Search Engine optimisation ..............

[paolo]

Alan,

It is because all the sites that return your name are reasonably well ranked listing site ads, or Lay My Hat. And lack of competition. If you put your name in quotation marks to ask for the whole phrase you can see there are very few Alan Knightings with any sort of presence on the web.

If you built your own website called alanknighting.com which mentioned your name many times, you would probably not get on the first page of Google for your name.

Changing your name to anything else would not confer you any favours with a search engine, they would just see a phrase rather than a name.

[ashtondav]

The whole thing is well illustrated by your own location.

Search google for "monflanquin accommodation" and the second place on the 1st page is the grandly named www.monflanquin-france.com. A frequent traveller to your part of France who loves your village would be quite likely to search this name.

In fact it turns out to be a double bedroom in someone's house! The site is quite well designed and there is a lot of text about Monflanquin. Hence its prominent position in a small pond (beating H-R which has an entry lower down)

Search "Lot et Garonne accommodation", which would be more likely for a first timer, or someone not well acquainted with your village and www.monflanquin-france.com is not even in the first 100 pages.

The reason is the amount of competition and the fact that only once on their site do they mention "Lot et Garonne". This time on page 1 google the big boys dominate.

So you optimise for your market...

[Alan Knighting]

Paolo & Ashtondav,

Thanks! It's a black art and I'm not a wizard.

I'll let H-R and FC do the job for me.

Alan

[ck]

Coming back to what niels suggested

Maybe setup a small link section and exchange some links with friends or people from this forum.

Would anybody with a google pagerank be willing to do a reciprocal link with my site. My apartment is in Bodrum,Turkey and should'nt compromise any rental oppurtunities in France for example. Any offers would be greatley appreciated. If you don't want to post please PM me.

Regards to all,
ck

Still trying to get it right!

[giofed]

You can say whatever you want, but google has rampaged since two years ago....and it looks like it's going UP. not down. Ask yourselves a question....Why do I use Google? B4 it was Altavista.....Bye

Giofed

www.holiday-apartment-tuscany.net

[Garri]

Would anybody with a google pagerank be willing to do a reciprocal link with my site. My apartment is in Bodrum,Turkey and should'nt compromise any rental oppurtunities in France for example.

If someone has a place in France why would they put a link to a place in Turkey? It offers no value to their web visitors and just provides irrelevant clutter for their users to scan through.

[ashtondav]

Errr, what Garri!

People go on holiday. Sometimes they go to France, sometimes Spain, sometimes USA. In short, the theme is 'holiday'. People interested in villas and apartment holidays are interested in many countries. Hence the existence of holiday sites.

Oh yes, and its why google benefits those who have links from related (ie travel) sites. Now, had the poster's site been about handbags you might have had a point. And if you ask google they will tell you you don't lose rank for linking to a lower ranked page - thats history.

Cheers - and good luck with the links!

Tudor
www.frigiliana-apartment.com

[Garri]

Tudor, with respect, if I'm on an owner's site (not a general listings site) specific to France, or a specific to an area of France, it is because I am interested in that area/country and not links to another country with avian bird flu

Also, people take their handbags on holiday and they've also been know to buy them especially to go on holiday with. How's that for a theme?

[ashtondav]

BBC:
"France confirmed its first avian cases of the H5N1 virus as the deadly strain spread around the globe."
Oops, i'll never chew on a slice of pink canard again!

[ck]

In reply to Garri's comments with regard to links on other peoples pages cluttering the appearance of those pages. I am not suggesting huge H1 size links across the prime area of the page but a small list at the base of the page in a small font size. Probably disregarded by most viewers but enough for the likes of Google to note the link.
I have had offers from LHM members for a reciprocal link deal and I am very grateful to them.
The whole idea of the LHM forum is and I quote

Lay My Hat is a unique resource for holiday rental home-owners, by holiday rental owners

I fail to see how Garri's site devoted to music-downloads as being at all relevant to holiday rentals in any shape, way or form, an opinion I am sure will be supported by the other OWNER/contributors to LHM.
With regard to his comments on avian-flu and Turkey I was happy to see Tudor's comments on the situation in France. Surely Garri cannot be so naive to believe that the migratory birds returning to England from spring onwards will be immune from bird flu. Will he then boycott all English sites also?
In closing I am still looking for further links if anybody is interested please PM me.

Regards,

ck

[Garri]

Probably disregarded by most viewers but enough for the likes of Google to note the link.

Yeah, and probably enough for the all-seeing all-knowing Google to realise what's going on e.g. an attempt to gain page rank using black hat tactics.

FYI, the avian bird flu was a jest, which is why I appended a smiley to my comment.

With regard to my site 'devoted to music-downloads', it's actually a record label, my record label. It has a French name. People listen to music when they're on holiday and in many cases they buy music when they're on holiday <!--- this is a smiley -->

[oskar]

an attempt to gain page rank using black hat tactics.

I think you have a lot to learn about SEO, Garri.

[Garri]

I think you have a lot to learn about SEO, Garri.

Yes, I expect I have but I won't learn much from this forum. And by the looks of things, you have a lot to learn about web design

[wilko]

In an attempt to improve my very limited computer skills i check out the site to try to learn stuff. Part of the discourse talks of links. would i be right in assuming that if all the participants of this thread were to "link together" that this would enhance all their positions on the deity which is Google?
And speaking of Google; we have translated our site into Swedish. Is it worth offering the option to switch from any page on the site from English to Swedish, and vice versa, as opposed to just offering the language choice for the whole site solely on the home page, and do these factors have any effect on our rankings for Google in Sweden. Lastly any advice for improving our rankings in Sweden would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Wilko
www.maspomona.com

[paolo]

And speaking of Google; we have translated our site into Swedish. Is it worth offering the option to switch from any page on the site from English to Swedish, and vice versa, as opposed to just offering the language choice for the whole site solely on the home page

Absolutely yes. Never mind search engines, there are very few sites that I have seen where you can click on a language flag on any page and actually get that page in translation. Usually just the homepage and a couple of other key pages are translated, and when you go any deeper you are back in the default language. So from a usability viewpoint, this is a real plus.

In terms of being found on a search engine, the more pages you have in Swedish, the better your chances. And the better you optimise each page for particular phrases, the more you can increase your chances.

Swedish is a minority language on the internet, and this means that you can dream of being found for phrases like 'provence b&b' in Swedish, that you couldn't in English.