Hi.
I'm a musician earning part of his living through playing piano/singing and DJing.
I have a website that was created for me over a year ago that I am pleased with and I believe presents me well. I recently noticed (as was pointed out me) that the site does not register at all (as confirmed) in Google/Yahoo etc if you do fundamental word searches as if you were a prospective client.
I have keywords set up correctly in the domain name hosting/management website to cover word search eventualities.
I emailed the guy who created the site and he suggest contacting a company called addpeople.co.uk who are amongst other things Search Engine Optimization specialists.
Having spoke to addpeople.co.uk it would apparently cost me £1600 a year to get my site somewhere on Google/Yahoo etc search engines. They also informed me that keyword Meta-Tags are of little consequence to Google/Yahoo etc....

I like to understand what I am up against, why my site is currently not recognised at all and am concerned that an outlay annually of £1600 is a lot. I also am confused why other musicians/peoples sites do appear on i.e page 2 of Yahoo on identical searches whose websites (in my opinion) are aesthetically much less pleasing than mine....

Not sure what best to do and would really really appreciate any advice here from fellow musicians....
Regards

It's simple, but nearly impossible. You need to have a unique name, or at least a very rare one. I have two sites which are top searches on Google. One is because I use a name for it which was deliberately (computer) generated to be unusual, and the other because it relates to a small town with an unusual spelling.
By contrast finding info about a bad named Amsterdam was not easy. It is reputed also that Google ranks sites by the number of links and references to them. So Skipper01, you need to join a lot of Forums (or Fora is you studied Latin) and post a lot on them.
Though changing your name Kersipp would help! At the moment it doesn't come up on google at all.
Cheers
Dave (alias DB111, alias Darowyn, alias Biddulphu3a)

If you post the URL, I'd be able to tell you whether the site was well formed / Search engine accessible etc. There's lots of tricks, but no 'we will get to you the front page of google' magic cure. Any promises to that effect are snake oil.

Tricks include correct semantic markup, accessible formatting, i.e no javascript only links, no images where there should be words without correct ALT markup - the list goes on.

T

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Web Design ~
Drum Studio

Hi - Thanks for this. The website URL is www.petebutler.org I'd be delighted if you could take a look and advise.
I'm obviously not ever expecting to be top of Google/Yahoo etc but at the moment if someone searches for ie pianist gloucestershire, then I don't come up at all which is compromising the point of the site I feel.

....Do I really have to spend big money to make it accessible at all??

Regards

Your homepage has no content, just a frames/noframes detection and a link to the actual homepage at http://79.170.44.138/petebutler.org/ You're not completely ignored by Google - "Pete Butler Pianist" finds you - but this construction may have a lot to do with your low visibility.

You certainly don't need to pay big money for web optimisation. Just ask the designer to link the domain address directly into your home page. But, before you even do that, have you registered at Google Webmaster Tools, uploaded a sitemap etc?

Hi there, Thanks so much for doing this and I appreciate your advise. To be honest, I am a keen student of web-tech and terminologies but I have kinda left this to the designer assuming he would know about it??!!!....to answer your question about Google Webmaster Tools, uploaded a sitemap etc I guess not as I don't know what these/this is....
I doubt therefore the designer would have done it then if this is part of the problem....

I will go back to the designer with this info and see what he has to say..
I'm glad I don't need to spend big monies but equally I would pay someone to help me resolve this if he can't. Would you be interested or know anybody...?

Thanks so much again...

Quote skipper01:

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Hi there, Thanks so much for doing this and I appreciate your advise. To be honest, I am a keen student of web-tech and terminologies but I have kinda left this to the designer assuming he would know about it??!!!....to answer your question about Google Webmaster Tools, uploaded a sitemap etc I guess not as I don't know what these/this is....
I doubt therefore the designer would have done it then if this is part of the problem....

I will go back to the designer with this info and see what he has to say..
I'm glad I don't need to spend big monies but equally I would pay someone to help me resolve this if he can't. Would you be interested or know anybody...?

Thanks so much again...

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Now you know Webmaster Tools and sitemaps exist, you'll have no problems locating and using them. It's all free!

Another thing you can do is make sure there are plenty of links to your pages from other sites. You must have some friends with web sites?

I control a number of websites, some of which are quite high-traffic. Each one of them includes a page of links to all the others. Sometimes it's quite inconspicuous, but it's there.
This may have something to do with my success in getting Google to notice the sites within a week or so of them being created.

Some of them have truly unique content. But one I'm particularly pleased with is a site I made for the guy who re-roofed my house. Against a LOT of competition, he comes up on the first page of a Google search for "Roofing Romford".

I'm a little surprised that your designer can't suggest anything better that paying big money for optimisation. He obviously knows his job in other respects - it's a very nicely made site.

Quote Neokoenig:

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If you post the URL, I'd be able to tell you whether the site was well formed / Search engine accessible etc. There's lots of tricks, but no 'we will get to you the front page of google' magic cure. Any promises to that effect are snake oil.

Tricks include correct semantic markup, accessible formatting, i.e no javascript only links, no images where there should be words without correct ALT markup - the list goes on.

T

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+1

Use keywords as names of folders in your website, names of html files, text in header tags, names of images, ALT tags for images, as well as the main text, of course.

Also you could put your URL in your signature file on this here site.

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http://ryanmead.net

Google measures -

The number of links from other sites, multiplied by the eyeballs looking at those links.

The number of times you alter and update your site.

The number of times that the search terms come up on your home page in html.

