Show us your website!

[Mortimer Firewood]

Plenty of SEO firms out there Matty. Bare in mind it takes time to build authority as a website along with plenty of other little factors, there's no great secret to getting to that illusive first page other than building great content that people 'want' to read....

 

Seo IMO is a con. There's a simple way to climb google in very little time if the guy designing your site is telling you seo is the way to go be wary.

All the guys that gave me good advice told me to avoid it.

Our site gets 2 calls a day and it costs less than £50 a week it was no2 on google 3 days after going live and has remained between 1st and 3rd spotit's a no brainier

[Andyd1606]

Seo IMO is a con. There's a simple way to climb google in very little time if the guy designing your site is telling you seo is the way to go be wary.

 

All the guys that gave me good advice told me to avoid it.

 

Our site gets 2 calls a day and it costs less than £50 a week it was no2 on google 3 days after going live and has remained between 1st and 3rd spotit's a no brainier

 

 

I'm just playing around with my site at the moment and trying to work out the best ways of getting noticed on Google. I know this is a minefield but slowly it is creeping up the rankings. Do you have any tips to avoid the seo route thanks Andy

[Mortimer Firewood]

I'm just playing around with my site at the moment and trying to work out the best ways of getting noticed on Google. I know this is a minefield but slowly it is creeping up the rankings. Do you have any tips to avoid the seo route thanks Andy

 

I will pm you and give you the advice I was given it works for us.

[Andyd1606]

Thanks much appreciated

[dan494]

Seo IMO is a con. There's a simple way to climb google in very little time if the guy designing your site is telling you seo is the way to go be wary.

 

All the guys that gave me good advice told me to avoid it.

 

Our site gets 2 calls a day and it costs less than £50 a week it was no2 on google 3 days after going live and has remained between 1st and 3rd spotit's a no brainier

 

 

£50 a week? What's that spent on?? I pay £5 a month hosting and that's it! Made the website myself though

[Mike H]

I was an SEO guy for 10 years, ran a seo company and hopefully can now provide some information that may be helpful in return for info you've given me!

 

About 15 years ago, SEO (search engine optimisation) was born because google ranked pages according to very simplistic algorithms that could be fooled. If you knew what you were doing, you could make website pages that had just the right density of keywords, links, bold text, images, etc etc. to make that page rank number 1 for a specific keyword phrase. You were basically fooling google into thinking you were the most relevant site in the world for that specific keyword. If you could get number 1 position for something like "Car hire in London" then you could be getting in excess of 1,000 visitors a day wanting to hire a car. It thus became big business. We had websites pulling in 40,000+ people per day. The big irony has always been that if you can really do SEO.... then you don't tell anyone! The big money was made by making your own website rank number 1 and selling the advertising on that page. So there is an argument that if someone is selling you seo services.... they are probably (not always) not very good! We had 40 websites covering 40 different sectors and for around ten years we let people put their ads on our pages. For instance, we had a car hire site that came up number 1 for every car hire search for every airport in the world. As a consequence, we had every car hire firm wanting to put ads on our pages. BUT.... google did not like the way we, along with many others, were just 'middle men' swamping their free search results with our websites and then making money from it. They wanted to get rid of us and improve the 'quality' of their search results. As a result, 10 years on and SEO is more or less dead. Google has become very clever and it is impossible to fool them anymore. The key to getting high rankings is now dictated by google monitoring the user experience. Rather than ranking websites according to 'on page' factors, they watch to see if a page has been useful to the user. For instance, if a user searches for "Cheap insurance" and they put your website number 1, they will then monitor what they call 'bounce rate'. If the user clicks through to my site and within 30 seconds returns to google then that may be an indication that my website is rubbish or not relevant for that search phrase.... so next time they won't rank it so highly. This is a very simplistic way of describing 'bounce rate' but it shows how it is now more about the way visitors experience your website that determines how well you rank, rather than clever on page tricks. Today's SEO is all about making original, interesting and efficient websites that people can easily navigate and use. There is no longer any short cuts or tricks. However, there is a few basic principles that you need to follow, which will make sure google can index you properly.

