Backup Anytime

Geansai gorm. What did I learn?
I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of Damien Mulley. If you are in Ireland and blog you will know all about him. He is ubiquitous in Irish blogs. Anyway, where was I. I am not a fan. Indeed I have found Mulley strangely unavailable (even to answer a repeatedly asked question) to amateur bloggers like myself but quick to pull the verbal trigger should someone dare to venture an opinion which differs from what he has freely spoken. I consider much of his commentary (such as the Hardwood Restaurant review) to be abrasive and damaging even when people genuinely try to engage and communicate in a positive manner. So much so that I expect many of his apologetic respondents wish they didn’t reply at all. People however are complicated and dismissing them entirely on the basis of specific events or differences of opinion can serve only to exclude yourself from some positives. He can actually be generous of spirit and use his blog to point to social wrongs. God forbid however that the same woman in this story should on the day she received the H.S.E. letter happen to serve up a meal to Mulley with an attitude, in a manner or above a timescale which wasn’t acceptable. An example of something I like about Mulley is his fresh thinking. I much prefer this to his belief in free speech applying to aggressiveness of speech. This fresh thinking coupled with his blog following can (on occasion) be conducive to producing web marvels. An example of this is the Geansai Gorm competition.

This competition interested me as I had never come across an SEO race with a level playing field. The key was the requirement of a new domain and in addition the need to use keywords which up to then would be uncompetitive.

Granted, some entrants will have contacts for links and even control over powerful domains but these tools combined with the knowledge of when and where to use or not use them are surely part of an entrants skill set from a potential client view point.

The results so far are interesting. I considered joining for a while for fun and chickened out. Not because I feared I would not come first. I knew that I wouldn’t win. But because I didn’t like the idea of coming in below midstream. Somewhat akin to lining up against the wall as a kid to be picked for football, not expecting to be picked first but praying you would be ahead of centre. I now regret not entering as any knowledge I gain from the competition is third hand and I can’t engage in any trial and error.

I did however join in to a limited extent by supporting one of the entrants. I showed my hand early on with regard to my support for Paul Savage. My reason for supporting Pauls Geansai Gorm website was his work in resolving a problem I had with Google some time back.

Anyway, less about Paul and Mulley. This post is not to thank Paul. I have already done that and it was a commercial transaction. This post is not about exacerbating or resolving my own issues with Mulley. I want to be neither “Mulleycoddled” nor “Mulleyfied”.

This post is about what I have learned from the competition and a call to SEO experts, participating or otherwise to assist with putting the list of tasks in an order of importance or weighing the relationships between specific tasks or indeed removing them from the list and adding others.

Here (in no particular order as of yet) are the SEO factors I believe to be important.
The individual list entries may be short and brief. This however is no reflection on the amount of work they require.

1. Good content (original)
2. Prevalence of keywords in domain
3. Number of words in domain.
4. Domain extension.
5. Number of links in.
6. Quality of links in.
7. Location of hosting.
8. Use of Google maps.
9. Proper implementation of site maps.
10. General use of Google Webmaster tools.
11. registration with major search engines.
12. Age of domain.
13. Frequently updated content.
14. Correct meta and alt descriptions.
15. Well managed keyword usage.
16. Blog implementation.
17. Use of social media.

I am beginning to wonder if near complete overall SEO is a financially viable option for small business. Realistically, even with strong management it is very hard to put time weights on these factors as they relate to each other regarding any order of importance.
Even after a generous once off investment one could spent near unlimited time on any of a number of these factors. It would appear to me that strong SEO management from a cost management viewpoint has to be about outcomes and not activities.
In other words, an ambition to achieve a specific page rank for specific keywords may be provided at a reasonable cost but a requirement to keep a site in perfect condition is an ongoing time consuming process rather than an event.

Also (and I am meandering now) is there an example of a “near perfect website” from an SEO viewpoint which most web developers can agree on? Is the measure of SEO simply achieving that number one spot at all costs or are there examples of tacky number one achievers which a worthy web marketer would not be proud of?

I would really appreciate some expert feedback on this. Apologies also for the general usage of the term SEO as I am sure many will see this as one factor and not relevant to many list entries as they may relate to SEM etc. I know I put much of this incorrectly but you know what I mean.

In short. Can you add to the list? Would you remove from the list? Would you dare attempt to list all or some of this list in order of importance?

Go ahead, that’s what I am hoping you will do.

Thanks
John

We got Google Sitelinks. How do we manage them?

For those who aren’t familiar with site links, they are not to be mixed up with web links or site maps.
Sitelinks are generated automatically by Google. The aim is to provide enhanced search results. In our example, if you type “Irish online backup” in to the Google search box (parenthesis not required) you will be presented with a mini site map for backupanytime. The same happens for a variety of other search terms and phrases (including obviously “backupanytime”) all of which we have not identified yet.

If you need more information about Sitelinks you could visit http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/sitelinks.shtml

We were eager to obtain Sitelinks status for some time. The procedure is not straightforward as part of the success in gifting sites on a merit basis lies in the absence of a definite procedure to obtain them. This was a source of frustration when we were trying to get Sitelinks but now that we have them we believe the procedure for selection should be strict and private (:

Anyway, now that we have Sitelinks and got them through operating along a general set of guidelines, we don’t know how to control them. In google webmaster tools the only option in Sitelinks is to remove them. We certainly do not want to do that. The site links provided for our site by Google are relevant and appropriate. Most of the pages covered are pages we would most want new visitors to read (bar the exception of http://backupanytime.com/Is_tape_dead.htm which is a humour page intended for those who know us - I just cant fathom the popularity of it) but there are others we would like to add.

Given that we acquired sitelinks by making our site useful and interesting for visitors (which is the Google selection route) I think it will be difficult to control the sitelinks listing through this wide approach alone. What I am looking for is specific information on how to manage actual site link results while keeping clearly to the spirit of Sitelinks which is to provide useful and interesting information.

If anyone has some information (preferably based on experience) on managing sitelinks once you have them it would be very much appreciated.