Will My Search Engine Rank Be Effected?

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

I have a website that has just started to get some visitors to it. But the Click through ration of ads on my website is very low and by my research I have concluded that because of the ineffective designs of my webpages people tend to leave the website quickly than normal. I designed the website using frontpage and now I have decided to go for a more professional software like Adobe CS5 or Microsoft Expression Web. Before changing my webpage design completely I like to know that suppose I change the Url structre and the Names of the webpages in my website, then what will happen to my websites rank on Google.I have experimented with effect of time in Google's rating and I have seen that as the site gets older (with no single word of content added to that site and no single page added to the site) the amount of traffic to the website through google's organic search increases.So i wonder if I change the names of the webpages, and change the structure of the website, will the website be treated as a new website or is there any way through which I can transfer some of the reputation of my older pages to the new pages I make. I mean is there any way I can tell google that I am changing the urls of my pages and you please change them in your index too.Or what I can do is just wait again for a long time to see google give some reputation to the new webpages I make.For your information, the name of the website will remain the same. It is only the name of the pages in the second level (pages inside a folder in the root directory of a website) that are going to be change.I will be very glad to hear from you. Thankyou

[yordan 10]

I guess that there is no real way for a webmaster to have influence on google rating.Logically, all the algorithms are made in order that the only way for having a good rating is to have an interesting website, where people find useful information. Of course, the structure of the site itself helps for that, making people feel comfortable during their navigation, ugly sites make them rush out as fast as possible. So, logically, the best way is to have an interesting content with easy navigation. Maybe you could ask some friends having a look at your website and ask them their opinion.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Maybe you could ask some friends having a look at your website and ask them their opinion.

I think its the best what I can do. I really feel I need to change the website but there are more expert and experienced people on Xisto forum so I must share the link to my website. My website isMananatomy.com

Please have a look at it. The website is made in frontpage. The menus are set in table i.e. it is an old style website and not based on CSS. Also one thing I like to share is that when I started the website I had no idea that something like CSS even exists. SO i just went for the frontpage. Now I have some very bad problems whenever I want to change a similar thing on multiple pages. I have to change all the pages from page 1 to page last. This is also one of the biggest reasons why I want to change my webdesign software from frontpage to Adobe CS5

[vhortex 1]

So i wonder if I change the names of the webpages, and change the structure of the website, will the website be treated as a new website or is there any way through which I can transfer some of the reputation of my older pages to the new pages I make. I mean is there any way I can tell google that I am changing the urls of my pages and you please change them in your index too.

There is a way to do it and it is by using web forward. With a web forward, I don't mean redirection but a real web forwarding by using web error 301 (this page have moved permanently). Once the bot picks up the code, it will read the 301 error and will be instantly taken to the new page defined on the error command. This will trigger the bot to update its index and some other search engine or even users that are reluctant to change bookmarks or indexes will still land on the correct page preserving everything.

 

redirect 301 /someoldfile.html http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/[code=auto:0]

 

The code above should be inside ".htaccess" (quote to show that there is no file name just an extension) which will only work

1. if you are on a linux or unix server

2. your host allows you to have that file.

 

If you are hosted on asthahost them you are lucky since Xisto supports almost anything that you need except video streaming.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

There is a way to do it and it is by using web forward. With a web forward, I don't mean redirection but a real web forwarding by using web error 301 (this page have moved permanently). Once the bot picks up the code, it will read the 301 error and will be instantly taken to the new page defined on the error command. This will trigger the bot to update its index and some other search engine or even users that are reluctant to change bookmarks or indexes will still land on the correct page preserving everything.

Vhortex its my lucky day today with you. You are giving me all the answers I need. You know I could not start re-developing my website because of this potential problem. Now as I have gained the concept I have another request for you.I visited the link you gave with the post but unfortunaltely because of my total lack of knowledge of html and all the related stuff, I could not find my way through. So if you can make a page about the solution to this problem on your website and then tell me about it, it would be very nice for me.
By the way it would be beneficial for you as well because I love to open and see ads.

Can you make such a page with very simply explained step by step process of doing it, excluding the maximum possible amount of coding knowledge.
Please tell me I am waiting.

