UK Public believe Google will still be #1 in Five Years Time

An online survey of approximately 1,100 people in the UK  found that 61% of respondents believed that Google would still be the leading search engine in five years.

When asked “Do you want Google to be the leading search engine in five years time?” the response was somewhat different, with a smaller majority (53%) saying yes.

“Do you think Google will be the leading search engine in five years time?”

“Do you want Google to be the leading search engine in five years time?”

The survey authors draw the conclusion that the UK public perception of Google has been largely unaffected by controversies that get lots of coverage among search industry insiders.

It’s also interesting that  56% of women than men wanted Google to remain the main search engine of choice for the next five years. This suggests that more women are happy with using Google search than men.

Another way to view these data is that 46% of the UK audience (second question) is, to varying degrees, open to alternatives to Google.

Nine Reasons Why Your Search Rankings May Drop

Aaron Wall has posted a great article over at SEOBook about nine reasons why your rankings may be dropping in Google. Definitely worth a read if your struggling to get to grips with why your site isn’t performing well in the search engines.

Back To Basics

Well I made it back from Cornwall in one piece – despite driving last Friday through some of the worst weather to hit the UK for over one hundred years. I found out later that if I had set off one hour later I would have spent the whole night on the M5 motorway in Gloucester!

After stopping at 3 service stations to try and find a travel lodge for the night I was directed towards a hotel off the beaten track (near Glastonbury) where we spent the night before traveling on next morning. All the travel lodges were full and so where most of the hotels nearby – it was only luck that a receptionist gave us a hotel address.

What the weather this weekend showed is that you need to have a backup plan. The same can be said of search engine optimisation. Search engines are like the weather and can change very quickly so your position in the search engines can change moment by moment.

Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what’s going on with any of the search engines when your search engine results placement (SERPs) seem to be all over the place. Every search engine is always tweaking and improving its algorithms (the program that it uses to decide your search position) , sometimes several times a day, in order to ensure they’re putting the most relevant results in answer to a searcher’s query.

At Customerstreet we’ve allowed for this by placing our customers in not just one directory but three seperate high profile directories Ufindus , Smile Local and More UK plus many of our websites have the option to appear in a dedicated trades portal.

Trade websites are becoming one of the most popular routes for internet users. They are simple to use and dedicated to the service being searched for. Customer Street have built online directories for almost every trade on the internet.

By giving our customers more exposure through listings in up to four major directories we’re helping to plan for those stormy times in search when your listing may not be as high as you wish it to be. By having listings in more than one directory Customerstreet is giving you more chance of being found for different search terms which can’t be a bad thing can it?

Holiday Time

I’m off on holiday tommorow – off for a few days to Cornwall – a very beautiful and rugged part of the country and, despite the dreadful weather we’ve had, I’m determined to have a great time walking along the beautiful beaches.

I’m going to rest and recharge my batteries – ready for my return to begin work on the new Rapid Site 3 with Stuart, one of senior web developers. Exciting times at Customerstreet, as we are working on the new Rapid Site Editor.

For those of you who don’t know what a Rapid Site is – it’s a simple easy to use website editor that allows our customers to update their website, add new pages and images etc. We wrote it specifically for Customerstreet customers. And we want to make it even easier.

This new website editor will be very user friendly and will generate search engine friendly code that the search engines will be able to index easily. All the text generated will be semantic – it will read like any normal page of text if you were to remove all the programming code. As search engines are only really interested in text it makes sense to show the search engines as much text as possible.

We’re also looking at making the rapid site editor even more easy to use and we’ll create an intuitive system that will help with writing text that is suitable for the search engines. One of the problems we realise that our customers may have is that they struggle to write suitable text for their web pages.

And that’s the reason I’m here working at Customerstreet – to help our clients to get as high as possible in the search engines listings whether it’s by improving the Rapid Sites and making them more search friendly or getting our Ufindus, MoreUk and Smileocal directory listings to the top of the search engines.

Either way it’s a task that I relish – there’s nothing better than seeing top results for our clients – it’s a vindication that what we’re doing is working and it’s working for our customers.

In fact we’re very lucky our customers are in the position of being able to get found very quickly in the main search engines. It can take up to 12 months for a website to begin to get anywhere in the main search listings on Google. We’ve just had one customer who has been found at #10 on Google for “Roofing Supplies Liverpool” after only two days!

This goes to show that what we are doing is working. But that’s not enough for us – we want everyone of our customers to be even more successful in the search engine listings.

Basics of search engine optimisation – Part Three – Meta Content

Meta Content describes the contents of a Web page. It’s not visible on the web page (it’s in the programming code in the background) but is seen by search engines. You can only see meta content if you look at the programming code for your web pages or use an editor to build your web pages.

Meta Content was first created to “make sense” of the growing number of web pages that appeared on the Internet.

