Lay My Hat

Hi to all,

We are trying to promote painting holidays here in Burgundy France and this morning I searched for 'Painting holidays in France' via Google. We didn't rank at all (didn't bother to search after page 3). I also did a search for 'Painting holidays in Burgundy'. I believe we are the only people offering this kind of activity in this region. Again, we didn't rank. Our site can be seen via British Arts, Goin2travel and artyfolk with whom we have links. They all appeared in the search!

Could somebody please look at my website title, keywords, description etc and tell me where I'm going wrong and what I can do to improve things.

Please just bear in mind I'm not a codie and need simple explanations.

Thanks in advance.

Catherine
www.pictureburgundy.com

Google gives you 4 out of 10 on page rank..........not bad for a personal site. I will let the more technical lot pitch in.

Hi Paul,
I'm really a wee bit dim! How do you get the 4 out of 10 thing. To me that sounds good. So why didn't we appear in the simple search 'painting holidays in Burgundy'?

Thanks,
Catherine

Hi Catherine,
this was discussed a while ago on another thread
viewtopic.php?t=1259

Hi Cat 7139

Now don't take this personally but you are a bit stuffed!!!

Looking at your title, keywords and description they look as though you are trying to spam Google.

Although Google are shifting the emphasis from these elements you may want to trim them.

Take some of these keywords and make them articles on your site with the headline featuring the area, so it could be 'Painting around the XXX region'.

I notice on your painting page ( http://www.pictureburgundy.com/paintingholidays.html ) you only mention Burgundy in the bold title at the top.

I would re-write this whole page with the emphasis on the region and where people might go within Burgundy to paint, do you visit villages in the area? If so mention them.

On your pages where you've got Picture Burgundy I'd turn this into a headline describing each page, so you could have Wine Tasting Tours of Burgundy, Burgundy Antique Markets, Burgundy Villages at Christmas.

And give each of these pages their own titles, with a very simple H3 header tag.

To get an idea of many of these ideas I've used on a site I put together please see:

http://www.dordognegiteservices.com/index.shtml

The secret is to keep it very simple as you want Google to get to the main words on your site, without putting other elements in its way.

Three or four mentions of Burgundy across the whole page should help.

Also do you know how many sites link to you? You may want to start tracking some down and exchanging links.

Hope this helps.

Craig

Spot on Craig...

Thanks Craig,
Just what I needed. But what is an H3 header tag?

I'll change all the descriptions over the next few days and try and simplify my keywords. I was under the impression 'the more the better' but having looked at your site I may have gone a bit overboard with ours!

Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Catherine.

Hi Catherine

If you view the source of the site I highlighted as an example you will see the main headline of each page is surrounded by a H3 header tag.

So for example:

<h3>Your Headline Here</h3>

Would look like:

Your Headline Here

It will actually look at little bigger but it's the actual words being used that is key.

Just write as though you were trying to simply describe what you do and you may also get the added bonus of people linking to you.

All the best

Craig

As if by magic, I found this article this morning:

http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-frien ... ings.shtml

It covers the importance of headlines and tags in more depth than I did, well worth reading if you are looking to give your site a boost.

Thanks again,
You couldn't send some of that magic my way could you in the form of a wand to correct my site? Thought not.
I'll get onto the link given and get to work.

Regards,
Catherine
www.pictureburgundy.com

Enter "Painting holidays in Burgundy" into MSN Search and you're right there at the top.

MSN seems to be very different from Google, and I recently noticed that more than 50% of visitors to my site who came from a search engine came from MSN. OK, my numbers are very small, but I suspect something new is coming around the corner. Do not underestimate the big M.

MSN seems to actively downgrade listing sites in its search results, which lets our personal sites score spectacularly highly. If only more people used it!

the clue lies in your titles and the name of your site.

If you type "picture burgundy" in google you are on page 1 position 3.

If you want to be found as "painting in burgundy" then change your title, your headings and in your text talk about painting in burgundy.

So instead of 'painting and discovery holidays ' you need something like 'painting in burgundy holidays'. Below instead of 'picture burgundy' have 'painting the burgundy landscape'. Below that instead of 'painting, wine tasting...antique hunting' focus on painting and have separate pages for the other activities.

Then in the text talk about the painting opportunities and the p[ainters who have worked there or nearby etc.

Of course what this will do is move you up the rankings for painting in burgundy but below in everything else, possibly. Why not just ahve a page devoted to painting in burgundy.

Just a warning, though. I went to http://www.submitexpress.com/cgi-bin/ke ... racker.cgi

and searched for 'painting in burgundy'. Guess what?

"No searches were done during the last 3 months using the search terms entered. "

Be careful. This is a niche market. You may be better with more popular terms.

We really need to be found in the search Painting holidays in France because anybody searching will use those words.

Your advice has seriously set me thinking about making major changes to our site! I've already started to make a few using some of the execellent suggestions that have been posted.

Thanks for all the positive feedback.

Cat7139

Is the domain name new? This will affect your google ranking for a while.