Author: Richard A Johnson Beng (Hons), Msc Eng, ICIOB
Managing director, Forevermac.com limited
Date: 10 March 2006
Introduction:
I'm an entrepeneur with a taste for all things internet and computer related. I've built my own websites (3 in total- so far), all with good quality content and a certain flair about them (well that's my opinion anyway) but my biggest and toughest problem (and probably bug bear) has been search engines, followed closely by marketing.
Of the myriad of search engine optimisation sites on the web, only a handful offer honest down to earth Guidance. Now don't get me wrong, they all offer a service to one degree or another, but of those that are listed on the search engines, only a few really have a clue what they're doing and are willing to pass that information on for free. In effect, the majority aren't very good at what they do, out to get a wedge of cash in return for little or no work on their part.
Discussion:
I've been designing the websites night, day and both in some instances since Christmas. It's now March 10th and both the sites that went live in December now have listings on Google with half a dozen backlinks showing up. Just type in:
Link:// (followed by say www.forevermac.com- ie your site name).
Search Engine Optimisation
The point is, I've come to realise a number of very key factors that SEO (search engine optimisation) companies fail to point out in any way shape or form. Many of the SEO (search engine optimisation websites) sites out there claim to be able to boost you up the rankings really quick (in about 10 days) all for a very modest fee. They can in some instances boost your ranking quickly, by adding 1000 backlinks to you, but you stop paying them and they will pull the plug on you by simply removing the backlinks. Besides, you're at their mercy in terms of keeping up with the backlinks and have no idea whether they will be quality backlinks or just pointers from any old site.
Optimising your website for inclusion in search engines is very tricky and time consuming. By focusing heavily upon Google listing requirements and trying to get on, let alone up their rankings, you can be sure that listings on other search engines will be growing at a steady rate. The reason for this is that Google literally defines the industry standard requirements for websites and how they are seen by search engines. They're so stringent that if you get listed with them you can be sure that the other search engines have you ranked quite highly. Believe me, I've thrown hours at getting us added to the search engines. Here's a number of key points that you should remember (burn into your brain):
1. Your site will now be judged on content by Googlebot. Forget about optimising your meta tags being a key to sucesss. Yes they are important, but they will by no means shape or form help you up the rankings. They will ONLY allow Googlebot to categorise your individual webpages- hence on a scale of 1-10 with very important being 10, I would give them a 4.
2. Content keywords is very very important. Add the keywords in your metatags into the text on your webpages very carefully. It's almost an art. Make sure there are complete sentences in there with your keywords spread out. Mark this as being 7/10
3. The first 3 lines of text are now the key factor to how you are listed in google. Google WILL pick up on this. Name the Title in the metatag of the page carefully and put a correspondingly SIMILAR (Not cut and paste) Title at the top of your webpage. Try to describe your site in the first 3 lines of text, what you offer and what you do on your website. Don't repeat over and over again, it no longer helps. Mark this as being 3/10- it's important if you get into say the top 2 pages of a Google search.
4. Size of your site: This has now become important as the larger the site (number of nice short concise pages) add more backlinks to your front or index page. Put a link back to the front page in each page- it will become important about 6 months down the line! Mark this as 5/10- you'll need to do this over TIME- not all at once.
5. Backlinks: Good quality backlinks are becoming more and more important. The most important backlinks can be defined as follows:
One way links to your site, but not from your site (many webmasters have 2 sites, one linking from their main site to the minor site, so anyone adding a link to the main site can be reciprocated from the minor site- called a 3 way link or triangular link.
Do not accept backlinks from sites with no relevance to your own. This is a definite no no as it'll just waste your time. Some SEO sites say that this will mark against you. I doubt this, but suspect that it won't count for much in Google PR (Page rank- google term for the ranking of a webpage in terms of their search engine ranking) terms.
Paid links: It's up to you. A site with a PR of 3 or more may charge to add you to it's outbound link page. If your PR is less than theirs, you will end up stealing pagerank from them, hence it's a sort of compensation.
Is your site an online shop? If so, be very careful about having it added to one of those Shopping mall things (sour taste in my mouth). They are not worth it, unless they are local orientated and have less than 20-30 outbound links per page. These sites are tantamount to link farms and really won't do much for your google backlink count, let alone your wallet. Then again, I guess some shoppers click on them when shopping, but it's pretty much hit and miss once they enter one of these sites as to whether they'll even see your shop.
When starting out, it's probably it's sometimes an advantage to just do loads of link exchanges with everyone you can, but make sure that when you hit about 100 links, you put a can on it and focus upon quality link exchanges. It'll get you a quick Google listing, but won't get you a good PR ranking (hope that now clears up how PR ranking works!)
