10 replies to this topic

[furniturebrains]

As always, a great forum with polite and positive help! I have been struggling for several months with my pages not showing up in G search. I am still in the index and have not done anything to cloak or deceive the search engine. When you do a regular search for " arizona furniture stores" my page (shown below) is not found. I then go into advanced search and ask to have 100 results at a time displayed (hoping I can find the page) and it is still not to be found. However when you get to the end and this message is displayed. "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 736 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." Upon clicking for these results, the page then appears around position #56.

Interestingly when you use the same search phrase in Yahoo, the page shows a number 5 ranking.

I am very perplexed and will appreciate some feedback!

Thanks,
Marty

[Jill]

Often with Google, it's a question of linking. It may also be a question of having gone overboard with the keyword phrases on your page, and/or it could be that your content is duplicated on other pages.

Have you looked into any of these things?

Jill

[furniturebrains]

Thanks for your prompt response. Please clarify what you mean by linking. The page ( obviously) has external links that are duplicated on other pages but also contains external links that are exclusive to the page. I have the page internally linked a couple of times and I know it has some backlinks from other sites. The key word density may be an issue as I have the same basic message on 20 pages with the only variation being the name of the state. I suppose it is unwise to have the duplicate message on numerous pages? However, on the remaining 30 state pages, I have not added the same copy and also suffer from the same google woes.
Thanks!

[furniturebrains]

By the way, I apologize for posting the link to that specific page. After I posted, I went back and read the [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules]Forum Rules[/url] and realized that was not adviseable.
Thanks
Marty

[Randy]

Hey Marty,

What Jill is referring to is the number/type of other sites that link to your site vs. the number/type of sites that link to your competitors.

Try this. Head over to Yahoo! and conduct a search like linkdomain:yourdomain.com -site:yourdomain.com. That will give you a list and count of how many other sites Yahoo! knows about that link to your site.

Do the same with a few of your competitors, noting how many links they have as compared to your site. Realize to that the linking text being used in each of these links can have an effect when certain search terms are used, but we won't get into that right now. Just look at the basic numbers.

The duplicated pages for different states could also be a problem. The search engines really don't like those for obvious reasons. They're typically only going to show one, and if it happens to be a different state the Arizona one simply wouldn't show up.

[Jill]

The key word density may be an issue as I have the same basic message on 20 pages with the only variation being the name of the state. I suppose it is unwise to have the duplicate message on numerous pages?

There's a good chance that's your problem.

You'll want to create completely unique content for every page of your site. Also make sure that no other site on the Internet is using the same basic copy as you are, or your site may not show because of that.

[furniturebrains]

Randy,
Interesting.....my main competitor shows approx 810 links and I show approx 300. I notice that alot of his links ( and mine) are links to pages within his site. Are these internal links in a site relevant and if so, should I consider increasing my own internal links? The duplicated copy I refer to is not the main content of the pages but simply my attempt (feeble) to optimize each page.
Thanks

[greenlightsuk]

Very difficult to compete with the bigger sites because G is rewarding them with link popularity by default. If you can figure out a way of adding more (unique) pages to your site, you'll enjoy the same benefits as some of these big sites.

[Randy]

Hey again Marty. Sorry for the slow reply. It's been one of those Mondays.

If you put a dash or minus sign in front of the site: part of the linkdomain: search it should exclude same-site links. That'll give you a truer representation of backlinks from other sites.

That said, do internal site links count? Sure they do!

Do they count as much as external links? Probably not, but who knows for sure? We can't know for sure since we didn't write the algorithm. But it is a fact that you have 100% control over same-site links and can pump those up in fairly short order if that's your wish.

Personally, I'm of a mind that a site should have as many pages as it needs to be a useful resource. For some sites that's 20 pages. For other sites it's 20,000. So there's really not a general sort of answer for that question.

The one thing you don't want to do is start putting up "junk" pages simply for the sake of putting up more pages.

The best advice I can give (for Google at least) is that it's somewhat important to pay attention to the other sites that link to yours. Not only how many sites, but what kind of sites and what anchor text they use when linking to you. It can all have an incremental effect.

As far as your own site's page count is concerned, write as many pages as your visitors need. Remembering that people may be coming by looking for things that may be closely related to what you do, even if it's not exactly what you do. If you write articles about subjects that your site solves a problem for, even though it may not be why 100% of your visitors would look for you, those 5% who find you because of the article will still be very happy campers.

[furniturebrains]

Randy,
Thanks for the feedback! I will continue to work at legitimate pages and totally agree with the idea of doing what is right for the surfer. I heard this quote the other day. " marketers want brand loyalty and customers want relevance" -unknown
Marty

[greenlightsuk]

In my opinion, internal links do carry as much weight as external links. That's the main reason larger sites do much better than smaller ones in Google.

However, I think those internal links will only help if they themselves are well indexed and have reasonable PR (4+ probably).