SEO self-help thread
- Thread starter I, Brian
- Start date
P
philsmears
No argument provided, all you've done is used the word 'ignorance'. And ermm, how exactly does Google match up its results to search keywords?I said:
Compliance with web standards is a lot more than validation my friend. Complying with a number of W3C standards such as WCAG 1.0 ensures that your content is read.I said:
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B
Business Angel
Tracy123 said:
Good question Tracy!
My colleague Kath Dawson ranks on page 1 for many SEO related phrases on Google.
Check these out....."seo frequently asked questions"
"consultants ranking"
"top 10 strategy consultancies"
"seo faqs"
"internet business seminar london"
"benefit of online marketing strategy"
"seo how to get the top 10 ranking"
"marketing tools for specialist consulting services"
For more top ten rankings she has achieved for clients see http://www.strategyconsultinglimited.co.uk/seo-rankings.htm
John
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Correct, but 'not complying' doesn't mean that your content won't get read. In my opinion, a business website exists to make money for it's owner, either directly or in-directly and seo is one of the primary methods used to that end. High rankings do not require a site adheres to set standards but merely that the content can be determined in the first instance.philsmears said:
This seems to be going in circles so I'm out for now.
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B
Business Angel
EBA Advisor said:I agree Tracy.
Come on SEO experts lets see what you got.
How these 1st page rankings that my colleague Kath Dawson from Strategy Internet Marketing has achieved on Google in addition to the ones on the previous posting....
SEO Client top 10 search engine rankings
http://www.strategyconsultinglimited.co.uk/seo-rankings.htm
SEO specialist services
http://www.strategyconsultinglimited.co.uk/seo-specialists.htm
Pay Per Click Services UK
http://www.strategyconsultinglimited.co.uk/pay-per-click-services-uk.html
PPC Or SEO
http://www.strategyconsultinglimited.co.uk/ppc-or-seo.html
John
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- Original Poster
- #52
Business Angel, is it possible for you to make a post without including self-promotional links?
I've set up this as a resource for people to learn about SEO - there's not a single link to any of my own SEO resources or my own SEO company in this thread.
It would be nice if you could respect the thread intention, instead of trying to force the issue for promotion.
It's also great that you've helped clients achieve visibility, but those just aren't competitive keywords.
Certainly not compared to what I know some of the SEO's on UKBF routinely work with. I didn't use the earlier example of "mortgage brokers" flippantly.
I used to rank No.1 for "Internet Marketing" on Google, as the conversions were better than SEO-related keywords. Since then I'm happy to be search engine friendly rather than ranking, as these days I work via referrals.
Bottom line is - I'm too busy ranking clients to care about ranking my own site - especially as it's no longer intended for client acquisition, but reference.
A whole range of factors - Google frequently cites "over 100 factors". Bottom line is that content alone rarely ranks for competitive keywords, unless from a very authoritative website.
Maybe, but as before, it has nothing to do with how search engines rank the content.
I've set up this as a resource for people to learn about SEO - there's not a single link to any of my own SEO resources or my own SEO company in this thread.
It would be nice if you could respect the thread intention, instead of trying to force the issue for promotion.
It's also great that you've helped clients achieve visibility, but those just aren't competitive keywords.
Certainly not compared to what I know some of the SEO's on UKBF routinely work with. I didn't use the earlier example of "mortgage brokers" flippantly.
Tracy123 said:
I used to rank No.1 for "Internet Marketing" on Google, as the conversions were better than SEO-related keywords. Since then I'm happy to be search engine friendly rather than ranking, as these days I work via referrals.
Bottom line is - I'm too busy ranking clients to care about ranking my own site - especially as it's no longer intended for client acquisition, but reference.
philsmears said:
A whole range of factors - Google frequently cites "over 100 factors". Bottom line is that content alone rarely ranks for competitive keywords, unless from a very authoritative website.
philsmears said:
Maybe, but as before, it has nothing to do with how search engines rank the content.
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L
LindasAvonTeam
[Business Angel, is it possible for you to make a post without including self-promotional links?]
To be fair, John was only responding to someone else's request, but otherwise I agree - let's keep this thread to the point, as it was originally intended. It's full of useful info. Thanks to everyone who has submitted relevant information, as it's very helpful (especially to someone like me who has had a dreadful experience through using the wrong SEO company, and my own ignorance (*see my new thread).
