Search Engine Optimisation and Google Ranks and all that stuff

ok so here is a thread that should attract spam like no other...

My company is not coming up on the first page of Google when I search for country and industry.

There is no excuse for that, since I am one of very few players in the market.

A competitor comes up first, and then a bunch of random industry articles etc.

What do I do about this?

A few things...

1. we are a relatively new firm, and as such
2. our website only launched a month or so ago.

Still some little techy crinks n things to iron out on it actually...however my understanding of SEO things is that the more 'dynamic' your site is (ie the more often things are updated and moving on it) the prettier it looks to Googlebots.

True or false?

I will say that my site is updated more frequently than my competitors with client news, images etc...so do I just have to keep doin' what i'm doin' and wait for the love to come?

Or are there some tips n tricks n so on (that don't involve carpet bombing forums to make your site look more linked-to) that I can do to give it a leg-up?

I don't know, maybe you can tell me what the name/website of your company is, and what services it provides with excellence?

did some sniffing around with the tools on my hosting company, generated some meta tags which I will have the designer embed wherever he feels appropriate. Also it searched for most used terms on my site, and my country and industry name were not among them, so this is something we can work on. So here's a question. Yes, I can edit some copy, put in some key words that are more relevant scattered throughout the text. But could I do this: country, industry, country, industry, country, industry, country, industry to the same effect. For those of you who don't see what I did there, try selecting the text. If I white-on-white some key words in, would that jump start me? Or just piss off the Googlestapo?

Originally Posted by Eason

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I don't know, maybe you can tell me what the name/website of your company is, and what services it provides with excellence?

Keeping the likes of you away makes me proud of my crappy Google rank.

I've recently been studying this stuff.

Tips:
1. Use of good Meta Tags - between 15 and 20 seems to be a sweet spot, google reads them but doesn't think they are spam.

2. Keyword in the body text - You're a marketing firm IIRC? Increase the number of times phrases such as Campaign, Marketing, Sales, Brand ect are featured. The algorithms tend to use Latent Semantic Analysis so you can't spam, but if you use them legitimately they will bump your ranking.

3. Links. The more inbound and outbound links you have the more highly rated you site becomes. For you it may be as simple as having a page dedicated to previous clients. Ask them to also link back to you (Maybe even mock up a logo for them to use "Proud Partners of Matt&quot.

4. Page names, alternate image tags and multiple domain names. Making sure that the code in your website uses your company name and function as much as possible. For example put your page title as "Matts Page | Specialists in Selling Stuff" rather than just "Matts Page". All images in your site should have a description tag, a search robot can't see an image but it will read the tags. Instead of your "Home" button being called Home, call it Matts Page: Home. Gets those key words in while not looking like spam.

So here's a question. Yes, I can edit some copy, put in some key words that are more relevant scattered throughout the text. But could I do this: country, industry, country, industry, country, industry, country, industry to the same effect.

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You could do, but its frowned upon. If it doesn't make sense then the LSA Algorithms will pick up on it and trash your ranking all together. If you write it well enough to not look like spam, then you might as well just have it on the page!


In addition to this stuff (which you appear to be working on anyway) consider your dependence on social networking sites. They are rubbish for actual client acquisition, but 40 or 50 people linking to your Business via LinkedIn is a nice way to boost your number of reference links.

Also, if you have a log-in portal for your clients, you force up your number of page views automatically, which helps with rankings.

This page has some decent pagerank pointers

How do I increase a webpage's PageRank?
Google interprets inbound links as a vote for the page by the page linking to it. Links from pages that are themselves "important" (i.e. have a higher PageRank) weigh more heavily than those with a lower PageRank.

Therefore, the best way to increase PageRank is to get as many websites, especially ones with a higher PageRank, to links to yours as possible.

The more links your pages receives, the higher its PageRank rating is likely to be. And the higher your webpage's PageRank rating, the higher your rankings in Google are likely to be.

Can I Buy PageRank?
No one can buy a higher PageRank. Google does not sell placement within the search results themselves. However, you may buy small text ads with the Google AdWords program that are placed above and next to the search results.

What Type of Links Increase PageRank?
PageRank is passed onto a webpage if the page with the outbound link uses HTML code that has a direct link to the link destination.

For example:

<a href="http://www.google.com">Outbound Link</a>

What Type of Links Don't Increase PageRank?
PageRank is not passed on if the link doesn't point directly to the link destination. Examples of links that don't point directly to the link destination include most affiliate links, traffic tracking links, links that point to a webpage on the same website as the outbound link which then redirects the user to the link destination (this is often used to hide the real URL of the website it is linking to), and so on.

Other links that don't help increase PageRank are links from webpages that either has a PageRank rating of zero (for example, new webpages), or doesn't have a PageRank rating because Google's spider cannot crawl and index it. These include dynamically generated pages, such as search engine results pages (including paid inclusion pages), online databases, and password protected pages.

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You may also find something useful here

Quickly spam Styleforum with 100+ posts.

Originally Posted by Blackhood

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Tips:
1. Use of good Meta Tags - between 15 and 20 seems to be a sweet spot, google reads them but doesn't think they are spam.

Yup, working on that. I think I have about eight, may crank a few extra words in there though.

