Bengo's dashboard

I personally like a slighty larger font size, but am probably not in the majority.

May I suggest you study up on ProjectWonderful.com as a possible advertising destination that is quite affordable? I use it myself. – Bengo, on February 14, 2009 19:45

The description should be different in each page, just as each page is different and deserves its own description. But, you won't be penalized for a few that are the same. Still, why not have them be different? It's better. – Bengo, on February 13, 2009 01:29

Tycho,

I will try to add a few thoughts to what has been offered. I personally do best one one or two questions at a time so we can go back and forth if need be.

I apologize if some of this repeats what you've been told.

I believe you know where to stick title tags and description tags:

Content sidebar>properties>page, and if page doesn't come up, click near the top of your actual page to change it from whatever it was on, like Images.

Using my own style, learned from some pros, I use title tags of this sort. Here, I am tilting the topic toward your site but not recommending these exact choices, since you know best.

A title tag I might use:

Regional Cuisine | Name of Your Site

No commas, capitalize most words. The vertical bar is called a pipe and hides on your keyboard near the right end.

Because Google prefers you not duplicate title tags, you might consider a series like this:

Regional Cuisine 1 | Name of Your Site
Regional Cuisine 2 | Name of Your Site
Contents | Name of Your Site
etc.

OR

your might have two pages about cuisines, and make one
Regional Cuisine
and another
Regional Cuisines

Now that you have a picture of how some good titles look, step back with me and let's do what the pros do: we use keyword tools to see what words are important in our text, and we often select title content words from them.

My article on tools for optimization covers keywords tools (with links) near the bottom half: http://www.psychedelictreehouse.com/w...

******Important note: keywords as discussed here do not have much to do with the KEYWORDS box on properties. This is because THOSE keywords, which are entered with word, comma, space, word, coma, space, are of low importance. The major search engines have abandoned them, so they are there on the off chance they will regain prominence, but also because some obscure search engines may use them.

So, to clarify, we are using KEYWORDS to mean important words within your text for the search engines, and candidates for use in titles and descriptions.

If you decide an important keyword in your text the phrase IRON COOKWARE (keywords can be phrases), don't fill your text with that word. Maybe use it a bit more, but if you use too much, you are de-optimizing the site for the reader. Above a certain amount, say 6% of text, you will be penalized. Note that I link to tools to help with this in my article.

Page descriptions often look like this:

Louisiana Cooking: Technique, Flavors, Methods, Ingredients

Or, if you have a preferred keyword that is not very competitive (see the Google tool in my article for competitiveness), you might use that phrase alone:

Pelican Stew

Note that you can include a lot of words in description, but google prefers short, tight titles. I don't have the exact piece that lists the total allowed for descriptions and will have to hunt it down. I can tell you this: you have at least 50 characters. Webmaster Tools will tell you if your descriptions are too long, also.

Page caption - You asked about this. Because I do a comic, I don't use this. If you use it, work in the most important words for that page. Some experts would suggest skipping it and instead placing a page caption at the top of your working area surrounded by html h1 tags, which look like this:

Working inside the HTML tool:

<h1>Your Caption</h1>

Close HTML tool and position it on page if necessary. Edit the text portion if desired.

If h1 makes the letters too big, try h2 or even h3.

Reason for this: Google looks for these tags. They are also easy as pie; you can still edit the text. This gives you control over text styles, like bold, font face, and color.

Downside: You are moving the caption lower where it might not be perceived to be as important by Google. (Kind of a catch-22 there, so experiment by trying different things and Googling the results after a few days.)

Keep in mind, using myself as an example: every comic on the web choose "comic" as a keyword. Most also choose "webcomic." If you choose similar words, they won't help you much.

Note that one of my sites, http://psychedelictreehouse.com, a webcomic help site, does well using phrases like webcomic help, webcomic information, or whatever I am using (I'd have to check). One expert I speak to says phrases are the future.

So there is my contribution for now. It did not cover everything, but I have to budget my time.

I remain pleased to assist more if I can, and am sure others can help you too. I think you will find that your frustration will start to give way all at once as your growing understanding helps you fill in the blanks.

Bengo

P.S. If anyone sees me making any mistakes, do speak up! I need to learn too.

You should know, if you don't, that Webmaster Tools is never able to report all your incoming links, so you always have a least a few more than you think.

You can see how often your URL is mentioned on the Internet by Googling

"example.com" -site:example.com where you replace example with your main name will give a number for total returned results at top right, and that is your URL mentions.

It's nothing amazing, but nice to know about and track.

CMD, you are suddenly coming off a bit self-contradictory to me. Either you are troubled or you are not.

