This Blog post updating my web design hertfordshire Google challenge has been a long time coming, so apologies to all those who have been tracking my progress!

So to recap – we had a less than perfect ranking of 180 on page 18. Good progress considering the scale of this experiment, but room for improvement. So, here’s the latest: Page 4, rank 33. Now we are getting some results! Here’s the screenshot:

Check it out, TBO Media are now on the first page and the number 10 spot in Bing.com for the ‘web design hertfordshire‘ keywords on our search engine challenge.

Click here to visit bing to see the results!

Great news just in, we are now 4th in Yahoo.com for our ‘web design hertfordshire‘ phrase!

See the pic below for confirmation, or click here to see for yourself!

Just checked Bing.com this morning, and we are now listed in their index for our targeted keywords Page 2, position 15.

The work we have done for Google and Yahoo has been noticed by Bing, as the results above show. Bing uses a completely different algorithm, as you will notice you get different results when you search. Compared to Google, these results aren’t always as relevant, but Bing offers a few variations on getting different results (local, tabs, images etc).

So did we do anything radically different for Bing, this relatively new search engine? Well, no.

Despite some minor technical changes, the search engine optimisation for Bing is a standard process like the others. We can see Bing does like;

• Different Meta descriptions
• Relevant page titles
• Heading tags
• Lots of quality content

Taken from the Bing white paper released for webmasters; Bing goes onto explain:

Ultimately, SEO is still SEO. Bing doesn’t change that. Bing’s new user interface design simply adds new opportunities to searchers to find what the information they want more quickly and easily, and that benefits webmasters who have taken the time to work on the quality of their content and website design.

Best of all, the type of SEO work and tasks webmasters need to perform to be successful in Bing haven’t changed—all of the skills and knowledge that webmasters have invested in previously applies fully today with Bing. Moreover, investments in solid, reputable SEO work made for Bing will bring similar improvements in your website’s page rank in Google and Yahoo! as well.

That’s the word from Bing, and is good enough for us!

Just a quick update on our latest progress on our Google Challenge on the keyword phrase web design hertfordshire.

It has been a busy few weeks for TBO Media, but we have not forgotten about our ‘little’ challenge we set back in October. So with November upon us, how are we doing in Google?

Well, from the first week position of 227 on page 23, we have climbed to position 180 and sneaked onto page 18! So if my maths is correct, that’s 47 places and 5 pages, in less than a month. Remember, these figures are with a highly competitive search term, on a new website. Having a site already ranking ‘OK’ in Google will see results much faster, as the website is already known in Google’s eyes.

So imagine if a website was already on page 5, and we carried out the same work on another search term? Well, depending on the term and competition, it could be a lot closer to the first page of Google. Simple.

Lets just recap – we have moved up the Google rankings by 47 places in 3 weeks, that’s 47 potential companies, all going for the same keyword phrase, we are now ranking above. Of course, page 18 is still waaaaay off an end result for us being ‘competitive’ for this keyword phrase, but these early signs of movement in the rankings are an important, and encouraging start.

An important lesson to take from this is search engine optimisation is always going to be a long term project. Anyone claiming they can get you top of Google in a day should be questioned further – there is no ‘silver bullet’ fix for ranking high, and it is not an over night fix. Sorry to break it to you!

We don’t know about you guys…but we are looking forward to seeing the next Google update in 3weeks!

Just a quick update before the weekend.

As you can see by the title, I noticed Yahoo has started to take note of our little challenge we have going on with Google. I couldn’t help take a quick peak at what the other search engines thought of our ‘web design hertfordshire‘ optimisation, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Maybe Yahoo got jealous.. but as you can see, they have rocketed us up their rankings…to PAGE TWO!

That is a great result, and long term (search engine optimastion always is) this is very encouraging.

It also goes to show the basic fundamentals of search engine optimisation do not need to be changed a huge amount to target different search engines. Sure there are some minor changes, different pages might get listed for example, but the foundation is the same. I hope the evidence above helps dispel that myth.

Have a great weekend everyone!

For the rest of you, simply enter your details below to enter the competition:

As you know, we recently posted details of the Web Design Hertfordshire Google Challenge, click the link for the full article. We decided to pick this keyword phrase to see how well we can really perform, on this highly competitive keyword phrase.

First up, we created a new page which related to our target phrase. You may have come across websites which have the keyword duplicated a dozen times in a single paragraph to get into Google. It simply doesn’t work like that. Not only does it look terrible, you are at risk of being booted out of the Google rankings permanently.

So you’ll notice our new page looks no different from the rest of the website, reads in plain English, and has been written for a human, not a machine. The page went live, and guess what happened?

Results from UK searches

A few days later and we get noticed, page 23, position 227. Wow. A long way off our final goal, but progress nonetheless. Remember, we didn’t rank at all for this term before we started this challenge. So we think 227 out of 668,000 is pretty good going for week one!

Content is vitally important for your website, and this test proves this to us. If you don’t have any content, your website will not work. Not just for search engines, but your customers want to read about you too. It’s that simple.

Here’s our quick list of do’s and don’ts to write effective website content:

Do..

• Make it unique
• Make it interesting, short and to the point
• Make it easy to understand

Don’t..

• Write more than 800 words per article
• Use all your industry jargon
• Copy someone else (no Copy and Paste!)
• Spam it with your keywords

In a nutshell, that’s how you write effective content. If you get stuck, we can always do it for you, just ask.

That’s all for now, stay tuned for the next update!

New sites are great, they look fresh and often packed with new ideas. The problem is, they lack the power and foothold in the Google rankings that older, more matured sites have. New sites take longer to be trusted by Google – Google doesn’t want to put any old rubbish in the rankings, it takes time to check the new guys out.

Sites which have been around longer have more content (normally), more links and higher rankings.. which means more visitors and more potential customers.

This is a problem many new sites face, having to wait up to 6months before appearing in Google can be frustrating, and even then only if your site has had any good optimisation done. TBO Media rely on the internet to generate business, so we need to showcase what we can and can’t do. That’s where the idea for the Web Design Hertfordshire Google Challenge was born.

At the moment, Google returns 669,000 results for the search term ‘Web Design Hertfordshire.’ And how well does our website rank for those terms? Very, very, very badly! Infact, we are not ranking at all for those search terms. That’s pretty normal for the age of the site, but we want to do better than ‘nowhere’.

So, we’ve given ourselves a target of 3months to improve and fast track our ranking. We’ll be tweaking the homepage, adding in some keywords, and building some links to get Google listening to us. We’ll give you an update over the next few weeks with our progress.

Wish us luck!