Getting British Business Online

[Clotheus]

I was just wondering if anyone has used this free hosting service? I had never created a website until I came across gbbo.co.uk. They use google sites for you to build your website and have been very supportive. If you have a registered company in the U.K., you can select a web address and they will host it for two years. All for free. I was thinking of paying a professional web designer to build my website, but found this experience worthwhile. I am on a very steep learning curve At a later date I will probably get the website re designed, but for those of you interested in getting online this is great. I am also looking for advice on how to get the website up the rankings on search engines? I have had two calls from companies saying they can do this for a fee approximately £800. However I question whether this is value for money? As I understand it is all to do with inlinks, or backlinks. This is how many other websites are connected to yours. Does anyone have any clue how this can be done effectively and efficiently, or how valuable in terms of money it is?

 

[edmondscommerce]

welcome to the learning curve

before you hand over any cash for SEO, my advice is to put that money towards improving your own understanding..

buy books, read blogs, experiment yourself

in the long run you will save loads of cash by getting yourself up to a basic level of understanding, thereby avoiding cowboys, blind alleys and dead ends...

good luck!

 

[CamWebber]

Hello!

The thing to bare in mind with SEO is it's very difficult to quantify. What I mean by that is it can be difficult to determine how much time, effort and money is required to achieve the desired result.

This is because there are a great deal of factors to take into account. That is why I would always be sceptical if a company will quote you a price without some time spent into looking at how long it is going to take.

One of the services I deliver is SEO and I will never ever quote someone a price untill I have done research on that market and such.

To understand SEO, firstly you should understand a search engines function (such as Google).

Their goal is to find you what you search for. That means scanning the web (or rather their database of indexed pages) and finding what they think is most relevant to your question. YOUR aim is to be the most relevant, as this results in gaining lots more advertising and hopefully more revenue!

So to find what's most relevant, they look specifically for certain things within the code (HTML) of a website, it's content and also it's popularity (e.g back-links as you said).

Here are some tips to point you in the right direction:

- Try to include the keyword you wish to be found from, within your content. A good rule of thumb is between 2 - 5% of the total wordcount of the content per page.

- Get your website URLs to be specific to each page. e.g a gardening company called zing. For a services page an ideal URL would be zing.co.uk/gardening-services

(like the keywords in the content, having the keyword into the URL makes it seem more relevant to a search engine)

- Include your main keyword in the title of the site.

- When generating backlinks (links to your site from other locations), be sure to use your keyword in the anchor text. The anchor text is the visable text which is a link when clicked.


These are some of the most important key points to take into account if you wish to SEO your own websites. Do bare in mind, this does only scratch the surface and there is a lot more to consider.

I wish you the best of luck and I really hope that helps!!! Any questions either fire me a PM or drop another question in the forum.

 

[Jeff Knows]

Anyone who tells you they have a sure fire way of getting your site to the top of the search rankings is lying to you.

There are maybe 10,000 people on this planet who actually know the secret sauce the various search engines use to rank sites and they all work in the deep recess of these search engine companies. Everyone else is mostly guessing.

Some of it works, some of it doesn't. Then the rules change. Google's goal in life is to stop people figuring out their magic voodoo and have sites ranked purely on merit. Sure, there are things you can do that make Google's passage through your site easier, making it easier for them find the various corners of the website gives them more information about it and the more information they have the more accurately they can rank you.

It doesn't matter how many little tips and tricks your average SEO guy pulls, none of them guarantee a damn thing. The single most important aspect is how much the world uses your website for the task you claim it does. The more people share, talk about and use your website the higher rank it will get.

The shady SEO guys will fake that in some kind of bizarre process of thinking they can fool Google/Yahoo/Bing. They can't and if you happen to give your money and site control over to one of these characters you run the risk of being removed entirely from the listings for cheating.

You are not the only website in existence and you do not deserve to be listed first merely because you found someone who knows a couple of tricks. Build your website, engage with your audience and expand naturally.. page rank will follow in quick succession.

 

[Mate]

yeah, before getting into an unknown to you territory, best thing to do is getting yourself educated first, read read and read then act accordingly..believe me it will save you time and money in the long run.

