Quackers Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 How do we make our School Web Page appear higher up in the search results? I've changed the Meta Data on our Joomla site to have our school name in (2 days ago, as it said "Joomla! The home ......," before) If you type our school name in we currently appear last on the first page of results. A bebo page the kids setup is first (which SMT do not like), then other county documents with our name in. Can you pay to have one of those Sponsored Links before the search results at the very top? If so how? I've tried reading googles site for information and non of it makes sense, its confusing me
matt40k Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 Big money in SEO. Sponsors links = money. You pay per click. Which is stupid. What is your school name?
localzuk Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 (edited) One way to make your site appear at the top is to ensure your site is the best place around for information about it. ie. ensure there are plenty of sites linking to it (there are various school site directories). Ensure you have a good selection of relevant meta tags in the header, and that the content on the pages is sufficiently wordy for a search engine to consider a useful page. Paying for a link would be a bad choice IMO. Can you link your site here so we can have a look to see what could be improved? Also, do you have search-engine friendly URLS enabled in Joomla? Edited January 7, 2009 by localzuk
Zimmer Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 Doesn't Joomla have a built in Search Engine Optimisation feature?
Quackers Posted January 7, 2009 Author Posted January 7, 2009 Site is Chesterton Community Sports College - Home is the site. So when Chesterton Community Sports College is entered in google we come last
matt40k Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 Chesterton Community Sports College Staffordshire: Read Parent Reviews & Rankings -- Primary school hey? Perhaps also setting the DNS record so ccsc.staffs.sch.uk works as well as Chesterton Community Sports College - Home
Zimmer Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 So how long has your site been live then? Usually it does take a while for a website to gain rankings with Google and other search engines. Infact, if you dive into the settings of Joomla you should find a few options for enabling and disabling how the website deals with web crawlers/spiders. It might be worth checking that your not blocking Google from indexing your websites content, this will most likely affect your rankings.
Quackers Posted January 7, 2009 Author Posted January 7, 2009 I'm using the Google Web Master Tools and it seems to be reading the site OK. The site has been up and running for over a year. Its jooma 1.0 not 1.5 does it still have these Web Crawler settings in?
localzuk Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 First thing I would say is that your site has very little text on the first page. It is all links and images. I'll have a deeper look soon.
_Bat_ Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 You need to get people to link to your site more. The more links that have the name of the school as the link title and links directly to the website, the higher up you'll end up being for that search term (i.e. the school name).
Zimmer Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 Not to sure about Joomla version 1.0, I've only just started to play with 1.5, before that I was strictly a php-Fusion guy. I'll stick a URL to your site on a couple of my personal sites/blogs, that might help Localzuk has a good point too, it may be worth looking at changing the content on the front page.
zag Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 Get other respected sites to link to you such as wikipedia or your local authority.
Domino Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 Have you submitted the link to google Add your URL to Google
ctaylor2 Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 Like others have said SEO can be a complex area. Sorting your title tags is important and including meta tags won't hurt. The most important thing is that you have up to date and relevant content on your site. Other factors in higher search rankings include being linked to by other relevant websites (the text that they use in the hyperlink can be relevant as well). I've got some links for you - hope they help. Beginner's Guide to SEO: Quickie Dos and Don'ts - Search Engine Guide Blog 10 SEO Techniques All Top Web Sites Should Use | Freelance Folder SEOmoz | The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet
Cache Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 I'm not a website expert by any means. A quick look on google I spotted the 4th link down was your moodle site with no obvious link back to your main site on it. You could link back to your school webpage on moodle which may/may not make any difference.
fernt Posted February 2, 2009 Posted February 2, 2009 Get other respected sites to link to you such as wikipedia Being linked to from Wikipedia won't make your school web page appear higher up in search results. Wikipedia links have a 'nofollow' attribute, meaning that the link will not influence the link target's ranking in the search engines. More about that at, yep, [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow]Wikipedia[/ame].
matt40k Posted February 2, 2009 Posted February 2, 2009 Depends, yes, google bots will not follow your website from the Wikipedia link. But people will, if you've got google stats, google will pick on this. Yes, technically it won't, but it will help get real users, which is what counts.
LisaW Posted February 3, 2009 Posted February 3, 2009 Don't know about Joomla, I use Frontpage, but I added the keywords for our site in small type at the bottom of each page. Took a week or so to have an effect. Also I always ask people to search for us using google. Hope this helps.
fernt Posted February 3, 2009 Posted February 3, 2009 I added the keywords for our site in small type at the bottom of each page. Took a week or so to have an effect. This is known as [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_stuffing]keyword stuffing[/ame] and is frowned upon by search engines. Although it may work in the short term (as it has in your case), in the long term you are likely to be penalised for using this technique. Quackers - I've had a quick look at your site and you appear to be doing everything right on there, so, as others have suggested, get some other sites to link to you, making sure that the anchor text they use contains the keywords you want to be searched by - Chesterton Community Sports College.
LisaW Posted February 3, 2009 Posted February 3, 2009 RE: keyword stuffing - I followed the recommendations in the Google help files for making your website appear higher in the lists! What might I expect in the way of penalties?
fernt Posted February 3, 2009 Posted February 3, 2009 I'm very surprised Google recommended that. Maybe they meant that you should use the keywords naturally within your site's content? Penalties would be either appearing lower in search results or simply just being removed from Google's listings. The latter has happened to the school across the road from us, although I don't know if that was specifically for keyword stuffing. I wouldn't worry if you've just put the name of your school in small type at the bottom of each page (in fact, that could be legitimate - most organisations would do so along with an address and contact details), but if you've put, for example, a dozen variations of the type of school you are and the names of your competitors then I'd remove them. Google published an excellent Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (PDF - 550 KB) towards the end of last year, which is well worth a read - even if you're already a seasoned SEOer. 1
mossj Posted February 3, 2009 Posted February 3, 2009 Just wondering but would contacting other schools and asking them to put a hidden link to your school on the bottom of there pages, in return for you doing the same have any effect?
fernt Posted February 4, 2009 Posted February 4, 2009 There's nothing wrong with exchanging links, as long as they're not hidden - if they are hidden, it's not adding anything to the website and that's why it'll be frowned upon.
LisaW Posted February 7, 2009 Posted February 7, 2009 fernt - thanks for info. Have looked at that and google help again (last looked about 4 years ago) and I think what we are doing is well within guidelines. It is just a line with the name of the school and county at the bottom of each page, much as you would have for contact details or copy write.
Quackers Posted February 7, 2009 Author Posted February 7, 2009 Well its moved up 4 places in the search results, so slowly getting there.....
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