Posts Tagged ‘irishblogs’
This question “Should a good SEO company rank for [SEO] ?” has popped up a number of times when I meet people to discuss SEO. Also for some SEO firms it’s a point of boasting or a sales pitch, saying that they can rank for some great terms like :
- SEO
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Search Engine Optimization
- SEO consultant
- etc.
Note: I’m not slamming anyone company in these examples, well maybe one, but this is not the point of the post. I want to give some tips on picking a SEO company so that you know the right questions to ask and know when someone is pulling the wool (a little) over your eyes.
Reality Time
A sad fact in this matter is that people searching for [SEO] are more likely to be other SEO companies, rather than potential clients looking for some SEO help. So the fact that they rank for SEO probably doesn’t even help their bottom line. Here is a little comparison between the number of searches for [SEO] and the number of searches for [cake recipe] using a popular enough keyword [house prices] as a scale. This graph relates to the worldwide view rather than just Ireland.
It just can’t be that there are similar enough numbers of people looking to bake cakes, as there are people looking for information on SEO. My tip would be if a company says they rank for a keyword, give it a check on google trends or on google keyword tool for adwords to find out exactly how popular it is.
Looking at the amount of enquiries I got last year, and the % of them which came from the keyword [SEO] I would have to say it was close to zero. I would hazard a guess that the a lot of my manual comment SPAM for SEO tools and link building etc, is from dubious firms putting these keywords into their browser and going through the first few pages of Google results to find some links. So the fact that a company ranks for [SEO] doesn’t really help them, rather it probably wastes a bit of their resources, unless they are using it for bragging rights.
Final Thoughtson hiring a SEO company
If you are going to hire a SEO company, ask more about what they do and how they do things. What is their approach to site structure ? And how to they go about procuring back links ? Don’t be fooled when a company says that they are are #1 or #2 for a particular {keyword}, and therefore they must be good and they will be able to get you to rank at a high position too. Rather, ask for real life cases they have worked on, and what the resulting traffic increase has been because of their SEO efforts. Request Google Analytics data (or some other statistical report) of before and after the SEO campaign, and if necessary verify with their client that the SEO company has actually done this.
An aside : And oh, here are our SERPs for SEO 
so we do rank somewhere, but just not that high, but then again we are not looking for new clients, so that’s okay.
A quick post to say thanks to my few clients who trusted me to get their website back in the index or to tweak their pages to get a few more visitors to their pages. Thanks to those who have collaborated on projects, have shared their code, and even offered their business advice. It was more than a pleasure emailing, talking on the phone, skype or on IM with you. The first year in business was a bit of an eye opener, a challenge at times and a steep learning curve. Thanks for helping me get there.
Merry Christmas !
Jobberbase [www.jobberbase.com] is a rather powerful jobs board software which we’ve been testing on jobsinireland.org for the last year or so. Overall it has become a rather mature and stable software, offering the ability for companies to post open jobs.
Aside : In fact, if your company doesn’t already have a career portal on your website, this software would be a great way to avoid recruiters. In the business of hiring, recruiters & agents have gotten a bad reputation for either being too expensive or for simply wasting employers time. With jobberbase you could have your HR staff post jobs openings directly on your website, and candidate could apply directly to you. With recuiter fees being in the thousands of Euros for a successful new hire, having your own jobs board could be a real money saver.
Some issues with jobberbase
Although the software is strong, there are a few weaknesses, especially for the SEO side of things. The first problem is that the footer template (located at /_templates/default/footer.tpl) is a global footer. This means that the same footer is used right across the whole website. Generally your homepage is your strongest page on your website and you should use this. We recommend adding a custom footer for the homepage and adding some extra text or perhaps deeper links to your site from here. Also if you are linking to other websites the effective difference between a site-wide link and a homepage link is minimal.
Another, and perhaps less known issue with jobberbase (in versions up to 1.8 at least) is the fact that the error page template returns a HTTP status of 200 (page found), rather than a 404 (page not found) error code. With jobberbase, once a job is removed, the page is no longer listed and if you call the URL of this job you will be redirected to a generic “unavailable page”, but this page is served as a real page (that should be indexed) rather than as an error page. My quick solutions to address these two issues are highlighted below (file references here are made for version 1.8 of jobberbase)
Jobberbase custom homepage footer
Jobberbase proper error page handling
- copy the file /_templates/default/header.tpl to /_templates/default/header-404.tpl
- edit the file /_templates/default/header-404.tpl and add at the top of the file
{php}
header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
{/php}
- edit the file /_templates/default/error.tpl change the first line from
{include file="header.tpl"}
to
{include file="header-404.tpl"}
Advertise your open jobs
And finally if you are an Irish company, and want to find good quality staff for free, then we recommend you submit your jobs to jobs in ireland where you have total control of the applications and best of all it’s completely free ! www.jobsinireland.org
There has been a bit of a buzz in the SEO community this week with the announcement from Google about their new version of Google. Essentially it is still in a testing (sandbox) phase, and they have opened it up for feedback. I still have to see some real major differences, but it does show some slight changes in the algorithm.
