Question about Google search results?

[FiveTimes]

what changes did you make to your site to make the leap of 8 pages ?

[Fred Bloggs]

what changes did you make to your site to make the leap of 8 pages ?

Validated the HTML against W3C standards, focussed on just three key words (went against advice here about the "long tail") careful attention to unique relevant page titles, unique relevant description tags, keywords, uploaded XML sitemap, a mild rewrite of content. Basically I followed the Google webmaster hints and tips plus suggestions from here. I did register a domain name with my three keywords in it, but so far, I haven't used it.

So far, the increase in business = zip, but it's early days and a very specialised market. I only need a couple of good leads and I'm quids in. The website now competes with top line agency and on-line jobs boards for my chosen keywords, good result, I'd say. Total work, about 5 or 6 hours.

[PAH]

Thanks NF, I haven't a problem with personalisation per se. So I think it's fine for me to just delete the Google cookie occaisionally when I want to see what changes to my webpages has done to their Google ranking.

Sounds like the ranking of your website will also be affected by your visitors search history too if they've already done some searches and haven't deleted their cookies!

[Fred Bloggs]

Sounds like the ranking of your website will also be affected by your visitors search history too if they've already done some searches and haven't deleted their cookies!

I agree. For example if someone has searched a number of times for the three keywords that match my own skill set they may well be completely fed up of clicking on page after page of agency websites and thereby overlook my own website where they could hire me directly.

[NickFitz]

Sounds like the ranking of your website will also be affected by your visitors search history too if they've already done some searches and haven't deleted their cookies!

Absolutely. The days of SEO shysters claiming to "guarantee" results are behind us

[PAH]

Absolutely. The days of SEO shysters claiming to "guarantee" results are behind us

Except for the Google shysters. They're forcing people to pay up for AdWords if they want to guarantee their site is on the first page.

Google are getting too big and need taking down a peg. Which will it be to do it, Bing or M12.

[NickFitz]

Except for the Google shysters. They're forcing people to pay up for AdWords if they want to guarantee their site is on the first page.

Google have never modified their search results for payment. If you have proof to the contrary, you have a world exclusive.

[PAH]

Google have never modified their search results for payment. If you have proof to the contrary, you have a world exclusive.

Apart from the bit where if you pay enough for AdWords you get on the front page, either at the top or down the side.

[Sysman]

Apart from the bit where if you pay enough for AdWords you get on the front page, either at the top or down the side.

And where it suggests that I really mean someone else when I put in my own name.

That never happened until recently.

[Fred Bloggs]

For a UK search on my keywords, I'm one up from the bottom on the first page now. Not bad. (Seems a good tip above to use IE8 private browsing to do searches from, BTW).