by admin | Nov 17, 2014 | rank higher SEO, Search engine optimization, SEO
A lot of energy and money is being expended by a lot of people on getting to page one on Google for their preferred search terms. I have heard of people “guaranteeing” page 1 of Google for a pretty handsome fee.
In the meantime I’ve just gone about and got my first page one
I knew that to have any credibility in the SEO field I had to be able to show that I could improve my own visibility, so that’s exactly what I did.
Late September, early October I was looking at the best ways to market my business. The obvious answer that kept coming back to me was to improve my ranking on Google.
I believe in just going for things, whether you are ready or not and then getting better via the school of hard knocks. So when I first launched my business, I think my website could have looked better, and the SEO could have definitely been better.
I was nowhere on Google.
Since September though, I put in a lot of work on my site and now have been able to see my web pages slowly climbing the rankings for various search terms. The important one for me is “Web Design Adelaide”. In Google terms I am still nowhere, since page one is where it’s at, but I’m heading in the right direction. For that particular search I have gone from around page 30 on Google 6 weeks ago to page 14. In SEO terms that is great.
I check regularly using Google’s Webmaster tools to see where I am at. Webmaster tools shows all the queries that you are ranking for and where you rank. It’s an essential tool for people with websites.
So I was checking over the weekend, and sure enough, there I am on page 1.
There was my own business on page one of Google for the term “custom website design Adelaide”. Very pleasing to see.
So anyway, what this means is that, yeah, I do know SEO. What I did for myself I can do for you. If you’re not ranking for important searches, get in touch. I can help you at a price tailored to your budget.
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 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+
