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Written by Bob Sheridan March 16, 2006 Dear LEDr's, I have been reading LED for several years and have used many shared tips & techniques to get my website restaurantplus.com ranked fairly high for keywords such as "restaurant software" etc. My question for one of the SEO guru's is "how to get non-index pages to get ranked with Google, etc." Specifically I have a page called restaurantplus.com/pos-point-of-sale-hardware.htm that I want to get ranked using keywords like "pos hardware, point of sale hardware". I am also trying to get restaurantplus.com/restaurant-pos-software.htm to place using keywords "restaurant pos software". I do get ranked but only for my index (home) page. I believe I have done everything correctly in my source code and have sufficient "content" on the web pages. Is anyone willing to share some ideas for improving ranking of web sub-pages? Bob Sheridan RestaurantPlus, LLC Written by Lorelle Smith March 17, 2006 One thing to do whenever possible is use the keyword phrase (the primary one the page is optimized for) in the anchor text of incoming links (or in the alt attribute if the links is from an image). Yours says "RestaurantPlus POS Software" so it's not a match. (This also shows how little stock the engines place in keyword-rich filenames, doesn't it!) Also, is this the only incoming link to the page? That shows the search engines it's not that important. Another place for a match is the heading in the page. Yours says "Restaurant Point of Sale POS Software" so it needs to be changed as well. You've got it in font size 5, but an <.h1> tag might be better to use. That's what it's for. This is something a lot of people get tripped up on. It has to be the exact phrase -- remember, it was indexed by a machine that sees things in binary (either / or). It's a good thing, too, as most words in our language do double or even triple duty. I suppose the day is coming when search engines can grasp language nuances, but in the meantime, use the exact intact phrase. Another problem with Bob's page is that it was obviously written for the search engines, NOT humans. ALWAYS write for humans. Who knows how many sales have been lost? Bob said he wanted restaurant-pos-software.htm to be found for "restaurant pos software" but how is a search engine supposed to know that? That exact phrase is on the visible page only 3 times -- few and far between a very long page full of other words. The good news is, this is easy to rectify with a professional SEO copywriter. Lorelle Smith, The Keywordsmith SEO/Internet Marketing Consultant Written by Mike Banks Valentine March 17, 2006 Bob, Put the pages on your sitemap - they aren't listed there now, and consequently, are not indexed at Google. The pages look fine (except for the FrontPage generated code clutter) but obviously can't be indexed if they aren't given a path to crawl. You've apparently left them unlinked from other pages, so they can't be found. Run the following queries from Google: info:www.restaurantplus.com/pos-point-of-sale-hardware.htm info:www.restaurantplus.com/restaurant-pos-software.htm You'll see they both turn up empty "no information is available for the URL restaurantplus.com/restaurant-pos-software.htm" results. Internal linking is critical to ranking as well and if no other pages link to these pages, they are not seen as important to your site - even when they are on the sitemap or have single links from another page or two. Mike Banks Valentine realityseo.com Written by Stephen Mareches March 17, 2006 Hi Bob, I did a quick check at MSN and Google and found that your site is quite well indexed by both search engines. Using "site:www.restaurantplus.com" (without the quotes) at both we can quickly see the pages they've indexed and this search returns many pages that have been indexed on your site. Using "link:www.restaurantplus.com" at Google we see web pages that have linked to your site. I tried "link:www.restaurantplus.com" at MSN and found even more pages linking to your site. MSN has added some new features to their search functions. Go to search.msn.com and click "About MSN Search". If you check out Search Builder you'll be given the clues to check out different types of searches for your domain that you may find helpful. Stephen Mareches, Web Consultant Sophia Solutions sophiasolutions.net Written by Anthony Kirlew March 20, 2006 Bob, You have a very well laid out site. Here are a few suggestions based on a brief viewing of your code: 1. Make your title tags specific for the keyword you are targeting. This pages title tag in particular is busy and is diluted by the attempt to capture too many keywords with one page. 2. Simplify your meta tags. Get all of the clutter out of there about Front Page, distribution, language, etc unless you have some esoteric reason for wanting it there (even then I say it is a bad idea). We have sites that rank #1 for their terms and the only meta tags we use are keyword, description, and robots. The "meta revisit" tag in particular is an often subject of conversation, but it has no value to any reputable search engine. I have even seen some directories that will not add a site just based on using it. Also, regarding how you use your keyword meta tag, please refer to item #1. 3. Use H1 text for your page headers and make them keyword specific as well. 4. Use specific alt tags for your page images targeting your keywords for that page. The one on this page says "restaurant software" which is not the same as "pos hardware, point of sale hardware", which you are targeting with that page. SEO aside, the potential for your site is huge if you consider adding software (download) and affiliate partners. I wanted to mention that in case you had not considered those aspect. I hope that helps. Anthony Kirlew Web Traffic Team Comments (0)
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