Top of the Search Results?

Hello,

This may be a rather broad and complex question, but how (in a nutshell) do I get www(.)shrinkfile(.)net to the top of the search results? Any simple way to explain this?

Thanks,
Peter

 

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/12-basic-on-site-seo-tactics-for-optimized-results/5966/

 

Choose what search term you want your site to be ranked for.. make sure you implement that term in your site content using SEO and also when building links make sure that your also using that term in your anchor text. For example "Shrink Files" or something similar.

 

There isn't really a simple way to explain it. I advise to start by learning some SEO techniques and strategies and impliment them to your website(s). You'll want to choose which keyword(s) you want to rank for and then check your competitors, see what they are doing, and "out-do" them. And always, continue to build relevant in bound links from quality websites

It's a never ending battle. Kinda like politics!
Good luck. You'll need it

 

Thanks SunDevil, it was very nice link.

 

All the info you need it's right here, now it's just up to you and your hard work!!
In this forum there are some amazing SEO that post important info so keep as updated as possible.

 

Yes, this is the ultimate picture of getting your page ranked high. You should start off by thinking how to make people link to your site

 

IMO there's a step by step procedure that you must follow in order to achieve good SERP rankings:
-know your target market
-choose well your niche
-KW look-up
-Choose the right KWs
-on-page -off-page optimization
-wait patiently
-try harder
-research

 

Millions of websites fail in the first year because they expect to build a site and then people will just find it. The competion is huge, but it can be done with hard work.

I have my anxiety site on the first page for the word 'anxiety' and it is number one for so many key phrases. This was done by loads of hard work, mainly...

Filling the site with loads of good, unique information. This helps as the search engines want information, that is why people search. I also get hundreds of links from people linking to me because they like the info, this comes from forums on the subject, other anxiety resources etc. It means I am getting loads of one way links. i have very few recipricol links.

I write articles all over the net and people pick them up to use and I have my site in my bio. I also write articles and ask sites of similar nature if they would like to use them for a link to my site. People with little content will do this and then place adwords around my article.

Keep updating my site, I have a blog and a friendship page that gets updated regular.

As someone said above, make your site attractive to link with.

 

This tactics are the basic and common way on how to be on the top of the search result that we must consider.

 

First, you need to find out which keyword you want to show up first such as "mattress store" if you run a website about mattresses. Then you gotta find out if that's too competitive or not. Usually, I go for at least 2 phrase keywords, the 1 keywords are hard to get on the first page.

 

I think this article could help you.

 

What about the fact that the page, by nature, has little content?

 

how little is the content? If its quality content it shouldn't matter, but you must have some content

 

there are so many criterias for the google serp but i believe the most important one is backlinks. try to get more backlinks from related web sites

 

Google loves content, the more you have usually the better off you will be. But make sure that all of your content is optimized for what keywords you are targeting.

Look at your competitors at the top of Google.. review their page, see what they are doing that you dont have?

 

NinjaNoodles, your home page took TWO MINUTES to load on my dialup connection - NOT good. If it takes forever to load the page on dialup, then you've just butchered your chances of getting people to link to your site (especially given the userbase), not to mention use it in the first place. Remember, not everyone can afford or has access to broadband (DSL or cable for the purpose of this post). And I don't mean "macaroni and cheese broke" when I say can't afford or doesn't have access to - especially the latter. Several parts of the US, including New England, the Plains States and people living in the mountainous areas of the country for instance, simply don't have access to these services because the providers don't see an economic benefit (ROI) in it.

But tha'ts not the heart of the problem (I just had to rant is all).

The problem is you haven't optimized your site at all (that's right, not at all). Let's take a top-down approach to your site's home page, shall we?

