Enhancing GOOGLE placement

[Roy Hersh]

If any of our participants has any expertise with Google "placement" and moving up in their rankings, I'd appreciate any insight as to how to have FOR THE LOVE OF PORT ... gain prominence when someone searches for Port, Port wine etc ...

Thanks in advance!

[John Conwell]

Here is a decent article for Stewart Todd, about how to go about designing your web pages to be more search engine noticible:

http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/
and
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters ... hp/2168021

The problem with this approach is that your still at the merch of the search engine indexing algorithm to find and place your pages near the top of its list.

These days, its better and easier to just use a search engine placement service to do it for you. You end up paying them about $50'ish a year and they'll register your site with all the major search engines, based on some list of keywords you want recognized.

If you google "search engine placement" you'll get a couple dozen companies that can do this for you.

[pgwerner]

Your post got me interested in what would be the top hits if I googled "port wine". The results were mixed:

1) Into Wine: Enjoying Port ( http://www.intowine.com/port.html )

OK article on Port, but not definitive enough of being the #1 hit.

2) Wikipedia "Port wine" article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_wine )

It makes sense that a Wikipedia article on the topic should be high on the list. The article is actually pretty good. I notice under "External links" that there's no link to this site – I just added it, along with a link to the IVP site.

3) Port Wine Club of Canada ( http://www.portwine.com )

OK source of information, but I don't know if it should be placed quite so highly.

4) Ask Men – A Lesson in Port Wine ( http://www.askmen.com/fashion/wine_and_ ... _dine.html )

Totally non-definitive and not deserving of being so high up the list. Clicking on the link, one gets a trailer of "Basic Instinct 2" before you get to the article.

5) Port Wine Online ( http://www.portwineonline.com )

Non-functioning page for some online store – does not belong in top 100 of hits, really.

Hits get really random after this, with lots of recipes and discussion of port wine stains. Port Lover ( http://www.portlover.com ) comes in at #11 – a site that's a similar idea to this one, but lacking in content. The first shipper or importer doesn't come in until #27 – Premium Ports and Madeiras ( http://www.premiumport.com ), a major importer who probably should place higher. No sign of this site or the IVP website anywhere in the top 300 hits.

Peter

[Derek T.]

I just googled 4 names of FTLOP members and 3 of them resulted in an FTLOP page coming top of the list and the 4th was about half way down the 1st page.

Might be irrelevant to this discussion but might not.

Derek

[Roy Hersh]

Coincidentally, I was contacted by a company today...and they mentioned I could pick any two words for $799 a year. In other words, if I choose PORT WINE, there are 16 search engines that would then have FTLOP website shown, almost like a banner add on top of the page with a way to open it directly AND also the first name in the listing of that page on the search engine with PORT WINE ... would show the website For The Love Of Port. The trick is that it is only the folks who are users of their "tool bar" supposedly 22 million users. I did not get a great answer when I asked how they'd keep FTLOP at the top all year on all of these search engines when someone typed in Port Wine. I was curious with all of the Website Listing companies out there ... why others who tried to lock in the name Port Wine ... would not take preference over mine. I need to look into this a bit more, but I think if it was possible to pick PORT WINE, it might be better than even WINE TRAVEL which someone else suggested in an email. But $800 is different than $50 that was mentioned in the earlier posting.

Does anyone know more about this stuff?

[randomguy]

You can read all about improving your site on Google's web page:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/

However, be careful that any companies or tactics you use aren't "cheating" or you will get banned:

http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... swer=35291

[Roy Hersh]

Thank you for the links and advice.