Getting website noticed by Google

[OFSO]

We've had a website for years now but unless you put in very specific words (i.e. Mrs OFSO's real name or the name of one of her prize-winning sculptures) Google relegates it to 'below stairs'.

There are a number of websites which offer to improve promotion, but has any member of PPRuNe actually resorted to one to improve visibility within Google and did it work ?

[mixture]

Another more powerful method is to put the desired tag-words in a meta statement:

No. Its not. That was true in the 90's... but not today.

Don't waste your time trying to play the "Search Engine Optimisation" game with Google.

Google's modus operandi is natural search and as such they tailor their crawling algorithms accordingly, as per the following Google Blog entry :

“Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh. Even if you don’t specify it in your search, you probably want search results that are relevant and recent. If I search for [olympics], I probably want information about next summer’s upcoming Olympics, not the 1900 Summer Olympics.” Google Official Blog, Nov 3rd, 2011.

The more un-natural you make your website, the more you try to artificially pad it up, the lower you'll end up in the rankings. Their algorithm will just consider you a spammer and punish you accordingly.

The correct answer is to follow their published Webmaster Guidelines here (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769).

For background reading, start off by sticking "Google PageRank", "Google Panda" and "Google Caffeine" into your favourite search engine.

[Mike-Bracknell]

Sort of what Mixture says.

Google likes fresh content, and will rank you higher dependent upon how much content you refresh regularly.

It also likes backlinks (people linking to your site) but these should be relevant and not paid.

However, you're onto a loser if your site itself isn't well designed with respect to HTML and search. You're also onto a loser if you're trying to chase popular search terms, because the big boys in those arenas will have chucked money at it.

(Can you tell my business partner is totally into his SEO?)

[OverRun]

Hi OFSO,

Yes they work.

The Google search algorithims changed a couple of years ago and everyone scrambled to update their sites. The old META tags trick sort of died. Not sure what you would pay in your beautiful part of the woods for assistance, but I figure EU 100-250 would be enough to refresh the site. And it really does make a difference. I went from top to bottom after the Google re-jig, and then bottom to top again after the site re-write.