I finally stopped worrying about Googles sandboxing of small
businesses, and business has improved. Instead of trying to please
Googgle and having a "content rich" (translation: full of spam) site I
have made a site that is easy to use, with great customer service (just
like our brick and motar store). Our customer fedback has told us that.
We use relevent links which better search engines like MSN consider
more important (and they should be). We also have used networking and
Adbrite (far superior to Adsense), with excellent results. For proof of
the importance of relevent links vs "content rich" (spam) check out
this website (not mine) and type in english toffee, you will find
better results with MSN and Yahoo than google, as this site is loaded
with relevent links, but simple without alot of google spam.
http://www.carysoforegon.com/
As for our site, you will find better relevency with the key word shell
night light with MSN or Yahoo, than with Google.
http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/
Carl

On Sun, 19 Mar 2006 20:44:42 +0100, carlrs
<carl@americanaquariumproducts.com> wrote:

Content rich and full of spam are two completely different things. Spam is
spam, content is content.

But the direction of your action is correct. It will not surprise me if
your site will climb up in Google as well.

Best,
Borek
--
http://www.chembuddy.com
http://www.ph-meter.info

You are correct about spam, but to me placing unnecessary information
(content) just to please a search engine is silly, and bad for
cutomers.
Carl.
http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/

On Sun, 19 Mar 2006 21:38:58 +0100, carlrs
<carl@americanaquariumproducts.com> wrote:

Please quote post you are answering to.

Depends on the point of view. The question is - when Joe Average enters
his search phrase 'aquarium filter' - is he looking for a place to buy, or
for the information on the filters itself? SEs assume he is looking for
information, you want SE to assume Joe wants to buy.

Best,
Borek
--
http://www.chembuddy.com
http://www.ph-meter.info

Not neccesarily, there are some good blogs and informational sites out
there, and I agree they should come up too. Type in aquarium uv
sterilization on MSN and our information page comes up as a well a a
blog on UV Sterilization. Not so on Google.
http://americanaquariumproducts.com/...ilization.html

carlrs wrote:
Hey nice keyword combo in your posting along with your keyword.

Now i know for sure, google groups is going to be blocked.

--
Webontwerp: http://vision2form.nl/webontwerp/
Korte handleiding zoekmachine optimalisatie / gevonden worden:
http://vision2form.nl/webontwerp/gevonden-worden.html
Lifestyle - wonen reizen en genieten : http://vision4living.com

On 19 Mar 2006 11:44:42 -0800, "carlrs"
<carl@americanaquariumproducts.com> wrote:

Late response - and inspired in part due to similar thread on AWW:

Sandboxing, on Google, lasts for a few months - anywhere from 3 or 9
months thereabouts from what I have read - and primarily targets new
sites, not limited on if those new sites are small businesses or not.
Although I can see the downside, on the site owner's side of the deal,
on Google doing this - I can also see the other side of the coin of
Google trying to do something to curb some individual's 'enthusiasm'.

Uhm, the translation I will disagree with - as one does not need to
put out a "full of spam" site. Not saying some people have not putout
'full of spam' type sites ... just that one doesn't need to think that
is how they need to write content to rank well (on any search engine).
Look up some of Cat's posts about content and writing of content that
she has shared with people - and she is a small business owner also.

[snip]
*looking at view source*

No keywords, outside of Oregon, shared in <title> -this would help on
MSN and Yahoo also as they also like keyword rich title text. Optimal
title text if wanting it to help them be found for "Cary's of Oregon"
searches.

Google is doing better, according to rumor, on handling javascript -
but the above site uses javascript for mouseovers on menu links - this
could be replaced with CSS to have the same effect, thus bettering the
spider's handling of javascript-embedded/shared links .. particularly
on the navigation menu. However, they also topped this with using of
flash. Note for the flash menu they mention chocolates 2 or 3 times
under their fancy flash menu - but at the bottom, for the text
navigation menu, they don't mention or share links to those pages
about chocolates.

No alt="" for images - so missing a great chance to describe there
products like dot box and such - and able to share good keywords in
doing so without appearing spammish.

No meta descript - and Yahoo will share that info if shared on sites.

And, looking through what text is offered - English Toffee is probably
their most weighted keyword phrase on the main page with Oregon also
probably strongly weighted - as they only shared, disregarding the
navigation menu text and their store's address, slightly over 50 words
in two pragraphs and one header. I had heard a(n unsubstiated) rumor
that Google is leaning more to pages that have around, to pages have a
bit more than 50-some words.


Now I did a quickie search to see if my "probable" thinking about
keyword weighting was true:

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...fee+%2B+oregon

They come up at #1.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...english+toffee

They come up at #9.

What else are they supposed to come up for, in terms of their main
page, if all they shared is English Toffee and the name of what state
they are in?

Ok *refills cup of coffee*

<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="index, follow">

You don't need that - spiders/bots will do that automatically. If you
want to restrict access to certain portion/pages of your site, then
read up on robots.txt files.

<META NAME="GENERATOR" content="SiteRightNow Control
Panel Web Site Builder at http://www.siterightnow.com/">

Some people share this - I have never seen any remote helpfulness or
perk in just listing what HTML editor one used to create their
site/pages with - so, on my sites, I don't share that META

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="Tue, 01 Jan 1980
1:00:00 GMT">

Uhm, given the date shared, I think it is safe to drop this tag ...
don't you?

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">

Hrm, caching has its perks in it helps pages load more quickly. If
using the above to thwart image lifting, from your site, kind of
pointless as there are oodles of other ways people can snag images
before they will even start to look in their cache.


