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After this latest Dec update I have looked at about 5 or 6 key searches and in every case I have to slog down to at least #50 or 60 before the first of the stand-alone operator sites start to show. Everything above that is totally dominated by the global and national directory type sites.
Why do they dominate... because they can play the linking game to an extent that is simply not possible for the small operator. This is not about giving viewers the best choice of sites (many sites are empty shells), its not about content (conspicuous by its absence in many cases)... no, the one common denominator is links. Not voluntary linking because of intrinsic value but engineered linking as an seo technique.
The stand-alone operator does not have access to a carefully crafted and controlled linking programme, they battle huge odds to get a reciprocal with a decent PR, even their entry in ODP will probaly end up on a page with a PR zero... same for their entry in Yahoo. They start to try for anything they can get, increasing the risk of straying into bad neighbourhoods. That is the reality for the small stand-alone operator.
Net result is usually a huge amount of effort for little or minimal link improvement so they remain locked in Google's Bermuda triangle..... and the quality of their site and its worth to the intended audience remains wasted... and that is often a great pity.
Is anyone else seeing this pattern in their pet areas? Is Google becoming the graveyard for small stand-alone operator sites in the competitive areas? Is AdWords the only option for the small operator? I'd have thought Google's commercial wellbeing was better server by enticing those better able to afford AdWords.
Some food for thought to get 2003 underway. Best wishes for a prosperous new year to you all.
Then have a page on "where to stay" where you recommend your own hotel (any maybe a few other really expensive non competitive hotels)
Or link to RC's site. ;) You'll be in good company.
Indeed. It makes perfect sense - it was exactly what I thought of you first sight.
Thank you for telling us a bit more about yourself.
Watch who links to you and try to convince them to link to you with your favorite link text.
Easy example - a site about australian widgets:
Filename: australian-widgets.htm
Titel: Australian Widgets Guide
Structure your text:
Headline: <h1>Australian Widgets - A Guide</h1>
Subheadline: <h2>Learn everything about the australian widget<h2>
Text: ... some nice text about widgets ... if it get's too long, split into further pages. Target different spellings on these sub pages.
Linktext to the site with "Australian Widgets Guide". Ask the people to use exact this link text if they link to you.
.... and more ...
Even in the (really wild) travel market you can have top positions. Don't concentrate on single keywords that are allready taken by the big players. There are soooo many phrases and words around the top words ... target them and you prob. get more traffic than the big players get for their single top words.
Build more content. And don't stop hunting for links ... google loves you if you go for quality! And you don't have to spend not even 1¢ to get qualified traffic!
If the big sites that are ranking above the small sites are not providing information the visitor wants, then the small sites will get the business.
True msgraph I run a glossary site and alot of my lesser important keywords are on the second or third page of Google result pages, the first page is full of corporate sites selling services or the actual article, but I still get alot of hits from surfers who go to the thrid page for the good quality ;) info.
Craig
That is providing the searcher sticks around!
"The click will come further down the line or there will be a refined search."
If the searcher is savvy
"But, if the big site satisfied the intent of the search, the small site's depth of information wasn't needed."
Absolutely .. in the context of this thread if all the searcher wanted as an example was a bed for the night.. then any of the big boys can help them.
The point is, that small sites are not optimising to meet their target markets terms when they do try to go broader or specify their intentions... (I know some of us are)
"You can't say that the SE wasn't doing it's job just because the serp wasn't kind to small business."
Search engines are very friendly to small businesses that know how to talk to their target market.
I run a small hotel site and we do pretty well, but I have seen this phenomenon you are talking about, where large players are invading the regional keywords for the travel industry. You may have a point for some regions, and maybe they haven't got to ours yet. It looks like as time goes on, more and more of the "widgetland hotels" type of keyphrases are going to be totally dominated by mass-produced travel directories, which is indeed sad.
However, the best advice so far given by far is to look for keyphrases in the wordspace around the main keyphrases for your area. The big guys can't target them all, they're too busy trying to rule the world.
Don't get too discouraged, there's still hope for small sites as far as I can tell. I just started another site, not travel-related, and after only two months I just got to #1 for a pretty big keyphrase, one that just wasn't being targeted by the big guys yet.
Anyway, point is, don't give up, you just have to be creative. :)
<added>Mods: If you think the above example is too specific, feel free to edit my post.</added>
[edited by: ciml at 5:26 pm (utc) on Jan. 2, 2003]
[edit reason] yep, too specific [/edit]
Well, once they resume the Apollo program, give my site a try (lol).
All kidding aside, I think Google gives the small sites an advantage. Google is predictable and pretty well understood and Google information abounds ... on websites, in forums, on blogs, etc., etc. .... so anyone that wants to learn how to boost their lonely site can find the information on how to do it, and how to avoid trouble along the way (naturally there are exceptions as there are in any risk venture). The other search engines are far less predictable or understood.
Google gives the small operator two good ways to get noticed (and maybe more with Froogle now). They can learn how to optimize by searching the web and forums or they can pay via adwords. But the days of free traffic are years behind us ... you pay with your energy by optimizing or you pay with your money by buying ads or placement.
Maybe we need to be realistic. Big organizations are beginning to get on top of this stuff and however the algo is tweaked, they will eventually dominate. Okay, we can be real specific in keywords, anchor text etc, but the reality may be that outmanouvering big guys through optimization was always going to be a relatively short-term phenomenon.
