February 18, 2009
Search Engine Optimisation with Webeden: Part 8 - Lets recap
And that, as they say, is that!
How have you found the process? Did it work for you? Are you now an experienced SEO expert as well a website making pro?
Like we said at the beginning, this is not meant to be the ‘be all and end all’ of SEO guides, but it does provide some useful, practical tips in a confusing world. Please (please!) remember, that this is not an instant process. It will take some time before your new site starts appearing in the search results. But follow the steps above, be patient and you can bet that your site will eventually turn up, and a hell of a lot quicker than if you did nothing.
So, all that is left to say is, good luck with optimising your site.
But did it work?
We’ve checked our results a few times. The first time was July 31st 2008, with results unchanged from December 12th 2007. The rankings were:
“West London Taxi” - number 1, “Joes London Taxis” - number 1 (Google.com)
“West London Taxi” - number 1, “Joes London Taxis” - number 1 (Yahoo.com)
“West London Taxi” - number 6, “Joes London Taxis” - number 1 (msn.com)
Then we tried again on December 12th 2008. How was Joe’s West London Taxis doing in the Search Engine rankings now?
December 12
• “West London Taxi” - number 1, “Joes London Taxis” - number 1 (Google.com)
• “West London Taxi” - number 1, “Joes London Taxis” - number 1 (Yahoo.com)
• “West London Taxi” - number 6, “Joes London Taxis” - number 1 (msn.com)
What further work did we do on the SEO? Absolutely nothing! It shows that if you lay the groundwork, you can boost your website very high in the SERPs, very early on. To bolster that, it’s important to resubmit your domain name, keep updating your content to keep it fresh, and of course there’s the all important incoming links from popular sites. By doing this you can ensure your site has a much better chance of achieving and maintaining a top ranking.
A reminder
Lets recap on all the steps taken to SEO the site. You must remember: search engines look for consistency and relevancy in a number of different areas of your on-page content and referral links.
These include:
1. The URL (or address) of your site (or specific pages on your site), e.g. www.joeslondontaxis.com, or www.joeslondontaxis.com/taxibooking, etc.
2. Your site name or title (and page titles) being published in the HTML, e.g. “London taxi company”, or “London taxi bookings page”
3. Your site and page keywords meta data published in the HTML, e.g. “London taxis, London taxi, Joes taxis, West London taxi, etc.”
4. Your site and page description meta data published in the HTML, e.g. “London taxi company provides taxi services…”
5. Your page content, e.g. the text that is on your page and relevant to your site name, keywords and description
6. Links on your page, including the anchor text, e.g. the text on which the link is set, e.g. “Book a west London taxi” links to http://www.joeslondontaxis.com/taxibooking
7. Images on your page, including the name of the image file (or Alt text)
8. Referral links to your site or specific pages on your site, e.g. a link on another site (incoming links) referring to your site
You, of course, can easily control all points from 1 to 7, since they’re all related to whats on your website, and can all be managed from your SiteMaker control panel. Point 8 is all about other websites linking to your own: its harder, requires a bit of luck and a bit of elbow grease, although there are quite a few ways of doing this.
Come on now SEO pros! How high have you got your site? Leave us a comment below.
Hi,
We took over a business just over a year ago and inherited a website which was OK and prepared for the previous owner by a clever student. However I yearned to be able to edit it myself and the old website would never appear on any searches. I spent a fortune getting an expensive optimisation review and paying someone to attempt changing the site. Unfortunately after spending a lot of money I found webeden. I would say if you can use powerpoint you can easily use webeden
Any way after building a site rather adhoc not planning key words on different pages too well I did get my site on the web. The domain was already established with a few links from some industry related websites and in less than 5 weeks on two key word searches on MSN and Yahoo I come top of the search even above expensive directories. google is another matter I come in the top 10 for one search criteria then the top of page 3 for the second. Hows that!!!
the only problem is I keep checjking every day to see if I am still there holding my breath before I dear look I think this is addictive!!
I eventually came up with some anchor text
The Rock B&B 4 star accommodation, ideal for walking breaks to explore the wye valley and forest of dean and got a free link with this text … than realised I didn’t have this twext on my website. Would appreciate any comments on my site http://www.stayattherock.com
Chris
Comment by Chris Lathan — February 20, 2009 @ 4:28 pm
Hi Chris,
I agree that its addictive - my positions in Google are the first thing I check in the morning and the last thing at night!
In terms of Search Engine Optimisation, you are getting lots right with your site. You have got good inbound link equity, and your visible text is well themed with a good density of keywords.
One thing that I would suggest is to cut down the number of characters in your page title. The current thinking is that 70 characters is the max for the page title, and if you have more than 1 keyword phrase then seperate them with a , a - or a | .(That last one is a pipe delimiter rather than an ‘l’ !) .
So if you want to target the keywords ‘bed and breakfast’ and ‘forest of dean, then you should use them like this in the page title:
Bed and Breakfast | Forest of Dean | The Rock B&B
Hope that helps, please let me know how you go.
Ken
Comment by admin — February 20, 2009 @ 5:08 pm
Thanks I had seen these vertical strokes on other websites. Is this what you do on the site title as well? Google seems to value the Site title over the page title and the site title seems a bit short. on site maker to get your key search words in is there a way round this? Can I have two Site titles on one domain name?
Ps have started restructuring my Page titles as you suggest
Thanks Chris
Comment by Chris — March 2, 2009 @ 6:36 am
Hi Chris,
Follow the same rules with the Site title, but you only get around 50 Characters, so decide perhaps on your most important keyword, and then put your company name in there too.
Actually I just checked and the page title above fits fine:
Bed and Breakfast | Forest of Dean | The Rock B&B
Of course don’t forget that SEO isn’t just about getting your site high in the rankings, but then getting people to click on it once they’re there. Its a bit about computer and humans! If what appears in Google is very clear - which this pipe delimiter stuff definately helps with - then you’re more likely to get the clicks too.
You can only have 1 site title per site. If you had a different domain name (either a different sub domain or a domain domain name entirely) then you could have 2.
Good luck!
Ken
Comment by admin — March 3, 2009 @ 3:13 pm