[vhortex 1]

So if you can make a page about the solution to this problem on your website and then tell me about it, it would be very nice for me. By the way it would be beneficial for you as well because I love to open and see ads.

I can write an article about doing it step by step, the link provided is an example and it was really the code to use.
For the sake of clarity, i can write the document after an hour as I am reinstalling a certificate file on a dedicated server.

The only thing you need to preserve is keywords and perhaps some modification on the new title. The filenames no longer matter since you will be forwarding the robots and even the visitors.

[vhortex 1]

I have created a mini tutorial here http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Feel free to ask for clarification if you still can't understand how it works, technical people always writes the worst manuals
I checked your site a few hours ago, I'll visit it again later within the day, thawte.com's new certificate rules almost made me nuts.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

I have created a mini tutorial here http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

Feel free to ask for clarification if you still can't understand how it works, technical people always writes the worst manuals

I checked your site a few hours ago, I'll visit it again later within the day, thawte.com's new certificate rules almost made me nuts.

Thank you thank you dear vhortex. The page was really awesome. THe information was brilliant. You have made it so simple that now I think I can do it easily. I have a few questions to ask about the process that I want to confirm.

 

Suppose my filename is "humerus.htm" and it lies in the folder "bones". Suppose I change the filename to "arm_bone.htm" when I change the structure of the website and the file remains in the same folder, then will the code look like the following;

 

redirect 301 /humerus.htm http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Another thing I want to ask is that the purpose of the change is not to change the content at all. I do not want to change a single word of my content. Is it possible or google will mark the new page as copied content.

Thank you.

[vhortex 1]

redirect 301 /bones/humerus.htm http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Add /bones, you must include the filename and directory from the main folder.

 

Another thing I want to ask is that the purpose of the change is not to change the content at all. I do not want to change a single word of my content. Is it possible or google will mark the new page as copied content.

No, google will know that you change the page name / location and will just update the entry for that index and as long as you maintain that rule, all content checker will know that the new page URL is just the same old page moved and renamed. Only badly written content checker will flag that as copying.

 

If you use the other redirect methods like meta refresh (pure html) or Header manipulation, the old URL and the new URL will be both indexed and marked as spam by Google, Bing and Yahoo. The rest of websites with similar service (sometimes including Bing) won't care.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

No, google will know that you change the page name / location and will just update the entry for that index and as long as you maintain that rule, all content checker will know that the new page URL is just the same old page moved and renamed. Only badly written content checker will flag that as copying.

So it means that it is the safest way to change the file name. Have you ever tried this by your self? I mean have you ever changed the URL of the page without changing a single word from the content by yourself. If yes then please tell me was there any effect (no matter how little) on your page views per day.
Also I like to ask that for how long my .htaccess file will have that redirect code on it. will it be always there or I can remove the code once I feel that all the search engines have corrected their index for my webpage.

Also please tell me that when I write this redirect code in my .htaccess file, then will I need to have the old file placed right where it was. Or there is no need of the old file then and I can just make my new website cleanly.

[vhortex 1]

So it means that it is the safest way to change the file name. Have you ever tried this by your self? I mean have you ever changed the URL of the page without changing a single word from the content by yourself. If yes then please tell me was there any effect (no matter how little) on your page views per day.

I am actively using it every time Google stumble on an error 404. I have allowed Google to index everything and that caused problems. I also used that rule to throw bot scanners trying to harvest emails on my site, they now land on a random site which I pick.

The ranking was not affected, the only problem I am getting as of the moment is the slow down issues on my host. The website I am using is hosted on a different web hosting service. My Xisto hosting which is active is mostly empty and was being used to modify WordPress plugins.

I also have been on the extent of rewriting the whole page but I keep the keywords and all the things that was being search on that page. The info was collected from Google analytics linked to my site. The only time I lost ranking was when I forgot to put back the keyword list.

Also I like to ask that for how long my .htaccess file will have that redirect code on it. will it be always there or I can remove the code once I feel that all the search engines have corrected their index for my webpage.
Also please tell me that when I write this redirect code in my .htaccess file, then will I need to have the old file placed right where it was. Or there is no need of the old file then and I can just make my new website cleanly.