To be fair, John was only responding to someone else's request, but otherwise I agree - let's keep this thread to the point, as it was originally intended. It's full of useful info. Thanks to everyone who has submitted relevant information, as it's very helpful (especially to someone like me who has had a dreadful experience through using the wrong SEO company, and my own ignorance (*see my new thread).
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Tracy123 said:
Well I'd hardly call myself an expert, but I am No 2 on page 1 for 'nappies'! When I get sales reps phone me up wanting to sell me seo services I ask them which search term they'd suggest I use to find their site and if I give them one for my site if their site ranks higher than mine for our respective keyword sthen I may be interested. Never had any takers.
I do regularly read up on the topic and make a few tweaks every now and then though.
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Seeing that the original purpose of Brians thread was one of Self Help and not of self promotion, it makes no sense to divert the thread off-topic as this doesn't benefit anyone. I would however, state that 'every' client who comes to me for a site design which incorporates seo is given access to more than sufficient ranking reports across numerous market sectors and engines to help them make an informed decision. Telephone numbers of existing clients can easily be made available to new clients should they wish to check my business integrity for themselves.Tracy123 said:
Moving on a bit I'd like to shed some light on this whole area of rankings/results/competition if I may as I think it might help some people understand better what mechanisms are at work and how you can't simply judge the 'competitiveness' of a keyword by the total results shown for example at the top right of Google (1-10 of so many million)
Enter a simple 2/3 word phrase into Google and it'll flush up pages that it feels relevant to the search query because these words are present on those pages, most relevant pages are delivered first, less relevant follow. We've all witnessed it, type anything into a search engine and after a dozen or so results pages the relevancy of the results have 'gone off the boil' which is a common reason why users retype or refine their search query. Ok, an example:
query on Google.com:
business services uk results 1-10 of 47,400,000 now any site appearing on page 1 from that huge number of results is bound to impress, yes?
But, and it's a big but.... those pages are not competition in the 'true sense', those pages are a huge collection of pages that Google throws at your feet hoping to satisfy your search query and the reason Google shows so many is because it first shows pages that contain those words in the most relevant order (to the search query), where, these words are located on a page and other associated factors which affect ranking positions. So, the first results are derived from an exact match perspective, that is if the words appear on a page in exactly the same order you typed them in. It'll also look for instances where 2 words are together but with the 3rd word appearing somewhere closeby, in that same sentence, paragraph, but certainly must be present on the page.
Then, what I term 'noise pages' kick in. Noise pages are simply pages that fit the criteria of the search query but in a far more loose manner, typically our 3 words can appear absolutely anywhere on a page but such pages tend to hold very little intrinsic value relevant to our query of business services uk. Noise pages typically show words which have less and less 'connection with each other' for that given 3 word phrase so much so that the page content appears completely off topic from the original purpose of the search. It's worth pointing out that at this juncture in the results it's very likely that what are deemed noise pages from one search query are in fact pages whose content has been seo'd for other keywords and on different topics so in effect, a form of natural content crossing occurs. Hope that makes sense.
Some sample noise pages could typically look like....
UK Alarm Services for your business...
Specialist catering services based in Luton Airport in the UK, business lunches our speciality...
Mind Your Own Business. Software and accountancy services - UK company
Page volumes are generally not the most accurate guide to how competitive a keyword or keyphrase is in isolation and even after noise pages have been excluded from the number of results, pages will still exist that have little relevance to the original search query.
One simple guide towards determining competition is to use some Google operators and one in particular is a single opening speech mark "
By using the speech mark at the very beginning of your search query, example; "business services uk you'll notice that about 99.999999999% of pages previously showing (47 million) have disappeared and instead we have around 10 thousand pages left. The reason for this is that by using the Operator we've simply 'forced' Google to deliver 'ONLY' pages which contain those 3 words. The words must appear in that exact order, one after the other and without being split apart by other words. All those previous pages that had 3 word combinations in them are not factored into this new equation, hence a much reduced number of pages, but pages which should be far more topical and relevant. So, a 3 word phrase that initially appears to be massively competitive boils down to one of considerably less competition with a little foresight.
There are a number of other Operators that Google provides but I'll save them for another time.
