Hi-

I am about to upload a refurbished site and need to know...Presently the domain name comes up first when googled by the site owner's name (a musical act of some renown). Since it's ideally positioned now I don't want to lose the top spot. Will there likely be a change when the new site is updated? I took many of the old meta tags and included them in the head of the new document but I don't understand search optimization at all.

The site as it currently stands is at: www.johnwicksandtherecords.com

I wish to replace it with a site that is in waiting but viewable at: www.martinitimerossi.net

Currently www.johnwicksandtherecords.com is in first position when John's name is googled. The new site will be uploaded to this same domain. I would greatly appreciate anyone who can give me a brief idea of how this works and can help me with how to ensure keeping the same position on the search engines.

Thanks.

A URL is an _address_. It's the identifier for where something is.

A web search result -- say for "jigsaw puzzles from Japan" -- identifies an address, URL, "location", call it what you will, which might be -- say -- http://imaginatorium.org/shop

Now every time the content of the page retrieved from this address changes, search engines will update their indexes. If suddenly all the talk of jigsaw puzzles and Japan is replaced by an essay on Belgian lacemaking, the address will drop (like a stone) in the results for "jigsaw puzzles from Japan", but presumably will start to appear in searches such as "Bruges lace". If the content changes slightly, not so much will change.

So in your case, if the content changes slightly, not much should happen. If you really are identifiable -- say you're a jazz band called the Elgian Blacemakers -- then you will be easily the first hit for "Elgian Blacemakers" (currently: Your search - Elgian Blacemakers - did not match any documents.)

There is strictly no meaning to expressions such as: "I wish to replace it with a site", since "site" normally refers implicitly to the location. Of course one thing you might be doing is breaking all the links, so http://ElgianBlacemakers.com still gets the home page, but http://ElgianBlacemakers.com/chart/ and all the other content locations disappear to be replaced by different ones. This is a Very Bad Idea, and you will lose all the other web search entries you have broken.

hth

Brian-
So it would be wise to keep the same link names for the other pages?
Rich

If possible, yes. Or set up the proper server redirects (see the server documentation...) so search engines find the new pages. "Don't break links."

Thanks very much, Brian.
Rich

Probably nothing serious.


Meta tags are mostly ignored by today's search engines. The <title> tag content is important, though. Perhaps the new "News" and "Sound" pages would benefit from having "John Wicks and The Records" in the <title>.


See http://htmlhelp.com/faq/html/publish.html#index-better


The new version uses ALT text in the image links, which should be an improvement.

Make sure the content on the temporary one is removed after the new version is uploaded, since search engines may punish you for duplicates.

You should keep the old URLs and redirect old or removed URLs to the new ones.

The actual link texts don't have to be the same, but it does seem slightly odd that the new "Sound" page uses the file name "links.htm". Instead you might rename it "sound.htm" and redirect requests for the removed "links.htm" (that may show up in search engine results or stay in people's bookmarks for a long time) to the index page.

BTW, on the new bio page the menu shows up far below the content in Opera9.

Can you explain quite what this means? I understand that a search engine might check for lots of identical pages and count them as possibly less than a single page. (Sorry, I hsacked the end off my fingr rtofsay, anf I'm typing with the ninre good ones)

But here surely, one piece of human description is being replaced by another, and I do not see how any program could determine that the two pieces of text are talking about substantially the same thing.

Again, I use my domain in the wyay Pair set it up by default: so http://imaginatorium.org and http://www.imaginatorium.org both return the same pages. Are you saying search engines might rate me lower because of this? And various bits of stuff appear in more than one place - some puzzles might be in more than one category etc. I can't see that elevating sites with "unique pages" by any automatic means would do other than promote junk sites. If you are generating random rubbish, it's easy to keep it unique.

See http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/b...py?answer=66359 --but how Google actually works is another issue (see any SEO forum for the latest theories).


I didn't mean the old and the new content. But if the OP is uploading the content on www.martinitimerossi.net to www.johnwicksandtherecords.com without deleting the former, a search engine may (or may not) consider the latter a "manipulative" duplicate.


Probably not (though the Google link encourages keeping internal links consistent).


But then both the category name and the puzzle selection in each category will be unique.


The issue is not about elevating, but more about punishing all but one of identical pages/sites. Don't know how Google determines which of the duplicates that's the original one, maybe it depends on how long it's been in Google's archive, or which one has the oldest domain name (IIRC Google has access to such info these days), or which one gets linked to more.

Intresting as i just renamed all my pages to somthink more meaning full eg a001 is now amnesia house 14-03-91 so it has more meaning for spider software to index my site which is about once a week now my rankings went from top 100 to top 10 in 2 weeks .

i was that gobbed smacked as i use google to find dates to events and how shocked was i when i typed in dance paradise 8
and my site was listed second i didnt realise as i clicked on the link but what a shock to see my pages befor my eyes

so my point being could you be wrong so wrong on the way pages are spidered i think if you submit your site map befor you update your pages then the spider software makes a full sweep of the site again rather than checking for new content and the allready spidered pages still egzist

what are your thoughts on this

kind regards
coolvibes

[quote name='Christian J' date='Dec 5 2008, 04:28 AM' post='31529']
[quote name='Brian Chandler' post='31527' date='Dec 4 2008, 04:00 PM']
Can you explain quite what this means?
[/quote]
See http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/b...py?answer=66359 --but how Google actually works is another issue (see any SEO forum for the latest theories).

[/quote]

Thanks, I've spent some time investigating Google webmaster stuff, which I didn't really know about. And set the "preferred domain".

I do not understand at all why google's 'page rank' for my site seems to be so low. Pages are "low", and also searches like link:www.imaginatorium.org make it look as though I'm hardly happening. This can't be quite right, since we get a steadily growing number of visitors, and shop customers. So I wonder if anyone can suggest something very basic I've missed?

Is it really a good idea to change my short, usually scrutable, and spaceless urls into things like: a_page_of_jigsaw_puzzles_by_artist_Haruyo.html, I wonder?

[quote]

[quote]But here surely, one piece of human description is being replaced by another, ...
[/quote]

Sorry, I misunderstood. I assumed the you were referring to removing the previous pages on the live site. I assumed the [different domain] site was just for test purposes.

If the page's TITLE, headers and/or text paragraphs contain "amnesia house 14-03-91" it shouldn't make a big difference (and if they don't contain it maybe they should?).


Not sure I understood that. My spontaneous guess is that spiders check the "last modified" header, and if nothing's changed since last time the spider doesn't bother downloading the page again.

How did you determine it? According to http://www.pagerank.net/pagerank-checker/ you have PR4, which I guess is OK.


PR is only important for ranking sites with similar search matches (this is/was not always the case, though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb ). Maybe there are just a few sites containing the relevant search terms, or maybe their PR is lower than yours.


No idea, here are some discussions: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=13564 (haven't read it myself).

yes but use( -) not (_) as spider software dont like it