Website hits and facebook

[Oldboy]

I'm no expert in ranking but one of my websites ranks usually between 2nd & 10th for a single keyword which lists over 39 million hits & has done for over 10 years. It helps that I own a top level domain which is that keyword. (breastfeeding, if you're interested)

So, that's how you keep abreast of the competition. 

[skellum]

As you may know my main website and trading name is Lancashire Photography but when I recently opened my shop in Leyland I decided I needed some sort of local presence on the internet so with help from my son ( because he's young and knows more about this sort of thing than me ) we bought the domain  www.leylandphotographer.co.uk  for £ 10.99 for 2 years then created a link site to my main site www.lancashirephotography.com  but most importantly we listed it on Google Maps and if you Google "leyland photographers" I am No: 4 ( or D ) and it has started to bring in customers and work for me.

Not knowing which area of Leeds you are in I did a quick search for available domains in the Leeds area and these are available :  cookridgephotographer.co.uk & .com, shadwellphotographer.co.uk & .com, morleyphotographer ( Taken ), rothwellphotographer.co.uk, pudseyphotographer.co.uk & com ( which supprised me with the connection to Pudsey Bear and all that ).  Update !!!   Just had a look on flickr and found your area and post code.  meanwoodphotography.co.uk & .com are available also leedsandbradfordphotography.co.uk & .com are available.


Another usefull free site is accessplace.com which usually comes up on Google first page after the Google Map entries. For leyland I am the first listing.

Hope this is some help to you.

If your wondering why I am up so late I have been babysitting a new pup. Its asleep now but ........

[jinky]

Cheers Dave. I`ll put that into my thought process. New puppy must be great - I am not allowed a dog in our house 
If you are wondering why I am up so late I decided it was time to set up a blog and link it to my website. Good grief I am on facebook and blogging now - please someone shoot me if I start tweeting  next

[skellum]

No problem Paul    A customer suggested I promote myself on face book but to be honest I hate it. Do you find it helps you in any way ? As for Twitter well thats not for me either, I have enough problems with the cat following me halfway to the pub.

[Jonathan]

A customer suggested I promote myself on face book but to be honest I hate it. Do you find it helps you in any way ?

It's going to make me sound old but I really struggle making sense of FB.  But then one day I realised that with no effort I'd booked a couple of weddings and some other stuff from it and I started to get interested

[jinky]

Not directly helped me yet on facebook but then I need to make more friends. My daughter has out me around a bit and and I am going to link my blog with facebook to try and develop both but early days yet. I have had one contact of a friend facebook me to suggest a link with a local wedding planer and highlight that her son is to marry next year and she has me in mind but then she was alerted by my leaflet through a friend rather than facebook itself. Still hoping to cultivate that one.

Somehting I don`t understand about facebook. I`ve got 2 accounts.
1.The personal one with around 55 friends thus far hich ends up with all sorts of stuff in feeds / posts that I would not necessarily want to link to from my work website
2. A work based business one which people can "like" and is more basis with people only able to comment o n what I put up there. Just 25 likes so far.

Using the same email address for each (probably a mistake) means that I can only use one of the identities on facebook at one time. If I use the business one - do my 55 contacts from the personal one still see what I am doing or just the 25 who "liked" me? They do not seem to show up as available on chat on bottom right so I suspect not.

Given that I now have a blog that I have lnked to my website it seems repetitive to post updates on what I am up to on my blog, facebook business and facebook personal. I am thinking of just using the blog link on website as pure work / comments and then only using the personal facebook to keep contacts up to date who maybe don`t look at the site. Am I missing something?

[Colin]

As Jonathon said earlier there is a lot of rubbish talked about SEO.

What I have found is that keywords mean less nowadays than they used to but if you are using them make sure that the keywords that you use appear appropriately several times on the home page of your website.

Google wants you to have a sitemap so make sure that you have created one.

The most useful thing to help your ranking is incoming links from appropriate websites. Don't get conned by one of the link farm companies and sign up with them as this will actually hurt your ranking.

Anorther thing that helps is to use your url in your signature on all your emails and if Mick doesn't complain  when posting on forums.

Make sure you check out the webmaster tools on all the search engine websites and then follow their submission procedure to get your site indexed by them.

I have found that these all work for me and placed me on the first page of Google and Bing. Hope they work for you.

[jinky]

As Jonathon said earlier there is a lot of rubbish talked about SEO.

What I have found is that keywords mean less nowadays than they used to but if you are using them make sure that the keywords that you use appear appropriately several times on the home page of your website.

Google wants you to have a sitemap so make sure that you have created one.

The most useful thing to help your ranking is incoming links from appropriate websites. Don't get conned by one of the link farm companies and sign up with them as this will actually hurt your ranking.

Another thing that helps is to use your url in your signature on all your emails and if Mick doesn't complain  when posting on forums.

Make sure you check out the webmaster tools on all the search engine websites and then follow their submission procedure to get your site indexed by them.

I have found that these all work for me and placed me on the first page of Google and Bing. Hope they work for you.

Thanks Colin - i`ll give these a try. I use my url in all signatures on  emails and will tidy up my keywords. How do I know if I have a sitemap already - given that I set my website up through luxipics. i`l ask them but just wondered? Looked up how to create one and was immdeitaely put off by all the compuer speak and codes - just not me. I`ll tidy up my keyowrds next  . I guess I need to link to more sites but step at a time.

