Registering School Website with search engines (google)

[HodgeHi]

Hello,

 

Just a quick one really. Perhaps a silly question too.

 

I have been having a few complaints from parents that they can't find our website using google. I have looked at how to register the site with google and have gone through the addurl link. Now it says that i have to wait for their bot to crawl our site.

 

I did this Friday and upon searching our School's name (Eaton Valley Primary School) over the weekend it doesn't come up, at least not in the first few pages i've looked at anyway.

 

So have i forgotten something or does it take longer than this for their bot to get around to doing something?

 

TIA

[Jamman960]

Not quite sure how the whole process works but having well selected Meta Tags setup really helps, I belive the H1 & H2 tags get picked up fairly quickly too. Getting your site linked via other sites also has an effect, I'd try and get a link on edubase as that may result in your site getting crawled qucker.

 

James

[EduTech]

Not sure weather you would of done this but just incase, submit your site to google using this: Add your URL to Google

 

Also, Just make sure your Meta Tag's etc are correct

 

Will take a few days for this to filter through.

 

James.

[HodgeHi]

That is the place where i added my URL.

 

I'm not too sure how the meta tags work thou to be honest. I added the site's name and location to the meta tags like this:

 

"eaton valley",cronehills,sandwell,"Eaton Valley Primary School"

 

Would this be enough?

 

I see that adding each word individually would not hurt though?

[RabbieBurns]

my header looks like this

 

  ... 
     Welcome to My School
  



...

 

Also, the google bots dont pick up newly added sites straight away, takes up to about a week.

 

But definately get it linked from another couple of sites. Maybe put it in your sig here too, or make a post with it in, as the more higher the ranked pages that link to it, the higher it will rank as well.

[dayzd]

Google also takes in to account the actual content of your pages (obviously).

If the page is well written (semantic use of html) and your content good (pages don't repeat the same content too often etc), you'll do better.

 

In my experience, Google can take several weeks to re-crawl websites, even if you have a sitemap.xml and robots.txt to help it on it's way...!

[fiendishlyclever]

Sign up for Google webmaster tools - you need to add a meta tag or upload a html file to verify you own the domain. Then you can submit a sitemap (if you have one) and even see which searches you appear in and which sites link to yours.

 

I registered all my personal sites and find it quite useful.

[SteveBentley]

Meta tags are pretty much obsolete in terms of search engine rankings, they have a very low status in the page rank mechanism Google uses to decide on the order in which sites are listed. This is partly for two reasons - some sites were stuffing the keywords with irrelevant things to try and get a higher search engine position than the content justified, and because the crawler bots have improved and indexing the whole page is viable now.

 

(In fact if Google's thinks that you're trying to play the system by having meta tags which bear no relation to the content of the page you can end up getting removed from the index completely)

 

The things which are given highest priority are things like the h1 and h2 tags as has been said, and also the title tag. Alt elements on images are also quite important.

 

Another key factor is who links to your site, so if you have a number of sites linking to yours, you should get a higher ranking. The "importance" of those sites (based on similar factors) is also taken into consideration.

 

Having links from other relevant sites is also a good way to get listed in the first instance, because as their site is respidered, Google will follow the link to your site and discover your content and add it to the index.

 

A site which a friend and I launched a couple of weeks ago is already on Google and hasn't been submitted manually, just linked from a few blogs. It would be worth trying to get a link or two from your LEA site in the first instance.

[Marci]

Best thing you can do to ensure Google has as little to whinge about as possible, and therefore more likelihood of rapid indexing is as per above... and... run everything thru the validators.

 

Install Firefox, install the WebDev toolbar addon. Get the website you want indexing up, and then under "Tools" on the webdev toolbar you can quick-click thru to the major code validators. Ensure you pass them all. This is good practice anyway, but the accessibility validators will tell you if you've missed any "alt" tags etc.

 

Other than that, all I've ever done is submit to Google as described in this thread... and we're very well indexed.

[Guest theeldergeek]

Hello,

 

Just a quick one really. Perhaps a silly question too.

 

I have been having a few complaints from parents that they can't find our website using google. I have looked at how to register the site with google and have gone through the addurl link. Now it says that i have to wait for their bot to crawl our site.

 

I did this Friday and upon searching our School's name (Eaton Valley Primary School) over the weekend it doesn't come up, at least not in the first few pages i've looked at anyway.

 

So have i forgotten something or does it take longer than this for their bot to get around to doing something?

 

TIA

 

 

In the past, I have registered sites using the 'free' submission engines out there, but a word of warning, use a throwaway email address because you will get spammed! These sites will reportedly submit your site to several engines in one go. Seems to have worked for me in the past.

 

The other method I have used, is the 'dmoz' route, see Submitting a Site to The Open Directory Project

 

Follow other advice in this thread paying attention to validation, correct use of meta tags (some engines do use them) and generally make sure your site has good keyword relevance.

 

As it is a school site, it is pretty unique by its very nature, i.e no other school exists in your area with the same name (hopefully) so it's not as if you are competing for placement.

[apoth0r]

It does take time to get up the rankings but with the correct meta data it's usually up top in a couple of weeks.

There are a few school names with 'St Mary' etc so that may be the problem.

If you are getting complaints about google, perhaps put a suggestion leaflet out to parents to refine their search or make the site a favourite.

