Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Yep. One very good tip - keep it simple. There are so many whizzy bangie things available, but most of the just hurt the retina. A really good example of what not to do.. A nice clean website design will make things easy.


Look at the best example of this - Google (even though they occasionally try to wreck it).

Search engine optimisation really means Google optimisation for most websites these days. It will take more than a 'sit down' but if you have a limited budget you can learn a lot of the basics yourself. There's a lot of jargon in the industry that might seem baffling at first and although SEO can be greatly effected by things such as canonical urls, 301 redirects, .htaccess configuration, the robots.txt file, XML sitemaps, the main thing is to ensure you have relevant, accessible and well structured content. Remember that search engine robots will read your site as plain text - even images will be indexed using their file names, titles, alt tags, and descriptions so think carefully about what keywords people will be using to search for your site and write relevant content around those.


Google also places a lot of importance on page titles and the structure of html too, so make sure your web designer knows how to write standards-compliant (x)html. It's a bit cliche but user friendly is Google friendly so having readable urls, good html titles, consistent navigation and accessible content will help lots.


Get a Google account, install Google Analytics, submit your site to the major search engines and verify it in Google's Webmaster tools (or get your web designer/developer to do this for you). Sit back and review your analytics statistics to make sure you're meeting your goals or to see whether you need to make any changes.


Ultimately, be wary of anyone who promises to get your site to the top of Google (no-one can guarantee that) or anyone who advocates bad practices such as keyword stuffing, deceptive redirects, link schemes etc - this could lead to your site being blacklisted and you will be removed from Google's results altogether. Not irreversible, but a pain in the ass no less.


A good place to start is this from the horses mouth:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf


Good luck!


EDIT: I forgot to say that if you can get your keywords in your domain name, then that is a mega bonus (www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk is actually a really good example of this).

Hi - I do this on Google for a living so can offer some insight:


1) Get some links to your site from other sites. Don't just spam forums with your link - offer to write guest articles for other blogs but request they credit your site [this has the additional benefit of driving traffic to your site. In Google's eyes this is means your site has quality content if you are being put on other 'high ranking' blogs


2) Put your blog on social media - make a facebook page for your blog, have a twitter account that links new articles make a tumblr account etc. Again this links back to point 1 regarding additional links from external sites. My hot tip for the moment is make a Youtube video that describes your site - Google owns youtube but is loosing money on it so they are trying to drive more traffic to the site by putting videos into search results (typically near the top). Takes about 20minutes to make a 30 second video and edit it but you really do see results!


3) Do NOT copy content from other site in large amounts - Google has a good algorithm for recognizing original content and if something is copied in large quantities you are pushed back down the rankings.


4) Make sure the coding of your site is up to scratch - no loose HTML tags, the "alt" tags on images are filled in etc etc. Again this is fairly standard stuff but the Google algorithm only 'sees' your site as raw code so make sure it is perfect


The main thing is just to make sure you have good, original content that people share around (it helps having twitter/facebook buttons on your page to help share the links). The more popular your website becomes the higher it goes in the rankings.


Much of the above is fairly standard - what is the area/subject topic your blog is in? If the topic is fairly competitive it is hard to break the "top 5" in Google.


Good luck!

SEO is a bit of an odd beast at the moment. One thing to bear in mind about linking from blogs, flickr , youtube etc etc is a lot of these sites now prefix all links with NoFollow tags, meaning "well behaved" spiders shouldn't index them. of course, that doesn't always apply. I have links on my sites that are deliberately marked nofollow and still I see instances of spiders visiting them in the logs.


Ironside has it right though. link, cross reference , rinse and repeat. And content is king ! The better the content the better the links


good luck


(btw.. for what it's worth.. none of my sites ever made it to the top 5 PAGES let alone the top 5 links ;-) .. so perhaps I'm not the best person to listen to ;-)

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Latest Discussions

    • Per Cllr McAsh, as quoted above: “We are currently updating our Enforcement Policy and changes will allow for the issuing of civil penalties ranging from £175 to £300 for visible smoke emissions, replacing the previous reliance on criminal prosecution. " Is anyone au fait with the Clean Air Act 1993, and  particularly with the state of 'Smoke Control' law and practice generally?  I've just been looking  through some of it for the first time and, afaics, the civil penalties mentioned  were introduced into the Clean Air Act, at Schedule 1A, in May 2022.  So it seems that, in this particular,  it's a matter of the enforcement policy trailing well behind the legislation.  I'm not criticising that at all, but am curious.  
    • Here's the part of march46's linked-to Southwark News article pertaining to Southwark Council. "Southwark Council were also contacted for a response. "Councillor James McAsh, Cabinet Member for Clean Air, Streets & Waste said: “One of Southwark’s key priorities is to create a healthy environment for our residents. “To achieve this we closely monitor legislation and measures that influence air pollution – our entire borough apart from inland waterways is designated as a Smoke Control Area, and we also offer substantial provision for electric vehicles to promote alternative fuel travel options and our Streets for People strategy. “We as a council support the work of Mums for Lungs and recognise the health and environmental impacts of domestic solid fuel burning, particularly from wood-burning appliances. “We are currently updating our Enforcement Policy and changes will allow for the issuing of civil penalties ranging from £175 to £300 for visible smoke emissions, replacing the previous reliance on criminal prosecution.  “This work is being undertaken in collaboration with other London boroughs as part of the pan-London Wood Burning Project, which aims to harmonise enforcement approaches and share best practice across the capital.” ETA: And here's a post I made a few years ago, with tangential relevance.  https://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/topic/278140-early-morning-drone-flying/?do=findComment&comment=1493274  
    • The solicitor is also the Executor. Big mistake, but my Aunt was very old, and this was the Covid years and shortly after so impossible to intervene and get a couple of close relatives to do this.  She had no children so this is the nephews and nieces. He is a single practitioner, and most at his age would have long since retired - there is a question over his competence Two letters have already gone essentially complaining - batted off and 'amusingly' one put the blame on us. There are five on our side, all speaking to each other, and ideally would work as a single point of contact.  But he has said that this is not allowed - we've all given approval to act on each others behalf. There are five on her late husband's side, who have not engaged with us despite the suggestion to work as a team, There is one other, who get's the lion's share, the typicical 'friend', but we are long since challenging the will. I would like to put another complaint together that he has not used modern collective communication (I expect that he is incapable) which had seriously delayed the execution of the will.   I know many in their 80s very adept with smart phones so that is not an ageist comment. The house has deteriorated very badly, with cold, damp and a serious leak.  PM me if you want to see the dreadful condition that it is now in. I would also question why if the five of us are happy to work together why all of us need to confirm in writing.             The house was lived in until Feb 23, and has been allowed to get like this.
    • Isn’t a five yearly electricity safety certificate one of the things the landlord must give for a legal tenancy?
Home
Events
Sign In

Sign In



Or sign in with one of these services

Search
×
    Search In
×
×
  • Create New...