by admin | Oct 8, 2014 | google, rank higher SEO, Search engine optimization, SEO
Apparently Google make 500 changes to their search algorithm each year.
The reason they do this is because when someone searches for something, they genuinely want to provide the user who is doing the searches with the search result most relevant to their enquiry. Now that means that techniques that used to work, such as keyword stuffing (where you loaded up your page with as many search terms as possible) no longer work. Google is onto such things. They don’t want manipulation of search results, they want pages that give people what they are really looking for. They want people to be writing web pages for people, not search engines.
So what makes site rank higher in 2014?
Well, surprisingly enough, real content. By that I mean actual things that visitors to your site want to read. It’s why I blog at least once a week now. And when I blog I need to make the content both informative and entertaining, because one of the things that Google also look for is traffic to a site. It makes sense really. If people are visiting a site, it must mean it has value to people, so therefore by definition the site naturally goes up the rankings.
Then there is speed. Google like sites that are fast. There are ways to test this and improve this (I happen to know them by the way).
Next is mobile optimisation.
Yes your site has to be mobile ready. Google wants to provide users (Its customers are your customers) with the best user experience possible. Naturally if your site isn’t providing a great experience for users, Google doesn’t want to send them there. So if someone searches on their phone for a site in a particular category and a competitor’s site is mobile optimised and yours isn’t, you can guess whose is more likely to come up.
Titles.
Page titles are as important as ever. You know, the little thing in your browser heading that when you click on it, it has a little description about the page contents? Well that is considered very important to Google, so make sure your titles are optimised.
Internal Links.
Internal links in my view are really important. How do I know? Because I can check my own rankings and see the improvements in where my pages sit on Google. (I will tell you how to do this in another post, so keep reading my blog). What do I mean about internal links? well an example is that instead of simply “BLOG”, the link to my blog now reads adelaide-web-design-services-blog. And that means that each of those keywords improve your search results.
Backlinks.
Backlinks are links from other sites to your site. Google counts them up, so the more you have the higher your site ranks.
Images and headings in articles.
If you look back at my earlier blog posts, what I didn’t have on the page was secondary headings or images. This stuff makes it more attractive to a human reader, so is marked up by Google.
After these key things come all the other things that have been around for ever, but are not as important now as people think they still are.
For example, these things called meta tags – they are on your page in the headers of your HTML files. And keywords of course. With keywords though, there comes a point when if there are too many keywords, Google penalizes you. It’s known as keyword stuffing.
By the way, give it time.
This is really important. I had a client who asked my why they weren’t ranking on the search engines.. a half an hour after their site launched. It takes a while. Search ranking improvement is something that happens gradually (but it’s exciting to see).
Why am I giving this information away?
Well for the same reason a mechanic can give me detailed instructions on how to rebuild a carburetor. It doesn’t matter. I’m not using them. So, having said that, if you feel like you would like to improve your search rankings, get in touch. I can tune your site.
by admin | Sep 29, 2014 | google, Google Docs
I have been writing a lot lately about Google
So much so that I questioned the value of writing another article about some of their services. I didn’t want to start sounding like a fanboy, like someone who heaps praise repeatedly on Apple products often does.
Unfortunately for you the reader there are a few more Google centric posts coming out yet.
Why? Because the stuff I am telling you about is FREE. Yes FREE.
And who doesn’t like finding out about free stuff?
So today I want to talk about Google Docs and Google Drive. I have written before about Google Drive. I consider it to be the option that is pushing one more piece of relatively new technology (the USB drive) to the scrap heap already. Why carry a thumb drive when you can synch your files online and access them via your phone?
Last week I was at a meeting and needed to take notes. By virtue of the fact that I had Google Quickoffice on my phone, I was able to write my notes for the meeting on my phone.
Now here is where it gets really good. OK, so what you say? Everybody can do that. Yes, these days it’s easy to do things like take notes on phones. Nothing remarkable about that. Yes but these notes were then automatically synched with my Google Drive.
