Site has fallen off the Google/Yahoo radar!

[TheMenuMaker]

First -- I'm not a website designer. I'm a graphic designer. I
designed my site, www.themenumaker.com, using Adobe PageMill. So while I know design -- I don't understand the ins-and-outs associated with web design.

What I do know is this -- my site always showed up in the top 3 listings under the search terms menu design, and restaurant menu design for 3 years, and it's suddenly disappeared!! This happened about 3 months ago, too -- at that time, I was told it may help to add more keywords to my source page. So I just copied all the terms used to find The Menu Maker from my web stats info! NOW I've been told that my site might be viewed as spam. I give up!! It's a legit site, offering a legit product!!

Any help would be appreciated!
Jane, The Menu Maker:confused:

[GCT13]

That's an interesting site you've got there MenuMaker.

Question - Why is there a line of text that is oh so close to the background color at the top of each page? It's very hard to ready and has that spamish look.

[chromate]

Hi Jane,

You actually rank 12 for "menu design." However, you've been dropped for "restaurant menu design".

Not sure why you've been dropped for that. There's loads of stuff you could do to better your position though. I'll only mention a couple for now...

- Decrease the number of words in your page title. Just focus on the important things you want people to find you for. I would change it to:

"Restaurant Menu Design - Specializing in Theme Menus."

That way, google will give more importance to the terms you do want to be found for.

Do you know what <h1> heading tags are? Your prog probably lists them as "heading" or something. You should use them and again include your important terms. For example:

<h1>Restaurant Menu Design - Specializing in Theme Menus</h1>

Again, this indicates to google that these are important terms and so you'll be likely to rank higher for them.

The other major thing is to try and get some other sites linking to yours. I notice that you have a couple of directory listings. This is great. But I think you should spend some time persuading some other people to link to you.

There're other things you could do, but for now, that's perhaps the most important stuff to concentrate on.

[chromate]

Originally posted by GCT13
Question - Why is there a line of text that is oh so close to the background color at the top of each page? It's very hard to ready and has that spamish look.

Agree. That's the line I would make into a heading in fact.

[incka]

Yeah, that is the only reason google might not like you in my eyes...

[TheMenuMaker]

Yeah, I don't know why I did that! Guess I thought it looked cool ... I mean, I *knew* I was supposed to have something "up there" for the search engines to read -- so I did it that way.

Okay, I've made some changes, and here's the problem. With my program, I can add that line as a head (or <h1> in other programs). BUT -- I can't manipulate it. So when you open my index page, it's in a different font, and flush left. Can you check it out and tell me if it looks too dorky?

Thanks! Thanks! Thanks!!
Jane, The Menu Maker
www.themenumaker.com

[MarkB]

Use a stylesheet to change the way h1 tags look. There're a few posts on this forum showing how to do it :)

[chromate]

Yeah, also make sure it's centered. I would cut down the words you're using even further. Obviously you still want people to click into your site from google, but is "by the Menu Maker" going to make any difference? If not, get rid of it. It will make a difference.

It's also important to have your most important keywords towards the start of the tag. So in your H1 tag, I would get rid of the word "creative". Maybe have something like:

"Restaurant Menu Design ... Specializing in creative Theme Menus"

It all makes a difference. You have to think about what your users would like to see and then what will get you higher in the rankings. You have to compromise between the two slightly.

[TheMenuMaker]

Unfortunately, I can't use a style sheet with that line of text ... If I type in <h1> on my source page of my program, the document locks up. If I manually enter the codes for center, type style, etc., it just reverts to the default. (I could be doing it wrong, but I've pretty much exhausted all my options ...)

So the question is, will my "heading" still get "read" by the google spider? Even if it's not in a <h1> tag? It used to ... and it's what showed up on descriptions following my listing in search text. I keep in Menu Maker, btw, b/c it's a pretty commmon search term for my site.

Thank you all for your help!! I can't tell you how frustrating this is! It's like shooting in the dark ... last time I hit my target just fine ... if all else fails, I'm going to have to try AdWords. Argh ...


Thank you all!!
Jane, The Menu Maker
www.themenumaker.com

:)

[TheMenuMaker]

Update: I found this interesting -- it's just the search term restaurant menu design that I'm not showing up on. Menu layout and a few others, I'm number one. Hmmm ... so Google hasn't blacklisted me, just from that term. I think I need to get a job at Google, lol!

Jane, The Menu Maker
www.themenumaker.com

[chromate]

Haha yeah, I always check out their job pages. London's an easy commute for me so I could easily work in their london offices. They only really ever seem to have jobs that are way out of my reach though, which is a shame. Maybe I should write to them seeing if they need a tea boy or something and whilst their try and talk them out of some inside info or something.

"Website publisher goes under-cover inside Google!" :)

[MarkB]

I'd love to work for them, but they require a degree for pretty much anything... which I don't have.

[chromate]

I have a Computer Science degree... but I still can't find any jobs I could do at google :)

[HiddenVorlon]

So any fix for being banned for a single phrase? I too am #1 or 2 on many other phrases (nothing to do with restaurants), but under a specific phrase (which gets the most hits of course), I am not even listed, when I was #1 or 2 pre-Florida.

I've contacted Google, but got squat from them. Any ideas?

[Mike]

Originally posted by chromate
"Website publisher goes under-cover inside Google!" :)

Haha:p