2. Keyword in the body text - You're a marketing firm IIRC? Increase the number of times phrases such as Campaign, Marketing, Sales, Brand ect are featured. The algorithms tend to use Latent Semantic Analysis so you can't spam, but if you use them legitimately they will bump your ranking.
<snip>
You could do, but its frowned upon. If it doesn't make sense then the LSA Algorithms will pick up on it and trash your ranking all together. If you write it well enough to not look like spam, then you might as well just have it on the page!

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yup, I am going to go over the copy tomorrow, tweak a lot of the phrasing to put in my industry more and the country name more. I don't think I will dick around with the white text thing.

I have a good friend in digital marketing, spoke to him about this, and he cautioned me away from it as well with words like 'blacklist your ass' which means I'll play by the rules

3. Links. The more inbound and outbound links you have the more highly rated you site becomes. For you it may be as simple as having a page dedicated to previous clients. Ask them to also link back to you (Maybe even mock up a logo for them to use "Proud Partners of Matt").

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Originally Posted by Homme

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This page has some decent pagerank pointers

Therefore, the best way to increase PageRank is to get as many websites, especially ones with a higher PageRank, to links to yours as possible.

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this appears to be my biggest issue.

When talking to the friend I mentioned, he went and dicked around with some tracking stuff, told me that my competitor who comes up top has 87 external backlinks, while I have four.

This is to be expected, their firm's site has been up for three years, mine has been up for a month. If anything, I am surprised it is not more.

However what I found interesting about this was that 66 of these 87 were from their own blog. This was either brilliant of them, or a brilliant accident. Basically they have mattscompetitor.com and 66 links in from mattscompetitor.blogspot.com that are all cranking its Google ranking.

This inspired my latest ideas. 1. start a local language blog that I have different employees post on twice a week with a link in the post back to my company site. 2. start a forum in local language for students. I do quite a bit of lecturing in my field, so I can make my team available to questions and discussion that they have in the field, with a signature in each of their IDs backlinking to my site.

Good ideas?

As for clients/etc - yup on that. I have mostly global clients, which makes it pretty hard to get on to their sites, but the smaller companies that are more flexible should be doable. Also got in touch with a couple of websites that offer directories etc for exactly this reason.

4. Page names, alternate image tags and multiple domain names. Making sure that the code in your website uses your company name and function as much as possible. For example put your page title as "Matts Page | Specialists in Selling Stuff" rather than just "Matts Page". All images in your site should have a description tag, a search robot can't see an image but it will read the tags. Instead of your "Home" button being called Home, call it Matts Page: Home. Gets those key words in while not looking like spam

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.

This I hadn't thought of. I'll tell my staff tomorrow to go putting some extra words into the headers and into the images. Thanks.

Also, if you have a log-in portal for your clients, you force up your number of page views automatically, which helps with rankings.

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Also didn't know that. We have a client log-in that we are not using yet. We are sorting out some of the other little gadgets n gizmos on there first, bug shootin' and so on. Getting pretty close now, and will start on the client stuff next, but nice to know it'll have an impact.

Originally Posted by ronny

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Contact a good SEO company, so that they can optimize your site for the search engines.
Ya, but don't forget I am a mod here. If I did that, I'd end up spaminating them at SF when they are blasting crap - my crap - out to a zillion forums under the guise of Targeted SEO

Thanks for the suggestions, and please keep 'em coming boys.

Depending on your staff levels, why not start a blog?

Simply require a 500 word article from each member of staff on a subject of their choosing (obviously relating to your industry) once per month. Even with 5 people on staff you would have more than enough entries to make a worthwhile blog, while drawing attention from new clients, getting links back as people tweet/reference/link to your articles. If they are any good then it shouldn't take more than about 2 hours per month of their time, but yield highly effective results.

It also shows a massive level of competence which may do you some favours as its a new business.

(My main areas of interest is Organic Traffic growth, so I personally prefer to look at ways a website can create value for consumers, making them more likely to return. Meta Tagging ect is great, but I reckon that it will only get you so far. Ultimately the better the website, the better the traffic and rankings.)

separate issue, a blog on my own site won't assist my Pagerank however...but yes, I am likely to start a blog on my own site for business development purposes. Learning a lesson from the competitor, also likely to start one hosted externally to generate links back to my main site from outside my domain.

Wonder if I have anything to say

I think that's a good idea.

Also get Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools working for your site so you can get more data.

In my experience, inbound links are the biggest drivers of success, but they also have to be the right kind. Your competitor's inbound links from their own blog are not likely driving a lot of pagerank. Google assesses the quality of the site that's linking to you, and (in my opinion) overweights those from .edu and .org addresses - particularly well known ones. So if you can get a page from stanford.edu to link to your site, it really juices your ranking. Links from very high traffic websites (i.e. major news organizations, or Fortune 100 companies) have a similar effect. The way to achieve this is to make linking an inherent part of your PR and marketing strategy. Any time you have an executive speaking at a conference, or quoted in the newspaper, writes an article for publication, or hosts an event, you want to get a: "for more information, visit www.mattscompany.com" line in there. It might seem more daunting than it is. If a university has a career center job board, post a job on it, be sure to include your web link - now their site is linked to yours and Google loves you. Google's algorithm fundamentally rests on this 'trust' model. Keywords just match up the search terms that somebody puts in - the linked trust model is mostly what determines the order in which the results appear.

as an aside, i despise the term 'search engine optimization.' it should be called search engine degradation/exploitation/gaming

I can rename the thread if it will make you a happier member...

..

A good read for those interested in SEO: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/bu...arch.html?_r=1