As most of you will know getting good listings on google is not easy, especially if your site is new and there are hurdreds of other sites just like yours.

Google Really annoys something rotten My SERP`s should be higher for my targetted keywords but instead you get sites that have nothing to do your targetted keywords but have a forum post with your targetted keywords and blam they get ranked higher than you.

You get lots of people all saying different things on how to raise your SERP`s Im starting to believe they do not know what they are talking about, or maybe their keywords do not have as much competition as what Im up against.


Take Live.com "yes we know its not as big as google" Getting Good SERP`s on their SE is a lot easier than google but not faster. For my targetted keywords I have managed to get top positions on first page. And the live.com SE seems to be more relevant than google in my opinion.

BAD GOOGLE.......

Any of you guys and gals having similar problems issues with google?

I'll be honest and say I haven't really focused on any SE's other than google! It is certainly harder to place well in google than other SE's.

Yeah, I find pretty much the same as Linda.

If you rank well in Google, I tend to find that you will do well in SE's such as Yahoo, MSN, etc..

Good luck with your onward (and hopefully upward) ranking in google!

Took me about 2 years to get 1st in google for the keywords 'vbulletin templates' i now jump from 1/2/3 - always the top 5 for these keywords.

I have found that updating your content regularly helps alot, if i dont edit the main index page of my site for a few weeks i can jump from 1st to 3rd very fast, as soon as i update even a few links i jump back to 1st.

Pagerank is my biggest headache, i go from 0 to 3 to 4 back to 0 then 4 again regularly.

I agree. They need to make their mind up.

The unfortunate truth is, there is no sure fire way or technique to secure a top position, which makes SEO both frustrating and rewarding. Different people will give you different opinion's and different interpretations on how to implement SEO. The best thing to do is to make your own opinions.

My advice (for what it's worth), is clean html and CSS, with well structured markup and links. From there it is all about quality content.



I agree, if you develop to good clean SEO standards (if there is such a thing), then you will find you will rank well in most SE's.

Although I only really take notice of my Google position. I find that if I appear 1st in Yahoo and 5th for Google, I still get at least twice as many vistors from Google.

Personally I find Yahoo and MSN to be even harder to rank for than Google.
Searching "alexgeek" returns my site #1 on Google yet Yahoo it's down quite a few

Totally agree, and backlinks, you need backlinks to your site / content if you are going to rank well in any search engine.

I also don't think it is worth optimising for anything except google. At present it is the king of SE's and all others follow the king.

As others have said, you rank well with the king and you will rank well with the others

This post has been edited by welshstew: Feb 15 2008, 12:01 PM

I'm not by a long shot an expert nor do I understand what most are talking about when it comes to SE. But I've never ever had to wait... google has always been very very good to me.

I attribute it to clean valid code, good page titles, a xml, sitemap, a google webmaster account and a wee bit of attention to keywords and phrases.

For instance, I just last finished up a very simple website (11 pages or so) . They already had at one time a web presense and was indexed by google already. But for a year or more thte site consisted of one placeholder page with about three lines of text, a logo and a phone number or two.

On Febuary 7, 2008 the site went live, on Feb, 8 I created a google webmaster tools account and submitted the xml sitemap. Between the 8th and the 9th google obviously had visited as the new page titles were showing up in search term results. On Feb 10th according to the tools google visited again. I had a bit of concern when the cached pages still showed the place holder page, but the new content and page titles. I guess that was a snaffoo and I am starting to see the new pages bing cached. I've done several hours of search term testing on google and yaoo, the site is already doing quite well. Several #1 spots in the millions as well as many in the top ten spots, For more specific terms, it still places well in the top 10 for it's global positioning and keywords.

I also always insert a statcounter code, and within a day or two I was seeing visits from Google, Yahoo and a couple from MSN even one from AOL.

In short, I may be lucky, or maybe google likes as I said good clean code, and I know they say valid code does not effect google, but well I swear by it. Submitting a sitemap and good pertenient page tiles and heading tags.

I just noticed, lol, wow this new site has a new PR of a 1!

Oh, I forgot to mention according to the webmaster tools, this site only has 3 links back to it and two links out!
8 of the new pages indexed


Other sites I've worked on I've had the same good luck! So I am often times surprised when I read questions on how to get google to notice them.

My theory is build it well, and bots will come.

This post has been edited by Sharron: Feb 15 2008, 10:49 AM

It's easier to rank on Live.com because it's easier to trick Live.com. Google's results reflect the quality of their algorithms and when you understand it, you can see why Google control the search market.

