Theming... What is it EXACTLY?

[newbie]

:confused:

I've been hearing more and more, not only about good key phrases in your page copy, but also "theming". Just by the definition I would assume that this involves having a page that clearly demonstrates one particular "theme"..

ie. restaurant equipment, restaurant furniture, foodservice equipment, used restaurant equipment, etc...

Is this all that this entails? Is there more to it? I have just started to hear about this technique and I'm not sure if there's more to it than that?

Thanks!
"Newbie" :)

[Advisor]

Welcome, newbie!

It's not a "page" demonstrating a particular theme, but more of the whole site demonstrating that theme.

So if all the pages on your site sell various restuarant equipment, that would be your theme. My feeling is that theming is overblown, because it's something that every site should naturally do. I thought it was really funny when people suddenly started talking about this new thing they figured out...themes! :rolleyes:

Any good Web site will have a theme. If it doesn't than you've got a lot more problems than themes can help you with!

Jill

[Mel]

Hi Newbie and welcome to the forum

Themes are becoming important in many search engines algos as searchers more and more want to see entire sites about a topic.

Tyr this link for a fuller discussion on themes
http://search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com/search_engine_themes.htm and if you have any questions come back here for more answers.

[Mel]

Hi Newbie

Dropped by your site - very nice looking site, but you should add a better title, and a description tag.

The first sentence in you body text is IMHO a great place to start for the description tag.

[JuniorHarris]

Good point webwiz regarding sites having a theme naturally. I think the biggest point is that people are now just more aware of this phenomena. And some engines may as well be more aware!~ It could be possible for an aware webmaster to tweak or adjust this natural theme, especially where competition is high.

[Mel]

Hi Webwhiz:

Well.... Not all sites have a natural theme - take a look at the nice website of Sears where they sell just about everything, but if you do a search on thier popular items you will not get decent results from themed engines.

For instance they have IMHO some of the best hand tools available, but if you do a search on "mechanics tools" for instance you won't see Sears in the first 200 results.

They have a great site with something like 12,000 inward links but no theme unless it might be "we sell things"

My own site is another example where I have ecommerce hosting, webhosting, merchant accounts, shopping carts, and a search engine tutorial. In order to "theme" the site I had to break it up into five different subdomains.

[Advisor]

Yes, Mel, but it's also because it's doubtful that a site like Sears has the slightest clue about optimizing a site for high rankings. (I didn't look at it...am just guessing!)

Jill

[Blue]

Just to throw my 2 cents in here.....

A site like Sears, to my way of thinking, already has such widely known "branding", that I think most people, at least those in the US, would just type "sears" or "www.sears.com" directly into their browser window, then navigate to the appropriate department (tools, toys, etc.), and therefore do not have to worry as much as "un-branded" sites about "themes" or even SEO knowledge for that matter.

I do, however, agree with Mel that types of a sites like his own (and mine!) need to have more SEO knowledge, such as breaking up the differently "themed" sections. As a matter of fact, I think, Mel, that this "break-up" info would be an excellent candidate for the "Tip of the Day" section of this forum (hint, hint .;) ).

[Blue]

Interestingly enough, I just went to Sears site and almost the whole site is "currently conducting maintenance on our site. Please try back again soon".

Their "PartsDirect site (one of the links on Sears under construction site) had as their first keywords the phrase "appliance parts" which I did a quick search for on MSN and sears wasn't in the top 30. they did come up as one of two "Featured Sites" (MSN again) for the term "Frigidaire" which is also in their list of keywords.

[Sharon & Roy]

Originally posted by newbie
:confused:

Is this all that this entails? Is there more to it? I have just started to hear about this technique and I'm not sure if there's more to it than that?

Hi newbie, there is actually quite a bit of "math" that goes into a "complete" theme "quotient, like ...

Take all your domain's pages in the Search Engine's database (so you may not want every page indexed) and combine the titles, keywords, phrases, bold text, heading text, alt text, anchor text, etc. then do the math according to 'weight' assignments from each particular Search Engine. Now add to that each of your pages' inbound links' site's theme. A lot of "off the page ranking criteria" is used to properly calculate your theme.

We present you with the following chart to give you a little "glimpse" of what you currently have for just your Home Page. Keep in mind that ALL your pages must enter the equation to properly calculate your theme as the SE would.

But the following can be a good indicator (or not) of what you currently might have as your theme and how you can make the proper changes to conform to what you desire.

Here is what we can say about your Home Page though.

Your words are evenly distributed as evidenced by the second chart for your keyword density, so increase the keyword ratio for your chosen keywords.

The first chart shows your Home Page's "off the page ranking page theme quotient" only.

An observation here ... If directory, foodservice and world are not your desired keywords, then you are being linked to by the 'wrong' themed pages. If those are the right keywords then continue to get more of the same kinds of links and increase those words on your Home Page. The more you do these two things the better your theme and link popularity will become and that will dramatically increase your Site if all else is properly optimized.

Also, you have the 'wrong' keywords in your most IMPORTANT tag of your whole page, the HTML Title Tag.