What this meant was that because my Google Drive was synched with my desktop, the document I had written on my phone was on my laptop ready for me to work on, in Word for Windows format!
Now it addition to this I have decided to start to use Google Docs as my office suite. This means that instead of using Word Windows and Excel on my desktop, I am experimenting with using Google’s office applications that are online and work through a brower.
I’m not ready to throw away Microsoft Office just yet, but online apps like word processors and spreadsheets do have advantages.
The main advantage is that you can edit your documents any time you have a browser handy.
It doesn’t matter what platform you are on. For example, you can edit your Microsoft Office compatible document on your iPad. Or on your Samsung tablet, or your Macbook. Whatever is your choice.
Another advantage of this approach is that these documents can be shared among groups of people. So if you have some business requirements for collaborative documents you should look into this.
As I said before this stuff is free. You don’t need to go out and purchase a copy of the latest Office software.
Now in the interest of balance and fairness, Microsoft also have competing offerings. They are of equal quality to the Google offering. They are Microsoft one drive and Microsoft Office Online.
So I urge you to look into this. The shift to everything being online is not going to go away. It will only pick up momentum.
And as always, if you need advice with these things, get in touch.
Microsoft Office Online
Google Docs
by admin | Sep 26, 2014 | google, Search engine optimization, SOE
One thing everyone on the web is doing is scrambling for search engine rankings.
Obviously this means that any edge you can possibly use you want. What I have been doing lately is researching the impact of having a Google Business page (simply a google+ page for business) on search ranking.
Google+ is Google’s social network, a competitor to Facebook. As a competitor to Facebook, I think it has a long way to go. One of the main reasons that I can see for this is that Facebook has games.
However, as always, the big sledgehammer that Google uses to bludgeon competition is search rankings.
If you create a Google business page, when you search for your page you will find your Google business page will come up next to it, as shown in the picture above. It will have a map and a few details about your business, and if people want to they can click on your page and have a look around.
I have been combing the web (as I do) looking for evidence that Google business actually does anything to your search rankings. I can’t actually find anything conclusive at this stage. There are many varying opinions on the web (as always). Some people say yes, some say no.
However, I will say this. Google+ is currently the second biggest social network in the world. They would like to be the biggest, obviously. If improving search ranking by tight integration with Google+ is the carrot they use to achieve that aim, I suspect they will do that.
Google is all about helping you grow your business (by using their services of course)
When you research what Google is saying, all of their promotional material is about how Google+ helps you promote your brand. So it stands to reason that over time a Google+ page will have some effect.
On a practical note, when I look at Google Webmaster tools for my website (an important tool I will explain more about in a later post), I noticed that by adding links to my blog posts on my Google+ business page the links were showing as coming to my site from Google itself. Now as any SEO expert will explain to you, links to your site from quality sources are a very important part of the puzzle when it comes to increasing your search rankings.
So that alone is enough for me to say, yes, it’s worth it.
And of course, if web management is not your forte, and you feel confused by such things as Google analytics and webmaster tools and all the stuff I speak about, get in touch. I can help.
What Google say about branding using Google+
by admin | Sep 22, 2014 | Android, google, Microsoft
A Friend Asked Me The Other Day, “What is Android?”
Strangely enough I had to answer him with, “I don’t actually know”. OK, of course I knew it was an operating system (an operating system, for those who are not technical at all, is what your computer runs on).
Now, if my friend had not been totally lazy, he could have looked it up on Wikipedia, but he didn’t. If he did, he would have found out that Android is a Linux based operating system.
Back in the olden days (in my grandfather’s time). There was an operating system called Unix. OK, it’s still around, but it’s not generally used for your average office worker or home user. It tends to be used a lot for scientific applications.
Linux is the offshoot of Unix that was supposed to be for PCs and home users.