Take the phrase "xmas trees delivered" for example.
On Google, you get:
1,2,3,4,5,6: Christmas tree delivery companies,
7: price comparrison for Christmas tree delivery companis
8,9,10: More christmas tree delivery companies
ALL of which are UK based, where I am.

On Live you get:
1. USB Christmas tree from www.firebox.com
2,3: Christmas tree delivery company from New Zealand, just round the corner from me (!)
4,5,6,7,8,9,10: Christmas tree delivery companies in the UK

What this shows:
a) Google is aware of my geographical location and the results reflect this.
Google understands what I mean and doesn't get hang up on words. I can search for Christmas or xmas, tree or trees, delivery or delivered and the results are all roughly the same (ie.: all companies offering the service I want), BUT, on live.com, the results vary drastically because it doesn't understand that "context" of my search phrase as well as Google does. It just searches for words. "Christmas trees delivered" and "xmas trees delivered" should give me roughly the same results, but they are completely different on live.com.

It's harder to rank on Google because it has much more strict algorithms that show on the quality of its results. Rank well on Google and you will have yourself a quality website that will withstand search advances of the near future.

Hey guys,

When it comes to SEO content is king. If you want good rankings you MUST have good content.

Clean code is great, but Google knows that not everyone writes clean or valid code, so it's learned to do many things that other SE's don't, such as reading JS, following forms, and I have a suspicion that they OCR images as well. Of course the more you know about the code the better your rankings will be. Of course knowing too much can get you in trouble as well. I have successfully SEO'd a site without valid, or even clean code to my standards now. I won't share the site publicly in the forum but if you want to see some results just PM me & I'll share a few. The site was optimized for hundreds of keywords and only a few do not show on the first page.

Rich

Google doesn't care about code. Period.

Hmmm, I don't agree with you at all Jack!!!

Proper use of web standards and bleeding edge practices makes sure that not only is the copy marked up in a semantic fashion which search engines can interpret and weigh without confusion, it also skews the content-to-code ratio in the direction where it needs to be while forcing all of the information in the page to be made accessible, thus favoring the content. I've have seen several occasions where the rebuilding of a site with standards, semantics and white hat techniques improve the performance of pages site-wide in search engines.

Essentially what I am saying, is a fairly logical conclusion, reduce the amount of code on your page and the content (you know, the place where your keywords are) takes a higher priority. Additionally compliance will, by necessity, make your site easily spidered and additionally allow you greater control over which portions of your content are given more weight by the search engines.

OK, Jacob you make some good points. But type in 'website design' on Google. These guys: http://www.webcreationuk.com/ come up 2nd. Check out their source code. Ouch! It's not a pretty site.

I agree with what you are saying, but code is certainly not what google considers a 'heavyweight' favourite, as the above shows.

I like it that is I search for roller coasters my website isn't even on page 1 and that is our focus but if I search for man found on mars then we come up number 1 on results and happens like that for various site unralted search terms.

Your page doesn't even include the phrase "roller coasters" on the main page unless it happens to appear in one of the "news items" listed (you do at least have the meta keywords defined). Additionally, Google is only aware of 2 pages that link to yours (one of which advertises itself as a "Porn Directory").

Notice the site you mentioned is using external styles with CSS. So that helps with the code to content ratio like I said above. But, I would be willing to bet if that site were to use proper use of web standards that there website would list higher in search engine for some of there other keywords or desired search terms. I honestly have no idea why you are fighting me on this. I can quote at least 100 of the top search engine specialists that agree with me on clean code with external styles helps you list higher. Just makes it easier for search engines to go through and see what is important to you.....your CONTENT!!

Google does not want you to build a site and write content for Google! If you are desperately trying to get a 1st page ranking on Google by trying all these little tips and tricks, you're are going to lose.

Google wants to provide the best quality information for its users. So, that being said...

Write your content for your customers, not Google.
Keep your content that you've written for your customers updated and fresh.
And of course, make it easy for Google to read your source by writing clean code.

Now if you really want to climb the Google ladder, you will need lots and lots of back links (honest back links, not link farm backlinks).

So in conclusion, if you want to make Google happy, don't do anything special... just write if for your customers, keep it fresh and keep it clean (oh and get more back links).

-Jasontor

P.S. Don't rely on a search engine to pay your bills, get out there and actively market your product/service! Then everything else is just icing on the cake.