Cant find self on Google

[willows]

Hi, I have tried to find myself in Google using the words that I put in Meta Tags & after 5 pages still locate website. If I put it in the search as willows personalised candles it comes up but I am trying to look at it from a customer perspective who would not know that willows candles exist. Have I stuffed something up? I have just read another note re in the meta tags to have the word comma space then the next word. Well silly me did not do that. What this be part of the problem or would this have nothing to do with it. Thank you, appreciate all your help so far with my other issues.
Leanne
www.willowscandles.com.au
Melbourne, Australia

[Bethers]

Re: Cant find self on Google

It can take MONTHS to come up in the search engines on your optimized keywords/keyword phrases. But NONE of the se's are going to use your keyword list for you. The words have to be optmized on your website, in your title and headlines and text on the pages - and in anchor text on links back to you. Your meta keyword list is really not worth the time it takes to write it - except there's the possibility it can hurt if you misuse it.

By the way - look at the thousands (and millions) of other websites that are coming up for the same keywords as you - that's why your optimization is soooo important. Some of them are going to come up just because they've been around longer than you - so if you do a better job on optimization, you'll pass them up faster than others. And don't optimize for too general of a term - for example here's how many websites Google has for candles:
Results 1 - 10 of about 38,500,000 for candles

You're title isn't optimized to help you - nor is your headline - I didn't go further into the page than that just now. Only a couple people searched all of last month for Australian made candles - Now, not a lot of people searched for personalised candles - but it WAS searched for and would probably be a lot easier for you to optmized for:

In Google:
Results 1 - 10 of about 575,000 for personalised candles

From 38+ million searches to just over 1/2 a million - much easier to optmize for!

You need to do some homework on what's being searched for - and you need to optimize for those phrases.

[willows]

Re: Cant find self on Google

Sorry I am not too smart when it comes to computers. Are you saying that Google actually picks up on what the text is on the pages rather than the meta tags? So whatever my text is on each page, if I improve it on each page it would help when people go on the google search?
Thank you once again, Leanne

[Bethers]

Re: Cant find self on Google

The meta tags are to further enhance your site. Since so many people misuse them - the meta keywords are rarely used anymore by any search engines. The search engines crawl your site and read all the text - some is more important than other - and they compare all the sites they read.

It's much more complicated than that - but think of it as they are like you looking at sites - if you look at 10 sites - some you like, some you don't. They'll look at spelling and grammar - at ease of getting around the site - at how long it's been around - etc etc. Since the spiders can't see - of course it's the text that it's picking up. Now, someone searches for, say "pink watermelon scented candles" - the se is going to go through the millions of sites they've searched and find any and all of them that have that text - then, based on all the other factors - present them in an order of importance to the searcher. The se's WANT to present good, relevant information - but they can only do it if they can find it.

I suggest you read the following ebook:
http://www.moxie-enter-prises.com/SEO-The-Basics.html

It's very basic - written for beginners - and maybe it'll help you get started on optimizing.

[Dream Lady]

Re: Cant find self on Google

Hey Beth: The fact that Willows spells personalized as personalised...does that make a difference? I assume it's spelled either way depending on what country you are in, but is there a way to have both spellings appear when searched? Just curious, because I would have searched using "z" in the word. or am I being to picky here.

[Bethers]

Re: Cant find self on Google

She's in Australia - and that's the spelling for Australia. (and for England). If she wants to sell in our market then she has to consider the other spelling also. But if we would want to sell in England or Australia, we would need to consider their spelling. It depends on the market.

[Andy128]

Re: Cant find self on Google

My two cents.

Most here know that Beth is the resident expert when it comes to SE optimization- and it is true. She helped me out a great deal. In fact- for those that want to build a effective web site- they should start with sound optimization practices that Beth has so often suggested -FIRST. I did not do that and had to adjust over 100 pages of my web site to be SE Friendly. It took about a month. Because of Beths help- my google and msn rankings are astounding. I am extremely pleased.

So- take Beths advise to heart. It will most certainly pay off!

Thanks Beth

Andy
www.123gpp.com

[Bethers]

Re: Cant find self on Google

Thanks, Andy - now you're making me blush - good thing I'm on the other side of the screen!

And I owe you an email - if I ever get my emails working right again!