 

Here is a list of things you might want to consider:

 

1) Make your website your hobby. It is not rocket science and can be very rewarding. Simple websites load quickly and work, so you don't need anything complicated. You can buy a domain name for £10 per year and website hosting for a small website should not be more than £25 per year. Look at http://www.cali.co.uk. You can then edit your own pages and you don't need to keep paying someone.

2) If you already have a website, is it indexed properly by Google? Google is by far the main player in search engines and if you are not in google, then you are not in the game. The way to check is do this search.... site:http://www.yourwebsite.com Google will then list the pages they have indexed from your site. If you don't have any or many are missing.... something is wrong.

3) Look at the list of pages that are indexed with google (site:http://www.yoursite.com). The title for each page listed is taken from what is called the meta title tag in the code. This is very important and should be effectively a short potential keyword phrase. If you have a page with the title "Kiln dried firewood for sale" then you are more likely to rank high for a search containing those words. So each page should target a different potential search phrase. If all your pages have the same title, then you are missing out. Remember that every page on your website could be the 'landing page' for a first time visitor. Make sure they can easily navigate to the information they want. e.g. prices, ordering etc.

4) Each page should have original content. It should also be relevant and user friendly. In short, make your pages for your visitors, not for search engines. If the page loads quickly (test this on different computers that have never loaded your website before) and the content is relevant then the 'user experience' will be good. If the user experience is good, then google, one way or another, will notice this and mark you down as a good website. Write as much as you can, because 'broad match' words will help reinforce your 'theme' for each page. e.g. A page about logs should contain the words trees, bark, firewood, etc. This helps google be certain that you are talking about logs from trees, rather than logs from ships! If they are not sure, they won't risk ranking you highly.

5) Get friends to test your site. Get your granny to order some wood. Sometimes we take for granted what we think is obvious, but others get lost. If you have website statistics, they can be very useful for showing you problems. For instance, if only 1 in 30 people are navigating to your ordering page, perhaps the link is not clear enough. A good rule of thumb is get all the important info near the top of the page.

6) Consider buying traffic. You can buy ads on google search pages very easily. Go to Adsense (search google) and all will be revealed. In short, you decide which google searches your ad will appear on and how much you are prepared to spend each day. The trick is, only appear for very local and very specific searches e.g. "Firewood for sale in Exeter" and not jus all search worldwide for "Firewood"! If you are not careful you will waste money. You will only be charged if someone clicks the link and because it is an obscure search, you will only pay 10p or so. Also, make sure you only appear on google search pages and not 'partner sites'. Anyway, the result could be that you get 30 visits and one of those orders a bag of logs. £3 per new customer.... not bad?

7) Keep updating your site with new content and pages. The more pages you have, focusing on specific keywords, the more chance one will appear in a search result. The more times google sees fresh content on your site, the better.

8) Make sure images are quick to load and avoid anything which is slow loading. It is tempting to put all sorts of clever graphics on the pages, but people like quick loading simple pages.

9) Keep every page on your website within the overall theme. Don't start writing about swimming pools on a firewood for sale website... it confuses google.

10) Consider making your website mobile friendly. There is a lot of information about this on the web. In short, if it is mobile friendly, then you will rank better on searches done on a mobile device.

11) Explore the web for tips on how to make your pages search engine friendly.... but make sure the article is recent. What worked 2 years ago may not work now.

12) If your business is a local one, then make everything about your website focused on your area. There is no point in diluting your ranking potential by not be specific about your location.

 

Dangers of SEO's...

 

1) You will get emails saying they can get you top rankings for specific keywords. However, the keyword phrases they mention will probably be non competitive so you should rank for those anyway.

2) Don't be convinced that buying links to your site will help. It doesn't mean much anymore and if google thinks you are trying to fool it, they will ban you. Emails saying they will help you get links or provide content for your site are to be avoided. A few good links is beneficial, especially if they are from a serious website and 'on theme'. Links from links pages, forums or directories are pretty useless for helping your rankings, though may be good for other reasons. Google wants to see a website naturally grow and if they see something being forced or 'unnatural' they may well ban you.