Here is a tutorial we wrote to give you some pointers ...

How To Format Your HTML Title Tag (http://www.iwon.net/articles/html-title-tag.shtml)

Now this is not meant to hurt your feelings, but to give you some advice on how to optimize your Home Page.

Use actual text not an image with text. The keywords should be in bold text and in heading tags and the keyword ratio should be around 4% to 7% and we recommend placing at least 250 words or so right after the body tag.

Also use this "table trick" (http://www.iwon.net/articles/table-trick/) to give yourself a boost, due to your left-hand navigation.



---------------------<><><><><>-------------------

WebPage Theme (based on inbound links)
http://www.smithandgreene.com

Keyword Weight
directory 16
foodservice 8
world 8
business 7
wide 6
1upsearch 5
equipment 5
websites 5
best 4
food 4

---------------------<><><><><>-------------------

Keyword Density (based on all words including title & meta tags)
* Ignored words of 3 characters in length or less.

Total Words: 7
Occurrences : 17
Count Word Density
4 bytes 23.53%
3 contact 17.65%
2 catalog 11.76%
2 locations 11.76%
2 online 11.76%
2 services 11.76%
2 tips 11.76%


2 Word Phrases: 5
Occurrences : 10
Count Word Density
2 catalog locations 20%
2 locations services 20%
2 online catalog 20%
2 services tips 20%
2 tips contact 20%


3 Word Phrases: 4
Occurrences : 8
Count Word Density
2 catalog locations services 25%
2 locations services tips 25%
2 online catalog locations 25%
2 services tips contact 25%

---------------------<><><><><>-------------------

[ihelpyou]

Nice little tutorials!

Sharon & Roy are correct when they say in there that things are not "written in stone". What works for one site may not work for another. The tutorials are very good though and give you some good working knowledge to get started with.. :up:

[JuniorHarris]

Yes!~ The table trick was a nice one as well!~ Very Good!

[newbie]

Thank you EVERYONE for all your help! I now have a little better handle on what this does (and does not) entail.

Sharon&Roy... Thanks so much for all the pointers. My page right now was actually designd a couple of years ago before I had learned any html and before I had even heard about SEO!! I'm in the process of completely redesigning my page and I want to do so with all of the tips I've learned here and at WebWhiz's RankWrite. I've been working on it for about 4 months and I think it will be mostly complete and ready to upload in another month or so.

I've tried to do most of the things you suggested....
>My text is no longer an image and I've added A LOT more! (Can you see what a beginner I was.. or still am! LOL!)
>I've added meta tags for keywords, description, and name
>I've done research on Wordtracker.com to find about four good keyphrases to target and have included them numerous times throughout my page text.

Now.. I just need to adjust my page a bit to target a different theme because my theme is NOT "directory, and "world". Foodservice is correct.

Thanks for the tips everyone! If there's anything else, please let me know! (My feelings are not hurt easily!! <g>)

Whew.. next class for me will be... "submitting to the search engines"... Uggh.

Newbie

[ihelpyou]

Very good newbie! Glad the members here were a help to you! Do not hesitate to ask a question whenever you have one.

Also, please stop by from time to time. Actually, daily would be fine. :)

[newbie]

Oh ya! Sharon&Roy... Thanks for the Table Trick! Pretty Nifty! :)

[Advisor]

Rebecca,

When you're ready to submit, you might want to check out my article on this subject at:

http://www.rankwrite.com/sesubmitting.htm

Also, last week's Rank Write discussed it a bit too. It sounds like you're a subscriber, so you probably already got it! I haven't had a chance to put it up in the archives yet either, but that will be up by tomorrow some time. I did submit a similar version of last week's RW answer to Workz for my next Guest Expert column. And it will eventually get posted over at the Rank Write site once it's been published at Workz.

Good luck!

Jill

[Web Witch]

....I totally agree My feeling is that theming is overblown, because it's something that every site should naturally do.

WW
:bat:

[Web Witch]

....Blue A site like Sears, to my way of thinking, already has such widely known "branding"...

WW
:bat:

[Web Witch]

....Rebecca :cute: :hi:

[glengara]

Memo: practice falsetto to make use of free phone consultation from iwon. Back to the subject, site architecture can greatly help in strengthening a theme, a particular structure, that must remain nameless as its very mention inflames a fellow member, can be especially useful.

IMO themes are a bit like links were some time ago, big initial hype, nothing seemed to happen so they faded, then Bingo! or more correctly, Google!
Speaking of links, I've read they should be strictly on-theme, with as many as possible in the deeper, more focused areas of the site.

Some good stuff on this in the rival publication that has annoyed our esteemed administrator.

[ihelpyou]

What annoyed me? Any good post whereever it is is just fine with me.

[glengara]

Annoyed by the cavalier attitude that deleted a post because i pointed to a thread here.

[ihelpyou]

oh, you mean a link in another site that pointed to here. Maybe not as much annoyed as simply completely surprised and shocked by the deletion. I thought that we could have a good relationship with other forums but seems this may not be possible.

All we can do is set an example and continue to link to other places if it will help our threads. Maybe they will take notice.