SEO Tycoon

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-18-2007, 10:39 AM

My site is designed with FrontPage 2002. I have read in a lot of places that FP inserts a lot of unnecessary code that makes it hard for the spiders to crawl pages, and I have also heard that that is not the case. Could someone please help me on this.

I have been diligently trying to optimize my site to get a better showing in Google before the holidays, however, I don't know if I am spinning my wheels and wasting my time or not. I realize that I am in a very competitive business and it is hard to rank well on many terms. I do rank fairly well with MSN and Yahoo on several terms, but do not do well on google at all.

If someone wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate it if you could take a look at my site and tell me if there are any major issues that I need to correct.

www.tiskettaskets.com

Thank you,
Marie

**ADAM Web Design** · 09-18-2007, 10:53 AM

Hey Marie,

While FrontPage does generate a ton of bulky and thoroughly unnecessary code, it's not your biggest problem.

Google tends to be more evolved than the other two engines in terms of SEO tricks and minimizing the effects of them, and your site has a few of them:

1) Link exchanges. They're all but dead when it comes to big G these days, as well they should be. In particular, irrelevant link exchanges are usually pretty easy to spot and minimize any SEO effects from such.

2) Keywords and phrases on the page, separated with a comma. You've got a couple of entire paragraphs that do just that.

There are also two things you're not doing that you should be:

1) Point all home page links to http://www.tiskettaskets.com , not index.html (this will let search engines know what the default page is and help avoid any possible duplicate content issues).

2) Writing and preparing copy for users first. Contrary to published and prevailing opinion, SEO is more about good design, quality content, and a maximized user experience. A lot of elements of good design (correct use of h tags, use of alt attributes to properly describe an image for the sight-challenged, things like that) are also SEO elements and a well-built site with quality content will always gain an inherent search engine advantage.

**Tisket Taskets** · 11:18 AM

Thanks for taking a peek at my site. Should I just do away with the paragraphs you referenced, or maybe replace the commas with dashes? I am assuming that you are speaking of the first 2 paragraphs below the thumbnails

On the directing the link in the top and bottom include to the home page, are you saying that when I insert the hyperlink, that in the address bar at the bottom of the hyperlink screen that I need to put http://www.tiskettaskets.com ? I try really hard to do things correctly, but I just don't understand this techo stuff quite as well as you younger folks do.

<<<you wrote>>>>
2) Writing and preparing copy for users first. Contrary to published and prevailing opinion, SEO is more about good design, quality content, and a maximized user experience. A lot of elements of good design (correct use of h tags, use of alt attributes to properly describe an image for the sight-challenged, things like that) are also SEO elements and a well-built site with quality content will always gain an inherent search engine advantage.

Can you be more specific as to where I am going wrong with this?

Again, thanks a million for your help.

Marie

**Learning Newbie** · 09-18-2007, 02:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tisket Taskets

Thanks for taking a peek at my site. Should I just do away with the paragraphs you referenced, or maybe replace the commas with dashes? I am assuming that you are speaking of the first 2 paragraphs below the thumbnails

Get rid of them if you can't turn them into something you'd say out loud in a conversation. That's the cardinal rule for just about any text on your page. Also, it's pretty obvious (to your customers and to Big G) the only reason these faux paragraphs are there is to get you to rank for the terms. Use off page optimization for that if you can't work it into regular sounding text that follows grammar.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tisket Taskets

On the directing the link in the top and bottom include to the home page, are you saying that when I insert the hyperlink, that in the address bar at the bottom of the hyperlink screen that I need to put http://www.tiskettaskets.com ? I try really hard to do things correctly, but I just don't understand this techo stuff quite as well as you younger folks do.

Yes, all your links to your home page should end with .com and your index page should 301 redirect back to your domain name. Basically, it should be like the home page doesn't exist, instead it's just tied directly to your domain name.

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-18-2007, 04:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

Yes, all your links to your home page should end with .com and your index page should 301 redirect back to your domain name. Basically, it should be like the home page doesn't exist, instead it's just tied directly to your domain name.

Ok, I understand and know how to insert the hyperlink into the text in the includes, but I don't know how to do a 301 redirect back to the domain name.

