New here and 1st post!
I have really been enjoying this fourm and look forward to posting more!!!
so here is my question....
Just wondering is anyone can explain to me why when I search my business name my actual website does NOT come up ...I come up all kinds of other places (where I have an ad etc)...but my actual website does not come up....I would think it would come up first???
Is there any thing I can do to at least have my site come up ...I know google and yahoo have me in their index??
Thx


Andrea

Andrea,

Kind of a complex question...... Go to google and pull up "SEO" to learn how you need to optimize your site. It sounds like you have already registered your site; if not, you can do so w/ google, yahoo, ask,.........

Mike

Like Mike said, SEO can be very complex. There are a couple of things I notice right off the bat though.

• You are hiding text from visitors on your home page. Hidden text is frowned upon by search engines and seen as search engine spam. There isn't really any reason to have black text on a black background as it is useless to your visitors. That could be hurting your site some.

• Other than your splash page, the whole site is Flash. Thus there is no information that Google can actually read. If you look at the pages your business actually comes up on, there is real readable text for users and search engines alike.

Changing that copy on the home page won't shoot you to number one overnight, but it's a start in the right direction along with some SEO research on Google.

Here's a snippet from Google's Webmaster Help Center:


-JG

Yep, complex issue. A couple of points.

1. Have a look at your site control panel. There will be somewhere that you can check the Logs. For example, my host (Bluehost) uses Awstats. You can look and see if Google has crawled your site. I have attached an image showing part of my site log.

2. If your site is all Flash, as mine is, drop some html in there to help with indexing. If you look at our pages Click Here you will see that the menu is Flash.

But, scroll down to to the bottom and you will see the same pages in an html menu. Basically, I have these links far enough down not to clash with the look of the site, but their presence will be indexed by Google etc.

You can also put your full web address in the Google search box, and if your site has been indexed, it will show in the results.

Good luck, let me know if I can help with anything.

Hugh

Though likely not typical... I've tracked my placing for a specific local search term (Minneapolis Wedding Photographer) and I ossilated between 45-75 depending on the update. I was moving up slowly due to a bit more exposure, but nowhere near high enough that someone would spot me in a general search.
I made a small change to the title of my site and now sit at #4 for the same search. This happened over the course of two updates.
Mine is an all-flash site as well.. which people say hurts me a bit.
Unfortunately, a search for Minnesota Wedding Photographer or St. Paul Wedding Photographer and I barely even crack the top 100. huff.

Hi.

You may also want to use Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools to help manage your SEO campaigns.

Getting links to your site from other sites on the web also helps - Consider setting up a Squidoo page and Blogger site with content and links to your site. Google defines good content as information that is 100+ words long.

Check out the forums at digitalpoint.com for advanced information.

Sean