Mobisitegalore and SEO

[Work In Progress]

Hello all.

I've noticed that all of my sites created with mobisitegalore do terrible with SE results. I've utilized their "optimization tool" with no luck at all. Is there something I'm missing here? :dontknow:

My sites not created with mobisitegalore are doing better than I expected. I just can't seem to figure this one out.

Thanks,
Mark

[coast]

Tag soup is my guess. Look at all those <instance> and <desc> and <nav> tags on http://fbimostwanted.mobi. You don't see them on http://pizzaz.mobi or http://weatherforecaster.mobi. There appear to be more of these tags than content and they're probably choking the spiders.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, go to the site and click on the "view" menu in your browser (internet explorer/firefox/safari etc.) and click "view source."

[Work In Progress]

Tag soup is my guess. Look at all those <instance> and <desc> and <nav> tags on http://fbimostwanted.mobi. You don't see them on http://pizzaz.mobi or http://weatherforecaster.mobi. There appear to be more of these tags than content and they're probably choking the spiders.

Thanks Coast!

So, what you're saying is, there's not much that can be done. I'm not a "coder" myself. If I were, I wouldn't need this type of service. I'm just guessing that these "tags" can't be removed. Even if they could, it would revert right back when I did an update (which is sometimes done 2-3 times a day). I'll pose this question about the SE recognition to mobisitegalore and see what they say about it. :rolleyes2:

[coast]

Thanks Coast!

So, what you're saying is, there's not much that can be done. I'm not a "coder" myself. If I were, I wouldn't need this type of service. I'm just guessing that these "tags" can't be removed. Even if they could, it would revert right back when I did an update (which is sometimes done 2-3 times a day). I'll pose this question about the SE recognition to mobisitegalore and see what they say about it. :rolleyes2:

You're welcome. I don't think there is much they can do about it, either, since it's an automated program. The tags serve as containers for the code to be plugged in from the site builder. Without them, the builder would not work is my guess.
Sorry :frown:

Time to learn xhtml and css :-)

[Reece]

From what I've seen, MobiSiteGalore based sites seem to have far less content than standalone notepad/dreamweaver constructed .mobis. I don't use MobiSiteGalore myself, so I can't really make any comments on it's tagging or whatnot, but I haven't seen many sites built with it that are more than a "two-hour" job, so to speak. Comparing it to a beastly .mobi like Wapedia, there's no doubt which one Google would consider more worthy of being well ranked. Alot of people blame it on SEO, but in my personal experience, alot (as in hundreds/thousands of pages) of relevant content goes alot further towards better rankings than SEO alone the large majority of the time.



Time to learn xhtml and css :-)

It's not that hard, I know you can do it :) I'm a notepad builder myself and while that might take a bit of reading and learning to do it that way, Dreamweaver makes it quite easy. Get yourself a free trial once you feel you're up for it! ;)

[Work In Progress]

From what I've seen, MobiSiteGalore based sites seem to have far less content than standalone notepad/dreamweaver constructed .mobis. I don't use MobiSiteGalore myself, so I can't really make any comments on it's tagging or whatnot, but I haven't seen many sites built with it that are more than a "two-hour" job, so to speak. Comparing it to a beastly .mobi like Wapedia, there's no doubt which one Google would consider more worthy of being well ranked. Alot of people blame it on SEO, but in my personal experience, alot (as in hundreds/thousands of pages) of relevant content goes alot further towards better rankings than SEO alone the large majority of the time.
Well, as far as relevant content, it's hard not to have relevant content in a site called fbimostwanted.....and it's just as it's named. Yet SE's seem to ignore it.
Pizzaz.mobi, on the other hand, is a much simpler site, yet ranks very high for "pizza search" and "pizza mobi" in most standard SE's (crept up to #5 on Google for both) and #1 for "pizza search" on Yahoo one search. Very pleased to se mStart.mobi lsting it at #1 for searching the ever popular "pizza"!
My opinion on the content issue is that mobi sites should be condensed. I know I don't want to read a book on a mobile phone. Just the facts for me. I might be in the minority on this, but it's my gut feeling that I'm not.

I've got to believe that Coast is on to something with the tags.



It's not that hard, I know you can do it :) I'm a notepad builder myself and while that might take a bit of reading and learning to do it that way, Dreamweaver makes it quite easy. Get yourself a free trial once you feel you're up for it! ;) Guess I'll have to give it a try. This old dog rode the short bus. :eek2: Might take me a while to figure things out. Looks like I've got some learning to do...:smile:

Thanks again for the help guys!

