# HRT, Google page rank and popularity



## ToolGuy (Dec 12, 2007)

I don't get it, there are new members on a daily basis, a fair amount of activity and this site is obviously listed with Google, as that's how I found my way here. So why then is the Google page rank zero? My little tool auctions site and my portfolio site both have decent page rank and they hardly get any traffic at all. 







It seems if HRT is getting new visitors on a daily basis, upping the page rank will probably multiply the activity here tenfold or more. It seems this not-so-little forum could enjoy a lot more activity. Some issues I'd suggest:

Incoming links
The more links coming in from other sites, especially those with relevant content, will provide a big boost in page rank.

Suggestion
If you have a home improvement related website, consider adding a link to these forums. 

User Friendly URLs
It's a highly debated issue of whether search engine friendly URLs matters, as most of the popular search engines do indeed crawl cryptic URLs. However, when people search they look at the URL and the fact is, more people are more likely to click on a URL they can read. 

Suggestion
Webmaster, I believe there are vBulletin extensions available for converting cryptic URLs to human readable urls which are free to download and use. Definitely something worth looking into. 

Please accept my apologies if I'm stepping out of bounds by bringing this up. I know I'm the new guy here, but I think it's in everyone's best interest and warrants some consideration. Those of us with links to our website(s) in our signature obviously would like more traffic. And I know hosting this forum isn't free, so more traffic means more advertising revenue. Also, we always encourage visitors to come back and keep us updated on their projects, as I've witnessed in many of the replies from the regulars around here. 

Bottom line is, I think HRT could be a lot more popular with not much effort.


----------



## latile (Dec 16, 2007)

I was wondering abut the same think, as I fund this post.
I do agree with all you said, and I could add few more point.
Myself I handle my web site all alone, I learn as I go, I got 2/10 ranks in abut 4 months after I publish my web site.  I be glad to help in any way as toolguy recommend.
I think for a start each member with a web site should add this forum to his web site. 
I will add it now 

Good luck


----------



## ToolGuy (Dec 16, 2007)

Hi LATile and thanks for your words of support. I took a minute to check out your store and I gotta say, I'm impressed. I wish I worked in LA, you'd have my tile business for sure. Not to mention it's darn cold here! hehe


----------



## latile (Dec 16, 2007)

I love L.A 

Thank you for the compliment.

I already added the forum to my site, and I am trying to find out why google not ranking this forum, like you said with the amount of traffic and the content on this forum it should have at least 4/10 if not 5

Any way if I find anything I let you guys know


----------



## ToolGuy (Dec 16, 2007)

Google doesn't seem to be crawling these forums. Search Google for the term "houserepairtalk" and you'll see only one link to this forum's home page. 

I use a sitemap tool from http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ to build sitemaps of all my sites (I have several) and I submit them to Google webmaster tools. They have an online version anyone can use for free up to 500 pages. For more pages the download version, which is installed on the hosing account, is only $15 I think. 

The nice thing about their sitemap tool is that it maps all the pages, regardless of what type of urls are being used. I think that's the thing about cryptic urls - all the major search engines will crawl pages with dynamic urls, but they have to know they are there first. Otheriwise they get confused as soon as they run into a ? or & or other non-alphanumeric symbols.


----------

