Long time away

[Thomas.Sorrill]

Hey Xarans. Sorry to have been away for so long. I've been knee deep in it for some time. The TG forums are getting woefully out of date, especially on the tutorial pages. I hope to try and rectify that in the coming month. So if you have any tutorials, or know of a good site to link to, please let me know.

Also, we (Xara) are trying to improve our search results. We score rather poorly on Google. As they tend to place us according to who links to us (and who links to those links), can all of you that are linked to Xara.com help out by submitting your sites to DMOZ? And can you try to pursuade the people who are linked to you to submit as well? Who knows, maybe it'll help get the word out as we are seriously under-represented on Google.

Here's the link to the main page of DMOZ

DMOZ.org

And thanks for the help.

If you have any other suggestions on how to improve our search results, I'd be grateful to hear them.

Cheers,
Thomas

[Thomas.Sorrill]

Hey Xarans. Sorry to have been away for so long. I've been knee deep in it for some time. The TG forums are getting woefully out of date, especially on the tutorial pages. I hope to try and rectify that in the coming month. So if you have any tutorials, or know of a good site to link to, please let me know.

Also, we (Xara) are trying to improve our search results. We score rather poorly on Google. As they tend to place us according to who links to us (and who links to those links), can all of you that are linked to Xara.com help out by submitting your sites to DMOZ? And can you try to pursuade the people who are linked to you to submit as well? Who knows, maybe it'll help get the word out as we are seriously under-represented on Google.

Here's the link to the main page of DMOZ

DMOZ.org

And thanks for the help.

If you have any other suggestions on how to improve our search results, I'd be grateful to hear them.

Cheers,
Thomas

[Ross Macintosh]

Thomas - can you look at this thread and advise the relavant person at Xara Ltd.?

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[Judi A]

Thomas, when I type in Xara at Google you are on top.

What catagory, or search word are you using that places you way down?

Judi

[gwpriester]

If you come up first on Google, as Judi reports, I don't see the problem. And with that great review I wrote for Xara X in Communication Arts Magazine, you should be home free.

I, on the other hand, could use all the clicks I can get on GraphicsNews.com The XaraXone was in first place for several weeks but has been slipping lower and lower. We're ranked #3 but about to slide to #4. The Fontman's site may even pass us.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://www.gwpriester.com">
www.gwpriester.com </a>


XaraXone

[Thomas.Sorrill]

I'd be completely gob smacked if someone typed in Xara and we didn't come first. The problem we have is more to do with link popularity. If you run searches on more broad based key words like graphics, vector graphics, etc. etc., we don't score nearly as well as the competition.

As far as I'm aware, Google rates and ranks your site according to the "quality" of the links to it (as well as the "quality" of the links to those links). It sounds incredibly subjective to me, but that is how they do it. Since Google is one of the more popular search engines, we need to figure out how to improve our rating. The only thing I can think of is by increasing the number of sites linked to us that are listed on DMOZ (that's where Google draws it's database from).

That's why I asked for the help.

Gary - You're right on the article increasing traffic to our site, Gary. I can't believe that CA gave you that many pages to work with! I'm stunned. :-)

But we still have the problem of attracting people who are looking for a graphics program, but have never heard of Xara....we need to increase our link popularity so they can find us more easily.

ROSS - I'll drop in on the other post and forward it to someone in the office.

Thanks for the help :-)

T

[Erik Heyninck]

You will hopefully know this already, but it is also of vital importance to use your keywords on the first page of your site at least some five times.
And never try to use, for example,black text on a black background as search engines are programmed to discover that. Instead, use a 2x2pixel black gif as background image because the colour isn't coded in html.
You can also make the engine come back every x days if you use the right metatag.
But in my opinion it is also the number of searches that counts. If people choose for example "vector software" and eight times out of ten they choose "A" from the list, then "A" will be at the top.

[jclements]

Erik, you're not suggesting they change the name of Xara to Ara so its at the top of the list, are you? : )

[Erik Heyninck]

Hahahaaa. My belly aches. Good one.

If you don't work against time, time often works for you.