Google Ranking and Backlinks to your site
Google ranking has one other trick up it's sleeve. It's an age thing, rather like a fine bottle of wine- good things only come to those who wait. Links to your site have to age before googlebot will consider adding them to it's index. It'll typically take 3-6 months for a link to age enough for inclusion. The links also have to look natural to count for much in the points scoring league. A qualiy backlink such as:
For computer parts, peripherals, Refurbished Apple Macintosh equipment, computer monitors from CRT to TFT, and complete computer systems, why not try The Cambridge computer Shop, located just outside of Ely, not too far from Cambridge
Rather than:
http://www.cambridgecomputershop.co.uk
Which will get you next to nothing in terms of a quality backlink, hence score very low with Googlebot..
Google Page rank and a trick:
I stumbled upon a Google future PR checker (PR predictor) on the web and found out something quite
well I'd put it as a Public Relations coup on Google's part:
Of the three site's I have, the oldest 2 sites were predicted as having a future PR of 2-4 (out of 10). Pretty low in my opinion. The newest site includes Google's Ad code, for including ads by Google. This site, although only a week old has a future PR of 5-6. Interesting you might say? I'd say so. No wonder so many sites have google ads on them.
Google listing and a helpful trick:
Getting listed with google takes time and determination, but in helping your site along towards an inclusion could consist of adding a sitemap.xml file into the website itself. Generating a sitemap is easy: Go to:
http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp
and click on the relevant link. Upload it to your site and then go to:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview?hl=en
The result of this will be that googlebot will trawl your site within days and you should find that at least your index page will be included in the index.
Google No-No
Whatever you do when producing links out of your site, be very careful who you link to. Check that the site you are linking to has an inclusion in Google. Google (and now Yahoo as well) have produced bad neighbourhood maps. These consist of sites that have been blacklisted by by the various cometing search engines. If you link into one of these neighbourhoods, you may just be struck off the search engines for quite some time.
Location, Location, Location- or a Marketing coup:
So you've wondered ho you can market your site? One hard learnt lesson well worth passing on to fellow readers and webmasters, whether just starting out or seasoned is to think small and not big. Every company from the smallest shop to largest national/ international company now has a presence on the internet. Internet advertising is now a very large growth industry with thousands of websites promoting their paid/ unpaid inclusions, linking schemes, shopping malls etc. These companies are blindsided by the sheer size of the internet and to put it simply can't see the wood for the trees.
About 2 weeks ago (here's where my new website came from) I was contacted by an online advertising agency, stating that they would include us in their Cambridge listing for Computer retailers. Hey that's great I mused
. But instead asked them how much? For a fee of £50.00 they'll add a link to my website for one year. Had a good laugh, told them I was looking for backlinks and said that I wanted a free inclusion. They added us later that day for free (which of course did not include a backlink).- Of coure Google does check for Words within websites and will see: Forevermac.com (That is after all the company name!)
Of course I ramble, that's not the reason for this but I'm coming to that part: I did a search for their site, found it online and then put it through my favourite online SEO tools: You have got to try these:
They're at: http://www.myfreeseo.com under home. The site's probably the best SEO tool and forum host on the web (well I haven't found any better yet.
So, having logged in, I checked the backlinks to their site:
Google: 10
Yahoo: 65
MSN: 265
Hotbot: 9
That pretty much smacks back in the face of publicity. They were ranked number one on Google, but then they did tell me to type Cambridge Computer into Google when they rang me. Now, you don't try to market youself like that to a Webmaster, no matter what.
So I did more research through my host and lo and behold there was light. No-one had registered:
http://www.cambridgecomputershop.co.uk
I Did.
The site's now live, with links out to my other sites as well as it's own pages. It's already got 3 backlinks to it that are seen by the above tools and will no doubt be ranked on MSN soon. Hopefully in 3 months, it'll be number one on MSN search for Cambridge computer.
So the moral of this story: Think abut how you want to market your site. Is it a local, national, or internetional site.
My keypoint suggestions for this marketing trick:
Local company, serving local people: Name your site with plenty of reference to the CITY it serves. Add content that reflects this.
National Company: You WILL need a paid advertisig campaign with GOOGLE/ YAHOO. Uild your links slowly and over time.
International: As National
Summary:
In summary, building a website can be fun, particularly when you're learning along the way, but remember to think marketing from the outset. Design your website keeping the above pointers in mind. They are very important. Above all:
When designing:
Add a good title that will reflect what you expect people to be searching for online
Careully add Keywords to your site
Thoroughy link your site together
Add your meta tags to content keywords, title and description, all of which reflect your webpages content accurately.
When Growing:
Add Pages slowly, google really liks sites that evolve over time.
Submit sitemaps regularly. Submit your site to the search engines, no more than once every 5 weeks.
Add backlinks at about 30-40 per month and no more. Make sure any backlinks are high quality.
Copyright forevermac.com limited 2006. All rights retained. Article may be republished in it's entire form only.
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