Google and the Website

Or maybe I should call this "The Website Blues."

One of the things we website owners want is for our sites to rank highly when someone uses a search string that describes our site. So, for example, I figure people who are looking for paintings of the desert would Google "desert paintings."

As someone who built and maintains my own site (which, by the way, just happens to be http://www.SouthwestSpaces.com or http://www.MarkJunge.com), I spend a lot of time trying to make sure Google finds my site quickly when search strings like "desert paintings" is used. Most of the time, I think I've done OK -- SouthwestSpaces.com usually ranks in the top 20 in a list of literally millions. I have ranked as high as #1!

However, if I make no changes to my site, it slowly slips back in the rankings. Frequent changes is one of the ways Google determines if a given site is worthy of being ranked highly.

Some changes are better than others. Switching out images of paintings or rewriting text are normally fine. Changing the name of a page is iffy. I did that with the two pages that feature my available paintings. The first of those pages was entitled ".../Purchase,", but I recently changed it to ".../Purchase-Desert-Paintings" as a way of using "desert paintings" more often so Google would find it easily.

Problem is: Google isn't as fast as I am when changing page titles. My website has been bumped all the back into the 130s at this time. The original title still shows, and if you click on it, you'll get a "Page Not Found" message, since "Purchase" is no longer the title of that page!

Thus -- my website is buried back further than most people would search for, and if they do manage to find it, the link in the Google list of sites doesn't work!

Oh, brother!

All I can do (as far as I know) is wait it out and hope things get fixed...eventually.

And I'll moan "The Website Blues."