I need feedback on the free design on my site?

ian

Administrator
Staff member
Haven't really noticed much difference between now and the last time I looked at it. It renders well on a mobile phone.
 

Anna Scott

New Member
You site design is simple and clean. You can make it better and you need to optimize your website. You have NO PA/DA.
 

lionel.web

Member
It's really much better, than your old version!
But, your main content on all pages (except index), should be centered!
 

ian

Administrator
Staff member
And we should about something so UTTERLY USELESS because????
I didnt know that PA/DA was a moz.com page authority / domain authority. I have never used it before and probably would not use it.
What is the basis for saying that tool is utterly useless?
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Just saying important w.r.t SEO.

But it ISN'T, they are invented metrics that no search engine has EVER used, and never will use, real people who have never heard of 'moz.com' have no idea what they are and will think that PA is 'Pale Ale' and DA is a 1950's hairstyle.
They exist so that moz can sell you a 'tool' to check them, it's the SEO equivalent of "Snake Oil".

The ONLY tool needed for checking how well your site is doing is a calculator, so you can work out the difference in earnings before and after.
 

ian

Administrator
Staff member
I don't think revenue is the primary motivating site for all webmasters, I run a non profit site (not this one) where my primary motivating factor is not money, but then I do use the number of subscribers to measure success.
I would be wary of any tools from third party providers trying to create a new standard like page rank which google seems to have abandoned because of the amount of Web spam it created.
So I think worrying about all these metrics is pointless because the algorithm is a lot more complicated these days.
I think webmasters should concentrate on just building the best website and user experience for their members which encourages them to keep coming back and the rest will just take care of itself. You could get tonnes of artificial inbound links, but if google detects the site as low quality and people are exiting out of the site fast, it is probably not going to help you and will be seen more as Web spam as opposed to natural. Inbound links from a site which is of high quality.
If I were google I would use the percentage of returning visitors to a site to help determine a site ranking. While inbound links still play an important part, I think there are more factors at play nowadays.
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Of course, whatever passes as a 'conversion' can be used in place of revenue it all depends on the site
 

ian

Administrator
Staff member
how? It's not a metric that they can even measure.
That's a good point, unless you use google analytics they possibly can't measure it. I guess they may be able to get some information when you search in google and click on that site as a return visitor. They may possibly be able to get some information from the google adsense code. In any case they should know the exit rate as in how fast you click the back button and go back to the google search page, so if a site has a massive amount of back links through seo but people are exiting out of the site fast, that could flag a potential Web spam problem.
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
In any case they should know the exit rate as in how fast you click the back button and go back to the google search page,
Well yes they do 'sort of' and Google have stated categorically that they do NOT use that kind data for 'rankings' because it IS far too easily manipulated by anyone hoping to artificially boost their own URLs OR to sabotage a 'rival' URL. Using 'click-through' information as a measure of "quality" or 'importance' is what has made 'Alexa rankings' UTTERLY useless for twenty years.

The 'sort of' proviso is because browsers do NOT reload a URL when a user selects "Back", so the referring URL (Google search page) is NOT refreshed therefore has no indication at all that the 'back button' was clicked.
This crazy idea that Google 'knows' exactly what users are doing after a click on a search result, has been bandied about for close on twenty years by "experts" who are remarkably keen to demonstrate how little they actually know about the mechanisms of browsers and HTTP requests. This misinformation is what makes most, if not all, self-proclaimed "SEOs" a bunch of clueless half-wits with regards to Search.

And personally, I have no qualms or reservations in telling them precisely what I think of their ignorance.
 

ian

Administrator
Staff member
I don't proclaim to have any knowledge about how things work with Google, they do tend to keep things secret after their fiasco with pager and and people buying and selling links based on page rank and thus polluting their results. I am just thinking out loud on what might be some of the things they might be looking for and what things might negatively impact your site.
If you had a tonne of inbound links and we're to rank high, technically they may not measure the exit rate, but if you click on the first result and then there is a short amount of time before your IP goes back and clicks on the next link, it may be one of a number of factors they use in determining the quality of a site. Google may claim to have safeguards, that prevent competitors from doing all sorts of things, but I gave seen sites in the past steal content from my site and a number of others and rank better for it. So it is not a system that is completely immune to being falsely manipulated, though it does appear to be getting better over time.
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
If you had a tonne of inbound links and we're to rank high
That's not necessarily the case any more, and it's not the 'links' that boost 'rankings', and never really has been. It is the anchor text of the links and/or the text adjacent to the anchor element in the source code that can boost rankings. The "adjacent text" being the reason that 'hidden' or 'empty' links (anchor elements with no text) worked so well in the "bad old days", and the anchor text being why "Google bombing" was effective for getting unexpected search results for certain phrases (http://mashable.com/2012/04/19/google-bombs/).
In the 'modern' search engine, a URL (not a 'site') could have tens of thousands of links with the same or very similar text, (an obvious "spam" signal by the way), whereas one or two links with different text, leading from a reputable website may easily outweigh all the other links and several other factors as well. In many cases a page might rank highly in spite of all the 'negative' factors, simply because of one 'positive' factor. These days having massive amounts of back links CAN actually work against you.
 
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