So I recently wrote about moving my image map to the bottom of my code. I seem to have moved up two spots to 65 for the search term ESL. I guess that's not the best SEO technique out there.
As I mentioned before I have about 100 internal links that go to my home page as "ESLgo". I'll be converting all those to "ESL go-free English second language" and we'll see what happens...
Also, I'm probably going to start writing about some of my other sites soon.
http://www.resource-zone.com/ is a forum where you can get information about DMOZ. The "Site submission status" is probably the most useful forum there for most webmasters.
I complained about DMOZ not being updated before, as I had submitted my update request and then heard nothing for a long time. Well I still haven't heard anything, but after checking on that forum I was informed that the update request is pending review. Well they have it, and that's good to know. Now if they would only do something with it...
It's well known that search engines value what's at the top of a page more than waht's at the bottom. Naturally you want lots of keywords near the top. Currently the top of my page (not counting the head) looks like this:
<body>
<a name="top"></a>
<img src="http://www.eslgo.com/graphics/ESL_English_learning_teaching.jpg" width="748" height="94" border="0" usemap="#Map">
<h1>ESL go - free English as a second language: learning ESL + teaching ESL/<h1>
<p class="normal">ESL go.com is a free English community of ESL students and ESL teachers. The goals of ESL go.com are 1- To give ESL students <strong>help learning English as a second language</strong> through <a href="classes.html">free ESL classes</a> and <a href="forum.html">free English practice message boards</a>.
2- To share <strong>teaching ESL</strong> <a href="resources.html">activities for TESOL, TESL, and TEFL</a> with ESL teachers.</p>
That's because I moved the image map (which goes with my header graphic) to the bottom of the page. I used to have this:
<body>
<a name="top"></a>
<img src="http://www.eslgo.com/graphics/ESL_English_learning_teaching.jpg" width="748" height="94" border="0" usemap="#Map">
<map name="Map">
<area shape="rect" coords="6,8,142,50" href="index.html" target="_parent" alt="ESLgo.com home page" title="ESL go.com home page">
<area shape="rect" coords="580,23,619,37" href="about.html" target="_parent" alt="About ESLgo.com" title="About ESL go.com">
<area shape="rect" coords="628,23,675,37" href="sitemap.html" target="_parent" alt="Table of contents for ESLgo.com" title="Table of contents for ESLgo.com">
<area shape="rect" coords="681,23,742,37" href="mailto:jim@eslgo.com" alt="Email comments to jim@eslgo.com" title="Email comments to jim@eslgo.com">
<area shape="rect" coords="681,45,743,85" href="forum.html" target="_parent" alt="ESLgo.com's English practice message boards" title="ESLgo.com's English practice message boards">
<area shape="rect" coords="559,45,676,64" href="slinks.html" target="_parent" alt="Links for English students" title="Links for English students">
<area shape="rect" coords="559,67,677,85" href="tlinks.html" target="_parent" alt="Links for English teachers" title="Links for English teachers">
<area shape="rect" coords="435,45,554,64" href="sstore.html" target="_parent" alt="ESL and English learning products for students" title="ESL and English learning products for students">
<area shape="rect" coords="437,67,554,85" href="tstore.html" target="_parent" alt="ESL and English learnin products for teachers" title="ESL and English learnin products for teachers">
<area shape="rect" coords="314,45,432,64" href="quizzes.html" target="_parent" alt="Test your English grammar and vocabulary" title="Test your English grammar and vocabulary">
<area shape="rect" coords="191,45,309,64" href="classes.html" target="_parent" alt="Free online English classes" title="Free online English classes">
<area shape="rect" coords="191,67,432,85" href="resources.html" target="_parent" alt="Activities for the ESL or EFL classroom" title="Activities for the ESL or EFL classroom">
</map>
<h1>ESL go - free English as a second language: learning ESL + teaching ESL</h1>
So this page recently was ranked by Google for the first time. My page rank is 5, thanks to a handfull of links, primarily ESL go, which has a page rank of 6. The other sites are my other three blogs, which shows you the importance of a few quality links. Here 4 external links = page rank 5 (the 4 links are PR 6, PR 5 x3 - each page has only 5 or so outgoing links). On ESL go, probably 100 external links = PR 6 and quite a few of the pages linking to ESL go are PR 5 and a few are even PR 6.
This also works against my time and link popularity theory which I wrote about in January. That ESL blog did increase to 5, but only as the links from this site and my other blogs were noticed by Google.
http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm has some useful advice for checking out your competition's use of keywords and comparing them to your own. Now they provide this advice hoping that you'll pay for their SEO services, but the free information is quite useful on its own.
Not too long ago, I changed a title to "ESL go: free English as a second language - learning ESL + teaching ESL" When my site showed up in a google search it looked like this: "ESL go - free English as a second language: learning ESL..."
I wanted that third "ESL" to show up, thinking it might boost my rankings because while I'm stuck in the 60's and 70's, a top ten site has the same page rank as me, but "ESL" in the title three times.
So I changed my title to "ESL go - free English second language learning ESL teaching ESL" ("as" and "a" aren't included in searches anyway). Now the entire title shows up in Google seach results but the ranking improvement has been marginal: I think I went from 68 to 63.
http://www.seo-search-engine-ranking.com/ad_network_222.php