3) The worst seo guys will put hidden text on your site and other 'black hat' tricks. You will get banned. My advice is just make your site the best you can for your users and let google do its stuff.

 

Google wants honest, good, user friendly and informative websites. Give them that, make sure they can index you properly and you will be fine. Don't expect to rank number 1 for "Logs for sale" but instead try and focus your pages on "logs for sale in Bristol" or local place names which are less competitive. Google has many of the best brains on the planet writing code to weed out anyone that tries to fool it with SEO..... if someone says they can beat the system then they are probably dodgy. There is no need to beat the system and those days of cheating are over. Also, consider other forms of advertising beyond search engines. Promote your site every way you can, because the more visitors you get, even ones from a business card, you will be noticed by google in a scary big brother sort of way. If they see your site is busy, they will become more interested in you. Also, don't depend on Google.... it could always dump you, so keep other avenues of advertising alive.

 

There's probably lots more to say but I hope this sparks some ideas.

[Scott Walker]

I was an SEO guy for 10 years, ran a seo company and hopefully can now provide some information that may be helpful in return for info you've given me!

 

About 15 years ago, SEO (search engine optimisation) was born because google ranked pages according to very simplistic algorithms that could be fooled. If you knew what you were doing, you could make website pages that had just the right density of keywords, links, bold text, images, etc etc. to make that page rank number 1 for a specific keyword phrase. You were basically fooling google into thinking you were the most relevant site in the world for that specific keyword. If you could get number 1 position for something like "Car hire in London" then you could be getting in excess of 1,000 visitors a day wanting to hire a car. It thus became big business. We had websites pulling in 40,000+ people per day. The big irony has always been that if you can really do SEO.... then you don't tell anyone! The big money was made by making your own website rank number 1 and selling the advertising on that page. So there is an argument that if someone is selling you seo services.... they are probably (not always) not very good! We had 40 websites covering 40 different sectors and for around ten years we let people put their ads on our pages. For instance, we had a car hire site that came up number 1 for every car hire search for every airport in the world. As a consequence, we had every car hire firm wanting to put ads on our pages. BUT.... google did not like the way we, along with many others, were just 'middle men' swamping their free search results with our websites and then making money from it. They wanted to get rid of us and improve the 'quality' of their search results. As a result, 10 years on and SEO is more or less dead. Google has become very clever and it is impossible to fool them anymore. The key to getting high rankings is now dictated by google monitoring the user experience. Rather than ranking websites according to 'on page' factors, they watch to see if a page has been useful to the user. For instance, if a user searches for "Cheap insurance" and they put your website number 1, they will then monitor what they call 'bounce rate'. If the user clicks through to my site and within 30 seconds returns to google then that may be an indication that my website is rubbish or not relevant for that search phrase.... so next time they won't rank it so highly. This is a very simplistic way of describing 'bounce rate' but it shows how it is now more about the way visitors experience your website that determines how well you rank, rather than clever on page tricks. Today's SEO is all about making original, interesting and efficient websites that people can easily navigate and use. There is no longer any short cuts or tricks. However, there is a few basic principles that you need to follow, which will make sure google can index you properly.

 

Here is a list of things you might want to consider:

 

1) Make your website your hobby. It is not rocket science and can be very rewarding. Simple websites load quickly and work, so you don't need anything complicated. You can buy a domain name for £10 per year and website hosting for a small website should not be more than £25 per year. Look at http://www.cali.co.uk. You can then edit your own pages and you don't need to keep paying someone.

2) If you already have a website, is it indexed properly by Google? Google is by far the main player in search engines and if you are not in google, then you are not in the game. The way to check is do this search.... site:http://www.yourwebsite.com Google will then list the pages they have indexed from your site. If you don't have any or many are missing.... something is wrong.