When I highlight the text and go to "insert hyperlink" or right click the text and go to "hyperlink properties" it brings up the box that says either "insert hyperlink" or "edit hyperlink". In the top box is where I put the text that I want displayed, the next box in "look in" which always shows up as my web site, and the bottom box is the "address" box. Do I just type in www.tiskettaskets.com in the "address" box, or do I have to do something different?

Sorry to be so dense on this, but appreciate everyone's willingness to help.

Marie

**Learning Newbie** · 09-18-2007, 04:59 PM

It's not part of the hyperlink that has the redirect. You do that through your server administration.

Are you running on a Windows or Linux box? Or, if we need to back up, is it something your company maintains itself or do you have a "web host"? How do you get your files from Front Page onto the live world wide web?

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-18-2007, 05:35 PM

Golly Gee, I haven't a clue about what Windows or Linux box means. I maintain my site but of course I do have a hosting company that hosts it. As far as getting from FrontPage to the live world wide web, I make the changes in FrontPage and then publish to my site.

I did a redirect one time when I changed a file name on a page by going into , I think, something like .htaccess, or something like that, but that is the only redirect I have ever done.

Thanks,
Marie

**Learning Newbie** · 09-18-2007, 05:59 PM

If you think it was .htaccess, that's because it was. And that means you're using an Apache server. I'm the odd man out in that regard, because I use Windows web servers. But someone else will be along to help.

But what you'll want to do is pull open your .htaccess file and add a little bit of code to add a new redirect, from yoursite.com/index.html to just yoursite.com. And if you haven't already done it, make sure if you type yoursite.com into the address bar it takes you to www.yoursite.com - for exactly the same reason.

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-18-2007, 06:05 PM

Thanks, I am rewriting the home page as we speak, so maybe it will be better. Hopefully someone will come along that can walk me through another redirect. I'm not sure I remember how I did it before, and of course this would be different, because before, I was only changing a file name.

Marie

**CSS4Life** · 07:18 PM

Here to help with .htaccess redirecting

Here's how it goes:

If you want to redirect visitors and search engines from www.tiskettaskets.com/index.html to the main address, enter this code in your .htaccess file:

Quote:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
# index.html to /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3, 9}\ /.*index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.html$ /$1 [R=301,L]

The same principle can be used to help in SEO - to make sure visitors and search engines only see one site, rather than 2 (Google will see the www and non-www address versions of your site as different).

If you want www.tiskettaskets.com to go to the address without the www part infront, enter this code in the .htaccess file in the public_html area of your files:

Quote:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^tiskettaskets\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://tiskettaskets.com/$1 [R=301,L]

If you want to do the opposite - redirect the address without the www to the www address (e.g. redirect tiskettaskets.com to www.tiskettaskets.com ), then add this code to your .htaccess file:

Quote:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^tiskettaskets\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.tiskettaskets.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Hope I've been of help. Talkupation appreciated

**Learning Newbie** · 09-18-2007, 07:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by whym

Here to help with .htaccess redirecting

Which brings up another point. You can learn about the hows and the why (has to do with how Google thinks of your site) in an article called Non-WWW and WWW Redirecting. It would be nice if all hosting companies provided this kind of info, but until that day, what matters is that you understand the answer.

You might have to "get" the .htaccess file from your server before editing and then re "publishing" it.

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-18-2007, 08:52 PM

<<<<<1) Point all home page links to http://www.tiskettaskets.com , not index.html (this will let search engines know what the default page is and help avoid any possible duplicate content issues).>>>>>

Ok, guys, I think I have gotten this issue taken care of, but not real sure. I called a friend that is pretty good at this stuff and she said that I could do it on the include and then recalculate hyperlinks.......I have also rewritten the home page. (

Sooooo, if y'all don't mind, when you have time would you take another peek at it and see if it is better and see if I have the home page link pointing in the right direction.

Thank you all so very very much.

Marie

**vangogh** · 09-18-2007, 09:05 PM

Marie I want to echo what was said above about writing naturally so everything reads well to real people. Imagine you owned a store and every road in town ended up right at your front door. But your store is so run down and so uninviting that no one wants to come in. You got a lot of traffic, but what did it matter. Make sure your site is first inviting to people and then get them to visit.