A little bit more about competition or more precisely, 'True competition'. It would be wrong to assume by using the Speech Operator to force results down to a more focussed number that the competition is almost non existent, it isn't. There's only 10 slots on page 1 of an engine and I've worked on client sites where my initial analysis suggested the client keywords were easy prey only to find that the first 30 results obviously had access to a shedload of money for seo. One client comes to mind, his main objective was #1 on page 1 for a single word, (goose that lays the golden egg was how he put it's importance to me) and it took me months to get him there despite his competion being tiny but he remained there for almost 4 years without any changes to the site. Number of page results at that time were...
Using the Speech Operator - 4,800 pages (5 years ago but more now)
Not using the Operator - 27,000 ish! I know this seems 'tiny competition' but those top 30 sites would have been spending a fortune on seo. It's not too often that a small number of companies target one particular word with such vigour!
In my experience I find that most clients are not in heavy competition markets, a few are but it's really inaccurate to simply assume competitiveness of two/three word phrases by looking at the result volume.
Single word seo is different as you can't get much meaningful info by using the Google Operator as it simply has no effect. Other methods can be used which I'll try to find time for to toss up here!
Hope that provides some insight.
Ray
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- Original Poster
- #59
Good post, Ray - it definitely needed pointing out that the number of results offered for a search does not directly equate to competitiveness.
As for Miranda's comment - this is something I actually wanted to pick up on earlier when budgets were mentioned.
Google has moved more towards scoring by "authority", and as a general rule, the longer Google has known about a website, the easier it is to rank. A clean website that has been around and indexed since 1996 is usually far easier to rank than one from 2006.
This is where established sites can really start to leverage their content, even in more competitive areas, and people such as Miranda can aggressively try to ringfence their market.
So ranking for really competitive keywords is not simply a matter of budget - it's a question of how much work would be required to achieve the results. And this is going to differ not simply according to the keywords, but also according to the website, with older websites potentially offering faster and more dramatic results Google.
2c.
As for Miranda's comment - this is something I actually wanted to pick up on earlier when budgets were mentioned.
Google has moved more towards scoring by "authority", and as a general rule, the longer Google has known about a website, the easier it is to rank. A clean website that has been around and indexed since 1996 is usually far easier to rank than one from 2006.
This is where established sites can really start to leverage their content, even in more competitive areas, and people such as Miranda can aggressively try to ringfence their market.
So ranking for really competitive keywords is not simply a matter of budget - it's a question of how much work would be required to achieve the results. And this is going to differ not simply according to the keywords, but also according to the website, with older websites potentially offering faster and more dramatic results Google.
2c.
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Looking at this search, I get Warwick Uni at #10 of the results.
That should be a strong indication that the term isn't really competitive as there's no way that the Warwick University site is being optimised for business services or is particularly relevant for the search term.
It a bit like the term : contact page
There are 4.35 billion results on google, but it shouldn't be that difficult for someone with half-decent on-page SEO skills to get to p1.
Steve
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SEO can be a very time consuming experience - that is what you end up paying for (if you have picked a reputable, innovative company). Especially if you're trying to get anywhere with loans, mortages holidays etc - ie competitive keywords.
There's no magic bullet, there's no guarantees (beware any seo who makes guarantees), all you can judge a company is by previous results.
Check out their own site. Do they rank high in Google for specific keyterms? Do they have a decent Google Page Rank? Any testimonials on the site you can check with a phone call? Will they give you some free advice you can try out yourself?
My advice for beginners is set up a blog on your site. Have a real think about the customers youre targetting. Write an artical about 500-750 words a week. This can be your news blog. BLOGS ARE FREE TO INSTALL, and only need about 4 hours to customise for your site "design".
But what to write on your blog (a blog is just a journal, a collection of stories etc)? Do a bit of research on keywords. Things people are typing into google about your product or biz.
You need to aim for what is called the long tail of keyword search returns.
For instance, if you have a flower shop write about keeping flowers good for a week. Make sure you've got things like "the experts recommend to keep flowers fresh by using ...blah blah...this will let quality flower arrangements....blah blah..stay fresh for blah blah..keep your quality boquets looking good for weeks....regardless wether it was a cheap flower display ...blah blah...or expensive, luxury flower display,...blah blah specialist of roses, dafodials, tulips etc....blah.... delivered by the local flower shop in "insert geographic location" etc etc. ie keyword rich.
