Hi friends,

I don't know why, but in the last two weeks the visits to the site has dropped at half the average value. maybe this is due to a Google reindexing or a change in the ranking criteria...

if you are aware of some actions I could take to bring new popularity ranking or attract new vistors please let me know...

anyway a big THANK to all the people who keep contributing to the success of the site!!

hope to bring you good news soon!

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AndreaVB

Hmm... that is strange... I would recommend submitting the site to google's "sitemap" (it's here or a similar https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
search for "sitemaps" on google, it's like the first link)

They say that it doesn't improve your position or anything... however... I provided a sitemap for one of my websites:
Before: links to my website from others appeared first
After: my site appeared before other sites that linked to mine

Before: my site wasn't indexed or listed for even 1/4 of the words on my site
After: my site was listed for words that were on my site, but not even close to a "match" (ex: "I looked everywhere....[insert paragraphs] "local bars are the best!" would show my site, whereas before, it didn't)

Of course, you could list your site on mine (http://everywhereslocal.com)... it might work as a "service" posting... perhaps other things. If nothing else, it could potentially drive more people here.

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Everywhere's Local (classifieds, job postings, & more for everycity in the world - user entered)

well,

have you used some special tool to generate and mantain your Google site map or do you edit it manually? what do you think is the better subcategory to submit my site to everywhereslocal?

thanks again!

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AndreaVB

Do you have records of what it was like this time last year. Maybe other parts of the world are on holiday  

it could really be posted anywhere on my site that's related... business servies would probably be the best category other than a banner (banners currently involve me adding them)

a sitemap's just "normal" XML. There's not too much to it. There might be generators for it (I'm thinking there were), but if you just create a XML file with the main pages, it could help.

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Everywhere's Local (classifieds, job postings, & more for everycity in the world - user entered)

Hi Boss,
Sounds like the Site Map idea is a good one. Google actually offers a lot of advice on how to prepare the sitemap and submit it to them. You definately need greater exposure on Google. I searched it using "vb developer", "vb advice", "vb question", "vb help", "vb programming", and several other vb's, and your site did not appear in the first 5 pages of any of the results. (sorry, not enough time to go past page 5 - and anyway most searchers don't go that far either)
I do know that they use spiders to get keywords from your default page header. I recently put a site up for someone and included :
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="all">
<meta name="description" content="included a brief outline here.">
<meta name="keywords" content="word,word,word"
Their site now shows within the first few pages if a search is done on one of the more specific keywords.
Not that I'm trying to teach my granny to suck eggs, I just thought that if these two ideas were used together maybe it would increase your visibility.
As one of our UK supermarkets say in their TV ad - "Every little helps"


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multi-tasking - the ability to hang more than one app. at the same time.

The page below had some useful tips

http://www.getadsensed.com/articles/article.htm?id=1

Steve  

well,

Saturday I've added a sitemap and registered it in Google Sitemaps, Hope we'll have good results with this...

thank you for the hints!

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AndreaVB

Hi Andrea

Any improvement in our rankings yet ?


Steve  

well,

it seems that the google page rank returned to its value 5/10, I've also added some meta tags to the forum pages, if you take a look at the HTML source of each page there is a KEYWORD metatag and many others, even if I've read in these days that metatags are ignored by most of search engines.

I've tried to spread some link around in order to attract new visitors and gain better search engine ranking...

...after some searches in the web I've noticed that AndreaVB shows up at the top of Google and Yahoo searches for the terms "vb programming"...this is fantastic!!

thanks to you all!!

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AndreaVB

Thought I would change the subject

Quite right Steve - it IS Excellent News.
Well done to the BOSS, all your efforts have obviously been rewarded. This can only be a good thing for VB programmers all around the world - their toolbox is sadly lacking without AndreaVB.Com - the best site there is for help, advice, news and tips.
    


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multi-tasking - the ability to hang more than one app. at the same time.

You're too kind and gentle! thank you for your appreciations     

anyway this thing I've done is nothing compared to the great support you're giving to the forum every day!

we are not at the same amount of visits of some months ago but we're doing better every day and I hope to reach a new maximum in the next months... maybe after everybody's holydays... when you all stay at work visiting and posting in the site

    

[Edited by admin on 24-11-2005 at 05:44 PM GMT]

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AndreaVB

Came across this article at this similarly named site on Search Engine Optimization.

Its worth a read

http://www.andreas.com/downloads/seo-search-engines.pdf