PageSpeed Service enables site owners to speed up how quickly pages load for their users.
To test your website to see how your website performance is currently:-
http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
For more information about the Google service:-
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/service
The removal of the flower delivery giant Interflora’s website from Google organic search results has shocked many online businesses, making everyone realise once again that Google guidelines must be adhered to otherwise you will be penalised, regardless of the size of your company.
But what did Interflora do wrong and what were they penalised for exactly? The short answer to this is paying for advertorials.
What is an advertorial?
Advertorials are stories or editorials that are published on press websites and contain links to related businesses. The businesses pay the press sites to create the story and embed links to them in it, passing the power to their sites.
Interflora did this with an array of different newspaper sites, including The Independent as they had a high page rank and so the links brought lots of power with them.
Google do not disapprove of advertorials as an advertising platform in general, it is the fact that the links are paid for that does not meet their guideline criteria. Google states that such links such have a ‘no follow’ tag attached and so are not included in their robot crawl.
It is not just Interflora that suffered a Google penalty however, the newspaper websites involved were also penalised. The Independent, which had a high page rank of 8, was down-graded to a page rank of 4. This is because they were selling the paid advertorial links, a practice which is condemned by Google.
Why do Google not approve of Paid Links?
Google strives to be the best search engine online, and they can only achieve this goal by ensuring that their search results are the most accurately matched to the needs and wants of the user in terms of matching sites to keywords searched.
If these results relied on the number of backlinks that a site had gained only, then the company with the most money to purchase them would always be top for their desired keywords, even if they are not necessarily the best for the user in terms of relevance. Therefore, Google considers this to be a ‘black hat’ method of SEO and penalise heavily for it.
We get asked frequnetly if SEO is important and our reply is that “SEO is essential” if you have an online business.
Search engine optimisation carried out correctly will give Google the opporunity to find the information they need in way that makes Google like your website more than a competitor.
A good way to understand how essential SEO is to your online business you can watch this video by Matt Cutts. In this video Matt explains how Google ranks a website using a unique evaluation process. The crawling that Google does and the analysis of a website is the starting point and how crawling is carried out over a long period of time.
This video helps explain the Google dance and also explain how Google crawls and updates more and more data today than they did before.
The frequencies and priorities of crawls and indexing is a very important part of the Google search and the filtering processes within the Google indexed databases.
An expert SEO company will help Google find all the data that is required to help you get your website into Google search results for the keywords that you want to be found under. This is an essential part of your online business and SEO works to improve the rankings simply by helping Google find the details it needs.
London, the capital city of England and centre for business and commerce, is the pinnacle of business locations throughout the UK. The desirability of the city means that there is lots of competition for business premises, as well as very competitive market sectors.
London SEO Company
The world of SEO is a large part of any successful business as it aids the web-based parts of companies to succeed. Companies who are based in London will more than likely want to appear for London geographical search terms e.g. hairdressers central London, hairdressers in Westminster etc. Due to the competitive nature of these search terms, it is imperative that you choose a London SEO company with proven results in London SEO; this ensures that they have the skills and abilities to complete the task.
Many SEO companies have chosen to base themselves in London as it is the centre of commerce; this however is not necessary in order to carry out successful SEO in London. This is because a company’s website can be accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection, therefore the webmaster does not physically have to be in London to complete the task of SEO.
It is also worth noting that often London-based companies charge a higher fee for their services as the cost of renting offices and living is higher in the city, therefore they need to generate higher revenue to maintain profit margins. It is however beneficial to work with a company that has some knowledge and understanding of the area in which you are marketing your products and services too.
In short then, there is a happy medium when it comes to SEO in London. Look for a successful SEO company who has their main offices outside of London, but also have some subsidiary offices within the City. This means that your website will benefit from the local knowledge present in the London offices, but also from a pricing structure tailored outside of the capital.
Chameleon Web Services are a Birmingham-based SEO company with offices in and clients in London. We can provide a much more cost effecitve SEO package due to our overheads being much lower than if ouw main buisness was in the Centre of London inside the M25.
To speak to us regarding moving your website forward for London based search terms ask speak to a Chameleon Search Engine Optimisation Consultant about your needs by calling us on 0203 397 4288 or complete our contact form online and we will answer your questions and schedule a call as required.
If you wanted to check out your website yourself now you can use our FREE SEO tools.
Chameleon have been developing FREE SEO Tools and you can now start to use the service. The SEO tools are designed to assist you in understanding how the Google robotwill see your website and ensure you following the SEO guidelines required to achieve Google ranking success.
