I am trying to SEO my site. Without knowing this, I can't go far. I mistakenly put invisible text for some days, later I realized its not good. Then I moved the keywords to the meta description. Could you guys please take a look. Suggestions appreciated. http://www.webcosmo.com
Well, first off: I can't imagine this will really help: I think that's a bit excessive. Your site won't allow you add text to it very well (articles, etc) due to the nature of your website. Right off the bat I suggest being sure that your page titles are keyword focused & descriptive; having a good page title is pretty important in terms of SEO.
Right, and you don't need 27 different keyword phrases in your title, either. Bottom line, even if it didn't harm your search engine rankings - you should never do things to your website in the name of SEO that diminishes user friendliness or user usability. Each page of your website should have a unique title. For your site, each section should have a unique title. If a user is in the Atlanta Georgia Section, maybe the title would be: Atlanta, Georgia (GA) - Free Classified ads or Atlanta GA (Georgia) Place Ads & sell - Free Classifieds You've used the more important keywords at the start: Atlanta, Georgia You've used a common "search substitution" for Georgia: (GA) You've created an accurate description of the section's contents using keywords: atlanta georgia ga free classified ads This will significantly help for SEO because people often search for classifieds ads websites using their city names. Using the city & state names in the title will help out considerably. Also, maybe consider changing your query strings: yoursite.com/listing/Search.aspx?countryId=1&stateId=141&gId=2&dId=51 to search engine friendly,descriptive URL's: yoursite.com/listing/usa/alabama/housing/housing-wanted/ Some believe, as do I, that your page names & page titles count as incoming anchor text in the eyes of search engines - thus increasing the likelihood that your page (or website) will be deemed more relevant for the terms used in the page names & page titles. I think the best plan of action for SEO on your website would be to work on being sure that it's user friendly. Look at craigslist.org; I suspect the reason that they are so popular is because they offer a useful service that's easy to use for the most part. I doubt that craigslist became a success overnight, but over time as word spread about craigslist; webmasters started talking about it, natural links came in & now they're hugely popular, at least in the USA. Bottom line, if you build a solid website that people love - you won't have to worry about seo nor traffic, they'll come on their own. Of course, lest I get flamed, I think SEO has a place, though I think it's more effective to create a website that attracts visitors because other visitors like it, not attracting visitors because you spent $500 - $250,000 on search engine optimization. That's all I was saying.
I think the directions you gave me will help a lot. Let me take care of these tonight, I will get back, to get it verified with you, if you don't mind. SEO has a very important place for starting sites as well as old sites. I learned it hard way. Thank you for your help, appreciate it.
I made those changes on the title as you suggested. Please take a look if I did it right. As per the URL since I am using asp .net, I don't think there is a way of using url as you suggested, as of my knowledge. I didn't change the meta description, keywords. Am I gonna get penalized for them being too long? Thank you so much for your help.
I think your changes will likely help you find more targeted visitors from search engines as search engines start to notice that your title's have changed. I'm not sure if .htaccess can be used with your setup, so you wouldn't then be able to use mod_rewrite if you cannot use that file. As per whether you'll get penalized, I don't know from personal experience. For every person that will tell you that you'll get penalized for that, there's another group of people that will tell you that they're worthless and count for nothing; which they might. The bottom line is that you don't have all the words that you have within your tags on your page. Your meta keywords should be accurate descriptors of the important keywords on each page (meta keywords tag should probably be different for every page). Your meta description should be a sentence (not a string of keywords) that accurately describes the purpose/content of your page; each individual page for that matter. Depending on how your script is setup, this may be very difficult or impossible. However, all this said - your meta content is probably the least important aspect of all on page elements for working on seo. I say probably only because I just woke up & can't think 100% yet, but I don't think there's anything less important than meta keywords, description for seo. Personally, I use meta tags but I use them in a way that is described above. I don't think they do anything for me in terms of increasing my rankings. . . just a habit. However - I think it would be wise to trim up your meta keywords & description. Keywords: a few phrases that relate to the content of the page: dallas, texas, tx, classifieds, ads, free, sell, post Description: a sentence or so related to the content of the page Dallas Texas (TX) Free classifieds ads site - buy & sell Or something like that. I would drop the long meta content, though just to be safe.
Thanks so much. I will work on the keywords. As per meta description, I saw on Google they highlight the description words if they match a search query. Any thought?
I would suggest you to implement .htaccess to get more user friendly URL's. Beside the seo perspective, themes look decent, are you using any CMS? or customized?
A question to you guys. When I type "classified","classified ads"... craigslist isnt on first page! How come?
very nice ednit , helping around to someone with details is really be appreciable. and by the way webcosmo, "Free Classified Ads" should be good title for signature links rather then "webcosmo.com - 100% Free Classified Ads", just my two cent.
It seems that Google uses the meta description of a page, if available, in their search results. Usually it's better if the description is focused using the main keywords of the title & page; though the description is meant to be a body of text that makes sens. . . not just a string of keywords. I highly doubt craigslist is concerned with which keywords they rank for in search engines. If anything, eventually they may get to the point of disallowing search engine robots from crawling their sites or portions of their sites. I think a way for you to work on getting your rankings up would be to look for some incoming links. I think that, for your website, you might be better suited to do a search for the phrases that you want to rank for, maybe: free classifieds free classified ads free classifieds ads whatever you decide you want to increase your ranking's for. If there's a website that lists a bunch of free classifieds sites, shoot the webmaster an email and politely ask if they can add your website to theirs, preferably with your choice of anchor text. Because your site is pleasant, you'll have an easier time than some others using this method. Plus, it helps you out by giving you a link from an extremely related website & it helps the other website owner by giving them a resource for their website visitors.
I once had a lot of questions myself. Using forums like these & search engines is how I learned to write programs, develop websites & how to market myself & my products/services; I try to pipe in when I can if I have personal experience with the subject at hand. Thanks.
just by "looking over" a site in 15 seconds noone can seriously give you a halfway reasonable SEO advice. Maybe META tags... To get a start...check my sig....if you have $10 to spare i can do you a site-analysis
ednit Thanks a lot for your advices. Its been big help for me. I will wait with the meta keywords/descriptions. I wanna see how Google treats it when there are too many characters on it. I will keep you posted. Thanks again.
IMO, that's a rather foolish generalization. While that might be true for advice from somebody that acquires their knowledge of search engine optimization from reading general webmaster forums but has no application history to backup what they say, more than halfway reasonable and helpful advice can be given by someone who's actively worked with seo & tested different methods, *especially* when someone has already worked with the general type of website that the question is being asked about. That being said, the input received on a webmaster forum should not be construed as a detailed plan on how to get things to where you want them to be. As alluded to, getting a website analysis by a qualified individual would give you a much better idea on how to go about things based on your specific website needs & your focused target market. You could also take the time to learn how to perform your own 'seo friendliness' analysis, but to do it efficiently, that'd take some time & practice. In addition to that, sometimes webmaster forums are the worst place to get seo advice because many people, though well intentioned, only share information that they've learned through these forums without actually using the tips they suggest themselves - and that information may be flawed or even dangerous. Not a problem. Glad I could help out some. Thanks.