SEO's analysis of my site

[Mike Lewis]

Just had an unsolicited email from an SEO guy. He basically said that he had done an analysis of my main corporate site (not the one shown in my signature to this post). He had uncovererd a lot of "issues" that were hurting my ranking, and I should use his services to fix them.

This is what he found:

• The main page "only" has 25 backlinks. This is bad because it lowers my site's ranking.
  
• It has a "Google pagerank" of 4/10 and therefore won't show up in the first page of search results. (I assume he means the "toolbar" page rank is 4/10.)
  
• The site "only" has 82 pages in the index, which is "quite low".

I'd be interested in hearing any comments from you SEO experts here.

Here's my take on this. The sole aim of the site is to promote my main service, which training and consultancy in Microsoft's Visual FoxPro. Now, if a potential client goes to Google and does a "pages from the UK" search, this is how my site would appear for the following search terms:

• Visual FoxPro training: 1st
  
• Visual FoxPro consultant: 1st
  
• Visual FoxPro courses: 3rd
  
• Visual FoxPro programmer: 2nd

and so on (these figures exclude results coming from pay-per-click results).

So, if the site is getting top ranking for the keywords that I think my potential customers are searching on, why do I need to worry about the Google page rank, no. of backlinks and no. of pages on the site?

Mike

 

[TomB]

Hi Mike,

As far as I'm aware PageRank doesn't effect the position of your listing.

Quality backlinks are important though, consider each backlink as a thumbsup vote for your site.

As for number of pages, I would have said it was quality over quality like.

You'd be better having 5 good pages with great information, keyword etc than 500 crap pages full of junk and duplicate info.

I'm sure the epxerts will be along to help out more!

Cheers

T

 

[stuarty]

Just Ignore the email - it's twaddle and sales pitch stuff meant to make you panic.

Tom's right - pagerank doesn't affect your page position.

What I would say is are you targetting the phrases that pay? You say you are using adwords but why if you rank #1 for your phrases? Have you done extensive keyphrase research and tabled all your phrases. Have you implemented the longtail phrases in your web pages?

My tip is do some keyword and competitor research. Look at the social media sites that are specific to your niche and look at what they are doing.

What's your target market? I see you do training? Deloitte are clients I see. Have you looked at any of the deloitte pages - I think they have a facebook page. Other clients may have pages so it's worth checking them out.

Do you post articles on social media sites and forums where decision makers will want your services?

Do an article of the benefits of training - get a copywriter to write an article then post it on squidoo or digg. Decision makers read these things.

Get a top 10 reasons why software training is good article - folk love these things.

Hope that helps.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Thank you for your very helpful replies -- most informative.

On re-reading my original post, I realise it sounds a bit like I was asking if I should pay attention to the mailshot I received. That's not what I was asking. I really meant my question to be retorical. I was trying to make the point that all these "reseach" findings about page rank and backlinks aren't very helpful when the site is already get top ranking in its target market.

Nevertheless, I was glad to read your comments. Just to add a couple of points ....

The figure for 25 backlinks is a big understatement. I suspect he just did a Google "pages that link to" search for the home page. The point is that the site includes a large number of technical articles specifically aimed at the Visual FoxPro community. There are links to these articles from literally hundreds of sites around the web, including all the leading FoxPro commumity sites. The fact is that people are always recommending these articles in blogs and forum posts. All the pages in turn link back to the home page.

I've also got around a hundred of my articles on other FoxPro sites, all linking back to my site. I've never got into social media sites -- maybe I should -- but I've found that keeping an active presence in FoxPro-related forums is very effective.

Stuarty, you mentioned adwords. Sorry if I was not clear about this. I'm not using adwords. When I mentioned paid-for search results, I simply meant that the page position I was quoting was after any paid-for links that appeared at the top of the page.

Thanks again for your comments.

Mike

 

[Terry]

Just to clarify a point: PR does affect SERPS, Matt Cutts said it on one of his SEO videos. He said specifically that it's part of the ranking algorithm but a tiny part and that people should not worry about it.

In regards that email you got; my opinion is trash it!

 

[Mike Lewis]

Terry,

In regards that email you got; my opinion is trash it!

I did that straight away. Even if I did need the services of an SEO, I wouldn't have looked for one in an unsolicited email (especially when there are so many experts here in the forum).

Mike

 

[lydabryant]

I agree with TomB that Backlinks are very important to increase your site's traffic.
Try to produce more quality backlinks.
Good Luck! :thumbup:

 

[Nick1]

It's amazing how many people on SEO / webmaster forums are obsessed by PR. Attaining a high PR is nice, but ranking well in the results is the goal (and converting the traffic!).

As for how many links you alreday have, this guy says 25 - but where is he getting that info from?

Using Google's link: operator to check my own site it says I have 11 links. Using Yahoo site explorer says I have 9000.

I know which one I believe...

 

[Mike Lewis]

Nick,

I agree completely.

It gives me a warm glow to see the page rank icon in my Google toolbar creeping upward. But I don't attach too much importance to it.

For me, there's only one thing that matters: Does the site bring in enough business. For a long time now, I've been getting more enquiries than I can cope with, so I've no complaints on that score.

Mike

 

[Gordon N]

It gives me a warm glow to see the page rank icon in my Google toolbar creeping upward.

I too had that warm glow until I noticed something today!!! :confused1:

I was checking my regional phrases which are doing really well now, number 1 for about six or so that I am aiming for....

....but my PR has dropped from 3 to 1 for some reason!!!! :blink:

Anybody got any ideas why!?!?

 

[Nick1]

There does seem to have been another PR update quite recently, and quite soon after the last one.

As to why your own site has lost PR, who knows??

It's probably as a result of some of the sites you have inbound links from losing PR or falling foul of a new algorithm in some way.

It took me a while to let it go, but you just have to let the PR thing go.

To misquote another phrase: " PR is vanity, SERPS are sanity"

 

[Gordon N]

Here is (part of) my answer - Google updates page rank. Twitter profile pages take a beating. - The Next Web