10
Aug
Why is SEO so confusing when it seems like such a simple task
Search
Engine Optimisation for Estate Agents is one of those jobs that
Estate Agents don’t really think about until last. Estate
Agents obviously know that these days you need a website, not just
for promotion and advertising purposes but to be a respected. Once
they have this modern new website then they start to realise
getting onto Search Engines isn’t as simple as they
previously thought...
So why is this....
And why do websites that are old and outdated able to outrank a
great new modern website like yours...
These types of questions are very common in
search engine optimisation and the answer isn’t the
easiest to explain.
We will start by explaining what Search Engines have to do, and
why they make it difficult to rank well.
First off they have to deal with over one trillion web pages,
they have to crawl through them and scan through the pages
analysing all the information they can use to determine if your
website is a reliable and useful one.
They will then have to scan through all the links between the
websites and web pages building a site map which will then be
stored in a database system and then all this great information
will then be provided to rest of the world at a click of a
button.
Once a user makes a search query to its given search engine they
will provide the user with millions of results within less then 0.2
seconds.
And then not to complicate it more Google will have determined
this information with over 200 ranking factors.
On top of this Search Engines will have to battle against
spammers trying to trick the system. They do this by figuring out
ways around the Search Engines Algorithm to obtain ranking they
don’t deserve. Google to try and protect themselves as much
as possible don’t provide information about their algorithm,
making it harder for us SEO’s! But in turn makes it a lot
more difficult for spammers to cheat the system.
Meaning the only way to know about correct strategies is by
keeping up with the forever changing world of SEO, testing
strategies and communicating with our fellow SEO’s around the
world.
So that answers the first question about why SEO can be so
confusing.
We will now move onto why you are being outranked by your
outdated and useless competitors.
What causes unusual results?
There are so many reasons why Google can produce results that
don’t seem right. Here’s a few of the most common:
- 1. Domain Age – definitely one of the
most common factors. Google loves domain age. The older the website
the better, as it shows Google that the website is reliable and
trustworthy. This is a factor SEO’s don’t tend to focus
on as there is only two ways around this.Buying someone
else’s existing domain, which isn’t usually an option
or waiting a few years for your website to mature.
- 2. Link Age – your competitor may have
received a great link which is still driving their rankings today.
Even if you have a lot of links, one link from a highly respected
website can be better then 1000 average links.
- 3. Social Networking – the competitor
may have a better profile of references on Social Networking sites.
This isn’t a huge factor with SEO but it can still make a
difference.
- 4. Bad outbound links – this is another
common factor and you may not be aware you are doing this. You may
be linking to a potentially poor website (that you haven’t
done much research on) or linked to a good website that shut down
and has been taken over by spammers. This could have a huge effect
and is worth monitoring.
- 5. Testing – search engines are
constantly testing and measuring search quality. They vary search
results to monitor the user’s responses. This is usually why
the search results fluctuate every now and again. You can’t
really do anything about this but if you have a good website with
good search engine optimisation, if you’re ranking does
drop it will usually go back up with in a few day.
There is obviously 100’s of other factors of why you might
be getting outranked but these are the most common for when being
outranked by the poor competition.
Watch out for the quality of the user experience and have a good
social networking profile and you can’t go too far wrong with
Google.
By Luke Stanley
SEO Consultant
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