How do I write a search page?

Google search for a non-profit family website placement.

• Up until a few days ago, my non-profit family website www.Evatt.Org was number #3 after a Google search was made using the surname "Evatt". Now, when a search is performed using the name "Evatt", the INDEX page is not listed at all! What would cause this? I made no major changes to the INDEX page - I have made changes before and it never effected the placement on the Google search. Please help me understand what happened as I worked very hard for many months to get to #3 on a Google search simply to wake up one morning and see the website just "gone" as though it never existed. Thank you - Danny By the way - I did first write to the email address for Google questions but they said to write you - so please don't refer me back to them!

• Answer:

  Hi Danny, Firstly, let me reassure you that your site has not been altogether dropped from the Google index - a search for "Evatt Family History" will still yield your site at #1. Also, a search using the single term "Evatt" reveals your page at #10, down the rankings by 7 places. The problem would therefore appear to be specifically related to your PageRank (PR); I presume that given your previous success at search engine optimization, you have at least a basic knowledge of how this works. If not, an explanation is available here: Google Technology ://www.google.com/technology/ So essentially, for searches relating to keywords prevalent in evatt.org, your position in the results is dependent upon the number and PageRank of sites linking to your own. Unfortunately for yourself, for searches for "Evatt", you are competing for the top positions will some fairly major other sites, not least the Evatt Foundation. I note the publication of your letter to this site and the inclusion of a link within it to increase your PageRank, a very worthy tactic. Evatt Foundation: Letters http://evatt.labor.net.au/letters However, the fact remains that those 9 sites above yours in the rankings are their purely because of their larger PageRank, and your task to improve your results position can be fulfilled only by increasing your own PageRank. Up to this point, I may just have reiterated information you already knew. Therefore I will now try to address the question of how you dropped down the rankings so severely. With the whole of the internet to attempt to index, the Google spider (software to record webpages) will not visit a page more frequently than, in general, 3-6 weeks. A lot can happen in this time, and I would guess that over the last 6 weeks your page rank has dropped very slightly through no fault of your own. Given the size of the other sites competing for position for the Evatt keyword, it is unsurprising that a small drop in PageRank can translate to a large drop in results position. Your drop in PageRank is most likely to have occurred because of a highly weighted (high PR) site dropping your link for one reason or another, perhaps because of an article or letter being archived. You are now left in a situation where your priority is presumably restore your PageRank as best you can. Currently www.evatt.org is a fine example of a 'good site' from a search engine perspective: keywords, titles, and description are concise and accurate, and your content is high quality. Perhaps the alternative text tags for images could be changed to be a relevant description of each picture, but I would not regard this to be serious issue. The only further way to increase the PR is therefore through considering links to the site. -How to further increase your PageRank- Using the command line instruction 'link:www.yoursite.com' will return sites linking to a specific site, so a search for 'link:www.evatt.org' will return a number of sites link to www.evatt.org, including your own. However, not all the pages linking to yours are returned in this search, the reason for which, although not confirmed by Google, is popularly thought to be because only sites with a PR of 4 or more will be shown. This gives an indication as to where there is room for improvement in your PR strategy, because although the absolute number of links to a page is important, it is the 'quality', or PR, of the linking pages which is vital. To discover the actual number of links to your site, use the search term 'evatt.org' and select the 'Find web pages that contain the term "evatt.org"' option from the subsequent page to obtain the results: Google Search: "evatt.org" ://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=G&q=%22evatt.org%22 Clearly, you are linked to by at least 10 other sites, but only one of these (other than your own) shows up on a 'link:' search as the rest are of a relatively low PR and consequently do not boost your ranking significantly. To further increase your PR, your aim should therefore be not only to collect as many links as possible, but also to attempt to get linked to from sites of a higher PR. Posting links on forums, writing letters to webmasters, and asking friends/colleagues to link their sites to yours are all accepted methods of achieving this. Obviously, you have already invoked this technique to a certain extent, but perseverance will be the most likely way to take your page to the top! Having talked extensively about PR, I should stress that it is extremely unwise to use any of the services advertised on the net to be experts in Search Engine Optimization which claim to guarantee your results position or to auto-submit your page to various search engines. Google take a very low view of using such tactics, and doing so will commonly lead to a site being 'blacklisted' and removed from the listings. Such services include 'Web Position Gold' and 'Search Engine Optimization Inc.'. Also, the use of 'Link Swapping' schemes is ill-advised - unfortunately the only reliable way to build a high PR is to be linked to manually. Here are a number of search engine related sites which I have found useful in the past and in answering this question. Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/ Web Site Promotion Do's and Don'ts http://www.searchengineworld.com/tips/keywords.htm Webmaster World http://www.webmasterworld.com/ Google Webmaster Frequently Asked Questions ://www.google.com/webmasters/faq.html If you would like clarification of any area of my answer, please do not hesitate to ask before rating my answer. Kind regards, mcfly-ga :) **Search strategy** google pagerank search engine optimization OR optimisation ... and personal experience