Been away awhile... Advice on search submission?

[lorikirstein]

Hello everyone!

Is there anyone out there who can tell me why I am not ranked on google? I have submitted myself to VodaHits, and I have followed advice (at least, I know I've tried!) in this forum about how to work my website.

Any advice for me would be SO much appreciated!

Cheers!

[philipc9635]

Hi Lori

I checked out you site for meta tags at www.widexl.com. It stated that they found a redirect from another domain name. This could be your problem.

Google will find you no matter what even if you don't submit to search engines. It has certainly found your e-mail address from what I could see on widexl.

Good luck

[lorikirstein]

Phil, how kind of you!

Would you tell me, which domain they are finding a redirect from, and what in fact that means? I mean, how do I make that stop?

Thanks!

Lori

[Bethers]

Google has given your site a page rank of 2 - which is good for a new site. What terms are you wanting to show up for when searching? I can't really find that you've targetted ANY phrases on your home page - therefore you might have a hard time showing up ever in searches.

Do you have links back to your website from other sites? If you do, do you know what the anchor text those sites are using is? Is it the keywords you want to be found for?

The only keyword phrase it looks like you might be targeting is "acting school" - if you do a search on Google for that - you'll see there are 58 million results for that phrase. It will be very hard for you to move up for that phrase. A little bit easier is acting schools california - with just over 2 million results. So, what does your website have to move ahead of the other 2 million plus websites out there? Are you targeting the phrase acting school california or acting schools california? No. I can't find the word California mentioned anywhere on the page. You do have it in your title - if it's important enough to be in the title - why isn't it on the page?

Your page doesn't really have a headline - something that tells the person that reaches the site - and the se's - just exactly what you are - it's probably the one most important element on EVERY page of a website - and you don't have it. It often is similar to the page title - but not always.

Remember, people on line rush to find what they're looking for. If they do find your website you only have a couple seconds to reel them in - that title on each page is often how you do it. They see your header and your headlines and decide by those if they want to look further. You do have a headline - but it's not specific enough. The headline you have is "Empowering the Actor" Workshops and Classes. I actually find that should be a subheader - because the home page needs the header saying that you are an acting school in california - at the least.

These are some of the reasons you aren't moving up the se's. It takes work - and good copy - and time.

[lorikirstein]

Okay, I give up. What is an H1 heading? Where is it put on the page? What's going on? Argh. I am doing Searches on the heading thing, Ms. B., and I have to admit that so far I'm stymied.

If you find you have some time, I sure would appreciate a small clue? Sorry to be among the clueless!

L.

[philipc9635]

Hi Lori

A H1 is a html box you place at the top of every page with the following text or similiar added into the box as the heading:

<center><h1><font size="3">Acting School California|School California </font></h1></center>

I hope thats correct Beth

[Patience]

Just chiming in to say...Lori, please don't give up! You ask the best questions!!

Off to learn more.

[Bethers]

Lori, I agree you should not give up.

Phil that is close, but I wouldn't repeat the same thing twice in the headline - that's spammy.

Lori - here's a short lesson on what a headline is (and an h1 signifies a headline).

Think of a newspaper. The very top headline is what the newspaper has put in h1 tags to tell everyone that that headline is the most important thing being reported that day. You want, on the top of every webpage - a similar headline - that in a short phrase (using your keyword phrase for THAT page) let's the visitors to that page know that they have arrived where they want to be.

If you have other lesser headlines on a page, they would be signified by using h2, h3, etc - down to as far as h3. You can do headlines without using the h tags - but they are standard tags - and using them correctly lets the se's know what is the headline.

The h1 should be written for your visitors - by doing your homework - and knowing the words they are searching for - that are the important words for THAT page. Each page should be different - as each page should be keying on different terms.

If you call up any of my sites, you'll find my headlines on each page. The headlines are usually somewhat similar to the title of the page - but often not identical. Both should be keying into the same keywords/keyword phrases for that page.

I would suggest you consider something like

California Acting School - East Bay Area

for your home page headline. You actually can put that on the page without using the html box - simply put it in a text box - then highlight it - pick the color, font, size of text. Then right click on the text box and and click on "html" - in the area for before tag put <h1> and in the area for after tag put </h1>

Feel free to read my beginners SEO book at the bottom of my signature - feel free to ask questions - but most important - do your homework and find out the words that people ARE using to find what you do. And then make use of that knowledge by your titles and headlines and text on all your pages.

[lorikirstein]

Ohmigod, you guys are amazing. And thanks for the compliment, Patience! I am the question queen, and it's nice to know I'm not bugging the heck out of people.

(It's taken me about forever to get back to this - so thanks for hanging in there...I'm appearing in a play in San Francisco, and between that and looking for a steady day job to keep me going, I've sort of gone under, if you know what I mean. But the play's a good one, so that's the payoff!)

Lori

[yangman]

You actually can put that on the page without using the html box - simply put it in a text box - then highlight it - pick the color, font, size of text. Then right click on the text box and and click on "html" - in the area for before tag put <h1> and in the area for after tag put </h1>

Hi Bethers,

Thanks for the advice. When I put in the <H1> tag and review over Firefox the text went off position, but appear fine with IE. Anything can be done to rectify this on Firefox?