SEO for new site

[benjaminFowl87]

Hi there, i've recently created a new website www.horseboxhirehertfordshire.co.uk

I have been following some of the very well written articles on this website and have been following them.

The website as listed above you'll see that i have, made them in a way that is clean, has a unique title and description for each page, as have i tried to make each page specific to a keyword.

I've also followed the advice about getting back links to the site by signin up to multiple search engines and web directories.

My question is, with all this taken into account, does getting a high google ranking come down to the amount of traffic you get to your website ?

[EverWebby]

Not necessarily, but it may play a factor in seriously competitive niches. You should use an optimization tool instead of eyeballing it. There are so many different factors that come into play, that saying that you meta titles, keywords, and description tags are included is meaningless. Some seo tools look at over a hundred different factors, which traffic in some, based on alexa, is included. But traffic does not explain how a site could rank before Alexa is updated. So you be the judge!

[benjaminFowl87]

Ok, thanks for the tip on the SEO tools, wasn't aware that there were any, always just thought it was having a bit of know how to optimise your website.

What on earth is Alexa though?

[EverWebby]

I have listed below a links to what I was referring to. The first one in the list is Alexa which among their many tools, they have site information on just about every site on the internet. It can be real helpful for advertising purposes and gauging.

Alexa Site Info
SEO TOOLS

[benjaminFowl87]

Thanks alot EverWebby, really helpful stuff, only problem is that my site currently has no data recorded by alexa :(, mind you, neither does our main competitor in the area :)

[ivoryresearch]

Hi Benjamin, Alexa can update there data every 4 months for certain fields so try not to worry too much...However the host can play a signficant part in your Alexa for instance I created a website last week for a client and it has already reached 47k in the UK and 2 million overall. One great tip I could provide if you haven't done so is add you business to google maps. Benjamin when you mention high google ranking do you mean high page rank or placement within the search engine results page? Traffic and placement are 2 different subjects as I could have a higher page rank and alexa ranking but my content may not be optimized enough for anyone to see it so I will not show up on the first page

[Tiggerito]

Google Ranking (if your talking about PageRank) is not effected by traffic. It is purely to do with website links.

Saying that, your ultimate aim is probably to get traffic from relevant visitors. Link building will help your PageRank and good content with onsite SEO will make you relevant to searches. The combination should generate traffic.

Some quick tips:

Do some keyword research, Google's Keyword Tool indicates people search for horse trailer and horse box as much as horsebox. And rental is used as much as hire. Target all these variations.

Currently Google thinks most of your titles are duplicates. Goole site:www.horseboxhirehertfordshire.co.uk to see. Your new titles will get indexed but they are no better. They are your selling point. Make them sell and include keywords: Some ideas...

• Hire your own self dive horsebox in Hertfordshire (home)
• Why we started our horse box rental service in Hertfordshire (about)
• Horse Trailer Rental in Hertfordshire (enquiry)

I have an article called Attract visitors through Page Titles that has more details on creating good titles, and another on descriptions.

Register your website with Web Master Tools to see what issues Google has with you, like duplicate titles and descriptions.

Include your location, address, and contact details on all pages (note how I did it for the titles as well). It helps you do well for local searches as well as encourages people to contact you. You have a space on your menu, add your phone number there.

Add a map to indicate the areas you service and list the towns in it. Help Google send people your way. e.g. Would you match a search on hatfield horse trailer rentals? (Local SEO & Website Marketing)

Make sure your w3c valid if you are going to show validation certificates!

And continue that link building. Look for local business directory websites and definitely register with Google Places.

[benjaminFowl87]

Very helpful stuff, will definately have a look at this when i get home, the link for creating superb page titles seems really good.

Btw , when i type in site:mysite.com, i do get alot of duplicates, this is because i was still building the website on the 2nd day of having registered the domain and adding content, google indexed us by day 2 which i was very impressed with.

as for when i referred to google ranking i meant to say the page ranking.

As for helping google find us by adding a map to where we are, we thought it best to not include an address and map to where our horsebox resides as this could lead to potential thieves stealing our horsebox.

Is there a way to reference areas that would be in our area by google maps? would a general map of say hertfordshire do the trick?

Thanks for your advice and tips, i'll be looking to implement some of this hopefully tonight.

Much apreciated ivory and tiggerito and i'll be bk soon with an update.

[Tiggerito]

Horse Thieves be damned!

Your map and related locations don't need to indicate where you are. The idea is to indicate where your customers are (where you service).

Put yourself in your customers mind, like my example hatfield horse trailer rentals. You might not be in Hatfield, but they are valid customers, so state that on your website.

And your map does not need to indicate where you are, just where your customers can be from.

You can tell Google Places to not show exact addresses. You can also fine tune the exact area you trade in.

Good Luck and tell us how it goes

[benjaminFowl87]

Finally got round to ammending my titles: these are what i came up with, well i took ur examples for home about and enquiry as they were good, hope you don't mind.

