Tom Doyle

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Posts Tagged SEO

Getting your website listed on Google

Aug 3

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing

Another common question we are asked on a regular basis is, “How do I get my website listed on Google”?

Getting your website listed on Google, is probably one of the easiest things to do when it comes to marketing your website online. It takes only one of a few small steps to make Google’s search bots aware of your website. But just how quickly these search bots come crawling your website to include your website in their search results page depends on which route you take to try get it listed.

When you do eventually get your website listed on Google, remember that this is only half the battle. If you haven’t taken other steps to optimise your website, the likelyhood is that that your website will only be found if someone is looking for your brand or company name.

When 75-80% of people looking for a product or service they require, you can quickly establish that being found only for your business or brand isn’t going to be enough to get the kind of traffic you want.

Here are 4 simple ways of getting your website listed on Google:

  1. Use the Google Add URL page
    Google allows you to add your website address to Google using the following page http://www.google.com/addurl/. This is probably one of the slowest methods of achieving a listing on Google but it works none-the-less.

  2. Get links from other websites
    This method is by far the best way in which you can use to get listed on Google. Links from third party websites are the cornerstone of search engine optimisation, so if you have another website or know someone else who has one, ask them to put a link on their most popular page back to your website.

    It’s not enough to get a link from a page hidden deep down in someone else’s website. The trick is to find a page with a high Google PageRank*. Pages with a higer PageRank are generally crawled by Search Engines more regaularly than those with lower PageRank.

    *The PAGE (and not website) that you receive the link from should ideally have a Google PageRank of 4 or more. You can check a web pages Google PageRank, by downloading and installing the Google Toolbar (www.google.com/toolbar). You will need to edit the settings in order to turn it on.

  3. Socialise
    What I mean by this is that you should start letting people know about your website. Whether that be through posting your link on Twitter, Facebook or even commenting on your favourite blog or discussion forum it all helps to generate links back to your website.

    What I don’t mean is that you should go spamming the world with links back to your website. Using Twitter for example, you post a link to your website and ask your followers to the visit the website. Or when commenting on a blog article, include your website address as part of the posting process.

  4. Add your site to Search Directories
    If all else fails and you are finding it hard to get links back to your website, you can always look at getting links from web directories. There are thousands of search directories that allow you to add your link for free. The same methodology for getting links from other websites applies, look for PAGES with a PageRank of 4 or more.

    Here are a few Irish directories you could add your website to:
    www.search.ie
    www.armchair.ie
    www.browseireland.com

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Bing takes a larger bite of the Search Market

Jul 14

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing

REDMOND, WA - JULY 29: The Microsoft name is d...
Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Since it’s relaunch in June of last year, Bing has been well received by a lot of people inside and outside the search industry. This has been mainly due to added functionality and some improved usability features. On its launch, Bing took a small gain of market share in the search world, mainly at the expense of smaller, lesser know search engines. But now all their hard work seems to be paying off.

Yes it’s true, they are still a long way off the massive market share that Google owns, but this time they have managed to take a slice of Google’s share rather than the smaller search engines. This can only be seen as a great achievement by Bing, as much as we hate saying it – Microsft have done well to grab a little of Google’s dominant share.

According to comScore – Bing’s US search market share grew 88% in the past year. They know command a respectable 9.85% of the search market. This compares well with Google who have seen a fourth consective month drop in market share to 62.6%.

Another interesting report by comScore shows that Bings ad impressions and clickthroughs have also experienced a rise. On the other hand, Google and Yahoo‘s ad impressions and clickthroughs have either been flat or on the downward spiral.

For more on this report visit : http://econsultancy.com/blog/6240-comscore-bing-is-gaining-on-google#blog_comment_33174

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Advertising? Just Google ‘Advertising’

May 13

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing

You gotta love the way some companies advertise their business online. I love seeing a quirky ad that urges people to visit a website that promotes a brand or product. But there is one thing that we’d always recommend steering clear of when promoting a business online, that is relying on search results. Whether it’s the organic search results or even paid listings, basing an advertising campaign on the search results is such a bad idea.

Not so long ago I wrote about how Imagine were playing a dangerous and costly game with their ad ” WiMax, Google It”. The fact that Google Adwords is a pay per click system, means that you are ultimately paying for traffic that is pretty much useless. I guess you could easily say the same about TV adverts, but this is the web and one of the major benefits of it is that it’s quantifiable.