<title>Free Online File Hosting and File Compression in Zip Format</title>
<meta name="description" content="Upload your files and download them in .zip format at no charge!" />
<meta name="keywords" content="free file compression, online file compression, file zip, free online zip, online zip files, zip files online, compress file, free zip, zip a file, zip, tar, rar, 7z, compress, compression, compressed, zipped, zip format, free file hosting, file hosting" />

Code (markup):

The first problem I see is the title element. I'd rather use this instead of what you have now. "Free Online File Compression and Hosting by ShrinkFile.NET". Not only do you get your main keywords in there, but you've also reduced the number of keywords, which will increase the weight of the keywords you have in there. The site's name is there for branding purposes (so people remember what the site's name is) and could be useful once people start searching for your site directly by the title (ShrinkFile) rather than what you offer (free file compression and hosting).

Next up is your META tags - the META keywords tag is practically worthless, but some search engines do at least consider it. But the keywords that will be placed here will depend 100% on the content in your Web page, so I'll come back to this later once I've addressed that issue. However, the META description tag is where your site will be making its first impression to a person who finds it via a search engine, so put on your finest suit and knock their socks off!!! MAKE THEM want to click that link to your site to learn more. Here's what you have in your META description tag.

Yeah, that inspires confidence. How about this instead? Remember that most search engines have a 160 character limit (including spaces), so we'll have to keep that in mind. Also note that the META description I'm using (while not the best I could come up with - this is FREE advice afterall) is an example, but it does get the point across, not to mention being persuasive and actionable (your searchers not only will know what the site does, but they'll also be compelled into using it; the use of the site name also reinforces the brand name I mentioned with the site title). Oh, and it also reinforces the fact that the service is 100% TOTALLY FREE (just in case they didn't notice the first time, or were a bit skeptical). "Save, upload and share your Word documents, images, PDFs and other files for free online with ShrinkFile's free .zip file compression and hosting service."

Granted, that was just an example, but I just IM'd a few friends of mine (and I don't mean my close personal inner circle of friends, but people I've befriended online, one of which even invited me to dinner after flying 1,000 miles to visit family that happened to live in my area), and they all (and I do mean every single person I IM'd) said they would DEFINATELY click that link if it had my title and META description. I guess I did my job in compelling them to CLICK THAT LINK (<YODA>good puppets they are, yesss...</YODA>).

Your other META data looks fine, but I did notice a comment in your script that would be better off inside the external JavaScript file, so move it there and get it out of your HTML. I've included the comment for reference.

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/gradualfader.js">

/***********************************************
* Gradual Element Fader- (c) Dynamic Drive DHTML code library (www.dynamicdrive.com)
* Visit http://www.dynamicDrive.com for hundreds of DHTML scripts
* This notice must stay intact for legal use
***********************************************/

</script>

Code (markup):

Ok, now on to the content. As they say, the proof is in the pudding - what pudding? I don't see any! In fact, the page is practically devoid of content! All I see is a form and a blob of footer text. Let's change that.

The first thing I'd do is create a logo that can be styled with CSS, and then insert that logo as an IMAGE, rather than a H1 element (save the H1 for the page title). Inside that image element I'd add the appropriate alt and title attribute information - "ShrinkFile.NET Website Logo" for the alt attribute and "Free File Compression and Hosting" for the title attribute (though that title attribute is a bit weak; I'm sure you can come up with something better). Whatever you do though, do not touch the ALT attribute's contents that I recommended. That's there for accessibility reasons, not SEO. You want to SEO the image, use the title attribute (oh wait, I just did). For the logo, I'd use the actual bar you have sitting inside the folder tab, and then use CSS to apply the folder in the background of the image (if you have to move the image via CSS a few pixels to make it fit, then do so).

Next I'd put some meat on those bones. You have the start to some quality content in your footer text, but it's just languishing there by itself - and you don't want that. Moving it to closer to the top will help a lot better than it would if it were to languish in the footer with the rest of the garbage (no offense intended).

Kicking things off would be the homepage title - since the home page is a service oriented one, I'd avoid the typical "Welcome" H1 heading and use your "Browse, Upload, Enjoy!" text as the heading, then add an empty span for some image substitution with CSS to hide it. Note you will not be hiding the text from your users per se - you're enhancing the experience since those who don't have CSS enabled (or those who do have it enabled but have turned images off) will still be able to see the heading text, so it passes the "Is this Hidden Content" test with flying colors.