Make sure it reads like proper english and above all make it origional and useful! Once or twice in your copy put "flower shop" or "local flower shop in "insert geographic location"" in a lik to your company info page. Google loves this sort of thing.
Once you've done this why not change the artical, give it a different slant and promote it using ezine articles - basically you dont want to trip duplicate filters in Google so change that artical! The only difference when writing an article in a post or for publishing on another site (rather than on your own) is getting your keywords in the link, so if I were a search engine optimiser I would want that in a link - you see Google adds up all the links pointing to your site AND takes note which words where used to form that link and then scores you against some other factors to determine where you appear.
Keep doing this every week or so. Make your site a resource about flowers and you will reap the benefits. It is that simple.
Join some forums about flowers or gardening etc - leave links back to your site - especially on-topic articles on your site. You'll get a few visits and google will follow the link and read your page. See if you can get some links from "authority sites" on the subject of flowers.
GEO Target! If you are a flower shop in glasgow, have "Flowers Shop, Glasgow, Scotland, UK in your title tag for your home page (maximum 8-12 keywords) and in your meta description (maximum 24 words) - forget about mata-keywords - they are useless. It's much easier to rank for "flower shop glasgow" than "flower shop".
And remember people might be searching for flower types - the top converting traffic is people who dont use one or two keywords - "looking for rose specialist in Glasgow" and your site pops up first could well be a sale!
There's many other things you can do!
DO NOT LISTEN TO SEOS who say you need to be submitted to 100s of search engines - this is utter nonsense! It is best to let Google / yahoo/ msn find your site! Do this by getting a free link in a directory website who is actually in Google, the rest is automatic after a couple of weeks. The good thing about a blog is that it is automatically syndicated to blogs worldwide if you set it up right and do a bit of research!
If you do employ an seo you should begin to see results of some kind within 3 months.
Shaun
Happy SEO'ING!
There's no magic bullet, there's no guarantees (beware any seo who makes guarantees), all you can judge a company is by previous results.
Check out their own site. Do they rank high in Google for specific keyterms? Do they have a decent Google Page Rank? Any testimonials on the site you can check with a phone call? Will they give you some free advice you can try out yourself?
My advice for beginners is set up a blog on your site. Have a real think about the customers youre targetting. Write an artical about 500-750 words a week. This can be your news blog. BLOGS ARE FREE TO INSTALL, and only need about 4 hours to customise for your site "design".
But what to write on your blog (a blog is just a journal, a collection of stories etc)? Do a bit of research on keywords. Things people are typing into google about your product or biz.
You need to aim for what is called the long tail of keyword search returns.
For instance, if you have a flower shop write about keeping flowers good for a week. Make sure you've got things like "the experts recommend to keep flowers fresh by using ...blah blah...this will let quality flower arrangements....blah blah..stay fresh for blah blah..keep your quality boquets looking good for weeks....regardless wether it was a cheap flower display ...blah blah...or expensive, luxury flower display,...blah blah specialist of roses, dafodials, tulips etc....blah.... delivered by the local flower shop in "insert geographic location" etc etc. ie keyword rich.
Make sure it reads like proper english and above all make it origional and useful! Once or twice in your copy put "flower shop" or "local flower shop in "insert geographic location"" in a lik to your company info page. Google loves this sort of thing.
Once you've done this why not change the artical, give it a different slant and promote it using ezine articles - basically you dont want to trip duplicate filters in Google so change that artical! The only difference when writing an article in a post or for publishing on another site (rather than on your own) is getting your keywords in the link, so if I were a search engine optimiser I would want that in a link
- you see Google adds up all the links pointing to your site AND takes note which words where used to form that link and then scores you against some other factors to determine where you appear.Keep doing this every week or so. Make your site a resource about flowers and you will reap the benefits. It is that simple.
Join some forums about flowers or gardening etc - leave links back to your site - especially on-topic articles on your site. You'll get a few visits and google will follow the link and read your page. See if you can get some links from "authority sites" on the subject of flowers.
GEO Target! If you are a flower shop in glasgow, have "Flowers Shop, Glasgow, Scotland, UK in your title tag for your home page (maximum 8-12 keywords) and in your meta description (maximum 24 words) - forget about mata-keywords - they are useless. It's much easier to rank for "flower shop glasgow" than "flower shop".
