Will changing page names create SE problems?

[Josh]

Hi all,

I'm interested in changing several of my page names to possibly improve their SE rankings. But I'm worried about those devilish spiders! :evil:

Might they think, since the page content would be identical to a page they've already spidered, that I'm spamming them in some way - and get banned? Or, since the old page would no longer be there to be spidered, would they recognize that I've only renamed the page and be a-okay? :?:

Thanks for any help!

[Helen]

Hi Josh,

Mr TC is the expert on this around here, and maybe he will be along soon to give a better answer. In the meantime:

I would think changing page names would make no difference as long as you don't change the domain name you're using for the site. The more keywords in your page names the better, as long as they are relevant to the page content. In fact, I would guess that the meta tag <META content="7 days" name=revisit-after> tells them you may be updating frequently; to come back for the new additions. :)

[Josh]

Thanks, Helen.

That makes sense about the domain name, so I think I'll make some changes. But I will wait to see if Mr. TC drops by as suggested "just in case".

While I've had inconsistent results, I've gotten some decent rankings for less searched for terms in Google by naming the page (which also becomes the title in WS) the actual targeted search word. Then I use it in the description and in the body as well.

Doesn't always work ( who knows what Google is REALLY up to?), but does often enough to make it worthwhile.

Thanks again! :D

[Shane]

Hi Josh, whilst waiting for TC.

Renaming a page won't effect your ratings and as you guessed can enhance when relevant. Google, especially, re-spiders often and will pick up your new page name via your domain name and rate accordingly.

[Mr T.C.]

It certainly will work Josh. Most engines give clear precedence to search words and phrases appearing in the TITLE. Go ahead and change your TITLE, you are not spamming. You may find Inktomi lists you twice for a couple of days (MSN etc.) but will drop your old title soon.

Think of your ranking as a points system with the TITLE being a major component. You say you tried a lesser used search term. This is an important tool you should think about. Thinking of alternative search phrases is all part of the game. I'd try to get good ranking using the more likely search phrase first, and use the secondary phrase as a fall back.

A starting point...
Lets say your your site is about Fresh Green Apples and your trading name is Robinsons Greengrocer. One TITLE could be "Robinsons Greengrocer Fresh Green Apples". The phrase Fresh Green Apples appears in there and the engines will allocate a score for this. However, be aware that you have diluted the density of your main search phrase in the TITLE. A search for "Green Apples" will rate your TITLE as having only 40% of the search term (2 words in a title of 5). Including the word Fresh could give you an advantage as you have already discovered (lesser used words) but including your trading name may be working against you unless you are so well known that your name will be searched. Get it?

Of course it all depends on your competition. If you are not up against strong competition then you have little to worry about and can include your Robinsons Greengrocer.

If I'm going to dilute my TITLE further then I'd be sure to make it count. What about the singular "Green Apple"? Here is another TITLE... "Robinsons Greengrocer Fresh Green Apples - Green Apple Sales". I'm just within 60 characters so Google will see it all and I have the complete phrases "Fresh Green Apples", "Green Apples", "Green Apple", and lastly the singular "Fresh Green Apple" through proximity. An engine will see that "Fresh" appears before "Green Apple" even though a couple of other words are between. As the sequence is correct this will count, though not as high as the complete unbroken phrase. I will place this singular second as I expect the plural to be more used so I want it complete. Keep in mind that not all engines with view the plural as containing the singular and also on todays busy web with stiffer competition you should think both plural AND singular. Hope I'm making sense.

Frankly, I'd drop your name and have "Fresh Green Apples - Green Apple Sales" Don't forget that the engine will also want to see these words on your page too. Search terms appearing in large font and bold text near page top will score major points (especially Google) so I'd start the page with a nice large HEADING "Fresh Green Apples" and follow it with a secondary phrase too. This is a great place to include secondary search phrases - large font at page top. Having started the page with your "Fresh Green Apples" include it further on the page too. Don't forget you can use proximity - "fresh supplies of green apples from apple experts..." and concentrate your efforts in the top half of your page. Search phrases appearing lower down will not count so much.

Again, it all depends on competition. Some may think that an oversized Heading and bold words do not look pretty - but what's the point of a pretty page that never gets found? People don't bookmark a Web page because it looks nice or the traders name appeared in the TITLE instead of a search term. Getting found is what makes the Web site building work worthwhile.

And we have only scratched the surface. Hope I've not confused

TC

[Mr T.C.]

