Website Design & SEO Tips

 Bad news for anyone working in the web or design or seo industry as Google have decided that as a result of customer needs they will not list any of these businesses with the map at the top of the search results if you put “web design town”  into the search box.  Sometimes it will list the map entries at the top of the search results if you write “web design IN town” but how many searchers will know that!!  Isn’t this just clear discrimination by Google against anyone involved in the web design business.  Why would they do that particularly when we very effectively were selling Google’s services to our clients.  Are we really going to promote Google’s services when they make our industry invisible in this way?

I found particularly disturbing the response in the thread below from Joel a Google employee; (my emphasis)

“Hi Folks - 

Earlier thread, Brian (BB- baseonballs) noted that this may be related to a known issue regarding the display of local search results on google.com. After further investigation, they are slightly different, and I’ll explain our intent.

Today, we’re intentionally showing less local results for web design / SEO queries. For example, [web design sacramento] doesn’t display local listings today. We believe this is an accurate representation of user intent. In some cases, we do show local listings, however (as NSNA/php-er noted) [web design in bellingham]. I’m sure some of you feel we should be displaying local results for queries like [Web Design Vancouver]. I understand that concern, but based on our understanding of our users, we feel this is the right decision for now.

I’ll give the usual disclaimer that we’re constantly working on improving the user experience and results will vary over time. So, this could change in the future, but I wanted to be explicit about what we’re doing today.”

Discrimination-Google confirms it no longer lists local map results for web design, seo unless the word in or near used!! http://goo.gl/4a52

“

RMilne Level 1 10:38 AM

Joel H: “some SEOs/web designers want their website, not a local listing, to be the primary destination”

 

The local listings link directly to businesses websites, how could any SEO / web designer not want users to see their business shown in a group of local listings???

 

Joel H: “we think this is a better user experience”

“Using words in or near seem to be suggestive of a different intent”

 

In what way is a search for something like “website design sacramento” any different at all from a search for “website design in sacramento” ??? The first search is just shorthand for the second one.

 

Google gave users on screen hints for years and years along the lines of “in is a very common word and was not included in your search”, that’s how users have been educated to search and so now they quite reasonably expect to not have to use common words like in and near. They don’t have to when they’re searching for other businesses so why would it occur to them to use those words when they’re searching for SEO and web design companies???

 

The other thing that hasn’t been addressed is why some searches for website design and SEO are still working as before? Why on earth would user intent differ from country to country?

 

Working examples:

 

Italy -

website design rome

website design milano

website design parma

 

Australia -

website design sydney

website design melbourne

website design brisbane

 

France -

website design paris

website design bordeaux

website design lyon

 

In short, how can any of what’s been happening with local listings possibly be considered a “better user experience”

Our first snow in the campervan.  We are still parked up in the lovely field in Belton, Norfolk with the donkey!   We ahve now been living for 2 months on the road in our antique Bedford CF340 aged 31.  This morning we woke up to about an inch of snow.  Everyone assumes we will be cold but nothing could be farther from the truth.  We are very cosy and particularly so at night despite having no heating on.  There is something about our bed above the cabin that just keeps us wonderfully warm. 

I think part of it is that we have become acclimatised.  I realised that yesterday when eating a bourbon biscuit – I was perfectly warm but realised that the cream inside the bourbon was rock solid!

Workwise we continue to work long long hours but I have spent the last week or so mastering CSS to try in some way to catch up with Mike – some hope!  But I have managed to right the style sheet for 2 websites, one of them particularly complex with equal sized columns regardless of the amount of text in each, so I am pretty happy with myself.

Obviously business can slow up quite a bit just before Christmas and this did concern me but we have had calls from 4 businesses in Norfolk to set up meetings the first week back after Christmas to discuss some pretty large websites so I’m happy.  Very few people walk away after meeting us regarding websites so we are hopeful of a reasonable amount of business from those meetings.

Recently I provided SEO advice to a larger corporation and am waiting so see if I get a long term contract from them.  It’s all very exciting.

I am looking forward to our first Christmas on the road, Christmas dinner in a motorhome, wonderful.  We have decorated the motorhome with tinsel and lights and it is like living in a grotto – it makes me chuckle each time I walk back in.  I have taken some photos and will put a pic in when I have taken the photos off the camera, now I must get back to work!

You will see I have added a number of new forms to my blog.  Maybe the most important one is the one for a FREE SEO Analysis!!

This SEO analysis will obviously not be in depth but I will be able to give you some ideas how to improve your website’s performance in searches.  Try it out and see what you think.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION TIPS FOR FREE!!!!

If you read my blog then you will know that the Duracell Bunnies advert is my current favourite.  I added this important fact to my blog just for fun about a week or so ago.  If you now search for duracell bunnies advert in Google you will see we come up half way down the second page for the whole web.  Now over time this result will sink down the results as the Google algorith will take into account relevance and traffic and as obviously this blog is not devoted to the topic of duracell bunnies this website will be seen as less relevant and therefore will move down the search engine results.

This is a simple example of how changing the content on an indexed website can bring you into the search engine results quite quickly, however you will only maintain your position by keeping your content surrent and relevant ie in this case I would have to keep adding content to this website on the same or similar topic on a regular basis.  So regularly adding more content containing your keywords helps your search engine position.

Increasingly people are adopting the Ask.com mentality and instead of just putting one or two keywords into the Google search box they will very often ask questions.  I, for example, run an SEO website called SEO4all and, of course, would love my website to appear high in searches for words like SEO, search results or search engine optimisation.  However these are extremely common keywords and many other companies have been running websites based on these keywords for many years therefore it would be ridiculous for me to hope to appear on the first page of Google for any of these individual terms.

I decided therefore to think about what questions might be entered into the Google search box and decided that some people might enter “how do I seo my website”.  Consequently I made sure that my website has that phrase in a number of places and that one of the URLs was also that phrase.  Despite only having set the website up a couple of weeks ago the website for SEO4all appears at position 15 out of 23,600,000 for a world-wide search for that key phrase.

So do not become fixated about succeeding in searches for any particular keyword, work out what others may put into Google to get your type of business to appear high in the search results, then make sure that you use that phrase within your website.

If you have particular success doing this please do leave a comment and do ask if you need me to explain anything further.

Here are some useful links for Google tools that will help you optimise your website.

Google Map Entry Business Account  - always get a map entry for your business and remember you can select up to 5 categories, try and use all of them!

Google Business Tools - if you do not have the time or the energy to use the more complicated analytics programmes then just sign up for Google Webmaster tools, it provides just enough information for most small to medium businesses.  There are many other useful tools available on this page.