serp ranking woes

I took time over the holiday to put into practice some of the SEO
tactics I've read about. My targeted keywords are "learn spanish".
Here's what I did:

1) added "summaries" to the table html like:

<table summary="learn spanish fast" width="775"......

2) changed the two main product page names from "spanh.html" and
"startpanish.html" to "learn-spanish-sw.html" and
"learn-spanish-ss.html" I used .htaccess to put a permanent
redirect to both of these pages

3) created a site map for the site (www.braser.com/sitemap.html)

4) did some minor tweaks to the page titles

Well, my site which over the past year has hovered between 28 and
34 on Google for "learn spanish" has now gone to 43 - 45. Could
someone please suggest where I might have gone wrong?

http://www.braser.com/

--
Brad Blanchard
Braser Soft - Learn Spanish
http://www.braser.com
Email accepted from the website

Brad Blanchard wrote:

I took time over the holiday to put into practice some of the SEO
tactics I've read about. My targeted keywords are "learn spanish".
Here's what I did:

1) added "summaries" to the table html like:

table summary="learn spanish fast" width="775"......

2) changed the two main product page names from "spanh.html" and
"startpanish.html" to "learn-spanish-sw.html" and
"learn-spanish-ss.html" I used .htaccess to put a permanent
redirect to both of these pages

3) created a site map for the site (www.braser.com/sitemap.html)

4) did some minor tweaks to the page titles

Well, my site which over the past year has hovered between 28 and
34 on Google for "learn spanish" has now gone to 43 - 45. Could
someone please suggest where I might have gone wrong?

http://www.braser.com/

Clean up the HTML horror(s), using CSS

Put a h1 in on each page, with well chosen text.

Drop general stuff like "Help & Info". You use <strong>, change that
too: "<h1>Help & Info on our Spanish Learning products</h1>"

Also, change your <title>,

Press information for Braser Soft's computer programs to learn Spanish
with sound for listening and pronunciation.

To something like: Learn Spanish - Press Information

I would drop almost all meta stuff BTW, and the tables, etc.

--
John -> http://johnbokma.com/ Firefox: http://johnbokma.com/firefox/
Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/
Get SEO help: http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

Brad Blanchard wrote:

I took time over the holiday to put into practice some of the SEO
tactics I've read about. My targeted keywords are "learn
spanish".
Here's what I did:

1) added "summaries" to the table html like:

table summary="learn spanish fast"
width="775"......

2) changed the two main product page names from "spanh.html"
and
"startpanish.html" to "learn-spanish-sw.html" and
"learn-spanish-ss.html" I used .htaccess to put a permanent
redirect to both of these pages

3) created a site map for the site (www.braser.com/sitemap.html)

4) did some minor tweaks to the page titles

Well, my site which over the past year has hovered between 28 and
34 on Google for "learn spanish" has now gone to 43 - 45.
Could
someone please suggest where I might have gone wrong?

http://www.braser.com/

Regardless of the SERP improvements the changes would have contributed to,
the actual fact of changes to a page seems to be (at least temporarily)
negatively affecting the SERP for that page. As if Google says "wait a
minute, I see changes, and therefore I need time to re-evaluate that page.
Meanwhile I'll push this page down for just in case."

Sincerely,
Dmitri
http://www.1-script.com/1_search/
Get search engine for your site
http://www.1-script.com/install/
Check out my CGI scripts installation offer
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On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 21:21:13 +0100, Brad Blanchard
<1122 (AT) 1122noexiste (DOT) net> wrote:

I took time over the holiday to put into practice some of the SEO
tactics I've read about. My targeted keywords are "learn spanish".
Here's what I did:

1) added "summaries" to the table html like:

table summary="learn spanish fast" width="775"......

That won't do anything except help your site to validate. Which is
something but putting in summary="big poops" would have as much
relevance.

2) changed the two main product page names from "spanh.html" and
"startpanish.html" to "learn-spanish-sw.html" and
"learn-spanish-ss.html" I used .htaccess to put a permanent
redirect to both of these pages

That could be ok in principle.

3) created a site map for the site (www.braser.com/sitemap.html)

Never a bad thing.

4) did some minor tweaks to the page titles

Could go either way.

Well, my site which over the past year has hovered between 28 and
34 on Google for "learn spanish" has now gone to 43 - 45.

Oopsie!

Could
someone please suggest where I might have gone wrong?

http://www.braser.com/

Why is all this stuff

bgcolor="#B5B5B5" background="gfx_back.gif" text="#000000"
leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"

in the body tag and not externalised in the style sheet?

