Yesterday some members of Digital Point Forums were talking about a Google search results update and checking the results I would say they were correct. The thing that sticks out the most is that a lot of newish .com sites that are hosted in the UK have had a nice little boost in the Google.co.uk rankings.
Three of the .com sites that I have worked on over the last few months up until yesterday were strangely performing much better on Google.com then they were on Google.co.uk (all of these sites were hosted in the UK).
I have two possible theories about why this has happened either Google.co.uk is very careful about determining which .com sites are actually from the UK and it just takes a long time or Google have just fixed there algorithm so that all UK hosted .com sites now get full Google.co.uk ranking benefit.
It is not just my clients who have been affected, I have noticed many .com sites are now performing much better, Kevin Gibbons site SEOptimise.com appears to have shot up in the rankings, congratulations Kev.
I have not said anything to my clients yet, just incase their rankings disappear, I will wait until next week because I have made that mistake before.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Geographical Keywording Your Content to Improve Search Results
What is Geographical Keywording?
Geographical keywording is the process of getting geographic keywords into your web pages and SEO strategy, and is one of your most powerful SEO tools. Many people who are serious about buying something search based on their location because they prefer to do business with a local company for a variety of reasons.
Some people initially don't want to focus on a geographical region because one of the greatest things about the internet is its global reach, and why would you want to limit your web site to your local area? Clearly, nobody wants to limit themselves to a specific geographic region when it comes to showing up in the Google search results. By associating your content and pages with geographical keywords you are not limiting your site but you are just focusing in on your location as a way of capturing the search requests for people in your area. Let's face it, when you launch a site you need to use every tool at your disposal to get an advantage and start getting some traffic on your site.
Once your Google PageRank goes up you may find that you don't need to focus as much on your geographic location anymore, but having geographic keywords in your content is not going to hurt you.
By periodically adding in the name of your city or state to your page titles and content you can sometimes get first page results or even the #1 organic search result on Google. I recently searched Google for "C# Programmer" and got 2,160,000 results. Searching for "C# Programmer Seattle WA" returned 150,000 results. If you are a C# Programmer located in Seattle, WA and you are looking for work in your area, then you can eliminate 93% of all other web pages that matched "C# Programmer" by including Seattle, WA in your content frequently.
There isn't much room for argument there, if you are selling a product or a service and most of your customers are located close by, then you need to get your geographical location into your keywords if you want people in your area to find your site. Even if you don't really want to find local customers, using geographical keywords can help you. If you want to sell products to other areas, just write some web pages that specifically target those geographic locations.
Google PageRank Considerations
This is a perfect time to talk a little bit about Google PageRank and how it affects your organic search performance. When you do a search on Google for the keywords that your website is targetting, don't be too surprised if there are lots of sites showing before your site that aren't really about the topic that you searched on. Linguistics can be tricky and Google does a pretty good job at it but sometimes they just can't figure out exactly what you are searching for. In these cases, any websites that have a better PageRank than your site, and have the keywords that you searched on, might return before your site in the organic search results. What this means is that Google's algorithm doesn't always understand what people are looking for and sometimes PageRank has a greater influence on results than the context of the search terms / keywords. If a person searching on Google encloses their search in quotes, the results are often very different because then Google knows to match on that exact phrase.
The problem is that website owners are at the mercy of Google's index algorithm and how potential customers enter their search terms. That is why you need to try to anticipate how people will search, and then determine how well you did. After analyzing your web statistics and logs for the search terms and keywords that brought people to your site, you will have learned more about how people search, and can make any adjustments to your site that are needed.
Geographical keywording is the process of getting geographic keywords into your web pages and SEO strategy, and is one of your most powerful SEO tools. Many people who are serious about buying something search based on their location because they prefer to do business with a local company for a variety of reasons.
Some people initially don't want to focus on a geographical region because one of the greatest things about the internet is its global reach, and why would you want to limit your web site to your local area? Clearly, nobody wants to limit themselves to a specific geographic region when it comes to showing up in the Google search results. By associating your content and pages with geographical keywords you are not limiting your site but you are just focusing in on your location as a way of capturing the search requests for people in your area. Let's face it, when you launch a site you need to use every tool at your disposal to get an advantage and start getting some traffic on your site.
Once your Google PageRank goes up you may find that you don't need to focus as much on your geographic location anymore, but having geographic keywords in your content is not going to hurt you.
By periodically adding in the name of your city or state to your page titles and content you can sometimes get first page results or even the #1 organic search result on Google. I recently searched Google for "C# Programmer" and got 2,160,000 results. Searching for "C# Programmer Seattle WA" returned 150,000 results. If you are a C# Programmer located in Seattle, WA and you are looking for work in your area, then you can eliminate 93% of all other web pages that matched "C# Programmer" by including Seattle, WA in your content frequently.
There isn't much room for argument there, if you are selling a product or a service and most of your customers are located close by, then you need to get your geographical location into your keywords if you want people in your area to find your site. Even if you don't really want to find local customers, using geographical keywords can help you. If you want to sell products to other areas, just write some web pages that specifically target those geographic locations.
Google PageRank Considerations
This is a perfect time to talk a little bit about Google PageRank and how it affects your organic search performance. When you do a search on Google for the keywords that your website is targetting, don't be too surprised if there are lots of sites showing before your site that aren't really about the topic that you searched on. Linguistics can be tricky and Google does a pretty good job at it but sometimes they just can't figure out exactly what you are searching for. In these cases, any websites that have a better PageRank than your site, and have the keywords that you searched on, might return before your site in the organic search results. What this means is that Google's algorithm doesn't always understand what people are looking for and sometimes PageRank has a greater influence on results than the context of the search terms / keywords. If a person searching on Google encloses their search in quotes, the results are often very different because then Google knows to match on that exact phrase.
The problem is that website owners are at the mercy of Google's index algorithm and how potential customers enter their search terms. That is why you need to try to anticipate how people will search, and then determine how well you did. After analyzing your web statistics and logs for the search terms and keywords that brought people to your site, you will have learned more about how people search, and can make any adjustments to your site that are needed.
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