Computers

The brainy leading the blind ?

During the 1,970’s, when I was the Chairman of one of the branches of The Institute of Directors, leading entrepreneurs and chief executives became extremely concerned, many for the first time in their lives. Previously the founder of the business knew more than every employee about the commercial operation, be it property, retail, or manufacturing. All of a sudden the CEO was in the dark on the subject of these wretched new machines called computers. The highly intelligent, and usually young, programming expert could lead the boss a merry dance, who, on being told that something would cost $10 or $1 million, had no way of knowing if that was reasonable. Even today, governments are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on projects that eventually don’t function properly. If you grade staff on a scale of one to ten, with computer experts, I would grade from one to a hundred. Some are worth $20,000 a month and many worth nothing. These genius level experts also use their own language in an attempt to baffle most normal human beings who do not understand a word.

In 1989 a British scientist called Tim Berners-Lee, working at the CERN nuclear physics establishment, which has been in the news in recent times, invented the internet, and in doing so broadened the scope of the creative programmers.

What is a website ?

If a company provides a service or product, one way of offering information would be to print millions of brochures, one for each household or business, and distribute them. This would tend to cost slightly more for publicity than the business owner had in mind. Another way is to put the same information on a website, where it can be viewed by all, and, if desired, can be printed out by the viewer.

Who will know about my website ?

If the potential market is limited, one can simply notify each of the potential customers. An example I came across was a lamp manufacturer who only wanted to supply to lighting shops in five counties, and whose representative called on each one of them. It was a simple exercise to notify each of them of the existence of his excellent website which contained photos and information on his vast range. I explained to him that he did not need our expertise in informing others about his products.  

How to contact people who do not yet know of your existence ?

Firstly one can spend a great deal of money advertising on TV, buses, magazines etc. hoping that the percentage of the whole population, at which you are aiming, happen to see it.

Secondly one can aim only at that percentage, by having your site appear in the first few places on search engines such as MSN, Yahoo, and Google, for those who are searching for what you offer.

This process, known as search engine optimisation, or SEO, also baffles the business owner, as he or she has no way of knowing what this should cost.

If your preferred search term is e.g. discongulated chicken widgets, this would be somewhat easy as there is no competition, and it would be unethical for a search engine optimisation company to charge for achieving this. Try it in www.google.com.

How difficult is my chosen search term ?

Try congulated chicken and you will see that it would not be fair to charge for achieving first place for this term.

Try shop, and you will find competition of over two billion, and we would not wish to take on such work.

Now try clothes shop and that is perhaps suitable for chargeable work.

Follow that by clothes shop Bradford and it is getting rather easy.

And now outsize clothes shop Bradford, and this illustrates that the more precise the search becomes, the more filters one applies, the easier it gets.

I have a client who wanted to be No.1 in Google for a one word search term, and now sells his entire annual production online, to customers who did not previously know of his existence.

How do I know that the SEO company can do what they claim ?

If an SEO can demonstrate having achieved number one against competition of 50 million, then he or she is somewhere on the scale, and if against several hundred million, I would accept that they know what they are doing. This is particularly so if they are competing against other SEO’s own sites, involved in internet work, rather than client’s sites.

I have met SEO’s who cheat by claiming good ranking for a site with which they have no connection. To check on this, insist that he or she put a message to you on the home page of the site, in front of your eyes, to confirm that they own or manage that site.

I also know of dishonest people who cheat to get your site up there, and get receive payment, knowing full well that your site will be banned in a very short time.

Once your site is achieving success, the webmasters of your competition will not be very happy and will work even harder to knock you back down again. This means that in order to stay up there your SEO has to continue to work on a daily basis.

Can I do my own SEO ?

Yes indeed. The work has nothing whatsoever to do with being a webmaster, and requires no knowledge of programming. On March 13^th. 2003 Google finally removed virtually all the previous tricks used by the brainy optimisers to achieve success.

A few myths stated by those SEO’s that are not up to date.

Keyword density, the number of times that your search term appears on the page, is important. It is possible to achieve good results without the search term being on the page.

Keywords are what matter. We can now achieve our client’s ambitions leaving this blank.

Lots of directory links will do it.  We have a list of over 5,000 directories the links on which are no longer recognised by Google.

Reciprocal links are what counts. Google state quite clearly that excessive link exchange has no validity.

What advice do Google provide ?

The experts at G are more than helpful and you should insist that your webmaster complies with all the guidelines on http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/

All that SEO requires is an understanding of the genius guys at Google, and knowledge of the algorithm, and its almost daily changes.