The Costs Of Fooling Google!

YapYapOK Free Classifieds  Page 1 Google #2

SERP is up!  We briefly made the top spot last night having relinguised at between 4 and 5 for a few months.  So the ongoing SEO has been a tremendous success.

I have helped quite a few sites travel up the ranking but none have proved as difficult as YapYapOK.  This is clearly due to the competition that we are up against. 

There is no doubt in my mind that the most successful sites are ones that implement all the usual suspects in link strategy.

In the last month we have been busy with directory submissions, edu links and blogging with keyword rich anchor text.  It is frustratingly slow but rewarding.  Free Ads still languishes behind at number 13 but is on the up.

The amount of hits that a site as a result of SERP is subjective.  A friend of mine manages his own site in Spain which is on the top of Google for many of his products.  He also manages a competitors website for SEO.  This one is now as a result coming in at number 2 and he insists that Google traffic does not vary that much.  Clearly there are reasons for this.

Google works hard to bring the most relevant sits to the fore in search results so once you are at the top of Google its clear that you are dependant on the searcher to click on your site rather tahn others on the page.

This is where fine tuning the meta data is important.  For Google relevance its necessary to match all aspects of the data with the page content to be rewarded in the top.  For the searcher they will see duplication of keywords in the title, and the description.  To gain interest from the searcher you need a great sales pitch using only 150 characters.  Balancing keyword identity with the sales pitch in one short paragraph takes a little application.  By thinking about how you choose a site to click on, then you can put yourself in your customers shoes.

Whilst we are all taught not to use words like cheap in describing our ecommerce sites, it is a very common term put before the object in a users search.  We have all searched for cheap flights, cheap tickets, cheap computers etc.  The best way to get some kind of recognition without downgrading our products is to utilise this in the meta keywords whilst using relative words such as bargain, or unbeatable prices in the description or/and title.  Try to match this in the home page content as well as you can.  Obviously this is only true should your parices be very competively priced.

I hate searching for cheap anything only to end up on a website which clearly does not represent great value.

Yesterday I was looking for Billabong sale T shirts for my sons birthday.  Many of the sites returned had sales and Billabong but only a couple had the 2 together despite putting "Billabong sale 50% off", or similar, in the meta title.   This meant that Google accuratley gave me the results, with keyword matches on their product pages,  however instead of taking 30 minutes to be an online purchase I had to sort through and navigate my way around several sites which took most of the morning.  Result - my confidence in those sites is low and I probably won't return.  Had their meta accurately depicted the sales or been more vague, such as sale and then Billabong in the meta I would have been more forgiving.  This was a clear case of misdirection.

Its the same as looking for links with no recipricol required only to go through the process of registration to find that unless they see your link on their home page it won't go live,

So yes you can still fool Google but it may be at the cost of the a returning customer.

YapYapOK Free Classifieds - no delusions, no misdirection,  just totally Free Ads!

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