Search engine results

[stu8]

Hi

I'm having a few problems holding a consistent position on Google. I run an online mountain bike shop and usually appear within the first page of results for main products. I keep a fairly close eye on our results and have noticed that over the last couple of days we have dropped on most searches to about page 4 or 5 in the results for Google. I appreciate that Google had changed its page ranking method a couple of months ago but I notice that our competitors results have not dropped. I can only think its our page/keyword set up.

Our domain is www.bionicsports.com

Any help and feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks Stu

[Mike Hughes]

From what I can see your web site could do with some optimisation for your main keywords. try reading up on google at webmasterworld

Mike

[DBurrows]

Slightly off topic

While having a little look for keywords in your source code i noticed that it is very very "clean", by that i mean in notepad (my default html editor) it is very simple to look through where as my own (and alot of other sites i have looked on) seem very complex and messy.

1.) Does it affect site performance at all?

2.) How did you do it


Thanks in Advance

[stu8]

Thanks Mike will do

I presume thats matching keywords more closey to the actual content.

Stu

[stu8]

DBurrows

Clean code hmmm...not sure about that..but thanks anyway.

Stu

[pinbrook]

Ideally you should optimise each page for the keywords revelavant to that page

[Mike Hughes]

here's an example to illustrate:

Lets say you want to focus on 'mountain bikes uk' as a key search term that could generate about 130 visitors/month to your site.

(This is from wordtracker, and is made up of the following predicted searches:

mountain bikes uk : 31/month
mountain bikes shops uk: 26/month
mountain bikes mail order UK: 10/month
Other: Double the above (best estimate)

To do well you need to have the words 'mountain', 'bikes' and 'uk' in the following places:

1. In your page title
2. in your page name (i.e. mountain_bikes_uk.html)
3. In other key places (H1 tags, links, image alt descriptions, product names and general text.
4. scattered throughout the other pages of your website.

To avoid overdoing it, make sure you mix it up a bit so it doesn't look like a spam page.

e.g. on page you might use:

pagename: mountain_bikes_UK.html
title: mountain bikes from bionic sports uk
H1 tag: mountain bikes
product name: scott mountain bike
description: this mountain bike from scott is ideal for Uk weather conditions having an independent suspension and large track wheels.

etc.

the bottom line is that these are the places that the search engines are looking at for clues to what your website is about and if you don't tell them there's no way they can know.

Mike

[stu8]

Great

I'll try and optimise the pages better.

Any idea why the results can drop so rapidly?

Also a more general point do you know how much traffic/sales most sites gain from search engines apposed to other forms of advertsing like sponsored links and banner ads?

Stu

[Mike Hughes]

Google is constantly tweaking the algorithm and watching the effects, plus from looking at your site I'd suspect that you previously had a boost from being new (or 'fresh'). i.e. google rates new sites (or those with new content) highly for a while before giving them thir normal ranking.

The other thing that may have caught you is their latest thing called 'Latent Semantic Indexing'. Essentially they no longer just look at the keyword score for a page but now also look at the score for related content on the page and website. i.e. a search for 'bikes' will also throw up pages that score highly for 'bike', 'cycling', 'cycle', 'pedal', 'bicycling', etc so the more relevant content and pages you have the better.

Mike

PS. regrading your question on traffic sources. It all depends. Links are good for your PR and free. In terms of where the targetted traffic (i.e. real potential customers) is just follow the money: i.e. search engines are usually key and if you get a good ROI on adwords then go for it.

[stu8]

Thanks for that.

Do you know of any sites where I can get some actual stats on the most effective forms of online advertsing including search eninge ad words.

The reason I ask is that at the moment we dont spend any money on advertising at all but I think we should and as I don't hold the purse strings I need some stats to convince those who do decide on the money.

Stu

[Mike Hughes]

There are plenty of sources around on the internet but I can't think of a good one offhand.

As a starting point there's a story here on the BBC website about Google and online advertising.

Here's a snippet (probably the only really relevant bit):

"Keyword-linked advertising, where firms pay to ensure that their online adverts appear whenever certain search terms are used, now accounts for about a third of all online advertising in the US.

Market preparations

It generates an estimated $1.6bn a year in revenues."

I know it can be hard to justify spending money on intangible stuff like advertising, but the right reason to do so is to achieve business objectives rather than because everyone else is doing it.

The right reason to advertise might be to establish a new company in the marketplace, build a stronger brand, find new customers, generate higher sales, etc.

Once you've decided on the objective you then look at the best ways to achieve it and how to measure the results against expectations.

The beauty of keyword advertising is that it's highly targeted, easy to measure (you'll get stats on ad displays, clicks and ROI), is easy to do (no graphics skills needed) and has a very low starting cost.

Mike

[stu8]

thanks very much for the advice

Stu

[skinnybloke]

In reply to DBurrows :

While having a little look for keywords in your source code i noticed that it is very very "clean", by that i mean in notepad (my default html editor) it is very simple to look through where as my own (and alot of other sites i have looked on) seem very complex and messy.

1.) Does it affect site performance at all?

2.) How did you do it .

It may because the "messy" ones have "Compact HTML/CGI" ticked in DESIGN > OPTIONS > MISCELANEOUS.

This removes all the comment fields, white spaces etc. and will improve performance (theoretically anyway).

[stu8]

ah right

I have that deselected so I can edit the pages in dreamweaver using the Actinic extension.

[skinnybloke]

Hi - I turn this off when I am doing development so that I can read the code easily from preview pages and then switch it back on when I upload the pages to the site.