"Website architecture" Google ranking

[Tom]

When I last checked (I think in January) the http://www.websitearchitecture.co.uk/ domain did not come in the first 900 returns for a search on "website architecture" (in quotation marks). I did some careful keyword planning and wrote text to support it. David uploaded the text and we now come in at No 7 on the first page of returns.

This shows the importance of keywords. First you have to choose them; then you have to hit them. Doing the job properly can save your clients a packet on money website promotion.

[James]

That's a great improvement. Do you think replacing the WA graphic with an <H1> tag and adding metatags could push it even further up?

I agree this proves the point about careful wording etc.

However, in this case do you think people looking for a university course "in something webby" will search on the word "architecture"? I'm not so sure. Should we plan for searches on "Web design" for example? (Now there's a challenge!)

[Tom]

I do not think they will search on website architecture - that's years away.

We'll see if my other target phrases work later on. I spent about a day hunting on all the combinations I could think of and then targeted about a dozen keyword pairs, certainly including web design. I'll aim to find and publish my notes so that we can all have a look and see what has worked at some later date.

Note: as yet, there is virtually no text on index.htm page. This is peculiar. It must be the internal links from other pages which are putting the homepage top in the returns.

[francis]

Zeldman has managed it with the words daily report (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=daily+report&btnG=Search) which, when you consider the amount of online news there is on the Web, is fairly staggering. But, as Tom points out, this has taken a looong time.

[Tom]

But what is the use of coming top for the words "daily report"? One could not guess what content such a name would bring up. My hope is that the words website+architecture will come into wider use to describe a well-rounded approach to web publishing.

By the way, I have added sub to the Grand Fundamental Principle of Website Publishing: 'you should give something away and charge for something else - unless you run a shop site, in which case you should pretty well give the goods away'. Maybe I need another sub to deal with government websites. They have already taken our money and should therefore give everything away. This principle also applies to the BBC. They are looking covetously at Adsense income and thinking how many more staff could earn >£1m/year if they had it. David Dimbleby wrote in this week's Sunday Times (in article about how he was not given a serious interview for the DG job) that he does not think the BBC should use license payer's money to put magazine and website publishers out of business. I agree.

[David]

Originally posted by Tom Turner@May 25 2004, 5:51 am
David Dimbleby wrote in this week's Sunday Times (in article about how he was not given a serious interview for the DG job) that he does not think the BBC should use license payer's money to put magazine and website publishers out of business. I agree.
Tom knows I do not agree with this. I think the BBCs commercial and non-commercial offerings are a force for good. In the main they are of the highest quality and demonstrate to some entirely commercial organisations what sort of level to aim for.

Just who will be put out of business by the BBC? Those whose products are not as good? If so, good! The BBC also publishes magazines, sells videos/DVDs etc. Do you believe that they should curb all their commercial projects and also not build such useful websites.

I think you have to see the BBC as more than a national TV company. It is a national media company. In the same way as it is right for the BBC to transmit schools/educational programmes, so it is right to publish educational materal in the form of a website.

If a commercial TV sector can thrive with the BBC, surely other areas of the media can do the same.

[Tom]

Yes, I know David soes not agree agree. But I think a Dimbleby is a powerful supporter in this discussion.

Take the example of BBC Gardeners World and Amateur Gardening. Why on earth should the BBC divert money we have given them for public service broadcasting and spend it on competing with Amateur Gardening? I think it would be better if they spent the money on better TV programmes. And why should they produce a pretty dreadful gardening website?

It reminds me a bit of the landscape architect/virtual reality specialist we had as a BA examiner a few years ago. He said he had almost been put out of business by a local Polytechnic using equipment bought out of public funds to do the same job cheaper.

[James]

I agree with both of you!

I often wonder why the BBC is allowed to advertise its magazines on its TV channels - the magazines are not free and presumably are not subsidised by the licence payer. But they appear to get free prime time TV adverts which would cost millions on ITV. That does look like an unfair advantage. Perhaps I don't know the full facts of the funding model.

