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Google Expert's Magnifying Glass

There are a lot of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)  experts in Ireland.  I am not one of them.  They all have a wealth of knowledge and expertise on how Google behaves when it crawls and indexes.

Its how they make their money and help you to get traffic to your site.  Most clients ring me at my website design company and ask if they can be number one on Google.  But I leave this to the so called experts.  I can help them with on page and some simple strategies for off page that most website designers should provide as part of their service.

I wish the SEO people every one of the well.  Are they Google Experts?  Well the short answer is No.  If you want a Google expert then call up Google for advice.  Oh I forgot they wont help you.  However Google do provide a lot of expert advice in their own pages like Google Webmaster and Google Code.  It is all free and there are a lot of YouTube channels devoted to sensible advice from them on how to design your site to help it rank when it is crawled. Combine this with a well thought out keyword analysis and you are setting down solid foundations for getting some rank placement.

To say you are a Google expert is completely wrong.  To say you you have an understanding of how Google behaves when it crawls is closer to the truth.  SEO experts have learned to understand this by working with customers on a combination of well written and structured page content, good back link strategies and a lot of off page effort to move your page up to the coveted first page.  There are also items like the following

• Well written up to date content
• Regularly updated site
• Domain name, age and location
• Number of back links to your site from high traffic sites.

Google Local Keywords can help you sometimes but not in a more competitive landscape to get some google juice but the secret to becoming a Google expert is very simple don’t bother.  Do bother however reading, understanding and researching the fascinating area  of Search Engine Optimisation.

The author is neither a Google Expert nor an SEO expert but he is an expert at drinking Heineken and is available for that!

No this isn’t a post about incest the incest is that people building their on page may be a large part of the search volume for specific keywords hence the incest!

If you look at your keywords in the  Google Keywords Tool. and think about what your competitors are doing then it shows that you should reduce the actual search volume by a certain factor.

Disclaimer this is not forensic just a random thought process about keywords.

Here a  Keyword Example

Lets say your keywords are Hotels County Cork. It’s a pretty competitive keyword with 1300 searches in Ireland for July when I checked today.

Now lets analyse this number.  If there is some SEO person doing some work out there for some of the hotels then the odds are that they Google this keyword combination at least once a day. So lets say there are 5 SEO people doing that – so scratch 5×30 days per month of those hits to give you 150.

Any self respecting hotel manager is looking at the competition out there.  And again lets say there are 10 hotel managers doing a similar search once a day this gives you 10×30 to again give you 300 hits.

I would estimate very conservatively a certain percentage of the people who tapped in this search term weren’t even interested in booking a room in a cheap hotel in Cork.  Lets say 100 of them (complete estimate there by the way may be on the low side?).  They hit the back button pronto

So total above gives you 1300 – 550 = 750 reducing the actual real traffic (and again the number of random surfers may be higher).

So what is critical for you for on page development is the following points.

• Make sure that your site does not depend on a limited set of keywords and use long tail keywords where possible even if the numbers are lower.
• Your Call To Action on the landing page needs to be strong and make the page sticky (e.g. make them stay browse and read).  A price offer, a contact link or form, an interesting article to read and so on.
• On page SEO is not as important as having a very active off page strategy.  Some people even say that if you have good off page then your on page doenst matter (however call to action is still important). If you are in a competitive niche then it may make sense to pay someone to do your SEO.  Google SEO Ireland for the experts in this area.
• Spend time working on good content it is the bye word of a good website.  A blog can be a chain of free thoguht (like this one) but if you want traffic that generates sales then take time over your content, research your area, don’t just google, look at print books, read newspapers make your content unique.

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Last nights conversation went like this (I have had many chats like this.)

Me: “Do you have a web site?”
Person: “Yes swelling proudly its www.mynameinlights.com”
Me: “Great! Do you get much traffic on it?”
Person: “Em….probably”
Me: “What words do you want to be found for on Google?
Person: “We are number one for the <insert text that nobody actuallly searches for>
..
And the questions go on like this for a bit as I try and sneak my business card into their hand (only joking!) It really annoys  me to realise more and more people have paid (in some cases substantial money) for sites that aren’t working for them and they cant answer the questions below about their investment.

• How many people are visiting your site per week?
• What words do you want people to find you for on Google?
• How many e-mails do you get from people who hit the site?
• How often do you update the site?

Now these are not hard or technically difficult questions.  With Google Analytics and a simple e-mail contact form people can get the above data.  Basic updates to a static site should be part of a brochure site option for any website provider.

At Grange Web Design I give all customer these options of their basic package. I do at least some basic on page SEO for their keywords that they want their business to rank for.  I do a week or so of off page SEO to get them some visibility.  And of course they always get an e-mail address that is the same as their domain name.  Now I am not pushing my business, any website designer worth his salt should do the above tasks before breakfast for their customers.

Ask yourself these questions today.  If you don’t know then you need to revisit your website strategy.  If you are in the middle of paying someone to design a site don’t send the cheque till the items above have been implemented.

I was thinking about hashtags the other evening and their future use on Twitter and here are some hashtag ideas that could be used and may even be used by people and companies already to communicate on Twitter.

• Airlines – for a particular flight airlines could post a hashtag like #jetblue0719645 and then people could tweet people on the plan about their plans and perhaps plan a cab into a city rather than pay premium prices, comment on the wait time, tell people where the best food in airport is and so on.
• Bars Who needs bluetooth?  A bar or club could post a hastag for the evening and people could meet up in the bar based on interests.  Not exactly glamorous but how reliable is any other method. Could be used by the bar to find out what sports game people wanted to watch.  Use by the DJ to see what song next from his options.
• Restaurants:  I know you can google about a restaurant but why not post a hastag for your place and then people can see feedback by  searching for the hashtag #tgifbroadway Excellent cocktails but the enchiladas suck.
• Schools: A way for people to find out what is happening for their new school class.  At the start of the year the teacher can post a hashtag like #philosophy2134 and then tweet out assignments or use it during the class to get feedback.  Change regularly to stop people intruding .
• If you are giving a presentation at an event that already has a hastag why not jsut create one on the spot and put it at the start of your presentation.  It allows you to gather comments and in today’s gadget focused environment people are more inclined to tweet than actually speak.  Sad but true.

How would you use hashtags?