Guest Posted January 21, 2006 Share Posted January 21, 2006 One thing I noticed when I tested SciFi-Collector.com at Poodle Predictor http://www.gritechnologies.com/tools/spider.go was that my description was pulling up less than helpful with search engines. Naturally, you want the best ranking possible with search engines, and the default doesn't help. With the only text at the top of v3 pages normally the search & login info, spiders pull up for descriptions: SciFi-Collector from LAB Enterprises (Powered by CubeCart) Search for: Welcome Guest [ Login | Register] About Us & Contact Info | Glossary of Terms | Links | Size Charts | Terms & Order Info... Not good. To solve this problem, I added a descriptive tag line above the search box, so it now pulls up as: SciFi Collector from LAB Enterprises (Powered by CubeCart)SciFi Collector is your source for Science Fiction, fantasy & horror collectibles from Harry Potter, Star Trek, Firefly/Serenity & More.... So thought I'd share how to do this. In your skins folder, you need to modify the styleTemplates/global/index.tpl (and add a class to stylesSheets/style.css if you need to modify the color of the text - I did white at 70% size). Find <div id="topHeader"> and just below it, add: <div style="padding-top: 15px;"><div class="whitetxt">SciFi Collector is your source<br> for Science Fiction, fantasy & horror collectibles<br> from Harry Potter, Star Trek, Firefly/Serenity & More.</div></br> replacing my tagline with your text of course. The padding setting was there originally, but I modified it down to 15px to allow for the length of my tag - you will need to play with it to fit your header situation. Get creative and put a few key words in it (though don't overdue it or the spiders might consider it a spam line - keep it as a sentence or two). Enjoy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 21, 2006 Share Posted January 21, 2006 nice idea will try this out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aikdo Posted January 21, 2006 Share Posted January 21, 2006 maybe someone can tell me diffrent but google reads through the code instead of looking at the page correct??? if so would this same method work if you set that div to Display:none; hence making it invisable???? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markscarts Posted January 21, 2006 Share Posted January 21, 2006 Those tricks are always worth a try, aikdo, if you absolutely don't want the text to appear up there, but some search engine spiders can be programmed to ignore features designated invisible, as some do with text of a same color as the background. It is not unusual for a spider to be programmed to "see" the page content as a visitor would. The biggestbaddestbestest search engines attempt to leave no stone unturned in doing this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 22, 2006 Share Posted January 22, 2006 DEFO NO NO invisable text is one of the easiest ways to get put in the sand box espically if google comes to ur site regulary. I would not recommend hiding text to anyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 25, 2006 Share Posted January 25, 2006 Yeah, invisible text is a bad, bad thing for search engines as people abused it packing keywords where they shouldn't have. That's why I suggest making it look like a tag line on your site. It needs to be the first text the engine spiders which is why I suggested putting it where I did. A few keywords in it is fine, but too many, and the search engine might pull you for spamming too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 27, 2006 Share Posted January 27, 2006 rather than using white text, in the div, use the tag: .whitetxt { text-indent:-9999px } then it takes it of the page, yet spiders will still read it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aikdo Posted January 27, 2006 Share Posted January 27, 2006 thats ok i got through my problem without having to break any of googles rules, a simple rearanging of one of my skins ment that in basic text formating the page content is rendered then the bars down the side of the page are rendered after, the page has exsactly the same layout with the css files in place but the page is rendered in a diffrent order... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest lcools Posted February 12, 2006 Share Posted February 12, 2006 rather than using white text, in the div, use the tag: .whitetxt { text-indent:-9999px } then it takes it of the page, yet spiders will still read it. sorry, I didn't understand this part where does this part go? thanks, Leila Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest lcools Posted February 12, 2006 Share Posted February 12, 2006 I tried the <div style="padding-top: etc. but it really messed up my background for some reason. I ended up pasting the text in between <div id="pageSurround"> & <div id="topHeader"> and so the text is across the top and that will work just find for now. My search description is greatly impoved. Thanks for the tip! Leila Find <div id="topHeader"> and just below it, add: <div style="padding-top: 15px;"><div class="whitetxt">SciFi Collector is your source<br> for Science Fiction, fantasy & horror collectibles<br> from Harry Potter, Star Trek, Firefly/Serenity & More.</div></br> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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