Homepage not first and wrong title + description in Google

[ShamanS08]

Hello

Someone please help me. Last night when I searched for my website in Google "quakers pc repairs" the top link was one to my homepage so quakers-pc-repairs.co.uk however I did a few changes to my site (NOT THE HOMEPAGE THOUGH) and next time my site got crawled, when I search for "quakers pc repairs", at the end of the first page, the followsing link shows up:
quakers-pc-repairs.co.uk/component/users/?view=reset

It may be due to the fact that the title of the page above displays as what I want the homepage one is to be:
"Computer servicing and sales in Devizes. Quakers PC Repairs" and the homepage's title for some reason is "Custom PCs".

So my questions:
a) How do I get the homepage to come up as my first as looking at the content it SHOULD
b) How do I get the meta description to show up in Google with my homepage this: "Computer servicing and sales in Devizes. Quakers PC Repairs" instead of "Custom PCs"?

Thanks

[ChillDot]

For your first question the simple answer is optimize the home page and get more links to that page. Unfortunately if google thinks another of your pages is more relevant then its content either is, or it has a lot more popularity than your home page.

In answer to your second question, the meta description and title are two separate attributes,

The meta description will not affect your position in Google rankings, that may only have an impact on the click through rate (CTR) from google to your site.

If its the title which you want to change(i presume it is) then on the home page, probably called index.php or index.html the title will be stored within the <title> and </title> tags.

[DarrenHaye]

Edit your homepage title..

At the moment it is just

<title>Home</title>

Put it what you want your title to be..

Also why is there a link on your homepage to another site with the anchor text "SEO Tips"

And if said site is so good you want to link to it from your homepage.. why didn't you go there for help

[ShamanS08]

Ok thanks a lot! I changed the title which I would normaly do but Joomla makes everything much more complicated. So I take it I now just wait for the next time my site gets crawled to see the changes?

By the keywords being targeted at each page individually, do you refer to the meta keywoards or the content? Could you look over my site and say weather I am targeting the keywords correctly? I would be very greatful!

DarrenHaye - A bit butthurt eh? I did it because APPARENTLY I got a link back to my site but I think I will remove it as I read that such links can have a negative effect on my site's rating.

My PageRank is currently 0. I have read the sticky, however is there anything a small, local business website can do other than keywords and backlinks in order to get a better pagerank?

Thanks

[joshz]

Ok thanks a lot! I changed the title which I would normaly do but Joomla makes everything much more complicated. So I take it I now just wait for the next time my site gets crawled to see the changes?

By the keywords being targeted at each page individually, do you refer to the meta keywoards or the content? Could you look over my site and say weather I am targeting the keywords correctly? I would be very greatful!

DarrenHaye - A bit butthurt eh? I did it because APPARENTLY I got a link back to my site but I think I will remove it as I read that such links can have a negative effect on my site's rating.

My PageRank is currently 0. I have read the sticky, however is there anything a small, local business website can do other than keywords and backlinks in order to get a better pagerank?

Thanks

LOL at butthurt. Nice touch, braj.

There are plenty of Joomla plugins to help for custom tags. I'm a moderator on the Joomla forums, inbox me for advice or click here: cool Joomla plugin for titles

No. The only way for a higher PR is to gain links. Links from higher PR sites are the ONLY way to raise your PR. Which shouldn't be your focus, but that's a discussion in its self.

[ChillDot]

No. The only way for a higher PR is to gain links. Links from higher PR sites are the ONLY way to raise your PR. Which shouldn't be your focus, but that's a discussion in its self.

you say that shouldnt be the focus? but wont getting high PR links be good for rankings as well as increasing page rank.

^^ This is asking btw as i dont know myself and have been attempting to do this myself

[terriwells]

All right, very quickly, what I understand about Page Rank:

Page rank does not affect your ranking in Google. It is possible to have a good page rank and still get outranked in the SERPS by websites with worse page rank.

The problem is, because a website's standing in Google can fluctuate, a lot of SEOs have glommed onto the idea of page rank to guide them, and they give it more weight than it deserves. The theory is that a high page rank indicates some kind of level of "legitimacy" or "trust" or "respect" or even "authority" that Google gives a website, with the idea that any links out from that site to another site should pass along more "link juice" than links from a website with a lower page rank.

