Scotland 1 France 0 now Scotland knows what SEO guys feel like!!!

It was an amazing night last night for Scotland, beating one of the best teams in the world on their turf!!! Well done Scotland. Today people in Scotland are feeling what can only be said, what a SEO person feels when they eventually move up the ranks in google search results.

There is nothing better than seeing your site move above competitions after months if not years of blood, sweat and tears. SEO guys are a bit like plumbers no one really appreciates, what they have had to do to get websites up the search engines, this normally because you cannot see a lot of the work being done. Also like plumbers the client knows its working or not.

SEO is a funny old business, rather like sport. As Liverpool Manager Bill Shankly once said -'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I'm very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.' Well sometimes it feels as thou SEO is the same as you watch google frantically for signs of change. SEO is like being the manager. You can tell everybody what to do, you can shout from the touchline but you never tell whether they are going to perform. Is your goalie (aka webmaster) going to let a sitter in ie change the way the server works without telling you. Is your striker (marketing director) going to get into his head some strange new strategy that he doesn't tell you about. Every so often it just happens you wake up one morning and you have shot to the top of the rankings... just like last night when McFadden turned and shot it straight over the goalie. Perfect. It only happens once or twice.

So my advice if you want to feel like a champion and walk down the street with your head held high when you have reached the number one slot then remember these simple rules.

• Right good unique content
• Try and add new pages to your site daily / weekly
• Use bloggers on your own site
• Make sure your site is well designed and easy to navigate for surfers and search engines
• Get inbound links from good quality sites
• Don't link to any old site be careful
• Don't try sneaky tactics like hiding text, buying link etc Google knows all the tricks

The best sites tend to have been well thought out and have lots of great content which is ideal for the Long Tail theory. Sometimes you will find you get more traffic off all the 100's of pages you've been adding rather than worrying about getting to number 1 for a specific search term. Remember one thing when you do reach number one there is only one way to go so be prepared to fight to stay up there as you will become the one to beat.

SEO seems to be just like fishing

SEO to me was very much just like fishing, you sit there for ages waiting for a bite, never knowing if you are in the right place, have the right bait or technique.

Coming from a sales background where results in many cases was instant to SEO where much of your efforts become unnoticed for months sometimes years. Well the key I think is to be patient and methodical.

Like any type of success whether its body building, painting pictures or creating a wonderful garden, it all takes time and a strict routine.

SEO can be very intimidating and misleading with so many forums and guesswork going on, not know which argument is correct. Well here are some basic principles I have picked up over time.

1. KISS - Keep It Short and Simple. The truth still stand that less is more, sites that do well have a clear and concise message and aren't cluttered with extra stuff. I know I leave a site straight away if I see an affiliate banner on a home page.

2. All services and products should be easily accessible, the 3 click theory. It should take 3 clicks to get where you want on a site.

3. Make sure your menu is easy for search engines to follow. Text based links are always best.

4. Go after good quality links. Passed experience has shown the harder it is to get a link from a site generally means the site is better. Try and get relevant sites to link to you, difficult if they are competition.

5. Definitely have a site map, this helps spiders and surfers navigate your site.

6. Write good articles about the industry you are in and submit them to article sites.

7. Bookmark your site on social bookmark sites using widgets




8. Keep adding good content to your site.

This is just basic stuff that I do, the main thing is just to be patient and religious in your routine. Happy SEOing

Is it Goodbye Google?

For the last seven years I have been using google adwords over any other form of advertising. At the start, keywords were very cheap as there was very little competition, but of course, like all new things the honeymoon period is over.

Over the last 12 months Google has changed a lot of its algorithms to return better results and continue the fight against spam. However this fight may have gone one step to far...

As a small business every penny counts, I have invested a lot of our revenue into Google adwords over the years. I also look after quite a few of my clients adword campaigns, but over the last 12 month I've seen 3 major factors change, and it may be Goodbye Google as far as spending money on adwords is concerned.

1. Naturally there is more competition now on adwords than what there was 5 years ago, or even just 12 months ago. My cost per click has almost doubled in the last 12 months, and to also add salt to injury my conversion of enquiries has dropped considerably. These two elements compound the fact that costs have gone up and conversion has gone down, which in turn means the cost per sale has risen dramatically.

The content advertising has also seem to get weaker for many of our adword campaigns, we have recently stopped advertising on the content network. I have tracked many clicks coming from bogus sites over the years, and I'm not sure google can track all the bogus sites and clicks.

I know Google rewards sites for good conversion, I'm pretty sure that our conversion rate is one of the best, so I would hate to think how much the other sites with lower conversions are paying. Over the last 12 months I have managed over $200,000 in adword advertising.

2.The second reason we are looking at alternatives is our Adsense revenue is 1/4 of what it was last year. The weak Dollar against the GB Pound really also does not help. What I am unsure about is how Google is charging more for adwords and maybe paying less for adsense? Or is it because of reason 3?

3.Over the last 18 months has been a nightmare for any internet business relying on traffic from natural searches. Since Google's updates, many of our sites which were doing fantastic, have now gone. I can understand link popularity and the reasoning behind it, but the fact is most small business do not have the time or the resources to do the link building that is required of them.

I will give you an example, my number one revenue site for sales www.edinburghstagparty.com

After a long hard effort the site's home page came back for the keywords:

Edinburgh Stag Party

But the many 100's of keyords like Edinburgh Hen Weekend or Edinburgh Stag Weekend we have never returned for. I would expect at least Edinburgh Hen Weekend or Edinburgh Stag Weekend to be just as effective. I know there will be many of you out there saying well this page is not optimised that alt tags is missing etc, but I can give examples of sites higher than mine who mention the keyword once. Google used to rate them for the keywords, so it knows what the page is about, but for whatever reason has decided to supplement most of my pages.

I did a test last week and for the first time in a long time, I got a much better result from advertising in a paper than I did in Google adwords. What I think has happened is Google has taken such a large proportion of companies advertising spend like mine, that it's forced the traditional channels of advertising to me more competitive. So for 2007 I will be spending less with Google and more on other advertising mediums, I will also be advising my clients to also consider looking at similar avenues.

I would love to hear feed back from anyone else, I'm sure I am not the only one in the UK who has noticed it.

I saw this more feed back on other people with issues about google Scobleizer

Looking For Well Organised Link Partners

I am looking for webmasters, SEO companies who understand the importance of good quality link exchange. We run many websites and feel with the right partners we can all benefit from good quality linking.

We have begun writing good articles with deep linking and placing them on 3rd parties websites. This has shown to be very effective if done correctly. If you are interested in teaming up with us and have good quality sites and don't do black hat tactics we would love to hear from you.

Email links@helpmego.to