On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, David Cantrell wrote: > On Tue, Mar 19, 2002 at 03:23:16PM +0000, Leo Lapworth wrote: > > > I've been asked to get a company in to help improve > > our search engine ranking (which no one has even > > considered in recent years). Does anyone have > > any recomendations ? > > Yes, it's simple. Make sure that the content is relevant, well-organised > and above all USEFUL. Google will do the rest.
Not true. You're in a chicken and egg situation. Google ranks by the number of people that link to you. How do people link to you unless they know you are there ? Google also takes a long time to get up the chart as it takes time for people to link to you and then for their sites to be re-indexed. > > I even get the concept of mini sites to feed traffic > > <cough> shurely you're not thinking of defrauding the users by artificially > improving your position? Again, if your content is good, you'll do well, It's called Marketing and it happens all the time ! "Build it and they will come" doesn't necessarily work quickly enough, if at all, esp. if you have fixed costs i.e. you're a business. > if it's not good then you don't DESERVE to do well. As an example, google > for London Perl. london.pm.org is right at the top, despite not making any > special effort. Or google for David Cantrell. Again, right at the top of > the list (and second too with a different site) with no special effort > other than having content that people seem to think is useful. As it happens most of these sites are search engine friendly but many heavily "designed" sites are not. Overuse of graphics, frames and a lack of metadata seriously spoil any chance you have of a decent position. > > but I really need someone to come in and cover the > > lot > > Then hire some good copy-writers and an editor, and make sure the editor > has the manglement backing to do his job. Only if they know how to write pages that are search engine friendly. > > (there seems to be hundreds and I don't know how to tell > > if they are good or not) > > Yes, I get those spams too. I gauge companies by how much they advertise. > If they have to advertise a lot to get sales, then they probably suck. If > they advertise in ways that are sleazy and offensive, then they damned well > DO suck. I don't actually care if spammers have a good product, I will not > do business with people whose business methods I abhore. Agreed. > On the other hand, if they can get sales by word-of-mouth, then they clearly > have a jolly good product. I would hope that you would agree that that > applies to freelance editors as much as it applies to actual physical > product :-) Word of mouth is definitely the best way of finding *all* types of trade/goods that you want to buy. Often we don't use it, why else would you be searching on the web for a product or services ? A company that takes the trouble to format it's pages correctly and get them high up a search engine is more likely to be perceived as providing a kwalitee product/service. It's all about perception, and we're back to marketing again, love it or hate it ! Simon. -- "Drink up, the world's about to end." "This must be Thursday, I could never get the hang of Thursdays."