The number of visitors you get.

Google is blind to -

Flash

Images

Redirects

Cheers for all the advise - I genuinely feel more comfortable now. The designer chap has reacted to the advise also and I'm more confident I/we can resolve this...

Regards

Yeah this iFraming business is the main issue - it's to do with your hosting: it's basically a cheap hack to host multiple sites on a shared hosting account (most likely) or a bad domain name registrar using 'web forwarding' or some other such annoying 'feature'.

The biggest annoyance is you're unable to bookmark a page. Search Engines will see this entire site as one page, and not even just your home page, only the information outside the frame, i.e:

<title>Pete Butler Pianist/Vocalist/DJ</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="pianist, vocalist, wedding singer, pianist gloucestershire, wedding pianist, petebutler, subtone, wedding entertainer, pianist cheltenham, jazz piano, solo piano, petebutler.org, www.petebutler.org, DJ, wedding dj, gloucestershire dj, ">
<meta name="description" content="Pete Butler is a versatile and experienced Pianist, Vocalist and DJ based in Gloucestershire UK. Pete has vast wedding, party, hotel, nightclub and cruise ship entertainment experience. Nationwide work covereage welcomed! ">

- that's it, search engines won't follow the main page content and links. Until you sort this, any effort to promote the site will be wasted.

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Web Design ~
Drum Studio

Many thanks - I appreciate your time and this and others info has greatly and genuinely helped
Regards

Quote Neokoenig:

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Yeah this iFraming business is the main issue - it's to do with your hosting: it's basically a cheap hack to host multiple sites on a shared hosting account (most likely) or a bad domain name registrar using 'web forwarding' or some other such annoying 'feature'.

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This sort of thing is by no means an inevitable result of hosting multiple sites on the same webspace.

I have been using 123-REG for both domain registration and hosting for several years. Until recently I used web forwarding, they now also offer a Domain Mapping facility. Neither result in what we're seeing here.

Quote Exalted Wombat:

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This sort of thing is by no means an inevitable result of hosting multiple sites on the same webspace.

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For sure - as NeoK said, it's the result of a dirty hack, and by no means inevitable.

Quote:

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web forwarding, they now also offer a Domain Mapping facility.

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Marketing terms - presumably made up by 123reg and/or friends. They no doubt correspond to specific real-world configurations, but I'm not sure I'd like to guess which...

Unfortunately, there is not really a 'human' factor used when placing sites in the search engine rankings. For this reason, an aesthetically pleasing site will not achieve a better position unless the statistics, in terms of visitor numbers and the length of time those visitors spend on the site, tell the search engine that it is a useful site.

The algorithm that is used to work out google positions is kept secret and any Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) efforts are an educated guess at reverse engineering the algorith. An experienced company will have a fairly good idea about what works and what doesn't. The company that you mentioned above will be quoting based on the value of this knowledge, combined with an estimate as to the difficulty of obtaining good rankings for your site. They may also be looking at the perceived value to you, in terms of increased custom, when working out their figure.

This periodic table of seo illustrates a pretty good guess at the way the search engine rankings are worked out (in my opinion).

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Riverside Recording Glasgow

Nice link there Riverside. I didn't really understand dik but like the colours. Interesting.

I have had to do this the hard way, learning whilst experimenting, with my businesses.

Good solid content, well described with specific keywords and tags, put together in a coherent and sensible hierarchy that allows the spiders to crawl easily with emphasis on content and navigation is a good start. You will find if the content is strong then you will get a lot of inward links which will drive your traffic and rankings. Google Analytics is a great tool and really helps to hone your content and navigation down to a military strategy.

Be active with reciprocal link requests but don't exchange with any dikhead. Make sure link backs are specific to your content or market. A geeza promoting handmade sandals in Equador is not going to help your ranking if you deal in music.

Get really active with endorsements, directory submissions, links, sitemap submissions etc, and remember the most important thing of all: content is king!

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Samplecraze
Stretch That Note

Quote chris...:

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Quote:

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web forwarding, they now also offer a Domain Mapping facility.

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Marketing terms - presumably made up by 123reg and/or friends. They no doubt correspond to specific real-world configurations, but I'm not sure I'd like to guess which...

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No, it's not just marketing-speak. Under web forwarding it was impossible to hide the name of the root site when e.g following internal links. Domain Mapping acts just like a completely independent site. This matters quite a lot to some users.

Sorry - marketing speak probably wasn't the word I intended. Yes - those options will undoubtedly *do* specific things. Just that I find it hard to guess what they really do, in terms of the underlying configuration:

- the domain registration

- the DNS zone data

- the web server / virtual host configuration

By analogy, some make of synth might a knob labelled "wave shape", which does stuff. But the name itself doesn't tell you what it actually does.

Skipper - If you;re in Gloucestershire, are you anywhere near Westbury on Severn? A relation runs a biz there doing search engine optimisation. He'll charge you, but he knows what he's doing. Will PM an address if you want.

I'm pretty sure you don't need to spend any money to climb the rankings. Our site is number 1 and never spent a penny! Nor is it updated very often, I am ashamed to admit!

As someone else mentioned I think a crucial thing is to have a unique name for your site, then you've got a fighting chance.

When the site was set up i took advice from wherever i could get it on how to boost the ranking (mostly around keywords and page titles), i seem to recall it did take a while to take effect, a few weeks, but eventually bore fruit. Mind you, it was 7 years ago now when we set it all up.

Does using a '.COM' address help i wonder?

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