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March 7, 2005

Notes from a far country - SEO.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a topic that interests me as it is one of the factors on which I advise my clients (who are small and micro businesses).

So I was interested to read in the UK weekly computer press a report about this regarding some of the top UK listed companies. The report stated that more than ¾ of the FTSE 100 companies fail to appear in the top 10 search listings.

The companies that fail to appear in the first 3 pages of Google searches include Telecoms and Mobile phone companies, banks and financial firms. Interestingly tobacco companies (tobacco advertising is banned in the UK) fare better than average.

For my clients, I emphasise that it is hard, and ongoing, work getting to the top three pages and staying there. Just creating the website is no guarantee of success (it would probably be a guarantee of failure!). There are whole websites dedicated to analysing search engines. With many of these you have to pay to get the detailed analysis.

The classic case I relate to my clients is that of a client of a colleague of mine.

My colleague reports that her client, who runs a holiday cottage in Mid Wales, spends hours every week researching the latest information on SEO on the web, then optimising her web site in the light of this research. The result is that her cottage is often on the first, or first 3 pages of a Google search. The end result is that her cottage is fully booked – which is the objective of her website.

So it is interesting to see that non-IT specialists can compete with the bigger players and specialists when it comes to the Internet.

A case of everyone is equal on the web?

Posted by at March 7, 2005 1:11 PM

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Comments

The problem with the SEO is that it can not read your mind. It can just guess based on the behavior of past searchers. When I first searched on "Hassan Farooqi" to see what was on the net about me, I found to my horror that it listed a whole bunch of terrorists but not me. Freaked out, I searched and searched myself until I found my "iSeries Network Pro" profile. I clicked it a few times and now "Hassan Farooqi" would put my iSeries Network profile on top. I will continue to do that frequently, just to be safe.

If those telecom companies wants to appear on top for search, they should pay google and to place their company name when "Tobacco Companies" is searched. The small guys can keep searching themselves and hitting themselves like I did.

If the companies wants to search a business in their area, they can use "Google Local". In North America we have some very effective local search engines like 411.ca whitepages.com and yellowpages.com etc. In fact I used a combo of google and 411.ca to locate a long lost childhood friend. While he was more than happy to meet me, he almost freaked out to know that there is absolutely no privacy in North America!!!

Posted by: Hassan at March 9, 2005 2:40 PM

I am a lot of a novis on the web , but Im sure that such a vast knowledge base must have archives of peoples past phone numbers and addressess ;yes?
Can you give direction to a frustrated novis ...PLEASE

Posted by: jeff kruper at August 5, 2005 1:35 PM

I do not know any search engine that changes rank just because you click the link! Look at the Google source for a page, there is no way for them to know who clicks what. Their rank is based on an algorithm that takes popularity into account, based on what the links from the rest of the world. If just clicking could advance rank, the engines would be meaningless. What search engine are you referring to, Hassan?

Posted by: Ira Chandler at August 8, 2005 3:07 PM

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