With some allowances for category, I can move almost any site that is receiving traffic in the hundreds from position X to somewhere in the top ten SERPS within a week. That's a function of SEO, not the host. I've worked very hard to become good at SEO stuff without resorting to tricks and gimmicks. Letters of appreciation from people I have helped are the proof.

I foolishly thought we were having an unnoticed conversation on a backwater thread but obviously not. It's easy to forget that everything here is for public consumption.

I don't want to demolish other people's morale with my issues, so I'll be signing off this thread, unless you need help with something from me.

I'm looking forward to the day when a product like this can be be purchased and downloaded, like DreamWeaver, and de-linked from hosting so that it is portable. Sometimes it is better to pay for services so you are not captive and your problems are backed up by potential loss of income. It also saves you bending over backwards, as part of the benefactor effect, to promote and assist the provider, since you feel kind of bad about accepting free services.

SynthaSite may still be the company of the future, and my heavy use may be responsible for my frustration level with it. What's tragic is I am bitter to stay but have found no good alternative.

When I don't know what to do, I do nothing, until the answer reveals itself, only now, instead of of loving working on my sites, I feel like I am just compounding what may have been an epic waste of time.

My wife and I were looking at the styles list last night. From a professional perspective, they are mostly rubbish, like what you would see at a site aimed for teens. I take this to mean we do not fit the user demographic, with our 650 pages of sites. We're probably expensive, and the goal is probably the average five page site. In dollar-based transactions, such things are made clear in the contract, and you don't find yourself as the freak by accident.

My wife questioned the choice of SynthaSite from the start, so I have dragged her into this against her preferences. How do I explain that I made a bad choice and set us back a year, when we can only afford two years of development time to make our project reasonably close to profitable?

These are my problems, and I'll handle them. But I didn't see them coming, and I am sad.

Over and out.

12-14 months, depending on the site. I bought a domain for each last summer at Go Daddy (not recommended). Everything worked fine until the subdomains were rerouted last month. What seems to have happened, after talking to half the staff at Google, is the subdomain redirects were sent to www.example.com instead of example.com. I installed new accounts using www and the data came back up.

I can't support this with well tested facts, but I would recommend that anybody consider waiting to install a site map. For one thing, there is already one on your site. Second, Synthasite asserts there is a harmless bug -- that's what's giving everybody the heart attack warning messages on WT. It's supposed to be fixed soon, but why fret over a site map, which is really an insurance policy?

I hate to be a broken record, but it always seems to come down to an issue with SynthaSite and Google interacting smoothly, especially for people using domains purchased before SS was a registrar. If I was CEO, supervising a development team, a customer support team, and rapid installation growth, I might overlook the need to inventory all the key interface points that are potential trouble spots.

Now, despite these issues being raised again and again, we have defensiveness. I got a letter from an engineer they kindly assigned to help me, and he quickly distilled the problem away from the recurring issues and to something simple to fix. I caved, from fatigue. When asked to evaluated by experience, I gave my report. I got a scolding letter back from the gut, resenting my impressions of his listening skills.

Couple this with the crybabies in support who are scared of me and find my questions too hard. I was left to twist over the holidays because no one could summon the common sense to say, the people who can help you are away. Please hang on until (data). I apologized and apologized and the only ones who respond are Monique and Ruth.

I realize there are tons of customers, lots of people in need, always a learning curve -- I have started and run over six sizable companies (well, two were small). I realize that of all the logical business plans, the most likely is to acquire scads of clients and sell out to a bigger firm with ads and content and other tie-in possibilities. I realize SynthaSite is a Vulture Capital play, not a development play, and that I have to find a better home at some point. But I never saw a firm go from stellar to Yahoo levels of customer service so quickly.

I'm actually in shock over it. It's like watching a train wreck. You shout, "The drawbridge is up!" But everyone shouts back, "We checked it and there is no problem." Then one leans out and writes "Question Answered" on your t-shirt.

If you find a decent map out, please let me know.

Another thing is, some users are getting a bug when they submit sitemaps to webmaster tools. It appears as an all-caps WARNING in red on a couple of pages. It's supposedly being fixed, but it just goes to add support to the idea that SynthaSite actions are affecting WebMaster Tools. I just checked and my data is still gone -- close to 10,000 links. SynthaSite has to get over the idea that keeping the sites running is priority one. Priority one is not scaring their customer silly that they have lost over a year of work. Not to mention, a bug post we could check before doing anything we have been told is "safe."

On the DMOZ stuff...

Domains work like this:

.com is a subdomain
.synthasite.com is a subdomain to .com
www.example.synthasite.com is three subdomains.
I guess www. is the top domain but I don't know.

