"No Search Engines don't display in Alphabetical Order"

[mrbenn7]

I've been working with my I.T company for about two years now, mainly doing design work, i feel i have picked up the basics of SEO(thanks to my supervisor, TallTroll)

I did a freeby site about 12 months ago, for some computer illiterate people (Well they have used computers but still think the screens should be green and black)

Everything was going fine untill one mentioned search engines, Now at this point i thought fine i just explain breifly what i knew, good content, links, description tag, keywords tag, as i say just the basics

It was at this point one of them turned to me and said "search engines display results alphabeticaly don't they" (If only)

OK i thought better go through the basic just one more time,
half an hour later, i think i'm winning as they have all been hanging off every word nodding and smiling,
so i stop and let them talk amongst themselves about the issues i raised,

They then started talking about keywords (maybe a had got through) then it hit me as one of them said
"Well, if we put an 'A' in are keywords then we will rank first" Arrrrrrrrrgh

Did i just suck at explaining stuff or where they all jus secretly drunk - who nows

Anyway i decide to not involve them as much as i would have liked in the SEO side of things

[rogerd]

Perhaps they had seen directory listings like DMOZ or Yahoo, where starting with "Aaa" remains an advantage.

[bunltd]

Someone I met last week thought SERP's are FIFO, first in first out, so you have to keep submitting to stay on top. I attempted to gently educate...

LisaB

[SlowMove]

Not for keywords, but the alphabet does have it's place in SEO.

A lot of Webmasters have links pages where everything is arranged alphabetically. Joe Surfer doesn't hit the links pages too much, but Webmasters looking for link exchanges do visit these pages.

Checking your email and finding link exchange requests where some of the recips are on PR4 or PR5 pages can't hurt optimization, but that has more to do with the domain name and/or title of the site.

[miles]

It used to help back in the days of yahoo listing in Alpha order.

I have said it 100 times people in general dont know what on earth the internet is. All they see is "Bill Gates pulled in another 50 billion dollars off of internet sales." They dont see that there is actual work that goes into a site. It is not the phone book and the name of you business Pain In The Wallet is not going to show up any better with a url like this apaininthewallet.com. They very well could have been on something. If I were you have TallTroll explain it to them, if they dont understand he can thump them on the head.

The best way I have found is walking them through it step by step and then send/give them a report restating in greater detail and leave the door open for questions. Most customers are not willing to change their site because the paid there partners son to put the site up. Get in there and show them before they screw it up and then you have to do flight of the bumble bee to fix it so they can make their 40 million dollars that month.

Take it with a grain of salt.

[chris_f]

Did i just suck at explaining stuff or where they all jus secretly drunk

thanks to my supervisor, TallTroll

You answered your own question ... drunk :)

Seriously, though. I think we have all been there. At the minute my difficultly is with explain how some search engines use other search engines data.

ATOB
Chris

[TallTroll]

>> Did i just suck at explaining stuff or where they all jus secretly drunk

>> thanks to my supervisor, TallTroll

>> You answered your own question ... drunk :)

Oi, what you trying to say here?!

My personal favourite was the call from a client that started

"Should we renew our contract with T*****c M****t?" Oops, looks like the swear filter catches that ;)

The conversation just went downhill from there...