Just going through my stats and saw I get a link from Paul Spencer over at Oikofugic Design.
Paul talks about how he has just finished a web site design for Lynsey Birchall.
Paul mentions how Lynsey’s site comes up 1st when you do a Google search for her name.
But not for when you search on what Lynsey wants to be found for – photographic retouching.
The Reasons
The reason Lynsey comes up first for her name is because the title tag of her page says: “Alizarin::Portfolio of Lynsey Birchall“
The name is very unusual and there would be either nil or very few sites that have the name mentioned. The site mentions it in the title tag – it gets # 1 on Google. Simple.
The reason the site doesn’t show up for “photographic retouching” on Google is because the site doesn’t give Google any hints that it’s about photographic retouching.
- Photographic retouching isn’t mentioned in the title tag
- Photographic retouching isn’t mentioned in the meta description
- Photographic retouching isn’t mentioned in the copy of the home page
- Photographic retouching isn’t mentioned in any links coming into the site
Remember, Google is just trying to show the most relevant results when people do a search. So you have to make it clear what the site is about.
What To Do
- Mention photographic retouching early in the title tag of the page you want to be found for someone searching for photographic retouching
- Mention the phrase in the meta description
- Mention the phrase on the page
- Get links to the page using the words photographic retouching as the link text
If Paul does those simple things (1-3 will take 5 minutes, getting links will take longer) then the site should very quickly move up the rankings for “photographic retouching”.
Can you do the same stuff for your web site?
Brendon
P.S: Thanks for the links Paul. Appreciate them ;o)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi there Brendon, was very surprised and pleased to find your post regarding my site this morning, my efforts to get better listings. I will follow your tips and keep track of progress. Many thanks for the great link. Cheers.
It’s worth remembering that the actual algorithms Google use to pull up search results are actually quite simplistic. They aren’t secret, there are a number of sites on the web that take the publicly available Google patents apart line by line … written buy college undergrads from Stanford and indicative of the level of sophistication of many university undergads. Sour grapes I know, ’cause if I’m so darn smart why ain’t I as rich as Sergy and Larry … but in computer science terms my view is accurate … “brute force” is the applicable phrase.
With this in mind an underlying principle of SEO should be apparent to anyone who has raised a child.
Google’s search algos are about as sophisticated as a three-year old’s miond. You can’t leave one off-handed comment and expect the child to remember a task.
You explain to the child what you want, then draw a picture, then provide an analogy to something the child already knows and then explain it all over again.
Google may be a very precocious three year old, but it’s still operating on the same monkey-see, monkey-do level … give it lots of opportunity and different ways to grasp the opportunity and its intelligence will then surprise you.
No worries Paul
See you had a few problems there with your site the same/next day. Bummer.