How do I 'optimize' my website?

JamieGee31

There are lots of very good SEO blogs/guides around. I would recommend reading the Free Beginner's Guide to SEO by SEOMoz.

Pinkypants

Other tip is to update site around once a week, google doesn't like sites that sit there doing nothing.

thaimeister

Other tip is to update site around once a week

If it has a blog, even better to update daily

freewheelinfranklin

Pinkypants wrote: »

Other tip is to update site around once a week, google doesn't like sites that sit there doing nothing.

This is not true. I have sites that I haven't touched since I built them and they're still sitting there making money every day.

There is a lot of mis-information out there when it comes to SEO. Google has a whole department dedicated to muddying the waters with press releases and blog posts which are just plain wrong and meant to confuse you.

"Do not believe all that you see and hear" especially where Google is concerned!

Hoseman

This depends on your competition though and the site you have. A site that has no content since it was built is there to serve a need.

I dont think Google is trying to muddy the waters. They're just stating what best practice is. Confusing people just wouldn't be of benefit to their business.

freewheelinfranklin

Hoseman wrote: »

This depends on your competition though and the site you have. A site that has no content since it was built is there to serve a need.

Agreed.

Hoseman wrote: »

I dont think Google is trying to muddy the waters. They're just stating what best practice is. Confusing people just wouldn't be of benefit to their business.

It is well known in pro SEO circles that Google does indeed publish vast reams of mis-information which gets re-published and quoted by many flocks of sheep. 99.9% of the SEO bloggers out there are simply the blind leading the blind using information which is questionable in the first place. No wonder 99% of web sites fail.

Google don't want you to rank well organically. They want you to buy your way to the top with Adwords. Google don't like SEO because by it's very nature you are manipulating their algorithm when you do SEO. They want their algo to pick out the most relevant sites, not the sites that have been best SEO'd.

Please believe me, Matt Cutts and his kind are out to confuse you. If you follow their best practices you will never show up at the top of the organic chart ... and that is the honest truth.

Hoseman

Im not sure I completely agree but perhaps I just havent seen any of the criticism re Matt Cutts. Also, I always thought he had a good reputation as he is quite often quoted by respected sources.

With regard to Adwords its a win win situation for Google. The top 3 sites get the majority of the clicks in searches so there are always going to be competitors vying for those clicks so Adwords serves a purpose.

freewheelinfranklin

Matt Cutts has a great rep amongst those who still believe that Google 'do no evil' ;-)

In one of Google's recent updates we saw the demise of some highly authoritative and well respected sites. One poor guy who runs an excellent DIY website with hundreds of pages of unique, relevant and very useful info (including instructional videos he spent a lot of time on) watched as the organic rankings he had held for ten years simply vanished overnight.

His income dropped by 90% and he couldn't believe what was happening. His site was replaced in the SERPS by some very questionable content including one site which was child p0rn! I think Google saw the error of their ways and removed the x-rated stuff but this guy's rankings never returned and his site was obviously one of the most relevant sites out there. Google got it badly wrong.

He tried to get Google to re-instate his site but they didn't even have the decency to reply to him. Google couldn't care less about webmasters. It's solely about the money for them now.

The irony is that Google built their business essentially on stealing other's content via the Googlebot, re-purposing that content and slapping ads alongside it. If you read their own guidelines you'll see that for us mere mortals this is against their 'best practices'. The ultimate hypocrisy.

I don't know about you but I'm finding it more and more difficult to find what I want on Google these days. The sooner they get taken down a peg or two the better in my opinion :cool:

Hoseman

Thanks, its interesting to read your opinion on this.

I know there have been some casualties from their updates but this is because of so many people trying to game the system. All the people rushing out to buy keyword related domain names for example and putting rubbish (or not so great) content so they can make money through affiliate links and advertising doesn't help.

I agree about the quality of searches getting worse. It can't be easy to create an algorithm that consistently produces great results when there are people always to trying to work the system. I actually like Google and competition is always good but doesn't really exist here. I've never really liked Bing and while I've heard of other search engines being worth checking out, I've never got round to really using any of them. While on the subject FB could do with a proper search engine (not Graph Search) unlike the shambles they have right now.

clippings

I suspect another factor is the time visitors spend on your site, compared to the time they spend on sites found with the same keywords.

So the old "content is king" rule may well hold true. If your site is so alluring that visitors linger and wander round it, my guess is you will move up the rankings.