Calling All Blog, MySpace, and Web Page Owners!

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
To the loyal readers of MTBNJ.com. I ask you to brace yourself, then look at this Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=new+...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

That's a Google search for "new jersey mountain biking". Nowhere on the first page will you see MTBNJ. IMBA? Skiing? Amazon.com? Yes. MTBNJ? Nope.

Go ahead and look, pages and pages and pages. On page 8, you'll even see a Wikipedia entry for Somerset County. But 10 pages of Google results and not a single reference to MTBNJ. Not good.

Jake asked what we could do about it and a buddy of mine gave us some suggestions, one of which was to link to the site as much as possible. Nobody really knows how these engine algorithms work. But some experts voice their opinions here.

Anyway, we're working on any number of things but one that we need your help with is external links. If you have a blog, a MySpace page, or a web page of any kind, putting a link on it back to the site (www.mtbnj.com) can only help. So on behalf of Jake and Steve, I ask you, beg you, implore you with a cherry on top, that if you have a blog, web page, MySpace page, or even an ID on another forum that has a signature (hi Kirt), that you help the site by putting a link to www.mtbnj.com on it. Many have asked what you can do to help. That's just a small detail that we hope will help in making it more visible to the search engines.

Basically, we need this to be much bigger than it is:
http://www.google.com/search?q=link:www.mtbnj.com&btnG=Google+Search

Props to Bulldog and Black Bear Cycling for linking to us, though I'm a bit disappointed that the Bulldog description doesn't say "chronic horse sodomizers". That list is incomplete. But it does reflect a severe lack of links to this page.

To shop owners/workers as well as any clubs out there, we ask you do the same.

Thanks for listening,
Norm
 

Glancing Aft

Active Member
I've noticed in the past that if you google "mountain biking nj" it's 7th on the page.

Maybe you could put together a snazzy banner we could put on pages/blogs/myspace/ect... ?
 

Maurice

New Member
Search engines will index pages depending on words/sequences of words present on those pages. The home page of MTBNJ does not have all the words you're searching for. Have some hidden text containing those search patterns somewhere on the pages where you want search engines to take you, and google etc. will do the rest.

I don't think linking to it would help much but I could be wrong. At the least you're likely to get more hits.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I've noticed in the past that if you google "mountain biking nj" it's 7th on the page.

Maybe you could put together a snazzy banner we could put on pages/blogs/myspace/ect... ?

I told Jake I was done with my good Moderator duties for the day. But I guess I could see what I could do :)

Search engines will index pages depending on words/sequences of words present on those pages. The home page of MTBNJ does not have all the words you're searching for. Have some hidden text containing those search patterns somewhere on the pages where you want search engines to take you, and google etc. will do the rest.

I don't think linking to it would help much but I could be wrong. At the least you're likely to get more hits.

Those suggestions are also on the list (titles, meta tags, intro paragraph, image alt tags). Basically code changes are in the "triage" category as that area moves from Jason to Steve/Jake. Hidden text is a good idea, though intro words on the main page (which redirects to the directory page) is tough because it's all image based, and the text needs to be at the top so that's the first thing the search engine sees. But then that could possibly throw off the image alignment.

Since Google doesn't publish their search algorithm we're left to guess. A lot of people say that external links actually makes a much bigger difference now, as it indicates how "relevant" the site is. If nobody links to you, you're meaningless.

Of course it will likely change next month, so anything you assume today...
 

Glancing Aft

Active Member
Norm, I ended up jumped on it myself. Hope that's okay... If not feel free to delete this post...

<A HREF="http://www.mtbnj.com/"><img src="http://www.mtbnj.com/forum/images/misc/vbulletin3_logo_white.gif"></A>

Copy and past that into a page and it will link to mtbnj.com using the Graphic in the upper left hand corner of the forum.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Delete the post?!?! NFW! Link looks good. Anyone can copy and paste that into their page-in-question. Thanks! Image below:

vbulletin3_logo_white.gif
 

anrothar

entirely thrilled
meta tags make a big, big difference. just type in every possible combination of words you can think of that someone would search for concerning mtb in nj. there is really no limit to the ammount you can putin there.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
meta tags make a big, big difference. just type in every possible combination of words you can think of that someone would search for concerning mtb in nj. there is really no limit to the ammount you can putin there.

I hear ya loud and clear! One of the problems - I think - is that the directory.html page does not have meta tags. The index redirects to the directory and it looks like Google picks up the directory page as the home page. So the meta tags on the index page appear to be ignored.

We just need to get our hands on the php code and make it happen.
 

clutch

New Member
Norm, I ended up jumped on it myself. Hope that's okay... If not feel free to delete this post...

<A HREF="http://www.mtbnj.com/"><img src="http://www.mtbnj.com/forum/images/misc/vbulletin3_logo_white.gif"></A>

Copy and past that into a page and it will link to mtbnj.com using the Graphic in the upper left hand corner of the forum.

How will just adding the link help with a specific keyword search? Wouldn't you also have to add the relevant keywords to your page as well? Is it thought that google determines relevance to keywords separeately and then just orders the links based on popularity alone?

BTW if you add forum to that search query, mtbnj is the 21st link you get.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
How will just adding the link help with a specific keyword search? Wouldn't you also have to add the relevant keywords to your page as well? Is it thought that google determines relevance to keywords separeately and then just orders the links based on popularity alone?

The speculation is that it comes down to weight. You don't need to add keywords to your site, per se. It may or may not help but the reading I did on it suggests that the Google algorithm isn't actually that smart. Basically Google comes up with 50,000 matches and then probably reassess from that, and any site with more "highways" into it will be given more weight.

BTW if you add forum to that search query, mtbnj is the 21st link you get.

Better, but shouldn't it be top 2 at worst?
 

Jason

JORBA Board Member/Chapter Leader
JORBA.ORG
Linking to mtbnj.com will in turn bring search engine spiders here and this help with indexing the site.

The META tags on the index regardless of the redirect "should" be picked up.

http://www.upromote.com/metataganalyzer.html

Type in only "mtbnj.com" and it will read the META tags from the index.html and not from the directory.php file.

Here is the banner ad I have been using on my myspace page if anyone is interested.
mtbnj_banner.jpg
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Type in only "mtbnj.com" and it will read the META tags from the index.html and not from the directory.php file.

I get "MTBNJ: Trail Directory" when I search for "mtbnj.com". We should try the phantom paragraph on that page to see if Google picks it up in the next few days. For all the Spidering Google does the changes don't actually seem to propagate very fast.
 

Jason

JORBA Board Member/Chapter Leader
JORBA.ORG
I get "MTBNJ: Trail Directory" when I search for "mtbnj.com". We should try the phantom paragraph on that page to see if Google picks it up in the next few days. For all the Spidering Google does the changes don't actually seem to propagate very fast.

I was talking about using mtbnj.com in the analyzer here: http://www.upromote.com/metataganalyzer.html

Either way, I updated the Trail and Shop directory with matching META tags we are covered.

I'll email you the .php files so you can see.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Damn that site doesn't grade us well at all! Good deal on the php files.
 

PatrickBrown

Active Member
after reading this, I decided to see about moving mtbnj to my top8 on myspace, then after searching, I realized that I mtbnj has never accepted my friend request..... lol :2guns: :mad2:
 
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