<h1 id="home">Browse, Upload, Enjoy!<span></span></h1>

Code (markup):

I know I know, I'm technically wasting prime SEO real estate here, but tough (deal with it). I don't build sites for search engines, I build them for people (while keeping the search engines in mind). Keeping the heading text identical to the substituted background image not only says to Google (in case the site is flagged for human review) that everything is kosher and that I'm not doing anything stupid, but the same text is available to those who can't see the image for whatever reason - and the choice of text here is compelling - meaning that it's actionable, that people will want to do it. Also note the ID attribute on the H1 element. An H1 is best used once per page, but since this will be on the home page, you're going to want to style it differently than the H1 element on other pages (should you choose to add them). The ID acts as a hook that will let you do that. If anything, I'd add a title attribute and put soem relevant keywords in there, but I don't think that'll be necessary given what's going to come next.

The next thing I'd do is write a bit about the site and what it can do for your visitors (and make sure you write it in such a way that you convert those visitors into users, you know, like how I did with your page title and META description tag). Let me see if I can whip something up for you...

"ShrinkFile.NET is a free online file compression and hosting service that allows you to upload and share your favorite files with the world free of charge. Your files will be saved to our servers in the popular .ZIP archive format and assigned a unique static link that you can give to your friends, family and anyone else you want to share your files with.

I would then follow that up with a list of supported file formats (yes, a LIST). Now, I'm going to be honest here. The one week lifespan of the .zip file has me worried. Granted, it's adequate for a free service, but why don't you offer paid storage as well? As long as the person continues to pay the monthly fee ($5/month should do it), they would get a private account on the site that they can use to upload and share as many files as they want (within the limits of their account). In fact, a tiered account level would work as well - the more you pay, the more storage space and bandwidth you get to use (oh, and an added benefit would not having to put up with the ads).

[EDIT - You might also want to add a service that allows other sites to use your service on their sites, kinda like how Google's Website Search works. Not only do the other sites get the upload form to use on their sites to "host" content on your server for a week, but it also can give you a backlink to your site, which will help you improve your PageRank, and possibly your rankings as well. Just something to consider.]

Now that the home page has some content, why not add some news to it? A section of the page devoted to what's happening with the site would be a great way to not only help generate fresh content on a regular basis, but will also help inform your users that there's something new going on as well. Links and quick blurbs (excerpts) to the news articles are all you'd need on the home page (and would also prevent any duplicate content penalties as well). For an example of what I mean, check out www.mozilla.com.

Also don't forget to include an about page (since you probably won't have enough space on the home page for information about the site and what it can do for the people who use it), as well as a means for people to contact you.

Once you have all that out of the way, THEN concentrate on your footer. All you should need is the standard copyright line ("Copyright &copy; 2007, ShrinkFile.NET. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of non-uploaded content prohibited without the express written consent of Monochromedia.com") and links to your acceptable use (TERMS OF USE) and privacy policies.

Hmm... I'm forgetting something. Oh yeah. Your META keywords tag. I'll save that for when you get some actual content. I'm writing this post for free, so I'm not about to conduct your site's keyword research for you. Find out what keywords are competetive (don't be afraid to aim high - your site has potential; otherwise I wouldn't have wasted two hours writing this up for you), and then write your page's content around it. Then place those keywords in your META keywords tag as a reminder to yourself what keywords you're targeting for that particular page, since that's pretty much all the META keywords tag is good for anyway.

Oh, and please, from a usability and accessiiblity perspective - lose the fader script. I was unable to see the upload form until I hovered the mouse over it. Also don't forget to optimize your background images so they don't take haflway to forever to load. If you need advice on how to do that, don't hesitate to send a private message to deathshadow (he's a forum member here). I wouldn't be surprised if he were to give you some pointers on how to do that.

 

Well Dan you spent two hours on the above and you don't even get a thank you, in fact he may not have even come back to read it....Good advice though.

 

He's been on the forum since then (last time was around 1AM today my time), but I doubt he's read the thread since I posted that. Perhaps he didn't notice it?

 

Dialup connections only account for less then 3% of my visitors