I’ve not been doing any work to the site as have had lots on. Perhaps as a result, the ranking have dropped slightly. In an exercise on working out how Google operates in practise, it’s hard to work out exactly what I need to do to get to the top. If you use some methods, you’re chastised almost and end up be penalised as a result whereas if you hit the right buttons, up you go!
So far, I think I’ve worked out that varied, relevant, regularly updated content is essential to make your way up google. The site has to be well established, and new sites seem to fair badly. (unlike www.msn.com, where I’m still number one). Keeping in touch with all the new technologies and trying to move along with them is also fairly key, community based sites seem to fair better, this for example is a WordPress site using someone else’s template currently as I’ve not had the chance to knock anything up.
The other stuff is becoming more standard. SEO seems to be key, and a error free XHTML site seems to fair better, especially if it’s fully accessible. I guess the search engines can read the site and get the relevant detail out of it that they need to rank it.
I’ve been careful with the meta tags here too, even though it didn’t actually have any until my colleague pointed it out to me the other day! Schoolboy error, but since adding in the meta tags, the site has actually dropped, so do the search engines really bother with this anymore? The site had no meta tags for the search expression “adam lewis” until two or three weeks ago, so is this a clear indicator that Google aren’t using these in their algorithm as much as they used to?
If I were rich, I’d experiment with the Google adwords to see if that has an impact on the organic results, but, alas all my money is tied up in beer so I’m unable to invest in such an experiment.
Here are the current results anyhow. If anyone reads this and cares, leave a comment, would be nice to see if comments make any difference to the search results!
www.google.com – adam lewis – 69 previously 69
www.google.com – “adam lewis†– position 59 previously 59
www.google.com – adamlewis – position 5 previously 3 (oh dear 
)
www.google.co.uk – adam lewis – position 9 previously 7 (cheaperbycar.co.uk is still 1)
www.google.co.uk – adamlewis – position 1
Peace out.
