05 September 2008 Eighth To First

Currently a search on Google for pigs don’t fly brings up my page as eighth. For pigs dont fly (without the apostrophe) I’m third.

I know there are many lists and posts around for ways to maximise your SEO, but I was hoping my readers could give me one piece of practical advice each. How do I work towards a ranking of first?

Posted by Zac Martin
7 Comments
  • Peter Wagstaff
    Posted at September 6, 2008 2:17am, 06 September Reply

    More importantly, how can you “get to first” when someone searches for Social Media Marketing or marketing advice?

    People searching for “Pigs Don’t Fly” either (a) know who you are, and will find you anyway, or (b) are pig farmers, who won’t be interested in the shit you’re blogging about anyway!

  • Zac Martin
    Posted at September 6, 2008 2:36am, 06 September Reply

    Long long term maybe, but I think short long term I should at least be getting my blog title to come up first.

    And who says farmers couldn’t use a social media strategy?

  • Micheil
    Posted at September 6, 2008 1:58pm, 06 September Reply

    I’d have to say one of the keys to getting a high google ranking would be having valid xhtml/html and an accessible website – or, on that can be read by screen readers.. and that’s about as much as I really know about SEO.

  • Jye Smith
    Posted at September 6, 2008 7:27pm, 06 September Reply

    @peter wagstaff – some valid points. I’ll never forget hearing about 3 wanting to optimize their site for the number ‘3’.

    @zac – i think it’s important to rank well for the issues you’re addressing too. Nearly all of my traffic comes through search (mainly for opinion, reviews and how to)

    You do have some valid points – many, many people don’t bother entering URLs and just enter it in the Google search bar. There’s plenty of stats backing that. So I think your venture is a very valid one.

    The problem is the apostrophe. When the algorithms work for URLs, Search etc they need to convert it to a HTML code.

    As a general rule I advise people to avoid any punctuation in the title of their blog. And it also depends on how people search for your blog, do they search with or with out the apostrophe?

    Give me a buzz if you want to chat through some more detailed stuff.

    Best,
    Jye

    P,S
    great podcast last week.

  • katherineliew
    Posted at September 6, 2008 10:03pm, 06 September Reply

    Back in the day, it helped a lot to register your website on http://www.dmoz.org – it’ll help with other search engines too.

    With most blogs I don’t think you can edit your header section, but if you can then editing your meta tags might help too.

    [/geekiness]

  • Matt
    Posted at September 8, 2008 9:42am, 08 September Reply

    Hey Zac, you need a few more links pointing to your site that use the words ‘pigs don’t fly’ as the link, and it wouldn’t hurt to write the words ‘pigs don’t fly’ in heading tags a few more times on your page. If you want more control over your rankings (and your content), switch to WordPress. Blogger is a bit like a pair of thongs – great for occasional trips to the beach, but if you want to run a marathon or go hiking in the woods, get yourself some sturdier footwear.

  • Zac Martin
    Posted at September 8, 2008 8:09pm, 08 September Reply

    @ Matt

    How hard is it going to be to convert though? Will I lose my current rank completely? My posts? My design?

    I think I’ve invested too much…

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