[Reece]

Unfortunately, at the present, Google actually punishes you for making a site extremely concise rather than Wikipedia-like. I'm sure that will change in the future and I have no doubt your visitors prefer your concise style rather than naming the offender, his brother, his sister, where he grew up, what football team he played on in High School, etc. Ultimately Google and other search engines will have to adapt to the needs of mobile internet users and when that happens, I have no doubt that sites like yours will rank considerably better.

If it's any consolation at present, FBI most wanted scores a 761 on Wordtracker versus zero (0) for pizza search, so you certainly have a much, much harder term to optimize there :)

A site I built a long time ago (and is now parked but still indexed), quercetin.mobi had (still does in some instances) some pretty good results for some keywords involving quercetin, cancer, and food sources. The key is to use a program like Wordtracker to find keywords or keyword combinations that are easier to compete with.

You'll never be able to compete with fbi.gov and likely not Wikipedia's FBI Most Wanted page, so half-way down the first page is realistically the best you could ever expect to do. Targetting something related to this may make it much easier to land a first page ranking.

Best of Luck :)

[Work In Progress]

Thanks again Reece for the helpful comments and insight.



You'll never be able to compete with fbi.gov and likely not Wikipedia's FBI Most Wanted page, so half-way down the first page is realistically the best you could ever expect to do. Targetting something related to this may make it much easier to land a first page ranking.

Best of Luck :)
On this, I'd say you're right. But keep in mind, I'm not trying to compete with these sites. My goal is to offer mobile users a good experience (which hopefully I have). My competition does not do this...yet....This is why I believe google.mobi and Yahoo one search must keep adjusting to show compliant sites. I'm sure it's coming. Just don't know when!

[gogo]

Here's Googles own guidelines http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#design

[gogo]

I agree generally with what's said here ie WYISWYG programs such as Dreamweaver create a lot of extra code. I'd been meaning to have a look at the code of a mobilgalore, site so I did. I don't think it's a problem here because all the extra coding is just comments.

If you look at it in Firefox and click View Source the commments appear between <!-- --> tags in green italics and these are ignored by the browser and presumably search engines. The rest of the code is uncluttered IMO.

But it might not help that nothing - correct me if I'm wrong - is formatted as <h1> <h2> etc - I believe search engines like to see that, they give more weight to the stuff in those heading tags and they want to find them. No reason why mobigalore coudn't update their program to format page headers in <h1> tags, I'm sure they're as keen as the rest of us to have their pages rank well.

[coast]

But it might not help that nothing - correct me if I'm wrong - is formatted as <h1> <h2> etc - I believe search engines like to see that, they give more weight to the stuff in those heading tags and they want to find them. No reason why mobigalore coudn't update their program to format page headers in <h1> tags, I'm sure they're as keen as the rest of us to have their pages rank well.

gogo is right, you need <h1> and <h2> tags.

Also take a look at http://find.mobi and see if it ranks well there.

[Work In Progress]

I can't really add these tags (or at least I don't know how yet). I'll pass this along to mobisitegalore.


As far as find.mobi, that's the first time I've used it.

Great results for :
Pizza (pizzaz.mobi)
Mobile Search (onfly.mobi)
Weather (weatherforecaster.mobi)
Date Rape (daterape.mobi)
New Windows (newwindows.mbi)

No results for :
evacuations (evacuations.mobi)
Fbi Most Wanted (fbimostwanted.mobi)

Funny thing is, fbimostwanted gets the second most traffic of them all. Evacuations gets traffic around storm times, but, as expected, just occasional visits at other times.

So, why does daterape and newwindows show in results (both obvious mobisitegalore sites) while the other two (which are visited more) get no love at all? :dontknow:

[coast]

What is linked to your mobisitegalore sites? Is anything outside the site linked to it? That could be a solution for you.

Edit: Check out mobiEnthusiast.mobi (http://mobienthusiast.mobi). DateRape.mobi just got a site spotlight entry, that ought to help.

[Work In Progress]

What is linked to your mobisitegalore sites? Is anything outside the site linked to it? That could be a solution for you.

Edit: Check out mobiEnthusiast.mobi (http://mobienthusiast.mobi). DateRape.mobi just got a site spotlight entry, that ought to help.

:adore::adore::adore: Much obliged, my friend....:adore::adore::adore: