May 7th, 2009
10 Reasons Websites don’t rank in Google. Pt 2: Poor Activity
Let’s think about some websites that are always at the top of the Google rankings…
The BBC (www.bbc.co.uk)
The Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk)
EBay (www.ebay.co.uk)
Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com)
Youtube (www.youtube.com)
Amazon (www.amazon.com)
IMDB (www.imdb.com)
These are all well known and high ranking websites, but it’s fair to say they’ve got little in common apart from perhaps one thing….their content is changing all the time.
Let’s consider the role of a search engine.
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Posted in General, Search Engines | No Comments »
April 10th, 2009
Relevance and Content are the two key words that best describe anything to do with any type of search engine.
Here we talk about relevance.
Relevant to what?
Ok, let’s look at the fundamental role of a Search Engine.
You type in what you are looking for, and the search engine finds you the most relevant answer.
If you typed “mechanic in Portsmouth” in to Google and received a listing of holiday homes in Southend, that wouldn’t be relevant, or more to the point useful!
There are a number of factors the search Engine ranks your site and its pages on, however most importantly it’s the context and content of a page.
Let’s say there was a website for a mechanic and on his home page it contained text such as “local Portsmouth based mechanic specialising in all types of car repairs.” Google would pick up on the words “portsmouth” and “mechanic” and likely rank your site when someone types “mechanic in portsmouth”
Build in relevance from the start
9 times out of 10 when we get asked to optimise a website, the website is already built. The simple truth often is, the website isn’t ranking, because the key phrases that the website is expected to rank for, just don’t exist anywhere on the site.
More importantly, there are often no relevant pages either!
If you can, research your market 1st BEFORE you plan your website. If you know what people are searching for, it’s much easier to plan the pages and content to give your customer what they are looking for. Your website is really for your customer after all, isn’t it?
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Posted in General, Search Engines | 2 Comments »
March 18th, 2009
Most people use Google these days, like it or loath it.
Is it easy to get to the front page on Google? Many Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) companies would tell that it is for a small (or often not) fee. The reality is, that it takes a lot of time, planning and effort.
Or does it?
Well, to get high listings for a generic term such as “plumbers” yes it does. It takes an significant amount of time and effort. However, in reality, would a Plumber really want to just Rank for just “plumbers”?
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Posted in Marketing, Technology | 1 Comment »