Meta Content (often called Meta Tags) often appears in search engine results, so making sure that your Meta Descriptions are relevant and well written will help to ensure that people will click on your web page listing in the search engines.
Search engines are placing less importance on Meta Keywords than in the past, however it‘s still important to provide meaningful descriptions and keywords. All Meta descriptions and keywords should be unique and apply to a specific web page.

Here are some guidelines to what you should look at – they will help you to write Meta content that the search engines will understand and use effectively.

Description – Use 15-20 words maximum, starting with several of your important keywords. Try to make the description as compelling and as relevant as possible for people who may look at your website.

<META content=“Builder Stevenage,builders in stevenage,stevenage builders” name=keywords>

Meta Keywords Tag – List your keywords up to a maximum of 30 words. Use keywords that are relevant to the page, with or without commas. Try not to use the same keyword more than twice.

<META content=“Lee Builders – Stevenage – home extensions, loft conversions and general building” name=description>

 

Google’s “Future Of Search”

Search Engine Land published details of Google Research Director Peter Norvig‘s interview with MIT Technology Review today. It proves very interesting reading – while nothing is really new it gives us an insight into what Google are working on and what possible future products may be appearing.

Google seems to be focusing on both machine translation and a speech project. Translation and speech has gone from one or two people working on small projects to live systems . Google are looking at speech technology that could serve as an interface for phones and also index audio text.

From Peter’s interview Google seems to accept that some people are more comfortable using voice interfaces and are more likely to interact this way. See below.

“One of the things we’re looking at is finding ways to get the user more involved, to have them tell us more of what they want. People type the query “map,” and then they get upset if it’s not the map they were thinking of. So, people may be willing to talk more than type. Or maybe they’re willing to take a suggestion if we offer something that they didn’t type a query for, but is related.”

Google Suggest

Google Suggest is a pretty cool tool which is completely free – As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you’re typing and offers suggestions in real time.

For example, if you type “bass,” Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include “bass fishing” or “bass guitar.” Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like “prog,” Google Suggest might offer you refinements like “programming,” “programming languages,” “progesterone,” or “progressive.”

You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse.

Basics of search engine optimisation – Part Two – Titles

Write descriptive page titles

By making your page titles simple, yet descriptive and relevant, you make it easier for search engines to know what each page is about, and people scanning through the search engine results can quickly determine whether your web site contains what they are looking for.

The page title is also what is used to link to your site from search result listings.

The Page Title is held in the programming code on your web page – it may seem daunting when you first look at the programming code but the truth is that it’s quite simple – the Title is what the search engine looks at first to decide what your web page is all about

<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>For a builder in Stevenage come to Lee Construction.</TITLE>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="Builder Stevenage,builders in stevenage,stevenage builders" name=keywords>
<META content="new builds, extensions,  garages,  garden walls" name=description><!-- StyleSheetStart-->

<LINK href="includes/style3.css" type=text/css rel=stylesheet><!-- StyleSheetEnd--></HEAD>

Because of this, the Title is one of the most important elements on a page.

When it comes to the order of the text, I’ve found that the following works well for your Title:

Service or Products | Site or company name

For a builder in Stevenage come to Lee Construction.

Whatever you do, don’t use the same title text for all documents. Doing so will make it much harder for search engines, people browsing through search results, and site visitors to quickly find out what the document is about.

Basics of search engine optimisation

I’m often contacted by Customerstreet clients asking for practical advice and help regarding search engine positioning optimisation (how to make your website appear more attractive to the search engines and to help to improve it’s position in the search engine results).

Over the years I’ve worked on many large web sites and I’d like to share what I have done to achieve very good search engine rankings for many sites over the years.

Let’s start with the truth – no one can guarantee the number one position on the search engines – not on Google, not on Yahoo or Microsoft Live. It’s up to the search engines to decide whether a site is relevant enough for a search to be the number one choice.

What you can do however is make your site more accessible to the search engines and to your visitors, improving your chances of being found for different keywords.

The guidelines I’m describing here are a basic level of search engine optimisation – they are what every single website should have (but sadly very few do).

If you have a website try these guidelines first, and if you’re still not getting the results you want, you may want to look into getting more help.

Welcome

Welcome to Customerstreet’s search engine optimisation blog. My name is Adrian Berry and I work as search manager for Customerstreet – one of the UK’s leading new media advertising services.

With nearly a decade’s experience in search engine optimisation (SEO) and online marketing I felt it was time that I passed some of my knowledge on to Customerstreet customers.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be explaining SEO in more detail, how it’s important to your business and why it needs to be done. I’ll explain the basics of SEO in simple terms so there’s no need to worry about technical terms and confusing diagrams.

More importantly I’ll explain how you can improve your position in the search engine listings and how you can improve the number of people that contact you via your website.