3) Look at the list of pages that are indexed with google (site:http://www.yoursite.com). The title for each page listed is taken from what is called the meta title tag in the code. This is very important and should be effectively a short potential keyword phrase. If you have a page with the title "Kiln dried firewood for sale" then you are more likely to rank high for a search containing those words. So each page should target a different potential search phrase. If all your pages have the same title, then you are missing out. Remember that every page on your website could be the 'landing page' for a first time visitor. Make sure they can easily navigate to the information they want. e.g. prices, ordering etc.

4) Each page should have original content. It should also be relevant and user friendly. In short, make your pages for your visitors, not for search engines. If the page loads quickly (test this on different computers that have never loaded your website before) and the content is relevant then the 'user experience' will be good. If the user experience is good, then google, one way or another, will notice this and mark you down as a good website. Write as much as you can, because 'broad match' words will help reinforce your 'theme' for each page. e.g. A page about logs should contain the words trees, bark, firewood, etc. This helps google be certain that you are talking about logs from trees, rather than logs from ships! If they are not sure, they won't risk ranking you highly.

5) Get friends to test your site. Get your granny to order some wood. Sometimes we take for granted what we think is obvious, but others get lost. If you have website statistics, they can be very useful for showing you problems. For instance, if only 1 in 30 people are navigating to your ordering page, perhaps the link is not clear enough. A good rule of thumb is get all the important info near the top of the page.

6) Consider buying traffic. You can buy ads on google search pages very easily. Go to Adsense (search google) and all will be revealed. In short, you decide which google searches your ad will appear on and how much you are prepared to spend each day. The trick is, only appear for very local and very specific searches e.g. "Firewood for sale in Exeter" and not jus all search worldwide for "Firewood"! If you are not careful you will waste money. You will only be charged if someone clicks the link and because it is an obscure search, you will only pay 10p or so. Also, make sure you only appear on google search pages and not 'partner sites'. Anyway, the result could be that you get 30 visits and one of those orders a bag of logs. £3 per new customer.... not bad?

7) Keep updating your site with new content and pages. The more pages you have, focusing on specific keywords, the more chance one will appear in a search result. The more times google sees fresh content on your site, the better.

8) Make sure images are quick to load and avoid anything which is slow loading. It is tempting to put all sorts of clever graphics on the pages, but people like quick loading simple pages.

9) Keep every page on your website within the overall theme. Don't start writing about swimming pools on a firewood for sale website... it confuses google.

10) Consider making your website mobile friendly. There is a lot of information about this on the web. In short, if it is mobile friendly, then you will rank better on searches done on a mobile device.

11) Explore the web for tips on how to make your pages search engine friendly.... but make sure the article is recent. What worked 2 years ago may not work now.

12) If your business is a local one, then make everything about your website focused on your area. There is no point in diluting your ranking potential by not be specific about your location.

 

Dangers of SEO's...

 

1) You will get emails saying they can get you top rankings for specific keywords. However, the keyword phrases they mention will probably be non competitive so you should rank for those anyway.

2) Don't be convinced that buying links to your site will help. It doesn't mean much anymore and if google thinks you are trying to fool it, they will ban you. Emails saying they will help you get links or provide content for your site are to be avoided. A few good links is beneficial, especially if they are from a serious website and 'on theme'. Links from links pages, forums or directories are pretty useless for helping your rankings, though may be good for other reasons. Google wants to see a website naturally grow and if they see something being forced or 'unnatural' they may well ban you.

3) The worst seo guys will put hidden text on your site and other 'black hat' tricks. You will get banned. My advice is just make your site the best you can for your users and let google do its stuff.

 

Google wants honest, good, user friendly and informative websites. Give them that, make sure they can index you properly and you will be fine. Don't expect to rank number 1 for "Logs for sale" but instead try and focus your pages on "logs for sale in Bristol" or local place names which are less competitive. Google has many of the best brains on the planet writing code to weed out anyone that tries to fool it with SEO..... if someone says they can beat the system then they are probably dodgy. There is no need to beat the system and those days of cheating are over. Also, consider other forms of advertising beyond search engines. Promote your site every way you can, because the more visitors you get, even ones from a business card, you will be noticed by google in a scary big brother sort of way. If they see your site is busy, they will become more interested in you. Also, don't depend on Google.... it could always dump you, so keep other avenues of advertising alive.

