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Q: Improving search effectiveness for website ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   0 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Improving search effectiveness for website
Category: Computers > Internet
Asked by: sunil1-ga
List Price: $30.00
Posted: 15 Dec 2002 12:44 PST
Expires: 14 Jan 2003 12:44 PST
Question ID: 125013
How can I increase traffic to my web site at www.uktyping.com.  I do
not want to pay or advertidsing.  I want to improve my position in
internet searches.

We currently have 4/6 visitors per day looking at an average of 10-20
pages per day.
Answer  
Subject: Re: Improving search effectiveness for website
Answered By: robertskelton-ga on 15 Dec 2002 18:22 PST
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
Hi there,

I looked through your stats and noted that most of your visitors
arrive via Google results or a link from www.venables.co.uk. Without
advertising, links from other websites and search engines are the way
most websites will get visitors, so our aim is to get you more
visitors using each method. It is important that you get other
websites to links to yours, as well as optimising your web pages for
search engines. Doing both is much more powerful that just doing one
or the other.


Websites
--------

Since Google arrived on the scene, the trend is for search engines to
use link popularity when determining search results. The more websites
that link to yours, the greater the likelihood that your website is a
good one and searchers would like to visit it.

The three best general websites to be linked from are Yahoo, Open
Directory and Looksmart. Yahoo and Looksmart charge fees for business
listings, but Open Directory is free. The appropriate categories to
submit to are:

http://dmoz.org/Health/Professions/Medical_Transcription/Services/

http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/Business_and_Economy/Business_Services/Office_Services/Secretarial_Services_and_Virtual_Assistants/

Just click on "Add URL" at the top of the page. Write a different
description for each - it is best to give a short, dry summary of what
you provide, that way they are less likely to rewrite it.

The other thing you need to do is ask websites to link to you. You
need to seek out sites from your area and/or sites that have visitors
who have a need for your service. Just write a friendly email to the
folk behind each appropriate site, and offer your site as one they can
link to for the benefit of their visitors. Make sure to tell them how
nice their site is! The combination of flattery and offering a way to
slightly improve their site (by linking to you) can have high rates of
success.

Their email addresses can usually be found on the homepage, an About
Us page, a Contact page or a page labelled Links. Make sure that you
personalise the email somehow, even if it just means referring to the
name of their site.


Search Engines
--------------

Keywords: It is important to focus on keywords that will actually get
you visitors, which are not necessarily the ones that seem obvious. By
far the best tool to use is at Overture, which returns the number of
searches per month made for the keywords you specify:

Search Term Suggestion Tool
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Although it only covers searches made via Overture, it is reasonably
accurate for predicting the search ratios of other engines, like
Google. A search for the keyword "typing" highlights some problems -
most people are searching for lessons, tests, software and tutorials.
That means a lot of competing websites. The only popular search query
involving the word "typing" that is useful to you is "typing service".

The keyword "transcription" is popular, but more than three times as
many searches are made for the phrase "medical transcription". So
whenever you mention "transcription" on your site, changing it to
"medical transcription" will bring in extra traffic.

Likewise, on the forms.htm page, use the phrase "legal transcription"
instead of just "transcription".

Having your address on each page is good, many people search for the
type of service they are after, plus the name of their town or city.
Your site comes up 7th on Google for this search:

middlesex medical transcription
://www.google.com/search?q=middlesex+medical+transcription

Replace Middlesex with Harrow and you are in 1st place.

Page Title: Google likes keywords in the title of the page. I suggest
that by placing a space between UK and Typing, you will have a much
higher chance of being found by anyone who has UK as one of their
search keywords. Make sure that each of your pages has a different
title, otherwise it's like buying 5 lotto tickets with the same
numbers on them. As an example, I would change the current title of
medical.htm to:

UK Typing - Medical Transcription Service

Headline Tags: These are HTML tags normally used to denote a headline,
and the most commonly used is <H1>. Google adds weight to any keyword
used in headline tags, as long as you don't go crazy and fill the page
with <H1> tags. These can be customized to look however you want using
Cascading Style Sheets. Changing each page so that it has at least one
<H1> tag of 5 or less keywords will improve your ranking in searches
for those keywords.

Number of Pages: Not many webmasters know this, but Google prefers
websites with more pages. More pages of unique content imply more
knowledge of a particular topic, and a desire to share the knowledge.
It is an indicator of quality. Not a top indicator, but something that
Google appears to factor in. If there is more information that you can
share with your visitors, put it on a new page. I don't know if there
is any magic number of pages one should strive for, but one of my own
sites received much more traffic from Google when it passed the
100-page mark. Your press.htm page is a good example of extra content.


Opposition
----------

There seems to be many other websites that offer services similar to
yours. This makes it difficult to reach the top of the results for
popular keywords. A good strategy would involve targeting less
searched for keywords and phrases. A smart webmaster can also get
ideas from looking into how the opposition get their visitors. There
is a site listed in the Open Directory which is quite similar to
yours:

Kemp Professional Services 
http://www.kemp-professional-services.co.uk/

They have a have a Google Page Rank of 5 (compared to your PR of 3).
They are linked to by the Alliance of UK Virtual Assistants, a
business directory site, Open Directory and that's about it.

Links to Kemp Professional Services
://www.google.com/search?q=link:http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ekemp%2Dprofessional%2Dservices%2Eco%2Euk%2F

You can get listed on the Alliance of UK Virtual Assistants by
emailing them, the details are at the middle left of their homepage:
http://www.allianceofukvirtualassistants.org.uk/index.html

Google has an excellent free search toolbar which is handy for search
engine optimisation, because it displays the Page Rank of each page
you visit, and it can show a list of sites that link to that page.

Google Toolbar
http://toolbar.google.com/

Another similar UK site, http://www.personal-secretary.co.uk/ , has a
PR of 5, and the only links to it are from Open Directory.


How Long?
---------

After making changes, submit the URL of the changed page to Google:

Add you URL to Google:
://www.google.com/addurl.html

Also submit the URL of any web page that you notice has added a link
to your site. Hopefully the GoogleBot will visit these pages before
the index is next updated, otherwise it usually takes another month
before any increase in traffic occurs.

If you changed everything today, there would be a good chance it of
them being reflected in the update at the end of this month, but more
likely to be the update at the end of January.


Search Strategy: Personal experience

I hope my advice has set you on the path towards higher traffic. It is
worth putting in the extra effort, which is one thing which separates
ordinary webmasters from skilled ones. I once spent 2 weeks just
writing emails asking for links - and a few months later it paid off
very well.

If you need any explanations, or if any of my advice is unclear, just
ask for a clarification.

Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga
sunil1-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars
Very useful Answer

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