Help with Google

From: Allan Pollett <allan_at_ucanbuyart.com>
Date: Tue 12 Nov 2002 21:59:26 -0600

About 2 months ago I worked on a project where I built a series of real
estate sites to expand on a group of pre-existing sites targeting new
markets. There were about 10 original sites, which at the time were ranked
in the top 10 for their key terms. Even the New York site was ranked #19 for
it's very competitive term. Each site had unique and excellent content about
100-300 pages each.

Wanting to expand upon the success and I created 20 new sites again each
having unique high quality content. The new sites all incorporated the
successful marketing techniques which were employed before.
Then I made a mistake. I decided to heavily cross-link to sites in order to
build a network. I learned later this could cause problems so I removed the
cross-links. However, Google had already indexed the sites. That months
update the sites dropped to the 100 position . This month's update, even
after the correction, they dropped even further (only two of the sites
maintained their positions).

At one time I thought I was search engine guru. I could consistently create
sites that ranked in the top ten of Google. Now my network of sites is dead.
I once believed the following would lead to high ranking:

1) Avoid spamming techniques
-hidden text
-redirects
-meta-refresh
-too small text
-repeating keywords to an extreme
- link farms
- mirror sites

2) Avoid frames - search engines have real problems with these. Though it is
possible to create sites that do rank well with frames using a the "no
frame" tag, it is better to avoid their use.

3) Keywords should appear in title meta, on page near top, in h1 or links
gives boost, and should appear disputed throughout the page and at the
bottom. These keywords should appear in sensible text. Text near the top has
more value that text which appears lower on the page.

4) Links pointing to the site should have keywords in them. Links from sites
like Yahoo, Dmoz, and high quality sites (high pr and few outgoing links)
which are relevant in content are the best.
Government and university sites are excellent.

5) Keywords in an image don't help because spiders can't see images.
However, they can see the alt tags and in the image name. Sometimes spiders
have problems seeing links within an image.

6) Sites which have excellent internal linking structure and excellent
content generally do well and are top ranked. Quantity of pages is
important.

7) Google sees keywords in comment tags do not in javascript.

8) keeping the file sizes small (preferably 10K or less)

There are more things, but these are the main points. I did all of these
things and still the sites are ranked poorly. I have better links, better
text, better code, better internal linking, and worse ranking. It doesn't
make sense.

Sorry for the length of the letter. I would appreciate any help.

Sincerely,
Allan Pollett
http://www.new-York-New-York-Real-Estate.com/





Received on Tue Nov 12 2002 - 21:59:26 CST