Hi chaps, I have a client who when he asked me to build him a ‘cheap’ web site accepted it when I told him that my SEO knowledge was limited and that I didn’t have the time to keep on top of it on a regular basis (without a fee). I’ve followed all of the fantastic advise on this forum and other resources but he is now complaining that he’s not No. 1 on Google.
Am I correct to tell him that the only way to get up the rankings is to pay a specialist SEO company to do it ? - and if that is correct, what do I need to give said company so they can have access to the site.
Freeway does an excellent job of allowing you to optimise the site for Search Engin, plus it has built in tools to help google (Sitemapper for example). If you follow the guidelines from these sites (I’m sure there are others on this list who have sites / checklists to follow) you won’t go far wrong.
With regard to getting to No1 on Google, it really does depend on what your competition is doing. If they have an equally optimised site as yours, but are throwing money at and SEO team to get them ranked higher then then they will appear higher than you. Some markets are very competitive - Insurance, Computer Sales for example - you are basically competing with thousands of other companies all wanted to appear first.
I have a site that appears on the first page of google for the term “Fitness Retreats”. I did that site in FW 5.4 and it has no extensive SEO techniques applied to it other than Site Content and Meta Tags (Title/Description). I also have another site that requires alot of time spent on it to get it ranked higher because of the competition.
Bear in mind that different SEO companies charge different amounts and some make promises they cannot keep.
Hi chaps, I have a client who when he asked me to build him a ‘cheap’ web site accepted it when I told him that my SEO knowledge was limited and that I didn’t have the time to keep on top of it on a regular basis (without a fee). I’ve followed all of the fantastic advise on this forum and other resources but he is now complaining that he’s not No. 1 on Google.
Am I correct to tell him that the only way to get up the rankings is to pay a specialist SEO company to do it ? - and if that is correct, what do I need to give said company so they can have access to the site.
I also meant to add. You do not need to give anything to anyone.
Once you have optimised the site through Freeway using Freeway’s tools, the SEO consultant (if you are employing one), will give you elements to add into the site (Code for the header that can be inserted Page>HTML Markup), and will make recommendations for content - Headings, new text based on terms he has performed research on. The SEO consultant will do alot of his work away from your site.
Nothing to be scared of, a easy to work along side an SEO consultant if that’s what it takes. Plus I have always had great help here on the list with exactly this topic.
Freeway does an excellent job of allowing you to optimise the site for Search Engin, plus it has built in tools to help google (Sitemapper for example). If you follow the guidelines from these sites (I’m sure there are others on this list who have sites / checklists to follow) you won’t go far wrong.
With regard to getting to No1 on Google, it really does depend on what your competition is doing. If they have an equally optimised site as yours, but are throwing money at and SEO team to get them ranked higher then then they will appear higher than you. Some markets are very competitive - Insurance, Computer Sales for example - you are basically competing with thousands of other companies all wanted to appear first.
I have a site that appears on the first page of google for the term “Fitness Retreats”. I did that site in FW 5.4 and it has no extensive SEO techniques applied to it other than Site Content and Meta Tags (Title/Description). I also have another site that requires alot of time spent on it to get it ranked higher because of the competition.
Bear in mind that different SEO companies charge different amounts and some make promises they cannot keep.
Hi chaps, I have a client who when he asked me to build him a ‘cheap’ web site accepted it when I told him that my SEO knowledge was limited and that I didn’t have the time to keep on top of it on a regular basis (without a fee). I’ve followed all of the fantastic advise on this forum and other resources but he is now complaining that he’s not No. 1 on Google.
Am I correct to tell him that the only way to get up the rankings is to pay a specialist SEO company to do it ? - and if that is correct, what do I need to give said company so they can have access to the site.
Thanks for that Nathan (btw you’re just down the road from me, I’m in Christchurch … www.rogerburton.co.uk) - I agree with all you said and will have a deeper dig into this chaps site but he is a ‘limousine’ service in Southampton and is after getting everyone in America who ‘cruises’ to Southampton to find his site and book him up … there are, of course, lots of others doing the same - I also agree that SEO companies seem a bit dodgy but he seems keen to throw some money at it … I’ll check out the links thank you.
