Official Luthiers Forum!

[QUOTE=Dave Rector] Does anyone know any trick to getting google, yahoo or any other search engines to pick up a new web page?
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Follow the hints on this page about googlebot understand your website

If you can get other people to link to your site it's good. Using a link like:
<a href="http://www.rectorguitars.com/">Rector Custom Handbuilt Acoustic guitars</a> will help google a lot. that's how
miserable failure got to be number one search result for miserable failure on google where it is today, people just linked that website to the words miserable failure, and google picked it up. It's called "googlebombing" I don't know if a link in this forum will help, but in many forums it will.

You don't need to actually googlebomb, because there are only so many sites that are linked to by the words handbuilt custom acoustic guitars.

That's fantastically funny!

Thanks Eric! Now if I can just figure out what all they are talking about, maybe I can do some good.

Getting the page done wasn't all that bad. But getting all this propagated to the search engines looks like it might take a while.

I need all the help I can get, I'm technically impaired.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

Sit tight Dave. I will email you some files on Monday.

One being a map of how the search engines index from each other (they often look at your rankings on OTHER search engines to help determine placement).

Another site you probably want to check out is www.wordtracker.com. That will help you decide WHICH keywords make the most sense.

This is a VERY complex process.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Nice work,Dave. Like everyone else said, it's very navigable. My only suggestion would be to change the spelling on "Englemann" to "Engelmann". Trivial, perhaps. (Unless your name is Engelmann, and there is a spruce named after you!)

I love the big, open shop. I bet you get plenty of exercise walking about in there, huh?

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Thanks Brock, I nned all the help I can get!

Steve, thanks for your comments! Yes, I do have to do a lot of walking in the shop. I ma working on getting it split up into some more managable sections, for humidity control and that kind of thing.

In the mean time, I'm just happy to have the space.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

Very professional web site! Getting a site to come up in the search engines seems to be the hardest part of web design to me. Anybody got some tips on getting sites to pull up in a search engine?

I'm not sure what happened, but the site is now findable (is that a word?) in google.

Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions!

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

The first thing you need to do in figuring out a search strategy is to determine a list of keywords you want to be found under.

Rather than setting down and "guessing" what are good words, a site called www.wordtracker.com does an analysis of what people are actually typing into the engines. This is invaluable in helping pick your keywords.

These keywords HAVE to be in the content of your site. But don't get cute.. don't put the words in there 10,000 times per page, make the text color the same as the background color, or anything else clever. The engines can spot if you are trying to "trick" them, then they blackball you.

Make sure you are using TITLE tages, and make sure your Titles have keywords in them.

Make sure you take full advantage of the META fields. Again, don't be cute.

Make sure the content on the pages is appropriate for the keywords you are aiming for.

And somewhere... (I am looking for it now)... I have a great map of the ORDER which you should submit your site to the engines. It makes a big difference.

One other thing that is very helpful is having a considerable number of links FROM your site to other sites (like the OLF) and reciprocally having others link to you.


These are the VERY basics, but a good place to start. I will post that map once I find it.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Thanks Brock! That's really nice information to have.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

Thanks brock! I'm going to keep this in mind for when I get my site done.