Some quick points noted about Google Caffeine :
- Image results seem to have lower priority.
- Search results appears to be about 50% faster.
- Larger index size.
- A different sensitivity to keywords in domain names.
Caffeine Comparison Tool
As always we like comparisons to be easy, like the Google / Bing Comparison, so I chopped the tool around to do a comparison between Google and the new Google Caffeine version and it’s located at www.comparecaffeine.com .Give the tool a run and see for yourself the differences.
Right now we have a US .com and Irish .IE targeted versions, more can be added upon request. Just say the word !
Updates
Given the amount of feedback I’ve gotten, I decided to implement some changes:
- Added .CO.UK version , the tool is now available in .COM / .CO.UK / .DE & .IE versions
- Ability to see more than 10 results, now has the option to show 10/20/50/100 SERPs
- Personalised search is turned off. Result changes on the current version of Google SERPs won’t be effected by what you have clicked / searched previously.
Bing From Microsoft
Today Microsoft has relaunched Windows Live search and it is now called Bing (www.bing.com). Right now Bing looks very promising, at least for the US market, their image search and some localisation seems to be better compared with google.com. For some searches like [thai restaurant 33308] the results are very similar indeed. Bing’s image search has a nice slight zoom in featyre , and “similar images to this” option which is rather nice. They present the results rather clearer than google, and have an easier navigation system on the left hand side to drill down on queries.
For Bing.IE the results we looked at seem on a par with google.ie, i.e. as good or even better, when it comes to general queries of facts ([horse racing] for example). But when we start to ask more localised and to ask for [doctors in Cork] or [cooking courses], bing starts to show it’s weakness. I would generally expect more local search results to be returned, even without specifying “only pages from Ireland”. I’m sure that this will be improved over time, and Bing.IE’s deficiencies are not always a bad thing. Right now there are very little ads on bing.ie, so you can be sure that the results you are getting are not confusing you with paid ads. This alone would move me to check bing before google.
Compare Google & Bings Search Results
For SEOs we have thrown together a quick tool that basically compares the two search engines side by side in one frame. Check out our Google compared with Bing Tool . Here you have the option to compare the .com or the .ie version of the search engines . The query will check and display the results for both search engines so you can see the difference in their ordering of the SERPs.
Google vs. Bing
Search Results compared
Submit your site to Bing
Hat tip to Michele for the link toBing’s URL submission. If you were previously in MSN Live Search results, then your site should also be listed in Bing, but if not you should take the time to add your URL.
Is Bing the Google Killer ?
Right now I think it is too early to say whether Bing is a real Google killer, but it does look like it will give Google a run for their money. I’ve read that Microsoft are planning an ad campaign in around the $100m mark, so after that I’m sure everyone will know what it is ‘to bing‘ just like they know what it is ‘to google‘.
Over the last few days I’ve noticed that on some queries on google.ie there new feature added to the SERPS. Now certain search results will result in blending in a listing of local businesses. These have already been active on google.com and google.de for sometime now, and it’s great to see their roll out in Ireland. Right now Google Business Listing are under used in a selection of queries that would lend themselves to listing actual local businesses, see this example for [doctor cork].
Business Listing
So if you were a Doctor in Cork, you could possibly easily get your business listed in the A-J business listing. Just think of the extra number of enquiries/leads that a bussiness could get by having their business appear in such listings. Of course some areas of business areas are already using this to full effect, take the hotels in dublin for example.
Hotels in Dublin
List your business on Google Local Business Listing
Here is a quick run down on how to get your business listed on the google local business listings:
- Go to the Local Business Center
- Login with your google account
- Select Add New Listing
- Enter your business details and link to your website
- Select your business categories and add opening hours
- Verify by phone/SMS/post
When adding your business we would recommend to add as much information as you can. Also think about optimising your company’s name listing to insure that it includes the type of business you operate.
For the US listings, Google has used some 3rd party websites like the Yellow Pages & Trip Advisor to seed the index. And it appears that some of the Irish listings have come through 3rd party sites also. If your company is listed via one of these sites, you can still take ownership by clicking on the link and viewing the full listing and then select “Add or edit your business”.
The Bad of Google Business Listing
Where there is any oppertunity to game google there will be people who will take advantage of it. Right now there does appear to be some SPAM in the listing for some queries like [car hire cork]
Spam in the Business Listings
Right now there doesn’t seem to be a way to report a listing, but maybe Google will add that soon.
Edit : Thanks to JohnMuller from Google I found out how to report SPAM on google maps.