[thelist] "spamminess" site check - realtymort.com

[Michael Dinowitz]

I have the problem even worse. House of Fusion (www.houseoffusion.com) has been
a major ColdFusion community site for almost 8 years now and if you do a search
for ColdFusion on Google, we don't even come up. We do have several tens of
thousands of links indexed by google (I run and archive some very large volume
mailing lists), but none under the most basic keyword.


> Hi evolters --
>
> I work for a company that has had a website for a number of years.
> We've never had _great_ ranking on Google, but we've always been there.
>
> The boss-man is absolutely driven to raise the rankings in search
> engines (I explained to him that Google's entire business model depends
> on web coders not being able to directly manipulate the rankings, but
> he doesn't want to hear it...), so he keeps insisting that I keep
> tweaking word order in Title tags and such, in a vain attempt to find
> the perfect "keyword" optimization.
>
> In an attempt to help this issue (and several other such as browser
> compatibility), I rewrote the site about six months ago using pure
> XHTML and CSS, which among other things majorly increase the
> content-to-noise ratio of the pages, improved structure, etc....
>
> We've hovered around 80th place when searching for the phrase "chicago
> apartments" (it's primarily a building management company).  Google
> redesigned their algorithm in November, and suddenly the page is
> nowhere to be found!  It pops up if I search very specifically (as in
> the specific company name) so we're still in the database, but we don't
> show up anywhere under various types of keyword searches.
>
> Here is the site:
> <http://www.realtymort.com/>
>
> I thought the site was well done in terms of readabiloity to search
> engines and such, and I'm not doing anything blatantly "spammy", AFAIK.
>   Am I missing something?  Is there something I'm doing horribly wrong
> here?
>
> Notes:
> 1) The Site Map is brand-spanking new (as in, "yesterday"), so that's
> not part of the issue.  I added that in attempt to alleviate the
> problem.  Bad move or good move?
>
> 2) There are two domains pointing to the same site, so that may be part
> of the problem (but wasn't before).  <http://www.aptrentals.com/> goes
> to the same site.
>
> 3) The words "Chicago Apartments" was recently added to the beginning
> of all page titles... not sure if this is the problem or not, just an
> FYI.  Doesn't seem to be too terrible of a crime, but slightly "spammy"
>
> Please take a look.  All advice is appreciated.
>
> More generally, do you all know of a good source of "search engine
> optimization" advice?
>
> Regards, (and tips forthcoming)
> Steve Rider
>
> -- 
> * * Please support the community that supports you.  * *
> http://evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
>
> For unsubscribe and other options, including the Tip Harvester
> and archives of thelist go to: http://lists.evolt.org
> Workers of the Web, evolt !
>