[Colin]

Jinky, If you want to tell me your url I should be able to do the sitemap for you and email it to you. Alternatively you can do it yourself here and all you have to do is then upload the normal xml and html files (you don't really need the others but if you want to upload them they are only small and it won't hurt) to the same folder as the home page of your website on the webserver.

[jinky]

Cheers Colin - I`m not sure how Id do it. I did go onto xml and get a site map emailed to me. My site providers do not provide site maps at the moment they say and their view is that they do not make a great deal mof difference to engine searches. I`ve no idea how to access the server but know I had huge problems early on when I bought my domain name from 123 and tyhen tried to link it to luxipics siste to get rid of the luxipics .com extension. 123 kep giving me plain wrong advice and in the end it was only luxipics at first time of asking who agreed to use my passwords to set it up. i`ll leave it for now and see how I go unless you know a way of doing it without messing up what I have. Alternatively if you or others can give me something showing the importance of site maps I can try and persuade luxipics to adopt them as they say it is something they could look at in future if enough demand for it.

[Jonathan]

their view is that they do not make a great deal mof difference to engine searches.

They are wrong.  It's one of the very very few things that Google, Yahoo. Ask and Bing agree on.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_map and even better http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=183668

I've said it before - you need a new host.  Luxipics will cost you money.

[jinky]

their view is that they do not make a great deal mof difference to engine searches.

They are wrong.  It's one of the very very few things that Google, Yahoo. Ask and Bing agree on.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_map and even better http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=183668

I've said it before - you need a new host.  Luxipics will cost you money.

Thanks for that - will take it up with them. I`ll be sticking with them for now as just recently renewed for a further year but will see what they do. Trouble is I can not afford / do not need an all singing and dancing website. Strictly semi-pro basis I am looking at with jobs to fund gear and a trip or two is my aim as I have other things I plan to do with my early retirment and photography is not my sole source of income. Wish I knew more about site creation or had a contact who would be reliable / cheap enough to do me one but not just now. i`ll use your links to talk to luxipics.

[Beaux Reflets]

Cheers Colin - I`m not sure how Id do it. I did go onto xml and get a site map emailed to me. My site providers do not provide site maps at the moment they say and their view is that they do not make a great deal mof difference to engine searches. I`ve no idea how to access the server but know I had huge problems early on when I bought my domain name from 123 and tyhen tried to link it to luxipics siste to get rid of the luxipics .com extension. 123 kep giving me plain wrong advice and in the end it was only luxipics at first time of asking who agreed to use my passwords to set it up. i`ll leave it for now and see how I go unless you know a way of doing it without messing up what I have. Alternatively if you or others can give me something showing the importance of site maps I can try and persuade luxipics to adopt them as they say it is something they could look at in future if enough demand for it.

As far as I am aware (and someone please correct me if I am wrong) ; The search engines trawl the landing pages first , which is usually the home (parent/index) page and on most basic web site maps the rest of the pages are linked as sons and daughters in the tree. If you have a site that includes more than one landing page (ie more than one parent/index page) the information on those pages will come up in the first trawl, along with your home page. Or indeed as itemised in your meta tag / data search info, when users type their search words in to find someone or something.

[jinky]

All really useful stuff wasted on an ITY illiterate lie me. I`ve sent my request to luxipics to do it or tell me how to do it if I can and will see it as a test of their customer service which I must say has been excellent to press. I think for me local advertising and word of mouth is probably the way to go rather than a heavy , costly advertising route that if it works might bring me more business than I want. Thanks all.

[Jonathan]

Cheers Colin - I`m not sure how Id do it. I did go onto xml and get a site map emailed to me. My site providers do not provide site maps at the moment they say and their view is that they do not make a great deal mof difference to engine searches. I`ve no idea how to access the server but know I had huge problems early on when I bought my domain name from 123 and tyhen tried to link it to luxipics siste to get rid of the luxipics .com extension. 123 kep giving me plain wrong advice and in the end it was only luxipics at first time of asking who agreed to use my passwords to set it up. i`ll leave it for now and see how I go unless you know a way of doing it without messing up what I have. Alternatively if you or others can give me something showing the importance of site maps I can try and persuade luxipics to adopt them as they say it is something they could look at in future if enough demand for it.

As far as I am aware (and someone please correct me if I am wrong) ; The search engines trawl the landing pages first , which is usually the home (parent/index) page and on most basic web site maps the rest of the pages are linked as sons and daughters in the tree. If you have a site that includes more than one landing page (ie more than one parent/index page) the information on those pages will come up in the first trawl, along with your home page. Or indeed as itemised in your meta tag / data search info, when users type their search words in to find someone or something.

Yes and no.  Spiders will crawl every page on the internet that they have access to eventually.  Because everything is interconnected.

Google suggest using an XML sitemap as a way to accelerate this process.  It's usually wise to follow their advice if you want results from them

If I work at a new venue I make sure the wedding from it is blogged with some suitable keywords pretty soon after.  Once the post goes live the site automagically regens the sitemap and pings Google.  I've hit page 1 for some venues within 15 minutes of making a new post.