Reading your post to Helen, it WILL always work. Think like a search engine. If someone types "Green Apples" into your form you might think along these lines....

I'm looking for the most relevant result for the search "Green Apples".

Hmmm... Lets find a page called Green Apples or at least with Green Apples in the Title somewhere.

Arhh! I have a few, so which titles look most specific? Does Green Apples feature in the Keywords too?

Now of the results I have, what is actually on the page? Here is one with GREEN APPLES nice and big at the top. Hmmm, looks like a page about Green apples sure enough.

What about the rest of the page? I see green apples mentioned once down the bottom. I'll put that to the back.

Here is one that mentions green apples a few times, and sometimes in BOLD print (must be important then), and it has links "More Green Apples" and a picture that has "green apples" in the ALT tag. Think I'll put this search result nearer the front.


There is more to it than that, but it's pretty much all common sense.

[Josh]

Thanks, Shane! This is good news! I'm going to get busy with this. :P

And thanks, TC! Great stuff!

Those "Green Apples" examples really made it clear.

I think on the pages where it hasn't worked well for me I've been bested by sites with higher Page Rank, particularly in the more popular search term competition, so I'm working on that as well.

I've also found search engine challenges I wasn't expecting from using Web Studio to create my site. Don't get me wrong - I love WS. But I used it primarily to avoid having to get involved with html too much.

So, I cut and pasted my text from Notepad. Looks fine on the page, but when looked at in "View Source", the text is all out of order - which is the way the spiders see it as well. Also, I don't get headings this way. I believe the only way I can fix this is to redo each page using the html object, which is what I was trying to avoid.

Ah well, I will get to this ... hopefully sooner rather than later.

But I will definitely go ahead right away and change page names. Mr google.bot should be around any day now!!

Thanks again. Think I've got a grip on this now. :D

[Helen]

Josh, WS will do your site in HTML as well as Cascading Style Sheets. You
just need to be really sure nothing is overlapping.

Go to site properties, over your page list. Click advanced tab, then select
3.2 HTML. I just checked a page done in 3.2 with 2 headlines. It did not
have <H1> and <H2> tags.... maybe it doesn't matter because it is in the
source code in the order it is on the page.

Actually I think the bots read the page anyway. At least it seemed so
when I would follow the links back to the search from clicking links that
my counter showed as search engine visits. The words that they were
doing the particular search for were highlighted on the page they had
cached there. But I could be behind the times... they seem to keep
changing their rules. But someone will probably be able to shed more
light on this for us both. :)

[Mr T.C.]

Yes, WS is a bit of a problem for this. WS is great for designing pages fast and easy but you ideally want to code a page in simple clean HTML for the best engine advantage. Google will love this too! WS may order things wrong in the code too and I'm not certain how well engines may be able to unscramle the ordering (your page HEADING may end up at the bottom!). I do this with a cover site. Not a good example just now as I've been playing with keyword density and dropped from #1 on Lycos (FAST) to #9 and dropped a couple of places on Inktomi too but take a look...

http://kover-it.com/

Should do better next week as I've made changes already. I want to use WS for building the catalogue pages as its fast and easy but for best search registration I want to hand code a simple but powerful page. This index page covers my furniture sections and I'll be building seperate gateway pages for the barbecue covers and car covers etc. I could easily build a splash page "all about barbecue covers" welcoming visitors to the barbecue section and rabbiting on about how good our barbecue covers are. Then I'd link to the barbecue covers page. This way I can layout my sales page showing off the product using WS fast and easy, knowing that changes to the catalogue will be fast and easy too, but I still have a search page thats as effective as possible with keyword density etc. staying constant despite whatever alterations I make to the catalogue. Competition for barbecue covers is high so I won't rely on the catalogue page which is not designed for engines.

I'm away the weekend but for now, don't use the HTML object for this. You want to get away from CSS parastyle text and type direct into the "Beginning Of Body" and use relative font sizing. It's not hard and I could explain more next week.

TC

[Josh]

TC,

I'm not in a big rush to do this because I'm a big procrastinator when it comes to html. I'm okay with text but have a much tougher time with the .gif and .jpegs and getting them to show up where they should be. :roll:

Is it possible in WS to leave the .gifs, etc. pasted on the page and then just add the html text in the "Beginning of Body"? Or, no such luck?

I see what you mean about your cover site. It could be the way to go.

Thanks on this. :D