Website Optimisation

There's nothing wrong with DIY SEO (optimising your own website), if you really know what you are doing. If your website represents your business or even your livelihood, would you really want to dabble with it? A lot of people will task the job of website marketing to the firm's I.T guy because 'he knows about computers' - or there is someone who considers himself a Google expert because he spends a lot of time on the internet! Do you know someone who considers themselves a 'Google Expert'?

Thinking that you fully understand search engine optimisation and genuinely knowing the ins-and-outs of search engine optimisation are two totally different things.

SEO and Website marketing is a serious business, I compare running a website to running a car, both are vehicles in their own right but do you service your own car? (or do you tinker with it?).

You probably rely upon your local garage. Tinkering with your car can and will create problems.

Equally dabbling with your website, badly attempted search engine optimisation, manipulating search engines and misunderstanding website marketing & internet promotion techniques can also endanger your online business. It makes sense to leave it to Internet Marketing Experts.

Google is the main search engine and portal, probably the internet industry's benchmark in terms of marketing and promoting websites, search engine optimisation and website marketing. There is also Yahoo, Bing and Ask but Google has the lion's share of the search engine market.

Google's algorithm is often the main subject in many SEO forums. It is also the least understood. To get a better picture of Google and the way it operates this mystical algorithm, we need to divide it into two distinct areas; hardware and software. (Obvious really!)

Google's head office has been nicknamed 'Googleplex'. It's easy to think of 'Googleplex' as being home to massive high end, super expensive, top of the range, state-of-the-art servers. Rows upon rows of massive computers, stacked in a clinical, sterile environment.

The truth is; the results that Google provide are partly due to thousands of relatively low-cost PC's all networked and operating from software using Google's search algorithm - it is this set up that creates the fast search engine that we rely upon.

The hub of Google's search engine and algorithm software is PageRank™, developed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page; Google's founders. Note Larry PAGE, as in PAGErank and has nothing to do with the rank of your page ...actually it has but the name comes from Larry page.

PageRank™ is often a curse to many search engine optimisers ( SEO's ) and probably the most misunderstood section of internet marketing and promoting websites.

It works on the basis that each and every page in cyber space has a value. So whilst you may look upon your website has a whole and indeed your website marketing and promotions may concentrate on your website as a whole, Google's PageRank relies upon a sort of democratic make up. It looks at links as votes.

It looks at who is linking to your site and assesses a value to the particular page partly based upon the value of a particular page which has a link. A good quality link to your site has a greater value than several poor quality links. Effectively you can waste so much valuable time building links to your website and feeling satisfied for a job well done ... until Google drops your rank!

Much confusion is scattered among search engine optimization experts and DIY'ers alike. Search Engine Marketing Forums can propagate Chinese Whispers and this part of Google's algorithm is generally misunderstood.

Links are important, there's no question about it but will putting links on your website to another website move you up in Google and improve your website's PageRank?

Google looks at a link from one page to another as a vote. The vote is for that particular page where the link resides to the recipient page ... not for the website as a whole.

So if you are thinking about the sheer volume of links ... or votes as gaining a higher pagerank in Google, your website marketing and promotions will be in vain! A quick backlink check by Google will uncover the nature of the page that casted the vote. Let's take a comical scenario, your page is based upon Wedding Gifts and there is a link from a Funeral Director, there is little or no relevance, so if Google views the voting page as "important", they will have more clout in making your page important. That isn't to say that the Funeral Director's website wasn't important in its own spectrum, relevance pays a crucial role.

Another common myth ... and there are lots of them! is that once you have successfully submitted your website to Google - you may sit and enjoy the results. What really happens is that Google remembers your site when someone conducts a relevant search, its pagerank was sufficiently high to jog Google's memory and if it matches the query, your website will be indexed highly.

So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with our results extremely difficult. And though we do run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher PageRank). A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search. More

Contact Peter Yexley on 01727 825 999