Getting in google

[Lin-z]

I need this to go away..

[liza]

That's weird. I just did the same thing, using quotation marks around my name and got a number of valid hits. Did you use quotes in your search? Sometimes that makes a difference.

[Lin-z]

no i just typed it in, but I will try that...

I am concerned with others finding it, you know maybe people who are not too computer savy... like the type that would not remember a simple adress like lindsi.com... Thats pretty simple right?

[Brodog2525]

i am not 100% sure about this but ........

google uses a very advanced program called "page rank" its google stop secret program that is the base of google. if lots of different websites link to your website then the higher you are on googles search.

for example CNN is linked to by millions of different websites when you type in CNN on google; the first result is CNN.com and not some random website.

hope that helps some

[mizuno]

Try this:

http://www.google.com/ad****/?continue=/ad****

[Brodog2525]

Try this:

http://www.google.com/ad****/?continue=/ad****

i was just about to post that link as well.

that will not get your website to the top of googles results but it will let google know your website is on the WWW in case it doesnt know already

from the site:
We add and update new sites to our index each time we crawl the web, and we invite you to submit your URL here. We do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.

[jj1987]

I used that link and within a day my webpage showed up.

[Lin-z]

Cool. Thanks so much for that info. I added mine so maybe it will start showing up soon. Thanks alot!

[mspringfield]

Interesting. I typed in my name and my pbase page came up first and my sportsshooter page #2.

Michael

[amonline]

Hey, here's a question I'm actually a pro at! :)

The problem is your meta tags:

<meta name="description" content="The ultimate in photo sharing. Easily create online photo albums. Share, store, organize and print." />
<meta name="keywords" content="online photo albums, photo sharing, photo hosting, photo storage, albums, photo albums, photo, sharing, picture sharing, share photos, photo galleries, photo gallery, photos, photographs, online gallery, picture gallery, picture galleries, online galleries, smugmug gallery, smugmug, smug mug, smugmug photos, images, image galleries, image gallery, gallery hosting, galleries hosting, hosting" />

Nothing in those titles or describes your website except a bunch of very non-specific terms. You need to replace all the info between the "quotes" with info like this:

<meta name="description" content="Lindsi Jones - Photographer | Official Home Page of Lindsi Jones Photography." />
<meta name="keywords" content="Lindsi Jones, Photography, Portraits, Weddings, Couples, Events, etc..." />

Do this update to your index.html page and you'll be fine in a few of weeks after Google has spidered your page. (can take as much as 2 months sometimes) Also, I'd only put the meta info in the index page, not any others. Be sure to submit your page to Google, Yahoo and the rest of the big engines... shoot for the top 6-8... there's really no point beyond that.

Hope that helps.

[mdgphoto]

You can also submit a site map to google, that will help googles crawl bot to follow the pages on your site, which will make it easier for google to index.

Also try and get as many higher ranking sites to link to your site as possible, that'll make your rank go up.

[NIftyBobby]

since your domain is lindsi.com, typing "lindsi" with or without the qutotations will bring up www. lindsi .com at the top because google places priority to .com domains. Since your domain isn't www. lindsijonesphotography .com you won't be at the top for the search term "lindsi jones photography". what you will have to do is mention the search phrases "lindsi jones photography" as much as possible in header tags or in other 'importatnt' html tags. the more you mention it, the more the google bot will think it's important. hence searching for "lindsi" brings up lindsi.com because your smugsmug is also lindsi.smugsmug.com and you also see "lindsi's home" linked on everypage.

Meta tags are important but not that great of an significance for the google bot. IT will help you with other search engine bots such as yahoo's. (IF you do decide to cheat with yahoo, you can just put tons of <h1>lindsi jones photography</h1> and other important key phrases and links inside comment tags.)

If you really want it to be up there as fast as possible, make your own site where you have more control with the markup to play with the SEO.

[peterdoomen]

Tips to get a good google ranking:

1) use the right keywords on your website, just in your body text. Forget about the meta tag. It has lost its value years ago.
2) get links from good pages to your page. This is the most important tip! The more good links, the better.
3) don't link to bad neighborhoods.
4) don't use add URL, let Google find your site itself by traveling other links to your pages.

Success!

P.

[amonline]

Forget about the meta tag. It has lost its value years ago.