<td width="70" valign="bottom"><center><a href='index.html'
style='color: Black'
onmouseover="image_Over('button1');window.status=' ';return true;"
onMouseout="image_Out('button1');window.status=' ';return true;"> <img
name="button1" border="0" src="/images/buttons/grey_31_page.gif"

I see you went for the mouseover on top menu buttons links also ...
can be done through CSS, especially for the simple effect you are
trying to go for - and with far less coding to pull it off also. ...

However, that is neither here nor there, as you are linking to your
main page by using index.html versus, what some people feel is the
better option of, http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com or even just
/.

I don't see an alt="" for your logo and it shares some, what I gander
you consider, valued keywords/products on it.


Now, you complained about "content" translating, on Google, to being
spam content - yet, on your main page, I see you only shared 1
paragraph of descriptive text about yout site and, by golly, it is a
word-for-word repeat the META descript. Nifty trick there to just
repeat the META descript as "content". Oh, while on the topic, you may
want to look over your META keywords as you have some repititons of
words in that and that may raise a llag, on some search engines, as
trying to spam certain words. 1 to 2 times repeating a word is viewed
better than going over 3x. No header markup, but then it may be
debatable on if what little text is shared is worthy of a header
preceeding it to help provide structure to the page's "contents".

Ok, your middle-bottom links - man, you have long anchor text for
those - and again, in my opinion, lacking creativity as you just
repeated the alt='text' above the links for the link text. Again,
watch the repetition thang - particularly if you are going to go
around complaining/claiming "Google likes spam sites versus content
sites" as, to my eyes, so far you are really toeing, if not crossing,
the line on doing exactly what you are complaining about 'others
doing'.

Also, by doing the above, you may have also watered down the oomph the
anchor text would receive. One achor text is about 37 words long - and
I thought I was wordy! And you seem to have a yen for javascript too.

What you may consider is splitting those long achors/links into
multiple, but shorter worded, links to pages about those products.

*scrolls down a bit* Ah, I see now why you shared about that one
English Toffee place in your post. A little usenet/mirroring promo for
a link exchange partner.

None of the text on the Adbrite ads, appearing when I looked at your
page, contains text that matches or would help support that page's
contents. So I would scroll back up - and start tweaking. I really see
NO reason why this page should rank well for "shell night light" on
Google - as you only shared that phrase 2x on the page (in the alt=""
and in the repeated anchor text) - as I am disregarding the sharings
in the META tags of that phrase as google may not even be taking much
notice, if any at all, of your metas. I am kinda surprised that you
are stating that it does well for that phrase on MSN, although, as I
already mentioned, Yahoo will take note of META description so that
may have helped you a bit with them.
shell night light

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ll+night+light
You aren't in the top 10

I added another word that was heavlily used in the page to add onto
shell night light phrase
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ll+night+light
you aren't in the top 10

Frankly, after reading this thread and the other one, I expected more
"meat" on the above two example URLs to back your argumentation of
"being overlooked" or "not ranking as well as should" thoughts in
terms of Google.

Now, you can feel free to pay me for the above These are just
things that struck my eyes while looking at the two URLs you shared -
but you also have a lot of reading of Cat's posts to do, tweaking some
of the ways you are sharing links, and then reading Bret's article
that I mentioned on the other group to you. In other words, you have
some work ahead of you if you handled the inner pages like I have seen
the outer/cover/entrance/main page handled.

Just try to have fun working on your site and beefing it up here and
there while watching how you handle repeating yourself and things
should improve for ya.

Carol

On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 22:35:07 -0500, Carol W <from_you@nomail.com>
wrote:

[snip]

Also, as a side note, the one site is using their site name as anchor
text -which is ok, if people search for that name. They may want to
rethink the anhor text used to point their way since their site name
and URL doesn't share hints about what kind of products they offer.
Your url, when split into stand alone words, have 1 or 2 keywords that
directly relates to the kind of products you are offering - so an edge
there that the other url does not have built into it when you think
about it.

Out of curiosity: Do you really want (or expect) the main page to come
up for shell night light - or the inner/product page page that would
share more information about the shell night light?

Carol

share more information about the shell night light?

Answer: An inner page
http://americanaquariumproducts.com/Shells.html or
http://americanaquariumproducts.com/...ghtLights.html

paragraph of descriptive text about yout site and, by golly, it is a
word-for-word repeat the META descript. Nifty trick there to just
repeat the META descript as "content". Oh, while on the topic, you may
want to look over your META keywords as you have some repititons of
words in that and that may raise a llag, on some search engines, as
trying to spam certain words. 1 to 2 times repeating a word is viewed
better than going over 3x. No header markup, but then it may be
debatable on if what little text is shared is worthy of a header
preceeding it to help provide structure to the page's "contents".

As for the repeat of content and meta descript, I was told to keep the
them similar or the same so as to not be considered spam.
Of coarse I stand to be corrected here.
And again I read that as long as the phrase- keyword is seperated by
commas they are considered different. Ex: "shell night lights" does not
repeat "night light". Again I stand to be corrected. I am not trying to
trick the search engines in any way. I wanted a site where it is clear
what we sell and what it costs. I have gotten alot of "human"
compliments about our URL page:
http://americanaquariumproducts.com/...ghtLights.html but if a
search engine can't find it, what good is it?
As for the Adbrite ads: are you asking for meta descript for them? We
just recently added keywords for our links pages based Web master
advice.
I have alt tags for the pictures, so I am not sure where we are missing
them
I also corrected a "style" and "<p/> tag based on a validator, but it
only colapsed the page.
Final comment, What are your fees?
americanaquariumproducts@yahoo.com

PS pardon my poor writing, it is late for me, as I work two jobs and I
start at 3:30 am on the next.