Q and A: Can you submit individual pages of a web site separately to the search engines?

QuestionDear Kalena…

Can you submit individual pages separately of a website to
the search engines – if so – how? My URL is: http://freewebs.com/jazzlist

Thanks
Cy

Hi Cy

Technically it is possible but you need to understand the way search engines index web sites in order to fully understand why this is often considered the wrong way to approach site submission.

With regards to your own web site http://freewebs.com/jazzlist there would obviously be an argument for individual page submission due to you not having a dedicated domain of your own and as your web site is not located in the root directory of the hosting site, there is little to suggest that submitting http://freewebs.com/index.html would have any bearing on your own web site’s performance.

The argument for submitting to search engines seems to have been around longer than the search engines themselves!

Some say that you need to submit only your homepage, usually index.html or similar and that the search engine will then index all links from this page and over time your site should be completely indexed.

There are variations on this theory the most common is submitting a properly formatted and structured sitemap alone to the search engine of your choice. the search engines then index all links from this sitemap alone. Formats vary but most popular are sitemaps written in xml, this version in particular is favoured by Google.

For further information: Google friendly site map protocols

Others say that you don’t need to submit any pages or sites to any search engines at all, instead you are better to create keyword rich and optimised content that, if written well enough should attract Google and the others along through social bookmarking sites and articles linking to your sites, a lot of people out there prefer this method as it is often considered a more honest approach to site submission.
I know of several websites that have never been submitted to any search engines but if these sites change content or write a new article then Google indexes this within 24 hours, proof indeed that if your content is rich and your site is attractive to the search engines then your site will become more successful based on its own content and merits alone.

The thought that you could submit a single page is a perfectly valid one but before you do this ask yourself this simple question…why do I need to do this?

The answer lies in the hosting and structure of your own website and your choice to follow a free/shared hosting option, this decision may have been made for any of several reasons. The truth is that as long as your site is hosted on a free, shared hosting solution your site will most likely struggle to achieve its full potential as you will no doubt come across issues when trying to optimise this kind of hosting solution.

The advantages and full control offered by a dedicated host/domain solution far outweigh any cost restrictions and in my opinion should always be the way to go.

I appreciate some people and businesses out there want to create a website for little or no outlay but as these are often clearly charging for what they provide perhaps they should consider what their visitors will think and how they will be perceived and judged in relation to their business acumen when the free hosting option is taken instead of creating a professional presence on the web.

Best regards

Andy Watson
Wildcat SEO

Q and A: Why have my rankings dropped now after five years?

QuestionDear Kalena…

I have been in the top three positions for the keyword ‘motivation’ for five years and just last month dropped to 16. A block of my once-ranked pages has simply disappeared. My business is sinking as a result. I haven’t changed a word on my site for months – perhaps even a year – because I’ve been writing a new book. Could this be the issue? My site is: Motivation123.com

Jason

Dear Jason

The advertiser competition for this keyword is very high resulting in a near saturated market.
The position change for your site could be as a direct result in a downturn in the number of searches for the single keyword “motivation”.

If your site content and meta-data has remained static for a period of a year or so then Google may have decided that your site is not as relevant in this search as it once was, resulting in placing your competitors higher in the Search Engine Results Page for the search term “motivation”.
Detailed analysis of your competitors may reveal more readily updated content and SEO work being carried out on a scheduled basis.

A positive move may be to restructure your keywords for a less saturated keyword phrase still related to motivation, it is important not to lose the keyword “motivation” altogether so add keywords rather than delete them.

Take a look at your site content and be sure to include any new keyword phrases in the body text two or three times and also consider looking at your description tag to reflect this new content.

Plan strategic SEO by using different related keyword phrases as opposed to single keywords and you could see your site rise in the SERPs again.

best regards
Andy Watson
Wildcat SEO

Review:SEOSiteCheckup.com

Hi Kalena,

I noticed that your site contains information on search engine optimization. I’d like to notify you of a new, free tool for automatically analyzing URLs for a comprehensive range of SEO issues.

www.seositecheckup.com

Submitted by: Rachel from seositecheckup.com

Review findings:

For:
Easy to use due to only one field to populate so enter your URL and away you go!

Site analysis is fairly quick and results are displayed in easy to understand sections;

– High importance
– Medium importance
Successful check

There are useful explanations and suggestions with rollover help pop-ups for each section.
In the event of the site being analyzed returning any results flagged as red or amber, the application displays detailed instructions and explanations as to why these have failed along with links and suggestions on how these issues can be resolved. These instructions can be a little technical and may be of more use to web designers and SEO specialists rather than the end user and site owners.

Against:
Browser compatibility – site appears to have been written for IE7 – slight misalignment of left edge when viewed in FireFox 3.01 and Opera 9.5

Conclusion:
There seems to be a lot of focus on the page size and even when the page analysed is less than the average page size (25Kb as stated in the application) there is still the suggestion to compress the page size further.

All in all this is a good and easy to use resource which, when used in conjunction with other site checking applications, can provide an excellent starting point or a reference for cross checking other web site optimisation processes.

Andy
Wildcat SEO