Funny... my sites come up in the top 1-3 everytime on all engines and I only use the metatag focus for ranking. Additionally, adding words from your keywords to the first paragraph of your index also solidifies that ranking.

Definately use the "add url"... it guarantees that the spiders put you in que for the next pass which can be anywhere from a second to 90+ days. I recently put up a site on the 26th that got spidered the next day... then again, I've had to wait as long as three months sometimes. There's no guarantee on time.

Not arguing... just stating fact... I do this for a living. ;)

[csondagar]

Interesting comments on Meta names. I am not challenging you folks on this but I have my website as the first hit, and I have not included meta names at all :confused: . Now, it may because my name is not that common. When I added my website using my own domain it tool google 4 weeks before it crawled by site, and added it to the search results.

My name is sondagar. Typing the name in google will bring up my website as the first search hit.

[amonline]

Interesting comments on Meta names. I am not challenging you folks on this but I have my website as the first hit, and I have not included meta names at all . Now, it may because my name is not that common. When I added my website using my own domain it tool google 4 weeks before it crawled by site, and added it to the search results.

My name is sondagar. Typing the name in google will bring up my website as the first search hit.

Meta tags help, but so does the criteria of your wording in the title and first 25-50 words of your spidered page, whether it be the index or other pages.

The fact that your page has no metatag (yes, I checked) actually helped you given your name. The spider caught it in the title. :)

[netizen]

I agree with Peter. I wouldn't put too much stock in Meta tags (no offense to those posters that use them). Most search engines these days do not look at meta tags anymore simply because they are widely abused in an attempt to get a higher page rank. SEO or Search Engine Optimization, is the buzz word today. And its all about links and keywords (not the meta tag property "keyword"). The only meta tag used at all is the description one, the rest are largely ingnored. Some engines might use the description proprerty in the search results if you have one. However, it will not effect your page rank. And if you do not have it, it will use text found on your index page as the description.

So include the name of your site in the body of the pages as well as your keywords like photographer, photography, and anything rlated to your site. Make sure you have good titles on your pages, this is another key area in regards to search engine robots. But the most important thing to do to increase page rank, or the location of your site in the search results is links. Link to high quality related sites and get your links on them. Google's page rank loves this, and per google this is best way to increase page rank. However, make sure the page linking to you is relevent to your site somehow and remember linking to "free for all" sites can actually hurt your page rank or sites that only exist to provide links.

The important thing to remember is the search engine robots cannot not read flash, or graphics. So if you have a flash site besure to include alternate text for browsers that do not read flash on your page. Also, make use of the alternative property in the image tag.

Here is a great site that gives you an idea of how search engine robots see your site. http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become a big buisness and lots of books and how tos as well as companies have really started to hit the market. The best thing to do if you are not familar with how search engines work these days is to read up on it. I would stay away from companies advertising SEO services unless you do some reasearch on them. A lot of these companies employ tatics that actually hurt your page rank.

Also, here is some tips from Google to help improve your position in the results.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

Hope that helps.

[blinking8s]

my stuff ranks failry well, page rank of 5 isnt shabby for my tiny little photoblog

some pretty good posts here, your meta information should be present,not for google but for other spiders and stuff as well, your code structure should follow a page flow (xhtml/css web standards will increase how a spider sees/reads you site) and most important, waht links to your site, forums, online photo comps, local website listing, blogs, the more the better.

[grego]

Damn, I'm all over the first page if you type greg burmann. But then, oh well.

[tim]

This will help: http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=179549

[tlc]

Try this:

http://www.google.com/ad****/?continue=/ad****

thank you!

[Chrisedge]

One thing I do for my Blockbuster (http://www.ihateblockbuster.com) site is just what I did. I come up first for searches of "I hate blockbuster" but I wanted to get a higher rank when people search for just Blockbuster (http://www.ihateblockbuster.com). By have a link with just the word "Blockbuster" and it linking to www.ihateblockbuster.com, it gets a better ranking.

Same way that the "miserable failure" trick worked was because so many people created a hyperlink from the phrase "miserable failure" to the bio of GWB on the white house page.

[EOS mE]

man.. my name is in google already.. and i didn't do anything yet. looks like i own a manufacturing plant in taiwan that i don't know about. haha.