If you run the site through woorank, it will flag up a few areas to look at - Headings, ALT Tags, www resolve, robots.txt, XML site map, Google Analytics… and a few more
Most of these things are easily done with FW and the cPanel.
Yes Nathan, very drizzly - and I have to take the train into Southampton … still another day another 2 new pence !
Again, thanks for the link … interesting it says:
robots.txt Missing
XML Sitemaps Missing
but I HAVE submitted a sitemap and added the robots meta tag: (robots=“index,follow,archive”) - at least I thought I had … I really must put a day or two aside and get my head around this … best Roger
Yes Nathan, very drizzly - and I have to take the train into Southampton … still another day another 2 new pence !
Again, thanks for the link … interesting it says:
robots.txt Missing
XML Sitemaps Missing
but I HAVE submitted a sitemap and added the robots meta tag: (robots=“index,follow,archive”) - at least I thought I had … I really must put a day or two aside and get my head around this … best Roger
Forgive me but obviously those bits are quite important - is there another site that you know of for checking these things other than Woorank with some more accuracy … thanks again for your time Roger
Out of sheer cussedness I ran a few of my sites through Woorank and, while a good shopping list for what you should be doing, I don’t think there’s much need to be over-concerned about the actual ranking. (Although I did note a point or two worth rectifying).
3 sites ranked No. 1, by Google, didn’t produce especially high rankings (partly, no doubt, because they don’t have or need the ‘social’ links or ‘edu’ and ‘gov’ back-links) while one site that runs significantly lower in Google rankings was scored second highest by Woorank out of the ones I tested. It also showed a couple of things missing that weren’t.
Not knowing how the Woorank ratings are weighted, I cannot comment, but this little exercise confirms my belief that content is always king. Yes, provide all the tweaks you can, but don’t rely on technicalities to uplift a site by far. if the site is not already semantically structured, with clear and useful information pertinent to the market, it will be downgraded by Google and the like.
Colin
On 14 Jan 2011, at 10:10, Nathan Garner wrote:
You may well have done. Woorank is still in beta so may not be 100% accurate, but a good guide/checklist.
I agree - the ranking doesn’t necessarily mean you rank higher, but the higher your rank, the more elements of design / construction you have addressed.
Out of sheer cussedness I ran a few of my sites through Woorank and, while a good shopping list for what you should be doing, I don’t think there’s much need to be over-concerned about the actual ranking. (Although I did note a point or two worth rectifying).
3 sites ranked No. 1, by Google, didn’t produce especially high rankings (partly, no doubt, because they don’t have or need the ‘social’ links or ‘edu’ and ‘gov’ back-links) while one site that runs significantly lower in Google rankings was scored second highest by Woorank out of the ones I tested. It also showed a couple of things missing that weren’t.
Not knowing how the Woorank ratings are weighted, I cannot comment, but this little exercise confirms my belief that content is always king. Yes, provide all the tweaks you can, but don’t rely on technicalities to uplift a site by far. if the site is not already semantically structured, with clear and useful information pertinent to the market, it will be downgraded by Google and the like.
Colin
On 14 Jan 2011, at 10:10, Nathan Garner wrote:
You may well have done. Woorank is still in beta so may not be 100% accurate, but a good guide/checklist.
That’s so interesting, I’ve done a fair bit of research into simple SEO and I come across that sort of comment soooo often ie “content is king” and “semantically structured and clear” … does this mean that - as long as I write accurate descriptive copy on each page that that will help with the rankings … ? it just seems too easy - how does google know it’s semantically correct, does it compare content with keywords, sorry, I can’t quite get my head around it. The site I’m talking about has only 4 pages, I’ve added keywords meta tags etc and the pages, I believe, are quite well written but it still doesn’t appear until page 4 or 5 with a simple search like ‘limousine southampton’ - I admit, looking at it again, it’s missing H1 and H2 tags and I’ll add those but I’m not sure they’d make that much difference … I’ll keep digging way … and thanks again Colin.
Roger
content is always king. Yes, provide all the tweaks you can, but don’t rely on technicalities to uplift a site by far. if the site is not already semantically structured, with clear and useful information pertinent to the market, it will be downgraded by Google and the like.
