Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Top at Google and other SEO thoughts

One of the things we do when we embark on Search Engine Optimisation programs for clients, is review keywords. Whilst the client will give us a list of keywords, we search those and see how often they’re used compared to similar keywords.

While not exactly an SEO study, this exercise pointed this out to me. A blog we set up for a client has the keywords “belt scraper”. Now working around that and doing a search, I noted that “belt cleaner” and “belt scraper” seem to be used interchangeably.

According to my client, “belt scraper” seems to be the term favoured in Australia, rather than “belt cleaner”.

While you may think that this is a minor detail, it isn’t. Why? Because if say searches use the former (scraper) rather than the latter (cleaner) and you target the latter as a preferred keyword, you’d be missing out on a lot of searches.

Mind you, Google sometimes uses similar words when it offers links in a search. While this will help, you can still miss out on getting more traffic, but targetting the wrong keyword.

In our SEO programs, we suggest using other keywords after we do a formal study. The client usually accepts our recommendations and we target the favoured keywords.


This may sound like a minor detail, but I think it’s an important one to remember.

And, to close on this point, I want to reiterate, that of the last look, bananascreens.com is back to number one. A former client's site beat me for a while, but now am back on top.

Note to self, keep off-page SEO going.

We cannot embark on a project as serious as search engine optimisation and just do this willy-nilly. Work is continuous and is not a just a one-off thing.

And, remember that the ranking will change from time-to-time as it may also change from computer-to-computer.

And, remember when I just got on the front page of google and later number one.

And, so the struggle (and fun) continues.