On my way home in the car this evening, I heard another advert that uses the Google verb. Yes, a company called “First Advertising” are running adverts on TodayFM and Newstalk in which the great employee suggests his boss should Google ‘Advertising’ and choose the first company that appears on the list.

Now for me, that is just suicidal! Nevermind that fact that no-one is in control of the search results other than Google, if I were in direct competition with First Advertising, I could easily turn on a Google Advertisement and be number 1 within minutes.

The other obvious scenario that they have clearly overlooked is the fact that if you do perform a search in Google (.ie) – it is Wikipedia that is actually the first result, in fact it’s not even in second place. Not until you choose “pages from Ireland” on the left hand side of the screen (which is harder to see with the new Google layout) do you actually see this company’s listing. Worse still, if you search on Google.com, they don’t appear on the first page at all!

On their website they state they are running these ads to celebrate their “clear dominance” of the Google search results. Dominance in a search results page that has no more than 2 other real competitors (pages from Ireland search).

I’m sure First Advertising are a great company, but they are just leaving so much open to chance that for me it’s a complete waste of money.  I wish them great success with the campaign and I really can’t wait to see how many of the top SEOs will try knock them from their perch!

Oh and of course…. If you want someone to look after your Google Advertising campaign, you could always contact me! :P

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Web design search volume in decline

Jan 7

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing, Web Design, Web Development


As the recession hit, most web design companies were busier than they had ever been before. There seemed to be a sudden rush of businesses trying to get online. In the majority of cases it was a knee-jerk reaction to prop up their falling incomes. During the latter half of 2009, this sudden rush seemed to have abated. There are many stories flying around that some of the major web design companies in Ireland are hanging on by the skin of their teeth and offering well below cost websites in order to generate some sort of cash flow.

Although they say that 99% of all statistics are made up, it’s still worth looking at some… :)

Google Trends is a great tool for researching keyphrase search popularity over a number of years of traffic on Google. So I used this tool to run a few searches on terms relating to web design to see if it could paint any sort of picture of what the state of the web design is in.

Web Design Search Stats - Google Trends

As you can see from above graph, the search term “web design” has been on a massive decline since the recording of the statistics began. Interestingly, if you take a close look at the latter quarter of 2009, you can also see a steady decline in searches for “web design”.

December is generally a slow time for new business in web design terms, so there are no surprises when you see the massive dips in searches across all years. Also quite interesting, is the steady performance of the term “website design”. In fact, there’s possibly a slight growth in searches for this term throughout 2009.

Does this mean that the web design industry has finally entered the recession with everyone else?

Only time will tell I guess…

Looking at the other side of our business; online marketing, it appears to be performing quite well. There is an obvious increase in searches for “SEO” – everyone seems to know what it is now or at least know someone that fancies themselves as one. There is a decline in searches for “Internet Marketing” though, maybe a phrase that has been lost to the popularity of “SEO”.

Although it’s hard to see from this graph, there has been a surge in searches for “Social Media Marketing“, which started showing up on the radar in 2007. No surprises there, since it’s the latest and greatest buzz word on the planet!

Online Marketing Search Trends

We’ll never get a true picture of the web design or online marketing industry from statistics like this. For example, the searches for “SEO” are being diluted by people trying to figure out how to market their own websites rather than actually looking for those services. None-the-less it’s interesting reading for anyone in or trying to get into this industry.

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Business Blog or Not?

Aug 21

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers, Online Marketing

Here’s a little scenario I’d like you to think about. It’s something we come across on a regular basis.

Tom runs a landscape gardening company and has a small 5 page websitewith the following structure:

Home Page
About Us
Services
Examples of Our Work
Contact Us

At the moment, Googlehas listed all 5 pages from his website on their search results. Tom knows that he shouldn’t really target more than 2-3 keyphrases per page and that his contact page and examples page have very little content, so therefore would be pointless to use for keyword targeting.

That leaves Tom with 3 pages that he can use to target Google for his chosen keyphrases. He thinks to himself, “surely there’s an easier way to get more pages on my website, so I can target more phrases”.

Tom notices that there’s a one day seminar being run in his local enterprise centre on online marketing. So he decides to attend. An apparently well respected Online PR expert recommends that he should use a blog as it will “significantly increase his ranking on Google”.

