Google never ceases to amaze me and Search Engine Optimisation often seems to surprise me.
You may have read my recent post about the Estate Agents in Fleet, well it seems Google has picked up on the fairly keyword rich content and carefully worded in-links and indexed the post above many of the real Fleet Estate Agents.
The article wasn’t written to rank in Google’s index, or as any kind of SEO Search Engine Optimization, it was just a general piece about what hard work the estate agents project had been. I suppose if anything it was done for the benefit of the Estate Agents own website, as the link back would be sure to help them up the listings.
Last week the post was 3rd on page one for “Estate Agents in Fleet”, as of today it is listed 11th, which is top of page two, not bad for a simple article, check here to see where it is appearing now.
So has Google gone mad?
Surely if someone types “Estate Agents in Fleet” they are looking for exactly that, an Estate Agents, to buy or sell a house, not a blog with one article about setting up an Estate Agents.
Granted, in terms of content my post is pretty much as good of the rest, so this is where Google falls down, you can game the system.
With decent links into the article with good anchor text and most importantly keyword rich content you can get right up on page one.
The problem is that Google eventually (often quickly) realises and moves you down the rankings, so what do you do then…
Well that’s why I have written this, I am confident the links and content on this very post will push the “Estate Agents in Fleet” article back onto page one.
Search Engine Optimisation is a all about being creative, having quality content and working hard on building decent links from other sites, there is no short cut or quick fix.
Depending on the business you are in the cost of Search Engine Optimisation varies, for example a Personal Injury Solicitor will need a big budget to run an SEO campaign as would a company who specialised in Personal Loans or Debt Management and IVA’s. Whereas a business operating in a less competitive field such as a local based carpenter wouldn’t need to go to the casino or get credit or a loan, as their Search Engine Optimization campaign would be a lot cheaper to run.
Join the buzz….Become a fan of Simon Chapple’s Blog that Bites on Facebook.
I wouldn’t calling it gaming the system. Google ranks based on proper keyword use and link popularity – if your article has more of that than the competitors’ then you deserve to rank.
I’ve noticed that Google will often move a new page up in the rankings temporarily especially if it seems newsworthy. Within a couple of days as the newsworthiness of a page decreases so does the rankings.
Google love new content and rank new pages or new sites high in search results but only for few days.
Backlinks is the key element in ranking high in Google.
I doubt that ‘estate agents in Fleet’ is a very competitive phrase, so it would be easy to rank well for it.
The phrase “Estate agents in Fleet” is with strong competition. It is not that easy to rank this term very well on google search engine. Google changes its way frequently. But from my opinion, Google has its policy, then SEOer will have their following strategies quickly.
As my point of view, we can achieve high search ranking for competitive keyword. But, for it, first we have to target less competitive keyword. Once, it is attained, then we target it for competitive keywords by getting more relevant back links to it.
@TTloanshark: Estate Agents in Fleet is actually quite hotly competed.
This is by smaller Fleet-centric sites and then the larger, seo’d up to the hilt sites i.e. FindaProperty.com/rightmove and the dirty practices of Email4Property (who seem to have bought every conceivable domain in the ‘[areaname]estate-agents’ format across the UK – check it for yourself, they have spent some time on that and they are reaping the benefits big time across the UK)
The smaller sites are probably in locally focussed directories so they’re ranking nicely – it’s nice to see that Email4Property’s tactic of areaname estate agents in the URL doesn’t always mean top placement – big up the Vickery/Waterfords/Romans guys!!
I second Agilina’s comment – new content always ranks well. That is until Google exhausts itself trying to find inlinks from authority sites in order to justify such a high placement in it’s results. Cos there probably aren’t any Fleet authority sites and/or any of the other top 20 sites linking to your estate agents in Fleet article it’ll drop down the rankings. It’s already position 22 on Google UK. I doubt ‘injury claims’ in your title tag does much to reinforce the Fleet Estate Agents theme tho!
