Google ranking

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humphrey
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Google ranking

Post by humphrey »

Hi,
My forum is called The Local Government Ombudsman Discussion Forum.
It is at http://amv3.com/forum/.
It has been running for 5 years or so.
The phrase Local Government Ombudsman appears in the forum 931 times. But search "Local Government Ombudsman" in Google and the forum is on page 11!
I have been looking at the relevant topics here and it is generally said that Google indexes phpBB very well.
Any idea how I can get on page 1?
Thanks very much for taking the time to read this,
Best wishes,
Martin.
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Brf
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Re: Google ranking

Post by Brf »

The way I understand it, your page ranking is more related to the number of other high-rank pages which link to yours.
humphrey
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Re: Google ranking

Post by humphrey »

Thanks for your speedy answer. I will make it a priority to get more links.
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drathbun
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Re: Google ranking

Post by drathbun »

From what I understand (and I am far from being an expert in search engines) it's not just the frequency but the context that the phrase appears. That's to prevent a tactic that used to be called "keyword stuffing" where web developers would stick tons of text phrases in a web page using "invisible text" techniques like white fonts on a white background, or zero-point font sizes, or things like that. Even if the phrase appears on your site, how often does it appear in context with the same or similar words as on other sites? In other words, is it being used appropriately?

Getting inbound links by buying them is a bad idea, you really want to get inbound links in a more organic fashion. You want people to discover your content and link to it, either by blogging about it, tweeting about it, referencing it on another board or web site, and so on.
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Pony99CA
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Re: Google ranking

Post by Pony99CA »

And, even if Google does take keyword counts into account, remember that Google generally links to pages, not sites. In other words, appearing 931 times on all the pages of your site is probably irrelevant; how many times the keyword appeared on a given page would matter.

It might also matter how the keywords were listed. Keywords in H1 or H2 tags might get more weighting than keywords in generic P tags, for example.

I also suspect that the domain name matters. For example, your domain name says nothing about government or ombudsman. Google probably has no idea what an "amv3" is, and it may not help that going to amv3.com gives a generic parking page.

Contrast that with a small pet sitting business site that I created (gooddogsitting.com), where searching for "good dog sitting" lists that page as the #2 result (not page #2; page #1, result #2) in Bing and #5 in Google (and it's a very small site that I put very little SEO work into).

However, as others have said, getting links to your site from high page rank, reputable and possibly related sites is probably your best bet for increasing your SERP.

Of course, this isn't really a phpBB question at all; it's a generic SEO question. In other words, you might be better off asking in an SEO-specific forum. ;)

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humphrey
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Re: Google ranking

Post by humphrey »

Well I have to say I'm glad I asked here because I'm getting lots of good advice. The reason I especially asked here is because in a normal website there are places in the header for tags, keywords etc but that doesn't apply in php pages, I was wondering if that was a disadvantage or if there were ways around it. But thanks everyone.
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Brf
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Re: Google ranking

Post by Brf »

Google, like any webbrowser, is not going to see the PHP pages. It would see the HTML output. Your tags are in the overall_header.html.
humphrey
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Re: Google ranking

Post by humphrey »

That's very useful to know! I'm going to make the most of these suggestions and hope to shoot to the top of Page One in time for Christmas!
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Dogs and things
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Re: Google ranking

Post by Dogs and things »

I'd also recommend to add some static html pages to your site, containing informative articles you write (unique content) about the subject of your site. Make your board part of a more general site about the subject.
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humphrey
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Re: Google ranking

Post by humphrey »

I'm at the bottom of page 2!Feeling dizzy. Bless you all. Onwards and upwards. Martin.
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Lumpy Burgertushie
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Re: Google ranking

Post by Lumpy Burgertushie »

set your google search page to show 100 results instead of the normal 10 or 20

then, if you were on the bottom of page 2 you would magically be in the middle of page 1.



all things are relative....

:lol:

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humphrey
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Re: Google ranking

Post by humphrey »

Update: am now third on the first page! :D
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stevemaury
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Re: Google ranking

Post by stevemaury »

If you put your board's URL in your signature here, it wouldn't hurt.
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humphrey
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Re: Google ranking

Post by humphrey »

Good idea, thanks!
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haggisv
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Re: Google ranking

Post by haggisv »

You should really try to optimize for the key-phrases that are likely to attract the type of people that you want to attract. How many people do you think will actually type in "Local Government Ombudsman"? Think about what answers or service your forum provides, and optimize for relevant phrases...
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