I kept them all under 60 chars as you the site recommends

Here is what i came up with:

Fantastic equine links, love horses, love our links (links)
Contact us about renting our horsebox in Hertfordshire (Contact)
Horsebox rental in Hertfordshire to transport 2 horses (Our Vehicle)
Amazing self drive hire prices available in Hertfordshire (Prices)
We do not supply your information to 3rd parties (privacy policy)
Terms & Conditions of Hertfordshire Horsebox Hire (terms and conditions)

My next step is to re-word the descriptions for each page and then do the keywords for each page,

I've been told that meta keywords are often ignored by search engines, how true is this?

[Tiggerito]

Nice set of titles.

Google officially does not look at meta keywords and now Yahoo is driven by Bing it probably does not as well. Put them in but don't spend too much time over them.

Do you track your visitors? This can be a good way to see what search terms people use when they find your website, and therefore ideas to fine tune your titles. And Google Webmaster Tools can be used to see what search phrases your website is doing well at.

[cornholebagtoss]

Here is a great 2 minute clip for you to watch from one of Google's engineers, Matt Cutts. He pretty much states meta keywords are a waste of time:

http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2009/09/keywords-meta-tag-useless-for-google-seo/

[AirForceOne]

Hi,

Firstly, I would like to say targeting right money keywords would be the essential issue for ranking and traffic purpose. Generally speaking, you should put your targeted keywords as front as possible since title tag would be the most important factor for on page optimization purpose.

Secondly, I think the site in your post does really lack of back links. :)

all the best,

[benjaminFowl87]

I haven;t setup an analytics account yet but i will set one up in my break at work.

As for not having back links, i am slowly building them up, i'm waiting for a few sites to get back to me.

I am right when i say back links are simply links on other websites linking to mine right?

[benjaminFowl87]

Hi, quick question, i have changed my page titles, however for the first page which is my home page, this page was previously listed on page 10 on google for when you search 'horsebox hire'.

since it is currently reading Hertfordshire Horsebox Hire Self Drive, it has shot up to page 3 on google.

This i am very pleased with, by changing the page title for the home page, will the page listing change dramatically or will it stay the same or possible improve with the new title?

Would i be wise to revert back to the old title before my site is crawled again ?

[AngelSEO]

"My question is, with all this taken into account, does getting a high google ranking come down to the amount of traffic you get to your website ?"

Traffic does not help with rankings, what you need to be doing is link building on a regular basis and building trust with Google. You should look at social media as well and get your business on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc.

[Tiggerito]

On your titles. Make sure you focus on searches that people use a lot.

Your focusing on "horsebox hire" but is that what people are looking for!

As I stated before, Google's Keyword Tool shows many other phrases that may get cause the same or even more traffic.

In the end, it's a "suck and see" thing. And you have to wait a while to actually see the results of a change.

Once you have tracking software you will be able to see what search phrases you are working well for. Google Webmaster Tools can also tell you what phrases you are potentially doing well with, as it shows what search phrases they include you for, and on what page.

Keep tracking and tweaking!

[benjaminFowl87]

I have tracking tools now, i'm gonna adjust my titles to try out different things as you have recommended.

The tools are brilliant, i can see exactly where i'm getting the traffic from and also what people searched in order to get there.

I love it.

[lingoway]

Use social bookmarking To drive traffic to your site.social bookmarking helps in:

Quick indexing in search engine.
build High PR backlink to your site.
Drive traffic to your site.

[benjaminFowl87]

Tigerito

are you Tony McCreath the owner of that seo-webdesigner site btw?

[nehacct]

First of all you should do.......SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION..........

[benjaminFowl87]

I've done all my SEO for the time being, just gotta 301 redirect some old pages and make it so that certain duplicate information doesn't appear in searches.

Oh and get back onto making my site fully xhtml and css compliant.

Other than that its a matter of link building with leafleting in shops and equine related places.

[Tiggerito]

Tigerito

are you Tony McCreath the owner of that seo-webdesigner site btw?

Guilty as Charged. The name comes from:

Tony -> Tony Tiger (Kellogg Cornflakes)
Tiger -> Tigger (Bouncing)
Tigger -> Tiggerito (Spanishified)

[ekkanh]

You should definitely use a SEO tool, but you also need backlinks and links. If a website has more links than you on there website and you want to rank better than them in a specific keyword. They will rank higher just because of all there backlinks.

Try optimizing your site for 5 specific keywords.

[iamseo]

IBP is a good SEO tool... I used it for top ten rankings in Google.

[benjaminFowl87]

Yeh, i've been told about IBP, i'm sure its great, but i'm on a budget.

Thanks for the advice on backlinks

[iamseo]

Try Traffic Travis.. there's a free version.

[benjaminFowl87]

brilliant link, traffic travis is superb.

Thanks alot

[iamseo]

yap.. i have been using this app.. and it fills my requirements.

[benjaminFowl87]

Ok, I've now finally added a sitemap to my website :)

One question regarding a sitemap, you have the option to to add the frequency in which a page is crawled etc.

I have set it to monthly as my pages once they are done will not be changing on a weekly basis.

My question is really, as i'm still updating things on every page as the site is still undergoing development, would it be a good idea to change the frequency to daily until the development is complete ?

UPDATE:

I changed it to weekly, i have also produced an ror.xml file and submitted them to google, i now have 3 sitemaps in total, having multiple sitemaps like this, is there a limit? am i over doing it?