On Tue, Mar 19, 2002 at 05:06:44PM +0000, Simon Wilcox wrote: > 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 ?
You let people know that you are there through effective marketing. Yes, there *is* a place for marketing :-) > > > 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 ! No, it's called lieing. Marketing is different. It is unfortunate that most marketeers are also liars, but they don't have to be, and in an honourable company they won't be. > > 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. Perhaps that tells you something about heavily "designed" sites. I didn't make any special effort to make my sites search-engine-friendly, they just turned out that way because they weren't built by some overpaid crack monkey with three-quarter-length khaki trousers and an amusing T-shirt. -- David Cantrell | Benevolent Dictator | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david o/~ I want my SMTP o/~
