Seach Engine Help

[AlanW]

I’m a complete novice when it comes to web design and need some help. I have built and hosted a website using the Fasthost website builder. The site has been online for over 6 months now but doesn’t get picked up by any search engines. I would be most grateful if someone could take a look at it and advise me why this might be.

My website address is:-

www.handpiecerepair.co.uk

Any help would be much appreciated.

Alan

[moojoo]

There is no Doc Type and the code is awful, bloated and sloppy. That could be a part of it.

Code: Select all

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 18pt; COLOR: red; FONT-FAMILY: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family:
                           Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings">&nbsp;þ</SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 7pt; COLOR: red; mso-fareast-font-family:
                           Wingdings">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial">Highspeeds &amp; Slowspeeds repaired</SPAN><SPAN
                           style="COLOR: black"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>

Wow. that is just gnarly, not your fault per say but gnarly.

[remo]

To get noticed by the search engines they need to know you exist.

So to make sense of that - Unless another site has a link placed to yours no one knows your there, a bit like a shop on an empty street, as the search engines follow all the links from every site they hit and add it to there database, some links to your site would be helpful

There are two quick ways to get noticed by Google

1 - Sign up for Google Adsense and place a tiny ad (I say tiny as it will be competive advertising generally) on the bottom of your page. As google adsense matches ads up with the content it will start to look at your page and decide what ads to show. That is why if you do it this way the first few times the ad will be blank, but the good news is that is looking up and down your site to see what ad is most relevant so its now starting to notic e you

2 - Do you use the google toolbar? if not download it - While your online anc checking your email use the search box to search for your domain in full

Both take a few weeks (2/3) to take affect, using adsense I have found the quickest way, sometimes just one week

so http://www.handpiecerepair.co.uk and hit search - your page wont be found but you will get a link saying "if you think http://www.handpiecerepair.co.uk is a Valid URL Click here" and it will bring you to your site.

Again this is just a way of showing google your site exists.

As for MSN and Yahoo - well try and get listed in some directories and place your site there

Never bother with any site that wants to charge you for being listed as there are good free ones around

Avoid any site that says we will submit your site "10,000 directories etc.." its just a waste of time

A few links and you will get listed on MSN & G pretty quick - Yahoo has a very very slow update process

Not sure what your planning to use your site for as what you do appear specialist. If you are looking to create new business from the site you may want to look at using some of the pay per click search engines like Google adwords or Overture

Hope that is of some help
Remo

[Compumaniac12]

i use http://www.submitexpress.com/

[Rob]

Best advice:-

Dont use Microsoft Word, or Frontpage for designing websites. This is effectively what you have done. They produce very poor code, very bloated and very full of needless rubbish.

Consider that a search engine will look at your code to content ratio as a major ranking factor.... your ratio of code to content is pitifully high.... which is pitifully bad.

Consider learning some basic HTML and CSS... or maybe an option is to purchase a CSS / XHTML table-less template. Ditching Tables isnt an absolute nessesity, but you really should avoid using them for layout purposes bacuse of the code bloat they add. Also too, avoid inline CSS like the plague.

Reduce your code, raise your content and pay attention to on-page SEO aspects such as page title, meta description, h1-h2-h3 tag - relevant embolded and italicised text and PROPER symantic markup.

Consider also that your site consists of three pages ONLY.

If you were google, and you wer faced with two websites competing for the term dental handpiece repair .... would you give a high position to a site with three pages with a severely low keyword ratio, low content to code ratio?

Or would you favour a site with a high amount of content to code... with lots of pages.... with great attention to keywords in content?

I can see WHY this is happening (It's my job) and can see a way out.... but you really need to rethink the design, get some more content and devise a way to constantly add fresh, relevant content (if you wanna shoot for top spots) thats crafted with keyword placement in mind.

SEO isnt everyones forte.... even with 7 years experience and many many successes, I am still learning..... so is everyone. Search engines keep shifting the goal posts.

Anyway, consider my words carefully....
On-page SEO is the basic building block, foundation, cornerstone of your overall ranking potential.... with your current design not even a mountain of backlinks would help you.

[remo]

I agree with Robs point about more content but I would say for such a niche you would not need to worry about having a massive site with tons of regularly updated content

Why? well because dental handpiece is so specialist and if over 500 dentists do use your service, ok some might not be 100% active but you could use that angle to build your links

I can think of 2 handyman sites - no more than 10 pages which get great rankings for traffic people actually search for, they have 1-3 placement every day for the sites for there the keywords that they need most because there niche is small and the site are clean and fast and have some useful information (but just about there business)


Rob - I agree content is king, along with clean fast pages but it does depend on your area.

I work full time just in the gambling space which is extremly competitive and for what I do, we update our content 5 times a day, as you know there is more to it than new content but depending on your competitive space different rules do apply,

[Rob]

oh, i totally agree.

My advice applies to any site.... it's generic. even with that advice put into place, it will still require reasonable effort even in this small industry to gain a 1st - 2nd rank.

Webforumz has climbed a MASSIVE hill to get second for 'web design forums'.... on page SEO isnt too bad considering it's forum based..... and the off page effort required was immense... although, the on-page is key here.

[AlanW]

Thanks for your help guys . . If I search "Handpiece repair" in Google (UK) my website comes up when I use my computer in Reading, but not if I use a computer outside Reading !!! Why would that be? . . . It's all too hard for me . . If anybody is interested in cleaning up my code (Obviously for a fee) please let me know.