You can never know how many people have book marks on that page so keep the rule but you can remove the old file. It won't slow your website even if you have a long redirect list. Once the rule was added, the old file no longer needs to exist.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Thankyou vhortex for your valuable help. I am on Xisto server and I think I won't get the problem that you are having, I am trying to get familiar with the Adobe CS5 environment first and then I will make necessary changes.By the way If you can give me any suggestion about the design of static webpages, I will be very glad to read your suggestions.

[vhortex 1]

Thankyou vhortex for your valuable help. I am on Xisto server and I think I won't get the problem that you are having, I am trying to get familiar with the Adobe CS5 environment first and then I will make necessary changes.By the way If you can give me any suggestion about the design of static webpages, I will be very glad to read your suggestions.

Xisto never slowed down on me except the occational 5-15mins downtime 1-3 times a month. The over all speed of Xisto is comparable to a Paid hosting that have 95% uptime. I don't think that the downtime are hardware related since mostly they happen when new accounts are being added to the server and only http part was affected which seems to be a restart on the server. FTP keeps on working perhaps because they have a different FTP server software. I never used mail for the hosting since it was being feed by google.

My suggestion for your site at the moment base on how it look are the following

1. make your menu to look pretty, ordinary people wants a menu that look pretty. It does not make sense though since people who will need your content will not care about it.

2. try to use layman's terms on your menu like "upper limb", it is straight forward but most people I met online don't even know what a limb in reality. Some point that the head is a limb, some says upper limb are the palms and other stuff.

3. try to put a thin line of margin on your page to define edges, try this when you already know the basic of stylesheets.

4. experiment on using arial, helvetica and roman fonts. I recommend arial, helvetica and verdana as a main font across the page. This 3 fonts shows almost the same on most browsers and looks nicely on IE. Roman was widely used for reference materials which matches yours.

5. try to use font size 12 pixels, experiment with it when you already tried changing fonts using css.

6. some people love to see a webpage that centers on the browser views, when i say page, i mean the whole content, header and menus center in the browser. No need to center the text.

7. maintain having lesser image on your website, if needed, add some. it is best to have minimal images to make sure that your page loads faster and search engines this kind of sites higher. don't yet use an almost image less design until you learn mid knowledge of css since without images or the fancy styles a css can provide, your page can end up dull.

8. for search engine part,
8.1 make sure that you have at only 1 (one) < h1 > < / h1 > tag, you can use up to < h3 > < / h3>
8.2 make sure that all images have the "alt" attribute set, images with no alt attribute was being ranked down and this total score can affect your site. mine got 2 page rank down just because I miss 1 alt attribute.

9. for adsense, make sure you have 3 or less adsense slots. the TOS states that you can only have 3 and if you can defend your site that you are not spamming, you can have 5 but this needs a request. I don't know how it is done. If you really want more than 3 slots, try https://www.google.com/doubleclick/publishers/small-business/ which is google's double click dashboard control. it is harder to use than adsense but allows you to have any amount of ads. this is to prevent you from being accused of spamming and having your earned income voided or get you suspended.

10. adsense revenue: image, video and flash ads gives more income but they only display 1 advertisement at a time. I suggest using text ads only. judge swapping from the two types base on click rates, you can do this by using channels on your adsense account.


most of the comments i have are just eye candies except item 8, 9 and 10. the first thing i learned about online presence is that people wants to visit a site that have a nice eye candy rather than a nice content. researchers on the other hand prefer content than eye candy and they get slightly annoyed with eye candies. i was assuming that you want to attract the common people.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Xisto never slowed down on me except the occational 5-15mins downtime 1-3 times a month. The over all speed of Xisto is comparable to a Paid hosting that have 95% uptime. I don't think that the downtime are hardware related since mostly they happen when new accounts are being added to the server and only http part was affected which seems to be a restart on the server. FTP keeps on working perhaps because they have a different FTP server software. I never used mail for the hosting since it was being feed by google.

 

My suggestion for your site at the moment base on how it look are the following

 

1. make your menu to look pretty, ordinary people wants a menu that look pretty. It does not make sense though since people who will need your content will not care about it.

