test pages

Is it safe to test two different landing pages using two different URL's (on
the same server)?

I think my site got "banned" from the search term I would like to be found
for in Google. It's somewhat complicated because I made some drastic
changes right before the be snafu and don't as of yet, have any solid proof
that my site would have fallen into oblivion had I not made the changes (I'm
pretty sure it would have though). It seems like I'm not showing up because
of "overused" keywords. I've already put my site back to how it was right
before the last major google update, it has been visited by the "freshbot"
but still doesn't show up in the serps for my keyphrase. I was number one
for my keyphrases for the majority of this year. I'm certain though that I
should wait until the next major update (one to three months?) to see if I
at least get a listing (any listing) for my keyphrase(s). The very same
thing happened to me during the last "major" update and when I put the site
back to the way it was I got my listing back within 30 days.

On the other hand, it's killing me to wait. I got another domain name not
too long ago that I've seriously been considering using over my current
domain name.

So... couldn't I build a "test" (home) page for my other domain, removing
the overused keywords or would this be considered a doorway page and further
push my site into oblivion? Also what's the implications of trying to
change your domain name?

Brian
IceIsHot.com
BunchaHosting.com
Web Hosting Comparison

On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 18:04:37 GMT, "IceIsHot" <bshickle (AT) hvc (DOT) rr.com>
wrote:

So... couldn't I build a "test" (home) page for my other domain, removing
the overused keywords or would this be considered a doorway page and further
push my site into oblivion? Also what's the implications of trying to
change your domain name?

You could try this, but it won't give you usable information since a
certain page will not rank well for a SERP unless google has found a
reasonable number of links to the page (this is less true of non
competitive SERPs).

So a page today that ranks 100 could rank 10th 4 weeks from now IF
you've managed to get the right links to the page. This is without
Google making any changes to their algo or you making a change to the
page.

Another way of looking at this is if you created a page and gave me a
copy and we both put it on our sites and I put 2000 links to it from
all the pages on my site, but you only put one link to it from a deep
content page, my version would probably rank much higher than yours
after a couple of indexes.

This also brings us to another problem, what you do to a page/site
today may not be reflected in your SERPs until an index or 2 (could be
8 weeks). So if you see a change in your SERPs today it may be as a
result of something you did in November or even October. If you make a
lot of changes to page you can't even be sure which version is been
used by google, even when the cache is shown, as at times you can do a
search seconds apart and see a different version of your page.

You need a lot of patience with SEO, we are talking multiple months
through trial and error to learn how to SEO a site or you could follow
the best information available and hope it's right.

A year ago I went with the latter, whilst at the same time learning
SEO techniques through trial and error. As I've said before find a few
people you can trust and follow their advice, if something doesn't
sound quite right ask questions or do the research yourself.

You'd be surprised how easy it can be to answer a question about SEO.
I've posted a few times how anyone can show alt text of linked images
is indexed whilst alt text of non linking images is not. Same with the
title attribute of links how that isn't indexed.

My advice would be to build a page based on the best information
available to you, get as many links to it as you can using your
keywords (for that page only) as the anchor text or alt text for image
links and then wait at least 4 weeks before considering making a
significant change.

If during that time you discover some new information tweak the page,
unless you think the page is so bad it should be scrapped. This way
you'll have a much, much better idea of what resulted in a change than
constantly making large changes waiting a week, not seeing a good SERP
and then starting again (I tried this about a year ago, it doesn't
help).

6 months from now you should have a well optimised page that with the
right links will rank high.

Tell you one thing I do find useful. Find a competitive SERP and look
through the top 5 to 10 results. Find the ones that have much, much
lower PRs than the others and analyse them to see what they are doing.

If a page ranks high, but has low PR it suggests it is there because
of on page factors. If you can work out what those are you can use
that information when editing your pages.

It is useless looking at the top sites if they have high PR because
they may be there because of off page factors.

David
_
Free Search Engine Optimization, SEO and
Search Engine Placement Tips (updated 16/11/2003)
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123...-optimization/
Free SEO Mailing List
http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/list?list_id=3290

SEO Dave wrote:

If a page ranks high, but has low PR it suggests it is there because
of on page factors. If you can work out what those are you can use
that information when editing your pages.

David

That's very good advice by the way and that is one piece of advice I've

taken you up on. Surprising you missed it since you mentioned that site
at my serp that was a redirect on page one as if it was a bad site seo
wise. It certainly looks like one and it only has a pr3 and 4 outgoing
links that don't link back to it yet it's high up on page one. I've done
a site just like that one just to see what will happen only the page
it's on is a pr6.