So after the seminar, Tom’s mission is to install a blog on his website. The first article he write is titled ”how to create a perfect lawn”. He remembers the Online PR expert mentioning that most blogshave a system whereby they “ping” Google to let it know that you have published an article. In most cases, your article should appear pretty quickly on Google, in some cases in less than 15 mins.

After publishing his article, he does a quick check on Google to see how many pages of his site they have indexed (site:yourdomainname.com). “Brilliant”, he exlaims! “I now have a 6 pages listed on Google! If I keep going at this rate, I’ll have hundreds of pages indexed by Google in a few weeks. This is gonna be great!”, Tom thinks to himself.

As days go by, Tom keeps a close eye on his website statistics and notices that the site is getting a lot of traffic for “how to create a perfect lawn” and “a perfect lawn” etc. Surprisingly for Tom, he hasn’t yet got one sales enquiry. “Why could this be?”, he thinks.

Tom contacts his local SEO expert and asks for some advice. The SEO expert quickly points out that anyone searching for “how to create a perfect lawn” are unlikely to be looking to hire someone? “Isn’t it most likely that they will be trying this themselves since they searched Google on how to do it?”, the SEO expert says. “Ah, that makes sense”, says Tom.

So the next day, Tom decides to create an article that is more tailored towards the keyphrases he wants to target, rather than providing free tips and tricks. His new article is called “Landscape Gardening in Ireland”. He doesn’t want it to appear as a spam article, so rather than just filling a page with keyphrases, he spends quite sometime researching and writing a post on “Landscape Gardening in Ireland”.

After a few days, he checks his website stats again… “YES!”, he exclaims. “I’m being found for “landscape gardening in Ireland” and Google has 7 pages of my website indexed!”, he says.

Tom is delighted, this is great news. Tom thinks, “But why have I not got any sales enquiries?”. “Surely this time, people searching for “landscape gardening in Ireland” are looking for a landscape Gardner?”, Tom thinks to himself.

On further inspection of his website statistics, Tom notices that most people finding his website are going directly to his blog article and then leaving the website. They’re not even bothering to have a look at his wonderful portfolio page of all his great work. Tom’s unsure where to turn next. He has wasted time writing these articles that he doesn’t even enjoy doing and he has plenty of other things that he could. On top of this, he’s not too sure what to write about next… But what should he do??

Does this sound like you?

The simple answer to this is – Tom should talk to someone who can help – www.2bscene.ie would be a good place to start! :)

The above scenario is similar to situations we encounter on a regular basis. Website and business owners are led to believe that blogging is the be all of a successful online marketing campaign. The simple fact is that they can be, but NOT for everyone.

The truth is that most of those requesting a blog have been ill informed about the true value a blog provides. Most don’t really understand how to use a blog successfully as part of an online marketing campaign. They expect miracle results even though they’re not sure what exactly a blog does or can do for them.

The increase in requests for blogs can lie squarely at the feet of fly-by-night SEO Experts and ”social media and online marketing experts”. These guys love to talk the talk, but most have never really walked the walk. They hype blogs as the saviour in terms of promoting and marketing your website. Unfortunately, they only give away half the facts.

To get the answers you need to see if you it’s worthwhile you need to ask them the following questions:

  1. Do you think it would suit my business?
  2. Do you think I could generate business from a blog?
  3. If so, what would my best approach to doing this be?
  4. Have you examples of clients you have helped create a return with a blog?
  5. If so, can I talk to them!

That should be enough to have them either running away or helping you understand how a blog might help your business.

Here are the simple facts:

  1. Blogs DO NOT increase your search engine ranking
  2. Google loves content – the more you have – the better (ideally it should be related to your area of business)
  3. Blogs DO help you create more content for the search engines – therefore, you should increase the traffic to your website, because your website is likely to be indexed for more search terms
  4. Blogs are a great way of building your profile and help promote you as an authority in your field

Whatever your reason for wanting a blog, please don’t be fooled by those selling it to you as a “magic bullet” solution for search engine rankings. It’s not, if it was everyone would just install one rather than hire a SEO expert.

Blogs can be good for your business, but you need to seriously consider why you are creating a blog. You also need to consider if you plan to create business from your blog and if you do, what is the best approach to achieve this.

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