That’s so interesting, I’ve done a fair bit of research into simple SEO and I come across that sort of comment soooo often ie “content is king” and “semantically structured and clear” … does this mean that - as long as I write accurate descriptive copy on each page that that will help with the rankings … ? it just seems too easy - how does google know it’s semantically correct, does it compare content with keywords, sorry, I can’t quite get my head around it. The site I’m talking about has only 4 pages, I’ve added keywords meta tags etc and the pages, I believe, are quite well written but it still doesn’t appear until page 4 or 5 with a simple search like ‘limousine southampton’ - I admit, looking at it again, it’s missing H1 and H2 tags and I’ll add those but I’m not sure they’d make that much difference … I’ll keep digging way … and thanks again Colin.
Roger
content is always king. Yes, provide all the tweaks you can, but don’t rely on technicalities to uplift a site by far. if the site is not already semantically structured, with clear and useful information pertinent to the market, it will be downgraded by Google and the like.
That’s so interesting, I’ve done a fair bit of research into
simple SEO and I come across that sort of comment soooo often ie
“content is king” and “semantically structured and clear” … does
this mean that - as long as I write accurate descriptive copy on
each page that that will help with the rankings … ? it just seems
too easy - how does google know it’s semantically correct, does it
compare content with keywords, sorry, I can’t quite get my head
around it. The site I’m talking about has only 4 pages, I’ve added
keywords meta tags etc and the pages, I believe, are quite well
written but it still doesn’t appear until page 4 or 5 with a simple
search like ‘limousine southampton’ - I admit, looking at it again,
it’s missing H1 and H2 tags and I’ll add those but I’m not sure
they’d make that much difference … I’ll keep digging way … and
thanks again Colin.
Roger
content is always king. Yes, provide all the tweaks you can, but
don’t rely on technicalities to uplift a site by far. if the site
is not already semantically structured, with clear and useful
information pertinent to the market, it will be downgraded by
Google and the like.
Yours really has very little text content - never mind relevant - and probably not been up there very long.
I crucial area is to get referring links from other (trusted) sites. The best thing you have done about SEO is probably post the URL to FWT where it will get regularly crawled.
If you use Google’s webmaster tools you can use their link checker to see who is linking to you. But you must encourage this.
I have followed all Freeway tools to optimize my website and also read Walter’s post you are mentioning and it’s very interesting, but have no idea how and where to enter the hi, h2, h3 and h4 tags. The site www.woorank.com also mentions h5 and h6.
“We found 45 images on this website.
25 alt attributes are empty or missing!
Alternative text (the alt attribute) is missing for several images. Add alternative text so that search engines can better understand the content of your images.”
Most of the images I have in my site are in Showcase and some using the Target/Show hide
Freeway will automatically add Alt text in images that are over a
certain size threshold. Without looking at your site, it’s hard for me
to say if you have some tiny images that might not get this treatment.
But to add Alt text to an image, or to see the Alt text that Freeway
has automatically put there for you, you just click once on the image,
and look in the Inspector. It’s in the third tab from the left (Output).
Walter
On Jan 14, 2011, at 6:14 PM, Marcus Do Carmo wrote:
“We found 45 images on this website.
25 alt attributes are empty or missing!
Alternative text (the alt attribute) is missing for several images.
Add alternative text so that search engines can better understand
the content of your images.”
Most of the images I have in my site are in Showcase and some using
the Target/Show hide
In Freeway, you attach these tags to text as if they were styles. Look
in the Text Style palette, and you’ll see h1 -3 listed there. You can
add the others if you like, by using the Cog menu to choose Edit
Styles and then using the Tag picker to choose one of the other
heading styles. It’s important to note that the H styles are “block-
level” tags – they are equivalent to a paragraph or an HTML box on
the page in terms of what you can apply them to. You cannot highlight
a single word and make it an H1, but you can highlight an entire
paragraph and make it an H1. (Not that I recommend that.)
Type a couple of words for your headline, then press Return. Triple
click to select all of the text in the line and apply the H1 tag using
the Styles palette.
Walter
On Jan 14, 2011, at 6:09 PM, Marcus Do Carmo wrote:
Hello everyone,
I hope you’re all well!
I have followed all Freeway tools to optimize my website and also
read Walter’s post you are mentioning and it’s very interesting, but
have no idea how and where to enter the hi, h2, h3 and h4 tags. The
site www.woorank.com also mentions h5 and h6.