And remember people might be searching for flower types - the top converting traffic is people who dont use one or two keywords - "looking for rose specialist in Glasgow" and your site pops up first could well be a sale!
There's many other things you can do!
DO NOT LISTEN TO SEOS who say you need to be submitted to 100s of search engines - this is utter nonsense! It is best to let Google / yahoo/ msn find your site! Do this by getting a free link in a directory website who is actually in Google, the rest is automatic after a couple of weeks. The good thing about a blog is that it is automatically syndicated to blogs worldwide if you set it up right and do a bit of research!
If you do employ an seo you should begin to see results of some kind within 3 months.
Shaun
Happy SEO'ING!
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Tracey,Tracy123 said:
My figures show that 'business services UK' is hardly ever searched for. Have you thought of optimising for 'business services' - unfortunately you're nowhere to be seen for that on google at the moment but our own mod alpha [SIZE=-1]http://www.alphalimited.co.uk is on page 3
Rob
[/SIZE]
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" The benefit of good SEO is when its done right it slashes your advertising and marketing costs by 90%."
This is simply not true, I am afraid. Anyone thinking of packing in the rest of advertising and getting on the organic, natural or free advertising gravy boat needs to take a trip right back to reality.
This is the myth of seo. Seo done right is advertising you pay for - at some point. Sure, if youre lucky, it can be the best ad budget you ever spend, but lets not forget seo is just part of the mix - a complement to other channels you already swim in - a means by which to reduce the "50% of the advertising that does not work".
" I would like to add that SEO should be considered like any other form of marketing" - I agree Yorganic.
Some clients think they can get to number 1 in google and stay there (very difficult, even if you can get there) - others think an seo is the answer to all their problems.
It's part of the strategy, not 90% of it!
I have gotten to the top for very competitive two keyword terms and guess what - zero traffic - nada - none. Let me tell you, that confused the office!
Think long tail, think long tail......
This is simply not true, I am afraid. Anyone thinking of packing in the rest of advertising and getting on the organic, natural or free advertising gravy boat needs to take a trip right back to reality.
This is the myth of seo. Seo done right is advertising you pay for - at some point. Sure, if youre lucky, it can be the best ad budget you ever spend, but lets not forget seo is just part of the mix - a complement to other channels you already swim in - a means by which to reduce the "50% of the advertising that does not work".
" I would like to add that SEO should be considered like any other form of marketing" - I agree Yorganic.
Some clients think they can get to number 1 in google and stay there (very difficult, even if you can get there) - others think an seo is the answer to all their problems.
It's part of the strategy, not 90% of it!
I have gotten to the top for very competitive two keyword terms and guess what - zero traffic - nada - none. Let me tell you, that confused the office!
Think long tail, think long tail......
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- Original Poster
- #75
sandpetra said:
Absolutely agreed - the benefit of SEO is the Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is traditionally much lower than PPC, email marketing, and telesales.
However, SEO is *one* marketing tactic - it shouldn't preclude all others for a serious business, merely compliment them, IMO.
sandpetra said:
Long tail is such a great resource.
I took on a client with a literally brand new website selling electronics. There was absolutely no way I'd get him ranked for really competitive keywords at first, so we took it in stages - target Longtail first, then branch out.
After a couple of months he swtiched the PPC off and went on holiday for 2 weeks. When he came back there was £8k in orders for him just from the Longtail SEO.
A year later, he's ranking for really competitive single keywords.
Point is, SEO isn't about doing something once, then forgetting it - it's a strategy, but the rules of the game are constantly changing. A SEO is supposed to know the way the rules are played at any one moment and leverage that for the client.
2c, and welcome to UKBF, sandpetra.
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D
DotNetWebs
sandpetra said:Tracy - hope you've 301'd
Talking of 301ing. I have often read that if you own a .com and a .co.uk should 301 the secondary domain to you primary domain.
I have tried this with some of my sites but not with others. I am still not convinced this is necessary but am open to persuasion.
Have a look at this:
Google Horsham Forum
If I 301 the .co.uk to the .com will I not then loose the second listing?
On MSN I could loose even more listings as I have practicably the whole front page:
MSN Horsham Forum
Any thoughts?
Regards
Dotty
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