It doesn't look like a 301 redirect has been set up on your site. Your server is Apache by the way and the code Daniel posted above will work. You can copy and paste either block.

You want to save that code in a file called .htaccess. It has to be exactly that and you need to create it in a text editor like Notepad. If you use Frontpage it won't work.

You want to upload the .htaccess file to the root folder of your domain. The root folder will be the same place where your index.html file is located.

The issue we're trying to correct is that your site can be accessed as www.yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com. Search engines will see that as two different sites so it dilutes the effect of other things you might do to build search traffic.

I wrote an article on the SEO benefits of 301 redirects which might help explain things a little more.

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-18-2007, 10:16 PM

Thanks Vangogh,

Gosh, I never knew that you could just type in something without the www. Guess an old dog is not to old to learn something new.
===============

1) Point all home page links to http://www.tiskettaskets.com , not index.html (this will let search engines know what the default page is and help avoid any possible duplicate content issues).

This is the problem I was trying to fix. Did I get it taken care of? I haven't been brave enough to tackle the www vs the non www yet.

I have gotten brave enough to copy and paste (RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^tiskettaskets\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.tiskettaskets.com/$1 [R=301,L] ) into notepad, but that is all.

Where do I insert it in the htaccess file. I remember being told as well as reading in one of the articles one of you guys recommended that you have to be very, very careful when you are in there.

Marie

**ForrestCroce** · 09-19-2007, 12:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tisket Taskets

Gosh, I never knew that you could just type in something without the www. Guess an old dog is not to old to learn something new.

You actually can't get to my site with a www in front of it. Enough people got used to not typing it that they seem to default to just typing in the domain name. Technically www is a subdomain, from when one server used to run the web site, another the ftp and a third might handle the mail. Now that it's all a slice of the same web server, it seems more convenient, hopefully for my users, to just drop the www all together. It's just a few extra characters filling up the address bar, and some of the paths are long enough already.

It really doesn't matter whether you host your site with a www subdomain or not, as long as you only use one or the other.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tisket Taskets

1) Point all home page links to http://www.tiskettaskets.com , not index.html (this will let search engines know what the default page is and help avoid any possible duplicate content issues).

This is the problem I was trying to fix. Did I get it taken care of? I haven't been brave enough to tackle the www vs the non www yet.

Nope; I can get to your home page through both of these addresses:

There are two reasons this is bad. Search engines might think you're trying to pull a fast one and get two different pages to rank for the same keywords. And when people link to you, some will grab whatever is in the address bar, while others will just link to your domain ... the first option above. Links are part of what make you rank, and you're dividing their power.

This also works by the way: http://tiskettaskets.com/index.html

**ForrestCroce** · 09-19-2007, 01:00 AM

Try this ... hold down the Windows button on your keyboard and hit E. A new window should come up pointing to "My Computer" or some other folder. Go to the address bar - if it doesn't have one, to to the View menu, hit Folder Options, move to the View tab, and it's in there somewhere - type ftp://tiskettaskets.com/ into the address bar. It'll prompt you for a username and password. Navigate to the public_html folder, then download a file called .htaccess to your local computer, make some of the changes suggested here, and then upload it. You'll probably need to use the same way to upload it that you used to download it, so keep the window open until you're done with it.

It's a little more complicated than grabbing the code here, though. Since you already have a page redirecting, you only want to grab the RewriteCond and RewriteRule parts, and add them to the bottom of what you already have.

Let us know if that works.

**Kushal** · 02:42 AM

Use stylesheet css. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets
I have checked some keywords in google and yes your keywords are very competitive.
Get link back from the related website not just the index page.
If your site rank well is yahoo and msn it will rank well in google too but it takes time.
If you are seriously working on seo from the time you started your website (1/21/2003) and you are not getting good rank in google, means something is still missing.
I don’t think you are not getting good rank in google because you have made site with front page. There are more then enough issues to get good rank.
Here are lots of new SEO gurus and masters; you can consult with them…