Many testing tools do not read the third sub, only the second, so if SynthaSite is listed, all the others will be too.

This is why it is important to get out of the subdomain situation as soon as possible, but this current mess needs to be resolved before I think someone should attempt the move.

SynthaSite would really benefit from opening solid communication with Google. The Google guidance on disappearing link lists is quite clear, but HOW to remedy it is not discussed. I've been waiting days for someone to answer my post.

If you use Trifecta on a site with three, click the blog option. Before you commence the reporting.

THANK YOU for this. I have been begging, I have been explaining, I have been arguing that something is wrong and affects the people like us, who bought domains before they became a registrar. My problems include all my WebMaster Tools links vanishing (check yours!), bizarre overlaps in Analytics even though I followed Google's instruction meticulously (SynthaSite just dismisses what Google said), and the complete disappearance of known valid subdomain traffic when the subs were forwarded to the domains.

For whatever reason, I am not being heard, and your amplification may make a difference. I can't even speak to Synthasite any more, I am so frustrated and angry. I think some key person just doesn't get it, not that people are being neglectful, but when they assigned someone from engineering to help me, I could tell he didn't understand the problem from the start.

There seems to be a blind spot in their knowledge. Despite the growing success of our comics, we are mulling whether to pull the plug and walk away. Having our efforts erased as fast as we produce work is extremely demoralizing. We're reconsidering print, which, frustrating as it was sometimes, was never like this.

I have to study some of your other data. My examination suggested that DMOZ is on its way out. In my category, there has been no updates for years, yet when I applied to curate it, I got an answer back saying they had way to many curators in that topic. WTF? Also, you can get in Yahoo if you are willing to wait a long time, at no charge. I just checked, and it looks like one of mine got in after two months, but I need to double check.

You might want to try Trifecta at SEOmoz. One free use per day. Keep track of what you've run.

Great! Remember that save as will include properties like title and description, so don't forget to modify them. – Bengo, on February 04, 2009 19:02

I'm not sure which site you mean, so here are the three main ones I have with SynthaSite:
http://PsychedelicTreehouse.com is about 300 pages
http://LilNyet.com is almost 200 pages
http://ScratchinPostComics.com is roughly 120 pages

I often build a new page by doing a "Save As" on a page that is similar to what I want, then deleting extra stuff.

But it's true, SynthaSite will offer a big benefit to us all as they increase our ability to manage pages contents or tags all at once. I know they consider it an important enhancement but would have to refer you to staff for any sort of official statement.

I have been w/ Synthasite since the days of about 4000 members, and I have worked with a much more primitive system than we have now, so many of my pages were built slowly and steadily. Again, and again. But this company often takes big jumps and I believe it won't be long before they are stealing people from WordPress.

The short comment I just made to Ticho was under the impression we were talking about Webmaster tools. I have not heard about putting tags or links in tag boxes. What is the purpose of this? If it is a way to insert your data on every page at once (just a guess), be aware that duplicate tags will not be good for your search results. I'm sure Synth wants to add a feature to do all pages at once at some point, so I recommend being patient with the current system for now. (It's so much more awesome than even a year ago when there were 4000 users).

But since I'm not sure what you're doing, I may be way off base. I'd love to learn from you, to understand.

Luis, Google made a small design blunder when they decided to tell you your verification tag in the middle of a long sentence. Some people are not sure where the tag begins and ends. Use the section that starts after "your tag should be:" then include everything up to and including the = sign.

You want to be sure to use meta tag, not file, as well, though I think you know this. – Bengo, on February 01, 2009 21:02

I can't answer the music switch button. Let's hope someone else can.

I used to put keyword in like this: first, second, third, and always with comas. After reading this, amongother things, I changed: http://www.google.com/support/webmast...

I'm assuming you're talking about description tags. My site http://psychedelictreehouse is an archive/how-to for making comics on line. It contains a large comic list section. For that area a description tag might look like this:

Webcomics List: Title Library, Webcomics A-Z, International Comics OR MAYBE

International Webcomic List: Online Comics Title Archive, World Comics, Alphabetical List of Active Webcomic Titles.

but sometimes that can be overkill and I'll go simple:

Webcomic Link List

For Titles, I like this approach:

Webcomic Links | Psychedelic Treehouse

but since Google likes distinct titles for each page, I might add page numbers:

Webcomic Link List 3 | Psychedelic Treehouse

The vertical line is called a pipe, and hides on most keyboards above the return key.

For the keywords box, well, that's there on the theory that some search engines still use it. I enter a few important words and leave it at that:

Webcomics Links, Directory of Comics, Archive

Note tht it's good to capitalize words. You never know where Google will graph words to give a search result for your site a headline, so you want them all to look good. Also remember that your readers see your title tag entries as page titles in your browser, so title them accordingly.