Also, Google creams itself over content written by humans for humans with an un-seo minded touch, the more natural and heart felt – the better. Their algorythms have changed much over the last few years to bestow more weight upon Social media and also posts such as your Fleet Estate Agents. That’s why it loves blogs too, cos a non-seo minded human is not trying to manipulate it and fool it. These non-seo minded humans are more likely only to link to relevant sites, in doing so they impart a large amount of information to Google on what really should be ranking well for those geographical or area specific search queries such as Fleet Estate Agents.
Again referring to Angilina – yup, to maintain a good position you need to build links into your new content to give it a fighting chance of keeping it’s head above the fold.
Interesting discussion. I was just talking with a colleague the other day about SEO best practices and what helps sites the most in this area. Though the general sentiment is that metatags no longer help, I’d be curious to hear what this group’s take is on the topic. My colleague’s opinion was that, despite general opinions, metatags still do help (in at least some way) with SEO. Anyone here have an opinion on this?
I think that they could also want to keep website administrators busy and reserve the top spaces for the admins which keep working on their stuff.
I guess just keep doing enhancements and it will stay on a high position. But also I think there are other factors involved.
Hi angilina,
I totally agree with you that “Google love new content and rank new pages or new sites high in search results but only for few days.”
But, I feel that Backlinks with relevant keywords is the key element in ranking high in Google.
Hi Angilina,
You have mentioned that “Google eventually (often quickly) realises and moves you down the rankings”.
It happens as other SEO also work on their sites to get better result in SERP. So, we should continue on our project also.;)
The methods used to keep your site in the top pages of Google for a long time will depend on if you know how Google ranks it index.
Wow! nice post buddy!
I’ll will in touch with you …on the Blog
Stumbled you ! cheers
Very informative post, and you have highlighted very good points on google, SEO and the Estate Agents… The comments are really commendable as well !
A good and unique anchor text is really important for getting good ranks by search engine, and i agree with you, google is really amazing and now especially with the search engine optimisation.
Now the race is about getting the best rank in a google search results, everyone is striving for that, and the key to acheive this is to use the appropriate anchor name,ok keywords.
By linking to your post from the same domain, you will not really boost your ranking any further. In fact, if you continue to do so, it will most likely be seen as spammy and will drop you down the rankings.
Best to go get some honest links from on-subject pages on on-subject websites.
Mix your keywords up, a host of links pointing at one page, all using the same link text = alarm bells at Google et al: “this guy’s a spammy link buyer!”
The engines, esp. Google, are intelligent enough to work out ‘estate agencies in fleet’ is the same as ‘fleet estate agents’, also same as ‘estate agents – fleet’ and ‘estate agencies in and around fleet’
I seriously doubt that you will garner any links from ‘valuable’ sites because your page does not list any fleet agents, nor does it really show anything of any use for external sites to link to using any wording related to ‘fleet estate agents’.
If I owned a prominent website for Hampshire and I had a Fleet page/s, I would not link to your page because it gives my users no useful information to help finding estate agents in fleet, but it does give a little information on ’setting up and marketing a new estate agency in fleet’
Another major hurdle for you is that your domain name is nothing to do with estate agents. Your permalink for the estate agents post is about as non-descript as it can get ‘/?p=87′ – it says nothing about the content on the page.
I would not be surprised if Google’s spidered your content and can see that you refer to SEO and anchor text and would devalue any link juice you pass with your link text..
Google last cached your estate agents page on 13th November, a month or so ago, showing there no new content on there = it will visit less
You’ve got 10 inbound links according to Yahoo site Explore, 9 of which are from your own site, the other 1 is from http://www.bumpzee.com/ (which appears to be down at the moment!), it looks like a discussion forum anyway so links could be discounted to negate any influence from forum spamming.
Get some followable, non-redirected links from estate agents websites in the area, get some links from .gov, .ac websites. get links from other blogs.
Give it a few months and have a look again…
Have a good christmas everyone