Hi guys! I just redesigned my site to be more search engine friendly, now I need to know what I need to do outside of the site code to make my Web design company show up in certain search results. Like "Web Design in Bensalem, PA" and so on. Please help. Thanks so much!

 

-Seth

Why outside of the site code?

 

There are plenty of things you can do to start off within the site code, which is what makes the most difference anyway

 

First of all you have a canonical url issue, http://yoursite.com should forward to http://www.yoursite.com

Secondly you have too much un-necassary markup, you could get rid of a lot of spans, divs, and classes - smaller files mean google can crawl more easily.

Your titles and descriptions should be unique across the site, and be relevant to each individual page, dont try to rank for 'web design' .. it isnt going to happen. Go for something a little bit more specific like 'web design yourcounty'

Some of your pages dont actually have a meta description at all

 

You've used h2's but no h1's

Could try some strong and em tags in relevant places

 

Finally - baselinks, an html sitemap, and an xml sitemap

 

Should get you on the right track

 

P.s. - The blog link in your signature is broken

Thank you so much! What do you mean by the forward? How would i do this?

 

-Seth

I'm also slightly confused by what you said about the redirects, Eggman. Are you saying that it's better to use http://www.domain.com over http://domain.com?

I'm also slightly confused by what you said about the redirects, Eggman. Are you saying that it's better to use http://www.domain.com over http://domain.com?

I'm not Eggman but I'll jump in here to say.. it depends entirely on the site. If you already have a ton of backlinks to www.your-site.com then forward the non www. version to it, and vice versa

 

This is a great tool for figuring out whether or not you should use "www.": http://oyoy.eu/site/www-or-not/

 

After that you'll want to see one of these two code snippets: Forcing "www." in your URL or Removing "www." from your URL

Links, Links and More Links

 

 

The toughest part of the Google SEO process -- back-links. Back links are websites that link directly to your website. The general principal is the more back links you have, the higher your pages will be ranked, as your website must be good if so many other sites are linking back to it.

 

If you run a web development company, then adding a simple link to the bottom of each of your client's websites, such as:

 

<a href=http://www.yoursite.com>Web development by Company Name</a>

 

... (With your clients permission of course) can help boost your back links, which will help boost your ranking position in searches.

 

Submitting your site to dmoz.org, Yahoo! and other directories is also an important step to increase the number of sites linking back to yours. Do remember however, that setting up back links takes time. I would recommend emailing 5-10 websites each and every day to request back-links or partnership links (keeping in mind that the sites contacted should be relevant but not competitive) e.g. - If you sell chocolate, partnering with a company that sells Roses may just be a good idea. Within a couple of weeks, you should have a good 100 or so sites happily linking back to yours!

I would recommend emailing 5-10 websites each and every day to request back-links or partnership links (keeping in mind that the sites contacted should be relevant but not competitive) [...] Within a couple of weeks, you should have a good 100 or so sites happily linking back to yours!

Does this ever actually work for you? I mean, I've seen people give that advice before but never in my years on the web have I found someone with a quality site willing to advertise another site for free.

it depends... if you offers back links in exchange the response rate is much better

 

also try emailing sites from your region, the people who live near you trust you more than those who live far away

Links, Links and More Links

The toughest part of the Google SEO process -- back-links. Back links are websites that link directly to your website. The general principal is the more back links you have, the higher your pages will be ranked, as your website must be good if so many other sites are linking back to it.

 

If you run a web development company, then adding a simple link to the bottom of each of your client's websites, such as:

 

<a href=http://www.yoursite.com>Web development by Company Name</a>

 

... (With your clients permission of course) can help boost your back links, which will help boost your ranking position in searches.

 

Submitting your site to dmoz.org, Yahoo! and other directories is also an important step to increase the number of sites linking back to yours. Do remember however, that setting up back links takes time. I would recommend emailing 5-10 websites each and every day to request back-links or partnership links (keeping in mind that the sites contacted should be relevant but not competitive) e.g. - If you sell chocolate, partnering with a company that sells Roses may just be a good idea. Within a couple of weeks, you should have a good 100 or so sites happily linking back to yours!

 

NO

 

Real SEO: is NOT Spam

 

RE the www and non www, Jem nailed it, just pick one - as long as your website doesnt load on both then you're fine, to implement this, use the following code in your .htaccess file

 

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

I'm not Eggman but I'll jump in here to say.. it depends entirely on the site. If you already have a ton of backlinks to www.your-site.com then forward the non www. version to it, and vice versa

 

This is a great tool for figuring out whether or not you should use "www.": http://oyoy.eu/site/www-or-not/

 

After that you'll want to see one of these two code snippets: Forcing "www." in your URL or Removing "www." from your URL

 

What I don't understand is what's the big deal if my site http://www.domain.com goes to the same site as http://domain.com and vise versa. Isn't that good that the user can do either? I know my mother sometimes forgets the www. and luckily it goes to the other one. Is there any benefit to which one i choose. i want my users to be able to use both. I'm still not clear on why the heck it matters and what the implications are of not doing this.

What I don't understand is what's the big deal if my site http://www.domain.com goes to the same site as http://domain.com and vise versa. Isn't that good that the user can do either? I know my mother sometimes forgets the www. and luckily it goes to the other one. Is there any benefit to which one i choose. i want my users to be able to use both. I'm still not clear on why the heck it matters and what the implications are of not doing this.

That was the point of the snippets I provided - it doesn't matter whether someone forgets the "www." or adds it in, the one will redirect to the other.

 

The theory is that by having your website accessible through both, Google may index pages from either side. This poses two problems.. firstly, Google may flag your www. version as a replica of the non-www. version and give a duplicate content penalty. Second problem is that if all of a sudden people start linking to a non-www. page but the rest of your backlinks come to the www version of your site, you may end up with two lots of PageRank/whatever.. combine the two and all that "link juice" comes to one site only.

Jem, you nailed that one like a pro!

Real SEO: is NOT Spam

 

Nice plug.

Well you see, I find that if I repeat myself more than 3 times in various threads, I might as well just write a blog and link to it rather than typing it all out yet again

Well you see, I find that if I repeat myself more than 3 times in various threads, I might as well just write a blog and link to it rather than typing it all out yet again

 

Actually a really interesting article. Cheers Egg.

Cheers scott!