The final tag is actually called an attribute, not a tag. It is a way of inserting "alternative text" in your image tags. To do it, click near your image, but not so close as to get the dotted line around it. It's at the bottom of the second menu for Properties in your sidebar, and clicking near the photo should bring it up. Name your photo to help it show up in Google Image Search results. – Bengo, on February 01, 2009 20:54

Hi Luis, until someone arrives, I can offer a few things. First, your situation is common and can be resolved, though sometimes only gradually. Don't lose hope.

Second, on my blog we recently ran a test of DMOZ and it's pretty much a FAIL. A lovely idea, but working poorly. Consider, instead, an article about what your blog is and what makes it special on Google's Knol, which is like Wikipedia with less editors fighting and much easier to use.

I studies your site, and I invite you to consider some suggestions: Studies show the majority of surfers don't like music that starts by itself. Some are at work, having a break, and it makes everyone look at them. The solution? Put a "MUSIC ON" button near the top, so it is an option.

I'd also like to see you add a simple, clear phrase above your text that states clearly what your site is about. Probably three to five words, in larger type.

I am not saying your text color choices should be changed, but I encourage you to make another non-public page and copy a version of your home page into it. Then, experiment with sections in different colors, sizes and fonts. Don't make changes right away, sleep on it, and look at them fresh a second time. Delete bad ones, and add more. Gradually you will find a winner. I personally use Gill Sans for almost everything.

Do keep in mind: every font has an ideal size, maybe two, where they look best. The other sizes will not be as good.

A more random suggestion: tasty food images make cookware more appealing to some. Just a thought to consider.

A SynthaSite staff person will probably be along soon to answer you technical questions. I'm just an enthusiastic user.

Bengo
http://LilNyet.com
The Red Menace Webcomic – Bengo, on January 31, 2009 23:18

Well, it's very much a group effort now, but thanks.

No, you can use any analytics you want. To me, an ideal set-up would be one server-based system, plus GA on the site. This would allow cross-comparisons and help you spot weaknesses in each, or useful tools in each. Opting out of GA means there is a much smaller pool of people around to help you, but it's not insane. Some of my closest friends rely on only server-based analytics. One impression I get from them is that when the ones who know what they're doing look around, they see a lot of people who have made installation errors that affect their data.

This short comparison article might be of interest: http://www.developmentseed.org/blog/a...

So you're clear, PageRank comes from Google measuring your site. Analytics comes from a tool, like GA, measuring your traffic.

Some people fuss that PageRank is old technology, but it's still a good measure of the extent to which others link to you.

Following some of the more worthy blogs in your subject area, and inserting your site name in the appropriate part (or, in the absence of a box, with your signature) counts on a variety of measurement crieteria, including PR, but also Google Blog Mentions, Internet URL mentions and other less well-known measures. It is a nice way to share a meaningful comment on a blog while expanding your web presence.

PR changes constantly, and you can Google "page rank finder" for little tools that tell you your current PR. Google only updates your assigned PR a few times a year, and they haven't done it in ages, so if you can get some links, blog comment links and mentions in blogs or media, you may get a higher page rank by the next update than you would otherwise. – Bengo, on January 31, 2009 23:03

Don't know that one. I'll have to look into it. Lucky for me, I got some help and am all set. I'm pretty sure SynthaSite wants to make this easier for folks a little down the road.

I think redirects are offered to anyone upgrading to a domain name purchased from Synthasite. I've got to say, if you're serious about your web site, that's a good move at a fair price, considering all you get. When I find myself hearing about people paying top dollar for bandwidth, I feel like I'm from another planet. Luckily, so is SynthaSite! :D

I get you now! Thanks for the lightning fast answer. Now I know where to look.

Bengo

Can I just say first, that to me, building a site involves hundreds if not thousands or reviews and rewrites, and I know if can sound nitpicking to comment on small details? I don't mean to interfere, just suggest!

Good.

I see you already made an order button. Good on ya. I wonder about the color match with the rest of the site. My skills are weak at color matching, so my wife helps me. This means that if even I notice it, it might be distracting. Maybe yellow on dark gray? I'd say medium attention-getting. You don't want to beat the visitor over the head or they will leave.

Also, you picked up extra indents in the first pages. If you have trouble fixing that, try Undo Formatting for those two lines, then fixing and reformatting, or splice in a copy of a lower line to set the format and edit it to replace the missing parts.

Right - it's Remove Formatting on SynthaSite. The button is close the the right end on the toolbar, which appears when you select some text.