Unfortunately Linux doesn’t have that much appeal to home users, for two reasons. Firstly people are used to Apple and Microsoft, which are relatively user friendly to non technical people. Secondly, Microsoft had the apps market all sewn up with their office products. Very hard for Linux to compete with that when everybody is sending Word documents that people want to be able to read.
So that is the origin of Android, but where is it now?
Well in 2005 Google (once again this company that has become top dog in the computing world appears to be calling the shots) purchased Android. It was another prescient move by a company that seems to be able to see the future of computing. The question is, does it see the future or does it make the future happen?
In 2005 most computing was still done on the desktop computer (usually running Windows).
There was at this time a bit of a shift happening towards laptops as prices of laptops came down and corporations realised that they could tether more people to work out of hours if they had a laptop, but it wasn’t an overnight shift.
Since then the shift away from desktops has accelerated. One of the main factors in this I think was the sudden availability of wireless. Why be tied to one spot when you can sit anywhere in your house or office and be connected?
Next was the shift from laptops (usually running Windows) to tablets. This has happened mostly since 2010. The iPad started the shift, but lately the Android tablets have taken over.
At the moment 50 per cent of web browsing is done on phones and tablets and that percentage is growing
With remarkable foresight, Google has sewn up the market for the devices that are the future direction for computing. Eighty five percent of phones run Android and 70 per cent of tablets. Windows phones are nowhere. Nor are Windows tablets.
Could Microsoft become extinct?
Yes it could. It sounds outrageous to think of now, but yes. Those who don’t believe this possible probably have never heard of Novell. Novell was the biggest computer networking company in the World in the 90’s before Microsoft took off. It’s now nothing more than a subsidiary of another company. Its decline occurred because Microsoft outflanked it in much the same way Google is now outflanking Microsoft.
Microsoft is not done yet, but unless they evolve, there’s a possibility of decline. Empires rise and fall pretty fast in computing.
By the way, just in case you think I’m some kind of Google loving, Granola munching, vegan hipster who hates Microsoft, this article was written on a laptop running Windows 7.
The surface tablet is dead
by admin | Sep 18, 2014 | google, SEO
It is now just after 17 years to the day that the domain name Google.com was registered.
It was on the 15th of September 1997 that this company that has become a modern behemoth was launched. Since then it has come from nothing to be valued at 395 Billion dollars and the world’s most valuable brand, even eclipsing Apple.
Google was the winner of the search engine wars.
At the time I completely missed the significance of this. I suppose most people did. When the internet was young the idea that a search engine was to become one of the most important internet tools was just nonsense. A search engine was just a utilitarian site. It didn’t have content of it’s own, so how on earth could it be important?
The company strategists knew though. Search engines were an important battleground because the people who won it would be guaranteed millions of hits every day.
Actually this figure completely underquotes the level of traffic that Google gets. Google currently gets 45,000 searches per SECOND. The number of hits per day is in the billions.
This gives Google an enormous amount of power.
They know what people are searching for. In aggregate this information is incredible powerful. Obviously the way Google uses it is to sell advertising. But it can also be used to identify social trends.
Why do you think we continue to hear about the Kardashians? Because people continue to search for them. So PLEASE!! Stop doing that. What happens is that magazine editors check the stats, see people are still searching and that’s that.
For more information on this, look up Google Trends. It will actually show you what the top web searches are for any given day, and the top searches on a year by year basis. It makes quite interesting reading.
It’s why getting onto page one of Google is so important. Contrary to what some guy from India will tell you, no one can guarantee you page one on Google. (By the way I actually heard this straight from the horses mouth – a Google executive at a seminar) There are tricks to help raise your profile over time, but Google works diligently to ensure that any dirty tricks will be penalised.
The Google algorithm is also constantly being updated.
It makes it hard to keep up with SEO but some of us have to. Every day seeking to understand more of what it is that Google wants to see in order to move your site in the search ranking.
I will be putting up a post soon about what are the latest and greatest ways to raise your search engine rankings according to the latest algorithms Google use, so keep an eye out for it.
Why Google won
Google traffic per day
Google Trends