For small businesses, it may be that the website will primarily be an online brochure, or big business card, rather than a go-out-and-grab em sales tool.
I would expect before much longer that mega media organizations will be ready to roll, so that the first fifty sites will be gateways to news libraries for which you pay on entry. Then maybe Google will produce side directories that allow you to choose independent content in some way.
Make hay while the sun shines
The post is about results across many thousands of sites, it has nothing to do with rankings results for any one specific site. The post in my profile is totally unrelated... but thanks for the comments although the rules of the forum generally exclude site reviews :)
Other posters
From a personal perspective, I am not a rankings junkie and don't get too excited when the goalposts keep getting moved.... but as we all know rankings have a very major impact on what the viewer gets to see.
To expand a little on the original post... the big directories will typically dominate a search for (say) Widgetville Holiday Lodgings. Open it up and you might find a one or two entries for Widgetville, often none at all. Accompanying images are the size of a postage stamp and the description runs to 4 or 5 dot points and a great big "book here" button. That's it.
Now those same properties have their own websites, with a home page explaining exactly what to expect, a page on the accommodation complete with photos, the facilites available, local attractions in the area, calendar of events, local hire and rental companies, direct contact details for the hosts, schedule of tariffs, online booking etc.
Everything that the posters in this thread have been talking about... its all there. And for most sites it amounts to diddly squat.
The point of the original question is that the almost useless (to the visitor) directory gets seen solely because of the engineered linking structure....the really useful stand-alone site does not get seen because it cannot compete in the linking wars.... and as I said at the top, that is sad outcome and it's difficult to see how the viewer gains from this.
Savvy searchers looking for those stand-alone sites jump over the few results pages and still find them, especially when they can't find what they are looking for on page one or two. It's not a flood of traffic, but they do get some.
If I remember correctly, in the days before optimization became vogue, you really couldn't expect your page to come up near the top anyway. Not with tens of thousands other similar sites and pages in the soup.
That, and SE algos have got better. Some optimization is good, as webmasters usually optimize to be found when they know their page will match the search terms they optimized for. Where SEO is bad is when it is done to get pages irrelevant to the search score high, or in cases where the idea is to grab all spots on the page 1 SERP.
That's it exactly! I wish there was a way Google could really tell which sites are truly informative but I guess it's about impossible without actually going in and looking at sites. Any other technique will soon be misused and the tricky ones will be up there again.
I've found that time is a great help. I have far more visitors coming in from other sites, bookmarks and recommendations from friends than through search engines. I see Google as a way to bring in new visitors who will also tell friends and possibly link me from their site if they have one. But all this takes time. Brett's info on a 12-month plan really makes a lot of sense.
Anne
Smart webmasters want happy visitors. That's one thing the webmasters (smart ones, that is) and search engines have in common.
"Research has shown that customers prefer to visit, and do business with, well represented corporate sites like ours in preference to individual home pages."
Well they didn't include *me* in their research!
You know those puny listings with the postage stamp size image mentioned above... If I am looking for a hard to get at web site and I find something that looks interesting, I will cut and paste the business name and search for it.. if google doesn't find it, that's when I trot on over to other search engines.
I prefer to deal direct where I can and will rarely purchase via a third party.. what do you all think?
Are people loosing their desire for the personal touch and direct relationships in business?
>If I remember correctly, in the days before optimization became vogue, you really couldn't expect your page to come up near the top anyway <
Oh yes you could... it involved on-page content and the careful use of keywords and phrases (aka spider food) to best deliver to the viewer what they had asked for. Those who did it well became known as seo's and many of them were/are the founding members of this forum. One of the enjoyable things about the web was that the little guys could compete solely on the quality of their product and knowledge of how se's worked.
Now its the site with the most links wins and why these forums are dominated by threads on how to best fabricate advantageous links. No-one talks about "reciprocal" anymore, its purely links by whatever means necessary. Check out some of the links pages and try to understand why a link from a computer repair shop in Birmingham adds value to an accommodation directory for Sacremento. (OK... I made that up but off-topic linking is now commonplace).
rfgdxm1
>Some optimization is good, as webmasters usually optimize to be found when they know their page will match the search terms they optimized for<
That is web design 101 ... any designer/seo is going to optimise for what they expect the viewer to search for. And they may be an absolute genuius at it... but without those links they will have to accept that their potential viewer has to do a hell of a lot of digging to find them. And that is pretty unlikely.
One thing about large corporate sites is it often takes them a long time to get their act together when it comes to SEO. Sometimes they never get it together, even when they are given the exact steps to take. The CEO, thier cousin and significant other, the brand managers, the product managers, the web designers, and everybody else all want to throw in thier .02 when it comes to the website.
It's also not just about the number of links. Quality, on-topic is important. For travelocity a PR8 = 18,600 links. We work with sites that have 10 - 200 incoming links with PR 5-6 that get plenty of targeted traffic and sales becuase of it. Others have PR9 with about 1/6 of the links travelocity has. Quality, creativity, brains, and a desire to succeed can sew the seeds of success regardless of the competitive landscape. You can do it if you really want to.
[edited by: skibum at 5:16 am (utc) on Jan. 3, 2003]
