• Google Analytics

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    GOOGLE ANALYTICS

    In general, whenever a site moves from one system to another and page structure changes, Google will perceive the site as almost a completely new site. With our upgrade much of the underlying code changed, including the image paths. Image searches specifically can drive a lot of traffic from Google, so if those paths change (which they needed to in this case), Google would need to re-index all of those. As a result, the site may lose ranking over the short term, but over the course of a few months it should pick back up to normal.

    There are several SEO improvements in the new system, but even with those improvements, they won’t be fully realized until the search engines have had time to build a ‘history’ around those links and images.

    Below is a report by our lead programmer of the new system SEO efforts:

    Results of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Review
    Indexing (or pages stored in a search engine index to be displayed in result listings)

    When a web site is created or redesigned there is a period of time that the search engines keep the old pages in their index. After time those "old" pages get dropped and the "new" pages get included. Depending on the time it takes to rebuild the new index of pages the popularity (or ranking) within the search results will fluctuate. Sometimes giving a small boost to new pages indexed over existing pages. However, that boost is not permanent and the new pages that are indexed will have to earn a ranking in the search results. The longer a page is in the index the more likely that it will get a higher ranking due to trust in the web site.


    Boosting Rankings
    There is no way to artificially improve ranking without resorting to methods that may get you banned from the search index altogether - BMW the car manufacturer suffered this fate with Google by using "black hat" SEO methods. The best way to improve page ranking is to write plenty of original text to describe an event. Make sure the description is on topic and contains highly relevant keywords.

    Crawlability

    • The search engines can crawl all of the pages on the Gryphon sites
    • How many pages get included in a particular search engine is not under our control
    • An XML (sitemap) file including all pages on the site can be provided to Google. However, this does not mean that all those page will be indexed

    Title Tags

    • The current title tags for home page and events contain sufficient data for the search engines
    • Some duplicity may occur in title tags when event, org, venue contain similar content this may have some minor impact as it may be seen as "keyword stuffing"
    • Title tags for organizations do not contain the name for the organization which should replace the "organization detail" string
    • Title tags for venues do not contain the name for the venue which should replace the "venue detail" string

    Meta Tags

    • Meta tags with original content (user defined) are seriously under used and would benefit the site if provided
    • Meta Description should include a brief description of the page content
    • Meta Keywords should ONLY contain keywords that ACTUALLY appear on the page
    • The meta tags could be generated automatically for each site but would not be as beneficial as human added detail

    See this example - a comparison with the home page of artscalendar, event detail page and venue detail

    URL: http://artscalendar.com [^]
    Title: Artscalendar.com - South Florida's Guide to the Arts - Fort Lauderdale to Miami
    Description: Find art and culture in South Florida. Get times and locations for theatre, music, dance, visual arts & museums, film & videos, poetry & literature, kid & family events, comedy, special & free events, film and more. ArtsCalendar.com is the leading online resource for Arts and Cultural information in Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

    Keywords: fort lauderdale arts and cultural information, miami theatre, special and free events in fort lauderdale, music dance and museums in south florida, miami comedy clubs

    URL : http://www.artscalendar.com/event/detail/440724490/Randy_Singer_and_Friends [^]
    Title :Artscalendar.com - MUSIC | Randy Singer and Friends | Randy Singer | Van Dyke Cafe
    Description:
    Keywords :

    NOTE: The meta description and keywords are missing above

    URL : http://www.artscalendar.com/venue/detail/330097962 [^]
    Title :Artscalendar.com - Venue Directory > Venue Detail
    Description:
    Keywords :

    NOTE: The venue detail has NO information about the venue at all

    URL's

    • The URL's for events have the event name suffixed on the URL. This can benefit ranking in the search engines
    • The URL's for Organizations do not have the organization name suffixed on the URL
    • The URL's for Venues do not have the venue name suffixed on the URL
    • It is possible that ranking of certain pages would increase with the inclusion of Org and Venue names in the URL and/or human added description and keywords for the meat tags
       

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