How is google any good!

sparky883

Yes you are right for our Pay Per Click Advertising,Where if you click on our sponcered link we pay google about 90p this adds up to around £400 per month-First Page of google Day in day out,this is not my point,I just think that when searching the directories just get in the way they are used as a link to the companyies main site or website povided by them.
So yes they are just "middlemen" same as employment agencys.
Taking a cut for doing very little,Bear in mind one thing:
There are more Directories or Similar Than there are "Plumbers In Birmingham"
Just shows you where the money is!!

And as for "search engine optimisation" This field is swamped to with fly by nights claiming to get you on the first page,I usually just have a look where there listing appears to prove my point.

RadoJo

The reason that nobody apart from Google knows how it works is so that people can't cheat. Google spends most of its money on improving the algorithms that decide whether a site is relevant and there are thousands more people out there trying to cheat the system by 'faking it'. There is plenty of advice from Google about how to make sure your website is as well optimised as it can be for their spiders (programmes which 'read' your site) meaning you will benefit from the natural listings. You can submit a site map to Google for free which will help them to categorise your site, and you can help yourself by making sure that the words people would search for to find your site ie 'Plumbers in Birmingham' appear in the text on your site so that Google can see what you are offering.

Google is really there for the user though - the emphasis is on making sure that a person finds the site they are after, not providing businesses with a free way to advertise their services. If you want to pay to be on the front page, then you can either use AdWords, whereby you pick the phrases which you think people will search for and then design an ad to be shown when someone searches for it, or you can get Search Engine Optimisers to improve your site so that search engines give it higher rankings, but there's no way to get free advertising to such a wide audience, which is hardly surprising given that there are whole companies who work on accounts for larger organisations' websites.

RadoJo

Whoops - cross posting there. It sounds like you are more annoyed with the directory sites than Google itself. The problem is that most of those sites are affiliate sites, meaning they take commission from every sale they make, so they not only have a lot of links with reputable companies but they also have a wide range keywords relevant to their list of products and services meaning that they receive high levels of traffic, which also makes them look good to Google. The system is not perfect, but Google employs hundreds of people to improve it, so these things are often resolved. There was quite a boom in directory sites relatively recently, but the market has been so flooded with them that I wouldn't be surprised if they start to disappear soon. And it would probably still be worth trying to optimise your site even if you just do it yourself as the best results even from Adwords generally come when the company has a high natural listing as well. They provide this tool to help optimize your site: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?hl=en-GB&service=websiteoptimizer&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fanalytics%2Fsiteopt%2F%3Fet%3Dreset%26hl%3Den-GB&utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-emea-uk-google&medium=ha&term=optimise%20site which might be of use to you?

uktim29

sparky883 wrote: »

I just think that when searching the directories just get in the way they are used as a link to the companyies main site or website povided by them.

But then how would you avoid the spam. The algorithms need to work for everything, they can't have a different algorithm for each search term.

Getting on the first page for 'Plumbers In Birmingham' is easy. I could spend 2 minutes doing it now and be there by next week. I'll send you a pm!

sparky883

Thanks will try it,Dont want sites banned for spamming though it takes ages to get them up and running again-Have leart some good infomation using this forum Just think in a few weeks when Google "cashe" this site typing in "Plumbers in birmingham" will bring up this forum in results and there aint much chance of getting one here!!! Touce Chey (is that how you spell it)

dangeroussports

whats better than google? Need a better search engine.

greektony

sparky883 wrote: »

Touce Chey (is that how you spell it)

No, no it isn't