Date   : Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:10:00 +0100
From   : dominic@... (Dominic Beesley)
Subject: Fw: 3.5' Drives (Again..)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Dominic Beesley 
To: Tom Kranz 
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 11:51 AM
Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] 3.5' Drives (Again..)


Sorry I missed Jonathan's original post (due to Demon being absolutely rubbish
and losing all last nights emails!)

Jonathan,

I'd run all your pages through a decent HTML validator (try HTML Tidy or
JS View plugins for Firefox - the page under question has a lot), sites like
Google push you down the results list if there are more than a couple of
HTML errors.

When you've done that try making an submitting a Google sitemap, this will
also tend to improve your ranking

Dom
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Tom Kranz 
  To: xx BBC micro mailing list 
  Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 11:34 AM
  Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] 3.5' Drives (Again..)




  On 13 Sep 2007, at 01:03, Jonathan Graham Harston wrote:


    http://mdfs.net/Docs/Comp/BBC/Disk


    What I am doing with my website that results in people not finding
    this information? What search terms did you use? What search
    engine did you use?


  Jumping in here - I don't know why your site performs so poorly in search
results, as it's full of useful information, but seldom ranks highly on Google.


  Using the following search terms:
  3.5 bbc floppy
  3.5 bbc disk
  3.5 bbc drive
  connect 3.5" bbc drive


  And your page isn't in the first 5 pages of Google results - most people 
tend to give up after 5 pages and try a new search term. Sprow's HowTo page,
which does have information on how to connect up a 3.5" drive, tends to appear
fairly high up on the first pages of results, at least for the last two search
terms.


  I think that the problem is:
  a) not enough sites linking in to yours - therefore search engines don't
treat it as authoritative
  b) the way the text is written on the page doesn't give enough keyword
density to flag these common search terms in the engines


  Unless I specifically add 'mdfs' to any search terms it's very hard to
find any of your relevant pages in the engine indexes. You can check the
keyword density here: http://oyoy.eu/page/keywords/?url=http%3a%2f%2fmdfs.net%2fDocs%2fComp%2fBBC%2fDisk


  (that site has many very useful tools to work out how your site is viewed
by search engines, and thus how to improve search ranking)


  If you go to Google and do a "link: http://mdfs.net" it will tell you 
which sites have incoming links - there aren't very many, and none of them
link in to your above listed page. This all means that Google assigns your
page a page rank of 0 - it's not rating as being authoritative or relevant
in the index.  


  Maybe the list needs a monthly "FAQs and Read These Sites First" sort of
posting to remind people of the good resources that are out there.


  Cheers,
  TOM


  --
  "Tell them we are not Gods, but Sysadmins, which is the next best thing."
  "What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and
to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after
we are gone?" Sir Winston Churchill
  http://www.linkedin.com/in/tomkranz








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