 

There's probably lots more to say but I hope this sparks some ideas.

 

Great advice,

Thanks for taking the time to write the post, certainly given me a few things to think about.

[Mark Bolam]

Yes, cheers Mike.

Time to dump the big cock tablet links then....

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Arbtalk

[Mortimer Firewood]

£50 a week? What's that spent on?? I pay £5 a month hosting and that's it! Made the website myself though

 

A friend made the website for me on the understanding I'd then return the favour and help somebody elsa. It's on pay per click

It's our only form of advertising now and I think £200 a month to get that volume of calls is quite good.

All though it's taken me a while to get my head round pricing with jobs from the site as before I took some time out all our work was word of mouth now people will get multiple quotes. It's not a bad thing as we just work harder and think outside the box more.

[hamdogg]

I was an SEO guy for 10 years, ran a seo company and hopefully can now provide some information that may be helpful in return for info you've given me!

 

About 15 years ago, SEO (search engine optimisation) was born because google ranked pages according to very simplistic algorithms that could be fooled. If you knew what you were doing, you could make website pages that had just the right density of keywords, links, bold text, images, etc etc. to make that page rank number 1 for a specific keyword phrase. You were basically fooling google into thinking you were the most relevant site in the world for that specific keyword. If you could get number 1 position for something like "Car hire in London" then you could be getting in excess of 1,000 visitors a day wanting to hire a car. It thus became big business. We had websites pulling in 40,000+ people per day. The big irony has always been that if you can really do SEO.... then you don't tell anyone! The big money was made by making your own website rank number 1 and selling the advertising on that page. So there is an argument that if someone is selling you seo services.... they are probably (not always) not very good! We had 40 websites covering 40 different sectors and for around ten years we let people put their ads on our pages. For instance, we had a car hire site that came up number 1 for every car hire search for every airport in the world. As a consequence, we had every car hire firm wanting to put ads on our pages. BUT.... google did not like the way we, along with many others, were just 'middle men' swamping their free search results with our websites and then making money from it. They wanted to get rid of us and improve the 'quality' of their search results. As a result, 10 years on and SEO is more or less dead. Google has become very clever and it is impossible to fool them anymore. The key to getting high rankings is now dictated by google monitoring the user experience. Rather than ranking websites according to 'on page' factors, they watch to see if a page has been useful to the user. For instance, if a user searches for "Cheap insurance" and they put your website number 1, they will then monitor what they call 'bounce rate'. If the user clicks through to my site and within 30 seconds returns to google then that may be an indication that my website is rubbish or not relevant for that search phrase.... so next time they won't rank it so highly. This is a very simplistic way of describing 'bounce rate' but it shows how it is now more about the way visitors experience your website that determines how well you rank, rather than clever on page tricks. Today's SEO is all about making original, interesting and efficient websites that people can easily navigate and use. There is no longer any short cuts or tricks. However, there is a few basic principles that you need to follow, which will make sure google can index you properly.

 

Here is a list of things you might want to consider:

 

1) Make your website your hobby. It is not rocket science and can be very rewarding. Simple websites load quickly and work, so you don't need anything complicated. You can buy a domain name for £10 per year and website hosting for a small website should not be more than £25 per year. Look at http://www.cali.co.uk. You can then edit your own pages and you don't need to keep paying someone.

2) If you already have a website, is it indexed properly by Google? Google is by far the main player in search engines and if you are not in google, then you are not in the game. The way to check is do this search.... site:http://www.yourwebsite.com Google will then list the pages they have indexed from your site. If you don't have any or many are missing.... something is wrong.

3) Look at the list of pages that are indexed with google (site:http://www.yoursite.com). The title for each page listed is taken from what is called the meta title tag in the code. This is very important and should be effectively a short potential keyword phrase. If you have a page with the title "Kiln dried firewood for sale" then you are more likely to rank high for a search containing those words. So each page should target a different potential search phrase. If all your pages have the same title, then you are missing out. Remember that every page on your website could be the 'landing page' for a first time visitor. Make sure they can easily navigate to the information they want. e.g. prices, ordering etc.

