Help! Folk website not on search engine

Subject: Help! Folk website not on search engine
From: Arnie
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 11:14 AM

Well, I decided it was about time that the Friday Folk Club, Deal had it's own website instead of piggybacking the Kent Folk site. Having persuaded my computer-literate son to set up the site, using Streamline.net as a webhost, I thought I'd be able to find the site using a search engine - but no such luck. As the site was set up about 3 wks ago, I thought it may have just appeared on the search engines but now suspect that something more is required. Any suggestions? - other local folk club websites appear on Google and other search engines, but not ours. By the way, if you want to view it, inc. some pics, it's at www.dealfolkclub.co.uk. A bit amateur but I think it does the job....

Subject: RE: Help! Folk website not on search engine
From: Mr Happy
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 11:20 AM

is this the one?

http://www.kentfolk.com/clubs/Deal_Folk_Club.html

Subject: RE: Help! Folk website not on search engine
From: Arnie
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 11:34 AM

Mr Happy - yes, that's our folk club but this is the Kent Folk website that has kindly included our details. I can find that on a search engine but not the website I set up - for that you have to type in the full address www.dealfolkclub.co.uk which isn't much good if you don't know the website exists.....

Subject: RE: Help! Folk website not on search engine
From: Snoozer
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 11:51 AM

You can submit it to google (and other search engines) yourself, for free. For google, go here:
http://www.google.com/submit_content.html

This doesn't mean it will show up overnight, but you'll have a better chance of google finding it quicker.

Subject: RE: Help! Folk website not on search engine
From: Arnie
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 11:58 AM

Thanks Snoozer - however, it's bloody typical that having started this thread, my website has now suddenly appeared on Google!! It definitely wasn't there yesterday but I suppose I should have rechecked today!! Anyway, I'm pleased to see that typing Deal Folk Club into Google now brings us up on the first page. Problem solved and sorry to bother any catters who bother to read this thread - although as they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity......

Subject: RE: Help! Folk website not on search engine
From: Nick
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 12:03 PM

The main thing you could do to get yourself listed is to get other sites (especially that score well on the major search engines) to post a link to your site - link popularity is one of the main things google uses to rank sites. You are mentioned by quite a few sites on google (if you search for 'deal folk club') and I'm sure they'd be happy to add a live link to you.

You in turn might choose to put up a links page to some other relevant places (before you ask people to feature yours) who you would like to be linked from - if you then email those sites and check that 1) it's ok to put the link to them (people rarely say no) 2) if they would link to you (though not dependent on 1!) and they often will

Alternatively you can submit yourself manually to the major search engines (eg Google and it should hasten things. Alta Vista have one; MSN do; Yahoo is harder; Ask Jeeves. Each has a manual submit button. Also you could submit to the Open Directory which is lesser known but both human generated and influential.

You could go for one of these 'Submit your site to two million different search engines' etc but I would approach them with some caution as they can have some undesirable side-effects!

Subject: RE: Help! Folk website not on search engine
From: GUEST,Nicholas Waller (Topic Website)
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 12:34 PM

It'll take a little while to get noticed. Do submit it to Google.

Also, Google and other engines notice and rank sites through the number of inward links to the site, among other things. So sites like folkandroots.co.uk/Venues_Kent.html have a link to your previous web address, and if there are a lot of these, and references on, say, artists' sites, then the old address will be favoured in search results for a while to come.

Write to listings and directories people like folkandroots.co.uk ([e-mail] it says on their site) and advise them of your new address and ask them to change their link. Listings sites like to keep up to date with venue, contact and phone no. changes and the like so they'll appreciate the note.

If the artists you book put up their forthcoming gigs list on their own websites with links to the venues/clubs they're visiting, then ask them to use your new address. For instance, I see Richard Grainger (May 12th) links to some clubs - Bridlington, eg - but not to yours. Get whoever booked him to drop him (or his web person) a note and ask him to add your address to his site. And put a link to his website on your site. The more links there are, the better.

At the moment your two sites have different information, and you want to get people sent to your new, more informative site as swiftly as possible. You can make your regular visitors' existing bookmarks (and google results) send people on to the new place painlessly by making the old kentfolk.com sub-page for your club changed to read "This site is now at www.dealfolkclub.co.uk", and then automatically forwarding them after a couple of seconds.

Subject: RE: Help! Folk website not on search engine
From: open mike
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 01:21 PM

part of building a page is subitting to search engines.
the key words are important part of this process, and
if you brain storm a list of words associated with you
site then it may come up when people search for these.
folk club, music,Kent,Deal, UK,etc. good luck

the major web browsers have search engines of their
own, i think, and there is dog pile and metacrawler,
Netscape, I.E., Firefox, etc.

Subject: RE: Help! Folk website not on search engine
From: open mike
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 02:05 PM

i also found this resource on
the dogpile site...from ask.com
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/martin.nail/Folkmus.htm
you might want to add you site to their list