All of this MAY actually be true -- or not. But it fails to take into account other factors that are important to ranking a website and/or judging a link -- and there are a lot of those. Take relevance, for instance. Which do you think will help a pet grooming website more in the rankings: a PR 3 link from a dog training website, or a PR 6 link from an accounting firm? All other things being equal, I'd actually bet on the dog training website. (Please note, this is one of a number of factors I could list).

Summing up: SEOs use PR as a shortcut, but it's a lazy one and for certain purposes it's really not accurate. I'd pay attention to other factors before looking at PR.

And final disclaimer: I'm not an SEO, I just read a lot about it. YMMV.

[ChillDot]

Yeh i gathered most of that from what I have read in the past, obviously relevance is important.

So I have been trying to get links from companies within my niche that have higher page ranks than myself.

Was just that Josh said focus should be elsewhere rather than building links from pages with higher PR, I was just wondering where it should be, unless that was meant as in links from relevant sites mean more

[joshz]

you say that shouldnt be the focus? but wont getting high PR links be good for rankings as well as increasing page rank.

^^ This is asking btw as i dont know myself and have been attempting to do this myself

Yes. But you can get a PR boost from irrelevant high PR links. So just because the link is a good PR doesn't mean it will have a direct affect on SERP ranker, rather, just pass over PR juice.

Edit: the focus should rather be in relevance and proper anchor text. I'll take over a lower PR related link than a irrelevant higher PR link any day of the week.

[DarrenHaye]

you say that shouldnt be the focus? but wont getting high PR links be good for rankings as well as increasing page rank.

^^ This is asking btw as i dont know myself and have been attempting to do this myself

Pagerank can be pretty easily manipulated, it can put a very false front on a site..

You have look behind the curtain to find out whats really going on.

A link will not be quality unless the site has authoritative sites linking to it.

For example if I look at a site and it has relevant sites, .ac.uk (UK equivalent of .edu) and or/news papers links etc, you know it's got some clout.

Or If I look and it has comment spam, forum spam, obvious paid links on cookie cutter sites etc.. not the same.

[DMN Webmaster]

I did it because APPARENTLY I got a link back to my site but I think I will remove it as I read that such links can have a negative effect on my site's rating.

I recommend you remove it only if there is no relevence between the two sites.

If there is relevence keep it!

My PageRank is currently 0. I have read the sticky, however is there anything a small, local business website can do other than keywords and backlinks in order to get a better pagerank?

Don't worry about pr. Only backlinks can change that. PR doesn't increase your serp, but it does help. Thats one reason Google released Penguin upon us! Like you said above, Apparently you got a backlink from another site by giving them a link. Just don't muck up your home page with a bunch of OBL's. That's just spammy and bad taste.

I suggest you do some guest blogging. Find some guest blogs in your niche, study how others do their blogging, especially how they write content. Then duplicate the process, not the content. That way you can create some one way links to yourself. (read link bait here)

[ShamanS08]

Right, I've changed by <title> tag, and the site has been crawled by Google bot since it is now the top result for "Quakers pc repairs" as well as the homepage being the first result. GREAT

However, The title is still "Custom PCs" which is not what I want. Is there ANY way to change the code or content or whatever to get the title to be what I want it or at least a little more relevant?

Thanks

[joshz]

Right, I've changed by <title> tag, and the site has been crawled by Google bot since it is now the top result for "Quakers pc repairs" as well as the homepage being the first result. GREAT

However, The title is still "Custom PCs" which is not what I want. Is there ANY way to change the code or content or whatever to get the title to be what I want it or at least a little more relevant?

Thanks

The title as Google displays or the title when visiting your website?

If it's Google display, you need to wait until your site is recrawled.

[ShamanS08]

Yes the title as in the Google display one. I'm 99.9% sure it has been crawled since the position has changed (after fixing a 404 error which did it I think). Also, I have seen pages with a <title>home</title> and still hacing their company name as the Google title :/

[DMN Webmaster]

Yes the title as in the Google display one. I'm 99.9% sure it has been crawled since the position has changed (after fixing a 404 error which did it I think). Also, I have seen pages with a <title>home</title> and still hacing their company name as the Google title :/

Google last cached your site Sept 7th. I used google.co.uk to check.

Oh, and for that SEO link, after looking at your site, I recommend you remove it. You don't really have relevence with that type of service. But do as you like.

Google will change the title and description when it thinks it's appropiate to do so. They say this is to better the user experience. In the case of a title that is just Home, I would agree with Google.