<!---Why have you got stuff in there in comment tags?--->

<META NAME="author" CONTENT="Learn Spanish with Braser Soft">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="copyright" CONTENT="GB Blanchard, 2005">
<META http-equiv="PICS-Label" content='(PICS-1.1
"http://www.classify.org/safesurf/" l gen true for
"http://www.braser.com/" r (SS~~000 1))'>
<meta http-equiv="pics-label" content='(pics-1.1
"http://www.icra.org/ratingsv02.html" comment "ICRAonline v2.0" l gen
true for "http://www.braser.com/" r (nz 1 vz 1 lz 1 oz 1 cz 1)
"http://www.rsac.org/ratingsv01.html" l gen true for
"http://www.braser.com/" r (n 0 s 0 v 0 l 0))'>
<meta name="iWatchDog-Program-Licensing"
content="http://www.iwatchdog.org/license.html">
<meta name="iWatchDog-Program-Validation" content='true comment
"ChildSafe International Web Sites" for "http://www.braser.com/" on
"2004.11.10"'>

What on Earth's all that about? Dump it.

background="gfx_menu_selected.gif">

could you not just call that fred.gif or whatever? Much less code.

"gfx_menu_button.gif">

same thing.

<font color="#666666" size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica,
sans-serif">

I see that repeatedly. Hallo - you have an external style sheet!

<h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><i>

Oh please.....and on and on.

You have a ton of very basic stuff to sort out. All of this counts
towards your positioning in the engines and should be addressed before
you begin worrying about minor ups and downs.

BB

--
www.kruse.co.uk SEO (AT) kruse (DOT) demon.co.uk
home of SEO that's shiny!
--

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 00:01:26 GMT, Big Bill <kruse (AT) cityscape (DOT) co.uk>
wrote:

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 21:21:13 +0100, Brad Blanchard
1122 (AT) 1122noexiste (DOT) net> wrote:

I took time over the holiday to put into practice some of the SEO
tactics I've read about. My targeted keywords are "learn spanish".
Here's what I did:

1) added "summaries" to the table html like:

table summary="learn spanish fast" width="775"......

That won't do anything except help your site to validate. Which is
something but putting in summary="big poops" would have as much
relevance.

Text to speech readers would make use of the summary="" info ...
though, if the table layout is for the layout of the page's contents
[looks and not for tabular data] then the summary attribute should be
left blank just like alt="" is for spacer or bullet images.

Although I will agree the search engine spiders may care less what
words are in there - the site is a commercial one and so accessibility
thoughts aren't a detriment factor for the users of the site.

Carol

Thanks to everyone (especially John and Bill) for the comments.

I wonder whether using tables is a Bad Thing. About two months
ago, I made a rather ugly index page without tables, left it up a
couple of weeks, and my Google rating didn't change one way or the
other. Was I just lucky?

I've been muddling along with Dreamweaver 3 for a long time now,
hence a lot of the "html horrors". I gather that I can take care of
a lot of the problems (like the repeated font declarations) using
CSS, subject I know almost nothing about. Could someone recommend a
book or an online place to get started?

--
Brad Blanchard
Website http://www.braser.com
Email accepted from the website

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 20:58:58 +0100, Brad Blanchard <gbb (AT) braser (DOT) com>
wrote:

Thanks to everyone (especially John and Bill) for the comments.

I wonder whether using tables is a Bad Thing.

I like them. If they validate they shouldn't be a problem.

About two months
ago, I made a rather ugly index page without tables, left it up a
couple of weeks, and my Google rating didn't change one way or the
other. Was I just lucky?

It wouldn't even have noticed it in two weeks. Give it six months and
see what happens.

I've been muddling along with Dreamweaver 3 for a long time now,

3? Make that a very long time!

BB


--
www.kruse.co.uk SEO (AT) kruse (DOT) demon.co.uk
home of SEO that's shiny!
--

Brad Blanchard wrote:

2) changed the two main product page names from "spanh.html" and
"startpanish.html" to "learn-spanish-sw.html" and
"learn-spanish-ss.html"

Well, my site which over the past year has hovered between 28 and
34 on Google for "learn spanish" has now gone to 43 - 45.

I figured out why I got the sudden drop. Just on a hunch, I
reloaded the main program pages cited above with their original
names, and in less than 24 hours I was back to 35. Apparently the
page rank of individual pages counts on the SERP. The two pages had a
PR of 4 and 5 which I lost when I renamed them.


--
Brad Blanchard
Website http://www.braser.com
Email accepted from the website