Forum Moderators: mack
I'm beginning to observe; and I mean like, time after time; that the top spots are really not occupied by the best candidates. Instead, they are categorically held by some company that just learned how to snag the position with the search engine.
Let me try this example: If I want to find the best green car painter in town, and use Search Engine Whatever, and five guys come up as green car painters, and the top two are miles and miles away from where I live, I can state, in abject ignorance, yet with very high accuracy, that both of those two green car painters...
While the 3rd or 4th ranked result, Greg's Great Green Car Exterior Painting will have...
And yet...
Greg, who is obviously the guy you want, is beaten out by two jackofall tradesmen who run over to an auto parts store and buy 20 cans of spray paint (and then spray blue and yellow ad-hoc when there aren't enough green cans on the shelves).
I have seen this so many times that I personally discount position #1, and find my eyes almost always naturally drawn to the 2nd, 3rd, and even lower ranked results.
Am I observing a temporary technical/market abberation in all this? For that matter; am I the only one who observes this phenomenon?
And back to the topic at hand; do I want to compete for first place if others are thinking the same thing?
Or better yet; ARE others thinking similar thoughts or not? Does first on the list equal clicking customers?
As a search engine user, I am usually willing to slog through 20 pages of listings to find what I want. Most people, however, are not. I figure most don't make it past page 3. The determined ones may try refining the search but will generally just give up after 2 or 3 refinements. If I type 'green car painter' into google, I get 2.1 million hits. If I add 'arkansas' to the mix it drops to 1.2 million (oboy approaching manageable fast). If I change it to 'sea green' it's still 732,000. OK, seafoam green. 773 hits (and not a single entry on the first page is actually a car painter). That's still 50 pages (listings 491-492) before it tells you that's the end of the most relevant results.
As a web site owner, I want to be as close to the top as I can get so that I'll actually get hit before the person gets tired and asks a friend or uses the yellow pages - to me, just being page 1 would be the golden ring - I'd slobber all over myself if that happened. My web site is in spot #67 (that's page 7 most of the way down) in google for what I consider the most common search phrase for my product. That's out of 390,000 hits, not bad, right? How many referrals do you suppose I've gotten from google in a little over three years? One. Turned out that cat tried a different phrase for which I actually came out in the #1 spot.
It just doesn't matter how much better a painter Greg is than anyone else - if people can't find him, he ain't gonna paint any cars. It's all in the marketing; it has been for a very long time, and likely always will. Back it up 20 years. If Greg didn't have a yellow page ad and none of your friends had occasion to have their cars painted, how would you know about him? Say he had a YP entry but no quarter page ad. Would you actually call all 20 painters, drop by and see their operations? Maybe, if you're painting your classic car that'll be hitting the show circuit.
With a global marketplace where your customers can't drive by your storefront, see you in the grocery store with your logo'd t-shirt, or see your ad in the back of the newspaper, you can't rank 773. You can't rank 100. And 67's no good either.
From studying tricks on this board, the sad part is that I've had to play the same game, to some client's dissatisfaction, yet reluctant acceptance (for example, putting the meta tag "pyromaniac" in the above example) so that *if* someone wants to do it wrong, or has the wrong idea, maybe, JUST MAYBE, they'll hit my client's site and then maybe, just maybe, they'll contact my client and listen to them so my client can teach them the right way to suit their needs.
Every day I research SEO is a day something like this annoys me. As someone else stated, if they're someone who doesn't know it well, they won't be around long, but the sad part is that they'll dup enough people into it so they get their money's worth and their webmaster is good enough to get the next person in line at the top of the results page.
It's an evil and vicious world that if you don't play along, you'll end up in no man's land somewhere on page 15-20.
"...(and not a single entry on the first page is actually a car painter) ~...."
My point exactly. Thank you so much. Commercial real estate properties appeared on page one when I tried this phrase...
I want someone to paint my car in Fayetteville Arkansas
cameraman also commented...
"...How many referrals do you suppose I've gotten from google in a little over three years? One...."
Okay, so, should Little Old Nobody guys (like Greg) just avoid spending time on Google?
I think I saw the page in question grabbing position #4 tonight, but only when using the exact right phrase
I am learning that that phrase (which I originally thought made perfect sense) will not be used by 90% of the people whom I am trying to attract.
Probably more like 99%
So then,
He uses the statistics program on his site to determine exactly what keywords and phrases people are using to get to his site.
How does Greg get those phrases associated with his Green car painting site; including google; et.al.?
He targets those words on the relevant page. He targets those words on his inbound links. He might want to spend a dime in advertising for those words.
Help me with the definition of "target", as in "...he targets those words..."
If Greg thinks "I apply green paint to primed cars" and then realizes that the public seldom uses the phrase "primed cars", he'll probably start thinking about other phrases.
So let's say he wants to "target" (realize, please, that I don't understand that term) the four phrases...
Give me some ideas that demonstrate targeting in the context we've been discussing.
Or, just choose one of those phrases (if four phrases is asking for too much free education here). How does Greg "target" a given phrase?
Now the top-position ... is this thread
See how it works now, Web_Student? Greg simply ensures that the words and phrases that he wants to rank with are within the content of his page. There's no trick to it. He should use the same words that he would use if he were talking to a prospective customer in the shop. What does the customer want to know? What does Greg need to tell the customer?
All of that aside, Greg should probably not expect the same quick results that this thread achieved. WebmasterWorld has some history with the search engines, and almost anything typed here will bring quick results. One of my sites is good, but still not as good as this site. Greg will have to build his reputation just like everyone else. If he wants instant results, he should consider advertising.
Stupid search engines.
Do I infer properly?...
So, looks like Greg needs about 3 years of continual website updates to be properly noticed as the really best green car painter in Greenville. Until then, Roy G. Biv and his spray cans will get the attention of the searchers; this, in spite of the fact that Greg's site is 100% focused on green cars, green paint, his air-tight ovens, etc..
Part of me agrees with cameraman; I feel like my work and efforts were a giant dose of destroyed time, and that is disgusting.
Another part of me laughs at the stupidity of these circumstances. It really is quite hilarious that this site got top rating for the topic of painting cars green in Arkansas; agreed? (p.s., as far as I know, there is no one in Greenville, Arkansas named Greg who has such a shop).
The student in me has grasped something important: search sites can no longer tell me what's here, right now, if someone new has recently appeared on the scene. If I want my car painted green, and search the internet this week, I won't find Greg. Instead I'll get Roy. Next year or two, yes; but today; no.
Professors? Have I learned my lesson properly?
There's more than science involved in this branch of computer science
Sure is. Besides your light reading being all of the research papers, it's trying to figure out how it all might be applied. That's where the informed seat of the pants and the gut feelings -- plus the "Aha!" moments and swapping observations over a beer or two -- become the art.
If you keep in mind that there are no definites in this field and that everythiing is ever-changing, well, you'll go a long way in keeping your sanity ;-)
Of course I don't know how many went straight to example.com but I do know that as I wear varifocals I usually focus on results 2 and 3 on a search first.