 

2. try to use layman's terms on your menu like "upper limb", it is straight forward but most people I met online don't even know what a limb in reality. Some point that the head is a limb, some says upper limb are the palms and other stuff.

 

3. try to put a thin line of margin on your page to define edges, try this when you already know the basic of stylesheets.

 

4. experiment on using arial, helvetica and roman fonts. I recommend arial, helvetica and verdana as a main font across the page. This 3 fonts shows almost the same on most browsers and looks nicely on IE. Roman was widely used for reference materials which matches yours.

 

5. try to use font size 12 pixels, experiment with it when you already tried changing fonts using css.

 

6. some people love to see a webpage that centers on the browser views, when i say page, i mean the whole content, header and menus center in the browser. No need to center the text.

 

7. maintain having lesser image on your website, if needed, add some. it is best to have minimal images to make sure that your page loads faster and search engines this kind of sites higher. don't yet use an almost image less design until you learn mid knowledge of css since without images or the fancy styles a css can provide, your page can end up dull.

 

8. for search engine part,

8.1 make sure that you have at only 1 (one) < h1 > < / h1 > tag, you can use up to < h3 > < / h3>

8.2 make sure that all images have the "alt" attribute set, images with no alt attribute was being ranked down and this total score can affect your site. mine got 2 page rank down just because I miss 1 alt attribute.

 

9. for adsense, make sure you have 3 or less adsense slots. the TOS states that you can only have 3 and if you can defend your site that you are not spamming, you can have 5 but this needs a request. I don't know how it is done. If you really want more than 3 slots, try https://www.google.com/doubleclick/publishers/small-business/ which is google's double click dashboard control. it is harder to use than adsense but allows you to have any amount of ads. this is to prevent you from being accused of spamming and having your earned income voided or get you suspended.

 

10. adsense revenue: image, video and flash ads gives more income but they only display 1 advertisement at a time. I suggest using text ads only. judge swapping from the two types base on click rates, you can do this by using channels on your adsense account.

 

 

most of the comments i have are just eye candies except item 8, 9 and 10. the first thing i learned about online presence is that people wants to visit a site that have a nice eye candy rather than a nice content. researchers on the other hand prefer content than eye candy and they get slightly annoyed with eye candies. i was assuming that you want to attract the common people.

Thank you dear Vhortex for your very valuable information. I will try to keep all this stuff in mind. I am planning to renovate my website and I will apply all the rules you told me on my website.

I would like to know that it is better to have ads right on the top of the website where users can see it without having to scroll down or it is better to have ads in between the content of the page where user have studied some of the content and the users that want more information about the content are very likely to click the ads. Have you experimented with these types of arrangements. If yes then how they worked fro you. Please share with me.

[vhortex 1]

Thank you dear Vhortex for your very valuable information. I will try to keep all this stuff in mind. I am planning to renovate my website and I will apply all the rules you told me on my website.I would like to know that it is better to have ads right on the top of the website where users can see it without having to scroll down or it is better to have ads in between the content of the page where user have studied some of the content and the users that want more information about the content are very likely to click the ads. Have you experimented with these types of arrangements. If yes then how they worked fro you. Please share with me.

This may be kinda late but here is my opinions:

1. ads in between the content can annoy a group of people, unless you can have a nice separator that goes with the ads then go for it.
2. ads on top produce more/high CTR, the reason is that they are easy to spot and people usually click them if they are related to what they are reading.
3. ads on the bottom is only used to capture those readers that reads the whole page and expect a discussion on going below the content (comment system)

The best ad block is a mid square one on the left side of the first paragraph of your content, make sure that there is enough spacing/padding around the ads to prevent it from touching the actual content text. Even if it is the best one, I don't use it since people may click the ads on error.. I favor visitors to comeback often than to have a high earnings from the ads.

Also note that most people tends to be ads blind, they won't even recognize that an ad is viewing displayed and most of them will just treat that as a typo error or something and go on. This is known to infolinks and kontrera so they introduced in text ads, double underlined text always triggers that there is something more behind that text and people will mouse over or click it.