search engines

Hi Carl

Not sure that too many people would be willing to share that info (as you may leapfrog them in the rankings)

Linking to your site is one way, and having changing content is another (better) way of doing this.

Spiders can get bored not picking up new content and may spider your site less often as a result.

I'll be on MSN later on, lets have a quick chat about it.

Glenn Watson Business Consultancy @ Inzvestor

>>>>>I don't know how to tackle it except by getting people to swap links with me<<<<<

Google only seem to value links from sites with high PR so don't waste your time linking with everyone in sight. If you type your url into the Google search box it will show you what it counts as links.

Interestingly enough posting at Startups is good for links but that doesn't count for all forums as you will see if you check.

Ian

I only have links from a few sites... I get lots of reccommendations from existing customers but they don't seem to want to link to me.

I have page rank 4 at the moment but businesses with lower page ranks are much higher up. I have looked at sites that allow you to swap links with others for free but it is just full of viagra sites and so on... I want to link to things that are even a bit relevant to me. Anyone know of any good ways get inbound links to their sites?

www.iccommunications.co.uk - 0845 numbers, 0700 and 0800 numbers

www.0870receptionist.co.uk - Free 0870 numbers, free voicemail, free switchboard - Instant online connection!

You could try Linkpartners at http://www.linkpartners.com/ as that is full of sites that are actively looking to exchange links and many of the participants have good sites worth looking from.

Edit - anyway where is the links page on your site as these companies will want a return link from you

Ian

First check if you follow Google's guidelines :

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

With this tool you can check if your website require a bit of work:

http://www.sitereportcard.com

You can also try to see what it shows for your competitors website and it will help you find out why they rank higher than you.

For example you have to many keywords and the description is too long. Please read this :

http://www.rlrouse.com/keywords.html

 Forums like this one can also help you find the answer:

http://www.webproworld.com/forum.php?c=12

I hope this helps

Joanne

Google is essentially one of the most difficult search engines to optimise for but it certainly isn't impossible.

The whole art of optmisation is understanding, and doing, what the number one position is doing - but do it slightly better.

The below is particuarly useful for Google:

• How many inbound links do your compeititors have compared to you?
• What are the pageranks of the sites linking to your compeititors compared to the sites linking to yours?
• How many times does your chosen keyword appear in your compeititors site compared to yours - do you have too many keywords which could be penalising you?

Do you find that in Google you are listed on page, say 30, but for Google, Ask Jeeves, Lycos etc... you appear on the first couple of pages - if so you are probably 'tripping' one of Googles filters and are being penalised for it.

This can happen by adding hidden text, having 'banner farms' linking to you, redirecting your site to another or it can be if your site is new - it can take a few months to start gaining all your pagerank 'weight' from other sites.

If not and you are listed on pages 1-4 then I would certainly aim to increase the number of sites linking to you and add new content to your site every day - links from related sites to yours is a bonus. Free directories are not given much weight by Google anymore.

Try finding out which sites link to your competitors (go to Google and type link:www.yourcompetitorswebsite.co.uk) because if they link to your competitors they may also link to you.

Basic concepts shows that Google gives around 70% weight to offsite optimisation (back links etc...) and 30% onpage optimisation (keywords, accessibility etc...) - whereas the majority of the other search engines tend to concentrate more on onpage optimisation than offpage.

I have written this quite quickly so hope it makes sense - but if you would like to contact me through my website with your website name and your main keywords I would be happy to take a look and give you some suggestions.

Good luck!

Dean

C2 Web Design

http://www.c2webdesign.co.uk

Thanks for that.. I think I may be tripping some sort of filter but I don't seem to be able to get lots of quality links to my site even though it is page rank 4.

www.iccommunications.co.uk - 0845 numbers, 0700 and 0800 numbers

www.0870receptionist.co.uk - Free 0870 numbers, free voicemail, free switchboard - Instant online connection!