 

[AndyP]

I'll keep it brief.....content, content, content!

You guessed it....content is King!

This pretty much parodies (sp?) what others have said..... concentrate on your content, engage with your audience, I guess this is sort of long tail SEO.....the PR and associated accolades will follow based on a solid footing....as with all get rich quick (read get you to the top of google in ten minutes) scams they just don't work.

 

[owenou]

I'll keep it brief.....content, content, content!

You guessed it....content is King!

This pretty much parodies (sp?) what others have said..... concentrate on your content, engage with your audience, I guess this is sort of long tail SEO.....the PR and associated accolades will follow based on a solid footing....as with all get rich quick (read get you to the top of google in ten minutes) scams they just don't work.

I am with you! Content is KING!
When you edit your web, you should consider how to find your web easily from perspective of your potential client...What are they really typing when they search by Google/yahoo...

 

[EliteGLD]

Here's some good advice: give and you will receive. write guest posts, articles for ezine articles, comment on other blogs etc. that will get you up the rankings a lot quicker and in a more healthy manner than link building.

 

[Victoriao]

welcome to the learning curve

before you hand over any cash for SEO, my advice is to put that money towards improving your own understanding..

buy books, read blogs, experiment yourself

in the long run you will save loads of cash by getting yourself up to a basic level of understanding, thereby avoiding cowboys, blind alleys and dead ends...

good luck!

I totally agree- this is great advice. I would recommend Milli(on Dollar Website by Lori Culwell. It will help you to learn about SEO, PPC and web design without you having to spend hundreds or thousands on a designer. Even if you chose to get a custom website at least you'll be well-informed about what the site will need and will get the best value for your money.

 

Build your website, engage with your audience and expand naturally.. page rank will follow in quick succession.

Not in my lifetime it won't.

10,000 I bloody hope not.

Earl

 

[raman]

The Best way is to create some good blogs,submit to directories and press releases

 

[AndyP]

The Best way is to create some good blogs,submit to directories and press releases

It's one way for sure but only as part of the bigger overall mix. I would hesitate to call it the "best" way.

 

Networking in real life....

Here's my suggestion based upon painful lessons...

1. Content is king - people have to have a reason to link to you.
2. The best links to give you leads (as opposed to any old traffic), come from good links from relevant (and authority) sites. 1&2 go hand in hand. Your competition will give you clues on how to get the best links...read on
3. Build a list of 'exact' keywords (using Google Keyword Tool).
4. Do a SERP's analysis on each keyword - I mean put each keyword into Google and download the Top 100 results - Use the SEOBOOK SEO plug in to do this. Only do this for 5 to 10 keywords at a time (get a rope across the river)
5. Analyze each set of 100 results for each keyword for the occurrence of a competitor page. Record how many times a competitor occurs in each set of results, the competitor with the top number of pages is your real competition. (there is always going to be more than one competitor).
6. Use the Yahoo site explorer tool to determine the origination of backlinks to the pages. Export the backlink lists and open each page to see what content and why your competition is getting a link.
7. For each link - call/mail the site owner to introduce yourself and determine what sort of content they like to link to - you would be suprised at how many sites will just give you a link.
8. Create some content for them and then ask for a link.

OK caveats -

1. This is hard work, but every link can bring and go on bringing a stream of leads for a long time. So you have to consider the effort in the context of the long term gains. (Many streams form a large river)
2. You could spin and distribute articles and get inbound links - but all you are doing is spamming the search engines not building long term equity.
3. Make sure your content's on page optimisation is good. If you don't know what I mean go download the SEOFASTSTART book by Dan Thies. - Its here > www (dot) seofaststart (dot) com/download
4. Page Rank is just a number....(seriously) Once again you need a good source of leads and that isn't necessarily the top position in Google which you could spend years and a lot of money trying to achieve.
5. Being in the Top position of Google will only give you up to 42% of the clicks, every position below this will give you less than 10% of the clicks.
6. Do the math on the search volumes and ask yourself how much is each keyword really worth to you

Final note, the only dumb question is the one without an answer...

So if you're stuck just ask me here and I'll see what I can do (if I see your question)

Cheers

Nick

PS: I'm not a full time SEO,