4) Each page should have original content. It should also be relevant and user friendly. In short, make your pages for your visitors, not for search engines. If the page loads quickly (test this on different computers that have never loaded your website before) and the content is relevant then the 'user experience' will be good. If the user experience is good, then google, one way or another, will notice this and mark you down as a good website. Write as much as you can, because 'broad match' words will help reinforce your 'theme' for each page. e.g. A page about logs should contain the words trees, bark, firewood, etc. This helps google be certain that you are talking about logs from trees, rather than logs from ships! If they are not sure, they won't risk ranking you highly.

5) Get friends to test your site. Get your granny to order some wood. Sometimes we take for granted what we think is obvious, but others get lost. If you have website statistics, they can be very useful for showing you problems. For instance, if only 1 in 30 people are navigating to your ordering page, perhaps the link is not clear enough. A good rule of thumb is get all the important info near the top of the page.

6) Consider buying traffic. You can buy ads on google search pages very easily. Go to Adsense (search google) and all will be revealed. In short, you decide which google searches your ad will appear on and how much you are prepared to spend each day. The trick is, only appear for very local and very specific searches e.g. "Firewood for sale in Exeter" and not jus all search worldwide for "Firewood"! If you are not careful you will waste money. You will only be charged if someone clicks the link and because it is an obscure search, you will only pay 10p or so. Also, make sure you only appear on google search pages and not 'partner sites'. Anyway, the result could be that you get 30 visits and one of those orders a bag of logs. £3 per new customer.... not bad?

7) Keep updating your site with new content and pages. The more pages you have, focusing on specific keywords, the more chance one will appear in a search result. The more times google sees fresh content on your site, the better.

8) Make sure images are quick to load and avoid anything which is slow loading. It is tempting to put all sorts of clever graphics on the pages, but people like quick loading simple pages.

9) Keep every page on your website within the overall theme. Don't start writing about swimming pools on a firewood for sale website... it confuses google.

10) Consider making your website mobile friendly. There is a lot of information about this on the web. In short, if it is mobile friendly, then you will rank better on searches done on a mobile device.

11) Explore the web for tips on how to make your pages search engine friendly.... but make sure the article is recent. What worked 2 years ago may not work now.

12) If your business is a local one, then make everything about your website focused on your area. There is no point in diluting your ranking potential by not be specific about your location.

 

Dangers of SEO's...

 

1) You will get emails saying they can get you top rankings for specific keywords. However, the keyword phrases they mention will probably be non competitive so you should rank for those anyway.

2) Don't be convinced that buying links to your site will help. It doesn't mean much anymore and if google thinks you are trying to fool it, they will ban you. Emails saying they will help you get links or provide content for your site are to be avoided. A few good links is beneficial, especially if they are from a serious website and 'on theme'. Links from links pages, forums or directories are pretty useless for helping your rankings, though may be good for other reasons. Google wants to see a website naturally grow and if they see something being forced or 'unnatural' they may well ban you.

3) The worst seo guys will put hidden text on your site and other 'black hat' tricks. You will get banned. My advice is just make your site the best you can for your users and let google do its stuff.

 

Google wants honest, good, user friendly and informative websites. Give them that, make sure they can index you properly and you will be fine. Don't expect to rank number 1 for "Logs for sale" but instead try and focus your pages on "logs for sale in Bristol" or local place names which are less competitive. Google has many of the best brains on the planet writing code to weed out anyone that tries to fool it with SEO..... if someone says they can beat the system then they are probably dodgy. There is no need to beat the system and those days of cheating are over. Also, consider other forms of advertising beyond search engines. Promote your site every way you can, because the more visitors you get, even ones from a business card, you will be noticed by google in a scary big brother sort of way. If they see your site is busy, they will become more interested in you. Also, don't depend on Google.... it could always dump you, so keep other avenues of advertising alive.

 

There's probably lots more to say but I hope this sparks some ideas.

 

 

Very interesting, ive read half and will finish the rest tomorrow!!