However, the BBC website IS free, although not really, because it's funded by my licence money. Although if I didn't have a TV I can still use the site. In fact, anyone anywhere in the world can use it free. But I'm happy with this - it's a fantastic advert for British culture. It used to be just the World Service that spread the word worldwide. Now we have digital BBC channels worldwide (eg BBC America, BBC World, BBC Prime) and the website to broadcast to our allies and enemies, we're not exclusive.

By the way, when researching for Tom's recent discussion log, I was surprised at the amount of times the students page on websitearchitecture.co.uk appeared in the results! Our work is truly out there now!

A search for James Barker (not uncommon names) on Google (UK results only) brings my university page up in 7th place - not bad considering I have done no marketing!

[David]

UPDATE

http://www.websitearchitecture.co.uk now comes second in a Google search on the terms website architecture (http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=website+architecture). We must be doing something right.

The home page now has a Google page rank of 4/10 - how did that happen?

[francis]

Even stranger, it's showing 3/10 now, less than 1 hour later. No idea how that happened, but have seen similar weird things happening when I was running a training session on Google - some people got different amounts of returned results even though the search term was identical and the time between clicking the "search" button was no more than 5 seconds.

We don't seem to have too many incoming links:

www.websitearchitecture.co.uk&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0]using (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=www.websitearchitecture.co.uk+-site:[url) the URL -site: method[/url]
Using the slightly flakey link: method (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=link%3Awww.websitearchitecture.co.uk&btnG=Search&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)

Weird!

Tom's post of 21st May said that is was "years away" :)

[David]

Hmm, interesting. I'm still getting 4/10 with my Google toolbar on IE6. Do you think it's browser sensitive?

Even more strange; where did this come from...

"Website Architecture: discussion of the relationships between website design, architecture and landscape architecture."

This little tagline seems to be quoted on most of the 14 links found.

All of which reminds me that I really need to knock that site into shape :(

[francis]

Landscape architecture?! Sounds like Tom has been up to no good! I don't think it's browser specific, I doubt Google would do anything like at; we had different results at work with everyone using IE5. Also, the query string from your post contains this:

search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8

so Google is, I'm guessing, being told it's an IE user agent. Try this as an experiment:

My Moz address bar search with Moz identifier (http://www.google.com/search?q=website+architecture&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

See what that brings back for you.

I was going to post a screenshot of Moz, but I'm getting a 503 Authentication Error (password not accepted) error via FTP. Any ideas?

[David]

Hmm, today it's down to third on Google - I don't see any obvious difference between the IE link and the MOZ link.

FTP - sorry, my fault :">

I moved the domain to Clook last week - was at Fasthosts. I set up the FTP accounts but failed to notice that there is a slight change.

All you need to do is to use the username: storr@websitearchitecture.co.uk
Password remains the same.

[francis]

Okay, this is screwy. The first time I tried it today it was 4/10. This couldn't have been cached as I've never had a 4/10 result. I hit refresh and it's not 3/10 and not budging from that position :huh:

FTP fixed, thanks

[David]

At least the best information on the site seems to elicit the best rank. This page (http://www.websitearchitecture.co.uk/webpage/books.html) gets a 5/10 Google ranking. That's pretty damn good for a page less that 12 months old. It is strange. I've worked hard for my 5/10 ranking on CADTutor and yet this page ranks the same by just sitting there ???

[Tom]

Just think if Britain's Olympic team improved as fast us - from 900th to 2nd in 3 months.

The next task is to improve our ranking for terms like 'web design'.

[Tom]

Blushing, I think yjsy a significant contributor to the Website + Architecture page rank is Dmoz.org (http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=website+architecture). (Francis guessed from the mention of LA). I have seen many comments to the effect that the ODP has a disproportionate influence on page rank. It is also the prime, perhaps sole, source of info for anyone hoping to make their first billion from a new search engine.

One also gets good results from links from University sites - I am hoping Phil's link from the UoG main site will get us to 5/10.

[Tom]

Websitearhitecture.co.uk has slipped down the Google ranking for a search on website architecture (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=website+architecture) - because we have been overtaken by the University of Greenwich! I think the extra links Phil put in (http://www.gre.ac.uk/schools/a-and-c/) is wot did it.