Google Rankings - Reciprocal Links

[pongosbears]

Dear Group,

After reading a very interesting article about positioning in the Google
search engine , I have a suggestion to all in the TeddyBair Fair group.

It appears that to get a better ranking in the Google Search engine you need
as many reciprocal links as possible to other relevant websites, so I
thought that if everyone from the TeddyBear Fair Group, who has their own
website, would put a link on their "Links" page for everyone who wanted to
participate then this would potentially increase everyone's position, and
best of all it costs everyone absolutely NOTHING to do it.

Anyone interested in taking part, please respond and send their info and a logo if they have one.

Lets hope everyone gets involved and it should raise everyone's profile in
Google.

Regards

Chris

Pongo's Bears
www.pongosbears.co.uk

[Judi Russell]

Hi Chris,

If it was that easy everyone would do it.......in fact they have been doing it and it hasn't made a great deal of difference. The reality is that there are 101 ways of enhancing your Search Engine rating and they all have to be optimised for a website to have any chance of getting onto page 1 (because that's where you want to be....page 2 is no good, many surfers will have moved on to other search words before turning the page). Experts are paid just to optimise and manage websites on a continuous basis because the Search Engines also employ experts to continuously refine the information they use to rank websites. The goal posts keep moving. Not very fair is it?

The other point to be made here is that each Google page contains about 10 websites. Today you are appealing to 147 people on this site. If you were to be successful, which of the 147 linked sites would actually appear on page 1? What happens to the other 137? More to the point, where would your site be? It's still a lottery isn't it.

Sorry I can't talk any more, I've got to be in Birmingham at 7.30 tomorrow morning....I need to get to bed.

Maybe see you there.....Goodnight:6023:

Chris Russell

[beverley]

Now I am not absolutely certain about this, but I heard this from a variety of sources. It is important to keep the front page of your site fresh and change it frequently. If the search engines find a page with little or nothing new happening on it, it falls behind. How true this is I do not know. A workshop on websites I attended we were warned not to have that empty front page, where it says click to enter. I was told the secret is to have photos that change frequently, or have a news page where you list updates you have made to the site. To keep the front page moving in terms of content, was not a guarantee of being number 1 but it did mean heading towards the top.

I will apologise now if this is completely wrong LOL:6087:

[gotobedbears]

Beverley..............i heard this too, so since i rebuilt my website a few weeks ago i have been adding little pics and snippets of info that don't interfere with the general layout too much but at least it keeps it fresh. Whether it makes a difference to search engines i dunno! But i enjoy mucking about with my website so look on it as an opportunity to play rather than work
:rolleyes: :p :D

As for search engines in general - i can only go on my experience and so far i have found that...............getting as many reciprocal links to your site is the best way.
Now, i know there is probably a more scientific and professional way of doing it but i dunno how to do it and can't be bothered to learn.
:6086:

PenPen recommends getting as many reciprocal links as you can and keeping your site updated. It's better than nothing huh?!?!

Penny :p

[Chowlea Bears]

This is all too complicated for me -

I just Googled myself and no result came up...............:6022:

I am here everbody - really I am............:cool:

[dalydesign]

It appears that to get a better ranking in the Google Search engine you need as many reciprocal links as possible to other relevant websites

This is not exatly true....

yes, it does help, but it doesn't always work. it is an old technique that google has caught onto the fact that everyone is creating huge links pages. If you add a links page with, say, 100 links on your webpage, you will be penalised as search engines recognise this as a way of spamming the search engine to boost your rating. they recommend selecting a few links and make sure they conating good quality listings.

Changing the homepage does help, but only if you change the text (not the images). Search engines recognise that the content has changed and they like new text (that's why the BBC website is so popular on google). However changing images is not a brilliant solution as images are made up of pixels (not text) and do not contain any text that google can recognise whilst searching. You can use ALT tags to describe images. My advice would be to change paragraphs of text on a regular basis this will definately help.

Make sure you have good quality Meta tags. If you have 6 keywords in your meta tags, these will act stronger per word rather than having 60 words (these become very weak as there are too many words)

Make sure you describe your images using Alt tags.

Create a sitemap and submit it to Google Sitemap, this will help your listing on google.

try not to use Flash animation (& animated GIFs) too much especially for navigation, it tends to put people off from visiting your site.

As Teddy Bear Fair is becoming extremely popular with Google & yahoo (we've had 5403 visitors to the website in the last 30 days and we've only been up and running a month or so), I'd suggest setting yourself up on the exhibitors section of the site and getting yourself listed. Google's search spiders will trawl through our site, then it will piggy-back our exhibitors listings to find your websites, it will then trawl through your site and rank you on their database.

....and if you don't believe me about all this info, seach for old and classic bears in www.google.com ....TBF is no.1 (but we're only on page 4 for Teddy Bear artists - so we still have some work to do there...!)

I hope this info helps.

Paul
www.dalydesign.co.uk

[dalydesign]

This is all too complicated for me -

I just Googled myself and no result came up...............:6022:

I am here everbody - really I am............:cool:

Sandra,

go to www.google.com and search for this "site:www.chowleabears.com"

you'll see that the first problem is that google doesn't like your page names, you need to rename the titles of your pages, they all say 'index'

[All Bear]

Hmmmn and I thought I was being helpful to everyone by hosting the British Bears on the net directory on my website! Presumably this wasn't a good thing to do from my own point of view?!! Hmmph. :mad:

[dalydesign]

yes, it sometimes means that you end up shooting yourself in the foot!

but don't fret....

It is a good thing to have, but it needs to be structured correctly. If you can restructure it so that you have sub pages for different categories then it will definately help with google.

think of it this way.... if you split the directory onto 4 separate pages (bearmakers, retailers, suppliers, collectors), a search engine may award you +4 points to your rankings (+1 point per page), but penalise you -1 point for one very long page (bearmakers) of links, therefore you have gained +3 points to your Search Engine rankings.

[dalydesign]

...I can't believe I'm giving out all my trade secrets! :6022:

[Chris Russell]

....and if you don't believe me about all this info, seach for old and classic bears in www.google.com ....TBF is no.1 (but we're only on page 4 for Teddy Bear artists - so we still have some work to do there...!)


Paul is a master of understatement here. Teddy Bear Fair is essentially a UK website at present and if you enter Google (Pages from the UK) and search on the following:

Teddy Bear Fair
Teddy Bear Fairs
Bear Artists
Bear Makers
Teddy Bear Artists
Teddy Bear Repairers
Bear Repairs
Bear Repairers
Bear Valuations
Teddy Bear Valuations
Teddy Bear Auctions
Bear Auctions
etc....

you will note that they all appear on PAGE 1 and only after 5-6 weeks!!

Tomorrow the world!!!.......Ohhh...that's where 'Old and Classic Bears' is! (Accident or Design? I'll leave you to work that out.)

Teddy Bear Fair.com has both a fun factor and is a serious internet marketing tool. With your help and involvement we can make this a success for everyone. Remember if you take an 'Advance Listing' on this site, you will have a webpage at the top of the Google rankings combined with a link to your own site. How good is that??:6042:

Chris

[All Bear]

Bloomin' marvellous if you ask me Chris! Loving it!!! :6018: :6018: