Search engine ranking

[SW1970]

There are pitfalls to avoid with SEO as well. Some organisations (free and paid) will claim to put you high up on google. What they do is add you to a big link list and you might be near the top of google for a few weeks as a result but google does regular trawls of link databases and gives those on the list negative ranking as a result (you'll drop off the bottom of the list). There are many books on this; including Dummies Guides etc. Spend £20 on reading one of those and find out how it works. It's more about avoiding falling off the bottom rather than getting to the top. I have a website on that is usually 3rd or 4th at the top of google for a particular search term and I've not paid a penny to be there!

 

[johnosman]

It's a fallacy that a website will get penalised for having links from a link farm, if this was the case all the top SEO guys would just build inbound links from dodgy websites to their competitors websites. Your website will only get spanked by google if you do blackhat onpage SEO.

 

[SW1970]

But that would rely on the competitor agreeing to publish a link. How's that going to happen then?

 

[johnosman]

What you are talking about is an inbound link, anybody can build inbound links to any site. SEO involves 2 factors, 1 onpage seo and internal links between pages on a website. 2 Offpage seo which involves building links to the pages of a website using relevant anchor text from other websites.

 

[robsparky1975]

Thanks for the Gumtree tip, bristollspark. I've just set up an ad now, and will see how it goes.

You mentioned a link to your website, but I didn't see that as an option - only to a YouTube URL.

Surprising the gumtree,so quick were yell to try and flog me advertising.

 

[robsparky1975]

To be honest for the majority of small businesses in this climate, parting with £250 monthly expense is way too much. You would need to get about £1000 extra a month to cover the cost. I agree with the first comments, that you have to do all you can first by yourself, then give it time, then seek professional help.

It was a one off fee of £250.also this company is small and like myself not vat registered so im thinking its just a one man band who knows his stuff,i think i might get some of his client references.

 

[sparc]

It sounds like some of the guys here know their onions, so wondering if any know how you get your website URL to land on electrician.html - rather than standard index.html? I know it can be done, just not sure how.

I ask this - cos learning about SEO for first time on this thread - I read having something like electrician.html boosts the chances of Google finding it - or maybe I just didn't understand that correctly.

 

[johnosman]

Not a web designer but I know a fair bit about SEO, to get your website indexed or as you say found by google the easiest way to do it is to link off of a page that google spiders regularly. As I said earlier in this thread by putting an add on Gumtree with a link back to your site is a great way to get indexed. You can submitt your site to google through their submission page but it then goes into a queue and has to wait as these are all checked manually.
The biggest mistake most people make when building a website is that they don't understand keyword research and just build a site around joeblogselectrics. Your site needs to be optimised for words that somebody looking for an electrician in your area is going to type into google such as "electrician london" Check out Googles keyword search tool, if you put a phrase in such as "London electrician" it will tell you roughly how many times this term is searched per month on Google, it will also give you similar phrases that it maybe worth optimising your website for.