will help in that department. It's really just another way of publishing a table of contents, and really I don't think it's useful unless, say, your navigation was done purely in Flash or client script.

When Steve talks about links, think of it this way. You could tell Google ( with an xml sitemap ) that all 2,000 of your pages are wonderful. With links from other sources, you have someone else, theoretically a non-biased third party, saying your page is worth looking at.

Change your signature. You already have enough, or too many % wise, pointing to your domain itself. Change that one to point at the most important page you've got that doesn't have any incoming links. If your only trying to pull a URL back into the main index, the anchor text doesn't matter at all.

You mean the main blogs title to point to something other than main url and into something more inward?

Not changing it could even have a benefit; this search gives me two of the top ten. It's not something anyone actually queries, and it's not very competitive. Sexy Lingerie is going to have a lot more competition, and it's generally better to make the anchor text reflect what someone is going to find on the other end of the link. But in some cases, you might want to keep the "child result" thing in mind, when the same phrase applies to more than one of your pages.

Im sorry this confused me. You say not to change it? So say sexy lingerie is listed 4 times in a article. Should I link 1 of them to the main "Sexy Lingerie" category, then the others to various parts within that category. I was thinking that the name of the anchor, would represent the section it was mentioning. Is this not correct? For example, if the article says "Sexy Lingerie" would it be prudent to point it to a product in the "sexy lingerie category" like a babydoll? Or would a "Baby doll" mention in the article be pointed to only baby dolls?

Wow, i hope that makes sense, im unsure if it does to even me.lol/

Thank you...and sorry for the parts i quite don't understand.

Dan I think you might be trying to overthink some of this. Here's what I would probably do.

Say you're writing a blog post and you mention the words 'sexy lingerie' I would link that to your main sexy lingerie category page since that's likely the page you are targeting for that phrase. I wouldn't worry about any other mentions of the phrase 'sexy lingerie' on that page.

You don't need to link to the same page over and over again from the same page. Also you don't want to use the anchor text 'sexy lingerie' to point to any other pages since that's diluting the effectiveness of the phrase. If you linked all foru mentions of 'sexy lingerie' each to different pages you're telling a search engine you think all four pages are equal candidates for that phrase.

If later on the same page you happened to mention 'baby dolls' then you could link 'baby dolls' to your page on 'baby dolls'

You also want to mix it up. You don't want every link pointing to your baby dolls page to use 'baby dolls' as anchor text. Add an extra word sometimes and vary that word.

Ultimately what you're trying to do is write naturally and add links where it makes sense to add them. If you happen to be writing a post about baby dolls then sure link to a page you want to rank for that phrase and try to pick some text that contains those words for the anchor text. At the same time if you don't add a link don't worry too much about it.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Dan I think you might be trying to overthink some of this. Here's what I would probably do.

Say you're writing a blog post and you mention the words 'sexy lingerie' I would link that to your main sexy lingerie category page since that's likely the page you are targeting for that phrase. I wouldn't worry about any other mentions of the phrase 'sexy lingerie' on that page.

You don't need to link to the same page over and over again from the same page. Also you don't want to use the anchor text 'sexy lingerie' to point to any other pages since that's diluting the effectiveness of the phrase. If you linked all foru mentions of 'sexy lingerie' each to different pages you're telling a search engine you think all four pages are equal candidates for that phrase.

If later on the same page you happened to mention 'baby dolls' then you could link 'baby dolls' to your page on 'baby dolls'

You also want to mix it up. You don't want every link pointing to your baby dolls page to use 'baby dolls' as anchor text. Add an extra word sometimes and vary that word.

Ultimately what you're trying to do is write naturally and add links where it makes sense to add them. If you happen to be writing a post about baby dolls then sure link to a page you want to rank for that phrase and try to pick some text that contains those words for the anchor text. At the same time if you don't add a link don't worry too much about it.

Sounds great thank you..

Guys question. I just got today a comment to one of my articles..... And i was wondering if i should approve these type of comments. It is basically a link for there site(which is a lingerie site), tossing out there description.

In the past I didn't allow comments due to huge amounts of spam. But you yall said to allow them. So I got some good plugins to monitor the situation so that really isn't a concern anymore.

Anyways, I was just wondering what kind of comments, and especially competitor sites i should approve.

Thanks again

In general I tend to think comments on a blog are like people in a restaurant. If the places empty, you've got to wonder why. So in general you want them, I would guess.

But not that specific one. Not because it's about the competition, but because it's spam.

Approve those comments which help the blog and will help you in turn.

Spam comments and competitor comments generally don't do that.

I know that's glib advice, but it really is that simple.