Can't find any of the keywords for my site

22 May 07 2:52 am

Sounds like you both need links and lots of them.

Elmo, links are the most important element of ranking well.

Have you submitted to directories? Submitted articles to article directories? Made a few blog comments?

Theres lots of ways to get links, you just have to make sure you're constantly getting them.

22 May 07 11:15 am

Dear Affilobuds Crowzy, Adrian and Sean06,

I have been doing linking but it has mainly been to loads of directories. Is that going to be helpful?

Adrian, I see what you mean about having the menu misspelled so I'll fix it but what do you mean by spaces in URL and everything in 1 folder?


Thanks so much dudes! You are Super affilobuds in every way!

God Bless & Flame On!
ELMO :mrgreen:

22 May 07 3:22 pm

Hi Elmo,

Everyone has already given you plenty to work on over the next few days but I'll add one more that's been helpful to me... write some articles and submit them to directories like ezinearticles and goarticles. This will get you some traffic AND backlinks :)

PC

22 May 07 10:06 pm

Hey Elmo,

I reckon one of the first things you need to work on is your on-page optimization. What Adrian is talking about is something we wrote about in the March Affilorama Update PDF (under the "Ask a geek" section -- complete with illustrations of cows). I don't think that having everything vomited into the one directory is going to harm your search engine rankings unduly, but there are other things that all together could be having an impact.

1) Your file names. Like the others have mentioned, when you were creating HTML files you will have named them like this: "my file name.html" Then when you linked them into your website using your WYSIWYG editor, the editor added a bunch of %20s where the spaces were, because you *can't have spaces in web file names*. You can when you save things on your computer... but you can't have them on the web. I don't know if search engines see the %20 as being a space. If they don't, then your file names aren't helping you for your keywords at all. If you saved your files as "your-file-name.html" the search engines can see the individual words that comprise your file name, and they might consider your page to be more relevant.

2) You're not using your anchor text very well. For instance, in your navigation you're linking to your "Top 10 questions about electric bicycles" through the anchor text "Top 10 pt.2". When you consider that the search engines look at the anchor text as being a clue as to the content of the page... does that really give them any information? It might help your ranking for the keyword "Top 10 pt.2" but it's not helping for "electric bikes and scooters". Even changing this to "Top 10 questions about electric bikes and scooters" might help. What I would do, though (looking at the content) is use that article as a base for writing ten separate articles, since each of those questions is something people might be searching for.

3) I see no site siloing. Now, this sounds like a complicated concept, but it's really not that technical. What you want to do is guide the search engine spider around your page so it doesn't get confused, and so that it really understands what your page is about. I suggest you re-watch the interview with Charles Heflin and read the notes that come with it. Getting this stuff put in place will be easier once you've organized your site a bit better.

I really think you need to go back and watch all the videos on search engine optimization again, Elmo. These guys have talked about getting a whole bunch of links, and while that's important, it's also very important that your site is as optimized as you can get it. So the top things I want you to focus on are:

- Getting your site organized. Have your reviews in a /reviews/ directory. Have your information about different electric vehicles in another related directory. yourdomain.com/electric-scooters/ yourdomain.com/electric-bikes/ etc. Put any articles about electric scooters in the electric scooters file. Any articles about electric bikes in the electric bikes file. If you feel up to it, post your proposed site structure here and we'll take a look at it.

- Make your anchor text work for you. Make sure that for every link you make, the "click me" text is based around your keywords. Since you should be creating content based around your keywords, this shouldn't be too hard.

- Once you've got everything organized, look at the way your pages link to each other. That's the heart of siloing. You want related pages to link to each other, and you want fewer links to less-related pages.

Watch those videos again and let us know how you get on. I see you've put a lot of work into this site... it'll be great to see it doing well.

All the best,
Mark

23 May 07 3:26 am

Hey Elmo,

Thanks for the awesome comments. It's really nice to be able to help people and see the progress they make, and it's even better to hear things like that from you :)

As for these blasted files/directories... it's so simple, you're going to slap yourself. You know how you create new folders on your computer? You'll usually right-click and go New > Folder, right? Well, that's basically it. Go into the place on your computer where you're keeping all your website building files. Right-click, go "New > Folder" and call it "images". Now shove all your images in there.

Now go back and create another folder alongside this images folder, and call it "electric-scooters" or whatever. Shove all the stuff about electric scooters in there.

Ok, so once you've got all that organized... it's going to break your site something awful. That's because your HTML doesn't know that everything has moved. You need to learn how to reference files in different directories. We also covered that in the Affilorama Update magazine (March... Ask a geek section) so take a look at that. Basically you're going to be writing things like <a href="/electric-scooters/article-name.html"> instead of <a href="article-name.html">

I'm just telling you to get everything sorted and working on your home computer first, before you upload it. Don't worry too much if when you click the links on your home version, they don't work. This is because when you put a backslash / at the start of a link it takes you back to the very root of the directory. This is great on your website (it takes you back to yourdomain.com) but on your computer it takes you back to the very top of your C drive (not even in your documents folder) so it doesn't work.

(If you're doing this in Dreamweaver then it will be ok if you've told Dreamweaver what the folder is you're working out of when you first started building the site. Then these backslashes will just take it back to the top of *that* folder when you preview it in Dreamweaver)

Once you think you've got it sorted... try to upload it. I'm not sure what FTP program you're using, but you might be able to upload everything... folders and all... and it'll just appear on your web server like it appears on your home computer.

Otherwise you can create folders on your server manually. In your FTP program you might see the "new folder" icon on the side that looks at stuff on the web server. Click on that and give the folder the same name as the one you've used on your home computer. Then when you double click on that folder you'll be taken *inside* that folder, and you can upload all the stuff that needs to go in *that particular* folder.

Then to get out of it and go back to the top (root) you use a "back" button or a "up folder" button.

If you're using Dreamweaver and finding it really complicated... try downloading a different FTP program like FileZilla. It's a little easier to wrap your head around when it's removed from your HTML editor, since it's just like shuffling files around on your home computer.

I hope that all makes sense... it's really hard to explain in writing. If you get stuck give us a yell here, or do a bit of a search on the internet for "how to FTP" "how to upload website" or something. I'm sure someone will have written a good, generic tutorial on the subject, and that should help you out until I can get around to creating a video on the subject :)

Let us know how you get on.
Mark

25 May 07 2:12 pm

elmo033057 wrote:Dear Marc & the rest of the Affilobuds and buddetes,

Well, I have managed to really screw up my site. I'm not sure how I did it, but it is a real mess. I tried to put all of those files in different folders and it is just one big mess.

Anyway, I have to go to each page and relink every single link. I tried to copy and paste the menu bar but that did not work. Each link on each page must be relinked.

That's all I have been doing for the last two evenings.

I think I may be done by tomorrow and I'll see how transfering the files into the FTP works.

God Bless and Flame......off?

ELMO :shock:

That is why we suggest to use a menu include elmo... using absolute links... then when you change a page... you only need to change 1 link :)

26 May 07 12:58 am

The PHP include lesson is in the February update PDF.

An absolute link is the opposite of a relative link.

Absolute would be www.google.com/groups/index.html whereas a relative one would just be groups/index.html

26 May 07 6:06 am

Goodstuff elmo, just keep at it.