 

It is also worth getting a few external links and registering with your county system (information for parents) type website. I know Northants has the facility.

 

Good luck and best wishes

[danIT]

Some referring links help!

[Flakes]

 

i would use the code above for your meta tags,

 

Description is the description of your website which will show up in google under your website link.

keywords are what people are most likely to search for i wouldnt use double quotes, a double quote in a search engine means that the statement that you have entered needs to exist in its entirety, so putting "Eaton Valley Primary School" in your meta tags would mean that your site would only show in google if the user typed, Eaton Valley Primary School, but if they typed, Eaton Valley, the website link would be hiden away somewhere on another google page.

 

 

other notes:

 

it can take upto a week for your website to reach first page, google uses many factors one of which is the amount of users clicking on your google link, if users can not find your page in google its not going to move up the pages very fast, however i believe the reason your page is missing is because of the incorrect meta tags.

Edited January 20, 2010 by Flakes

[sjl]

We had a similar issue where our site was wildly varying in the Google rankings. No Errors in the webmaster tools etc. Basically a nightmare with no where to turn!

 

We got our ranking at the top by submitting a Google maps entry and verifying our entry by getting them to send the post card etc.

 

Now when you search you get our result at the top with a nice map etc.

 

Not saying it will definitely work for you – just did for us.

[HodgeHi]

Thanks for all your feedback guys. Lots to go through.

 

 

i would use the code above for your meta tags,

 

Description is the description of your website which will show up in google under your website link.

keywords are what people are most likely to search for i wouldnt use double quotes, a double quote in a search engine means that the statement that you have entered needs to exist in its entirety, so putting "Eaton Valley Primary School" in your meta tags would mean that your site would only show in google if the user typed, Eaton Valley Primary School, but if they typed, Eaton Valley, the website link would be hiden away somewhere on another google page.

 

 

other notes:

 

it can take upto a week for your website to reach first page, google uses many factors one of which is the amount of users clicking on your google link, if users can not find your page in google its not going to move up the pages very fast, however i believe the reason your page is missing is because of the incorrect meta tags.

 

@Flakes

 

Where would i place the code that you provided? Would it all go into the meta tags section in the joomla backend? Since my site runs on the Joomla Edugeek template (also thanks) I'm not entirely sure as to how to go about some of the things mentioned.

 

Such as validation. It looks like there is an issue with scriptegrators highslide plugin for it's webgallery. But how would i resolve this as it's a module/plugin?

 

PS. How would i make my url in my sig clickable? I assume it needs to be to be followed.

[Devontechie]

Where would i place the code that you provided? Would it all go into the meta tags section in the joomla backend? Since my site runs on the Joomla Edugeek template (also thanks) I'm not entirely sure as to how to go about some of the things mentioned.

 

 

You will need to log into the Adminsitrator backend of Joomla and go into the Global Configuration section. You will then find Global Site Meta Description and Global Site Meta Keywords.

[chinesewhispers]

Welcome to Google Business Solutions

 

Click on local business centre, and you get to add details like map, full address, website etc.

 

This will get your official details listed, and adding a web link will make it crawl the site too.

 

You need to verify the listing, usually quickest using the PIN entry by automated call (you give them your official school number, it calls you, gives you a PIN, which you then type into the control panel).

 

Works well, and will certainly allow people to find info about the school.

 

I do it for my clients, as well as the school.

[Flakes]

since steve answered your first question ill answer your second one

 

you cant make your signature a clickable link, this board does not support HTML code in the Signature(atleast i havnt managed to get it to work).

[Marci]

BB Code for links is disabled in the backend by the admins, presumably to stop people using the site as a free marketing platform via banners in sigs. Full guide on it - BB Code List - vBulletin Community Forum

[ajb]

To determine what Google has crawled, use the 'site:' prefix in the search bar followed by your domain name.

 

Try:

 

site:.sch.uk

 

To get results for all .sch.uk domains, or:

 

site:nottinghamshire.sch.uk

 

To get all results for Nottinghamshire school Web sites.

 

And, of course:

 

site:eatonvalley.sandwell.sch.uk

 

To bring back any results for your own school.

 

Ta, Andy.

[fiendishlyclever]

To determine what Google has crawled, use the 'site:' prefix in the search bar followed by your domain name.

 

If you use Google Webmaster tools you can submit a sitemap, and you can see how many of your pages are indexed by Google, and the searches you come up in (not just the ones clicked on).

 

Bing has a similar webmaster control panel but a little more limited - and they tend not to index as much as Google.

 

My favourite tool on both Google and bing is to see which other sites have links to yours. Sad but true

[HodgeHi]

Well, since i started this thread and tried a few of the responses (haven't tried all of them due to time) my site still doesn't show up at all. I tried the site: prefix as mentioned by ajb and it shows that a plugin has been crawled. Thats it. I think i need to create a site map.

 

I will continue on with this. Thanks for all the replies though.

[mossj]

You can do that easily with a plugin from the Joomla Extension Directory..

 

Also register your site with google webmaster tools, it will tell you how often your site is being crawled and how much.

 

Thirdly check that you don't have a robots.txt file that is blocking all search engines.

[HodgeHi]

Can you recall what the plugins called?

 

I will look into the robots.txt, although it's just the edugeek projects template. Not much else has changed

[mossj]

Anyone of these will do... Site Map - Joomla! Extensions Directory