A Challenge

[ctabuk]

OK - I'm not the best SEO guy on the planet -I'm a Search Engine Marketer - if you have been following the Does Google seek new Content thread you will see that Peter (IMC) and I have slight differences of opions over .govs. And I know that some dot govs will be using this title. So I'll look forward to seeing Peter's views on this.

As a Company we are moving into Shared Ownership Mortgages -they are becoming big business in the UK -mostly due to soaring house prices.
My site Right to Buy from Council Tenants Advice Bureau (UK) Ltd fares pretty well on the pages that I have optimized for my keywords. In all I have 800 different search terms that find me listed on page one or two on Gooog - But Shared Ownership Mortgages is going to be a bit of a bugger. So I have created this SHARED OWNERSHIP MORTGAGES « SharedOwnershipMortgages

I did that this morning - I'm not intending to feed anything other than news items that have the tag 'can be used' in other words no copywrite restrictions.
I have around 30 different e-mail addresses - so I can self add loads of content from various sources.

How would you guys go about getting this highly placed on Google? -I'll be up against loads of really good websites -I have just created Sharedownershipmortgages -dot org and dot org.uk (I'll not use the dot org but just stop someone else getting it!!)

I now have possibly one of the best known forum usernames around -with massive IBL's to "ctabuk" -would I be risking too much by routing those through? -It can be done!!

OK - any ideas welcomed.

[ctabuk]

I found this and maybe it applies to why Google will always favour .gov sites


Google seeks better access to government informationBy Daniel Pulliam dpulliam@govexec.com October 25, 2006
Officials from the leading Internet search engine are working to remove barriers that prevent their technology from reaching vast troves of information buried in government databases.
Internet users want government information because it has a reputation for being reliable and accurate, said J.L. Needham, a strategic partner development manager at Google. But while portions of agency Web sites are easily indexed by Google and other common search engines, the engines cannot search other areas, known as the deep Web.
For instance, Google cannot scan information in the database housed at the Environmental Protection Agency's Regulations.gov Web site, Needham said. The site allows users to view government regulations and post comments on proposed agency rules.
"If you were a business owner and found out you were potentially subject to a new regulation that you wanted to find out more information on, it may be difficult to find this information using a search engine like Google," Needham said. "The problem is that search engines are unable to crawl the full text of many government agencies' databases."
As much as 40 percent of the content on agency Web sites is invisible to Google's crawlers, Needham said. This means that for a majority of Internet users who do not know how to look beyond a search engine site, that information is effectively invisible.
Needham said he is meeting with a variety of agencies to discuss how the information housed in their databases can be made available in the search results from engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN. One method would be to use Google Sitemaps, which enhances Google's search results, Needham said.
Implementation of Google Sitemaps by a federal institution that maintains one of the world's largest networks of sites, including many databases, doubled the number of Web links found by Google, Needham said. This allowed for millions of new documents to be included in search engine results, he said.
A Dec. 16, 2005, memorandum from Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, required all agencies by Sept. 1, 2006, to set up their public information so that it is searchable. It stated that "increasingly sophisticated Internet search functions" can "greatly assist agencies in this area."
Agencies also were required to provide all public data in an open format that allows the public to aggregate "or otherwise manipulate and analyze the data to meet their needs" by Dec. 31, 2005, according to a separate OMB memorandum signed by Johnson on Dec. 17, 2004.
Mark Luttner, director of EPA's Office of Information Collection in the Office of Environmental Information, said the agency's e-rulemaking program management office is working with OMB to respond to a recent request from a search engine company that wants to index the Regulations.gov data.
In addition to the technical challenges presented by the company's request, EPA has to consider whether a commercial company could assert proprietary ownership on federal data and whether providing government data to one company would provide an unequal playing field for other companies, Luttner said.
Needham said Google, for one, does not want to assert ownership over any information obtained from agencies, and agency efforts to improve the ability to search their Web sites would likely be equally beneficial to its competitors.
Commonly used search engines like Google are able to index other agency Web sites used to disseminate information, such as the Small Business Administration's Business Gateway e-government initiative.
Nancy Sternberg, the program manager for Business Gateway, said the initiative's Web site, Business.gov, has been optimized for all major search engines. But Business.gov does not contain a separate database, Sternberg said, which would make indexing much more challenging.
Search engines cannot index the Grants.gov database housed at the Health and Human Services Department, according to John Etcheverry, director of grants systems modernization at HHS. But in 2007, Grants.gov will implement a Google search appliance that will let Google scan specified database tables with grant synopsis information, he said. Allowing search engines to crawl the entire Grants.gov database would create security vulnerabilities since it contains sensitive applicant information, he noted.
Google's forays into the government include a U.S. Government Search Web page, which is intended to provide a single location for searching across agency information and for keeping up-to-date on government news. Google maintains the site is not intended to compete with the government search site hosted by the General Services Administration, called FirstGov.gov. Rather, it is intended to complement it, company officials say.
John Murphy, director of FirstGov.gov technologies, said the FirstGov.gov pages are optimized for all search engines, but the MSN-run search tool is specifically directed to searching government Web pages, including those hosted by state and local governments.

[SemAdvance]

David,

How does a US .gov site have anything to do with UK shared mortgages?

What does any . gov site have to do with mp3 downloads? or custom t shirts?

.gov links are valuable when they are relevant to the site, however just like .edu links unless related to education or government the value of the links is most likely devalued.

Spinning wheels.....

[Peter (IMC)]

Considering that you mentioned that "Shared Ownership Mortgages" is a new thing, I decided to go to Google trends and see its search volume over the years. What a dissapointment. No results.

So I went on to Google Adwords Keyword Suggestions and tried my luck there. That went better, moderate amount of searches in the UK.

Google trends does show results for "Shared Ownership" and some increase in the last 2 years.

an intitle:"Shared Ownership Mortgages" inanchor:"Shared Ownership Mortgages" intext:"Shared Ownership Mortgages" search in Google UK. Gives about 929 results. That's quite a lot. You´re not the first.


Now I'm not sure what the above has to do with .gov sites.

But to continue the .gov discussion. Your second post already shows that .govs are more difficult to search engines than easy. That´s pretty logical because .gov sites don't have a comercial interest. When a citizen needs something from the government it won't be that difficult to find, as long as you know what their site is. In other words, there is no insentive for the government to be more search engine friendly.

But then how come .gov sites do rank just fine? That´s kind of obvious I think:

* lots of useful content
* no competition
* frequently updated
* lots of backlinks
* they talk about just about everything
* very trustable (don't disagree! )
* etc.

It´s like the ideal site for a search engine. They have no interest in high rankings..

What do you want for your website? Is the list above close to it?

[ctabuk]

Hi Guys - I used the USA one as it was the only one that covered that topic.

You have to think 'Government United Kingdom' -We have a new Prime Minister and he is talking about creating a 250,000 House build programme all on Shared Ownership terms. As these schemes get going then the UK .dot gov sites will have pages relating to that term. So I am forward planning. So I will have two unique URL's and a blog with the same title. I should be OK -fingers crossed.

Any ideas welcomed. Thanks Peter -Cheers David

[Webnauts]

I hope that I am not going off-topic here.

I have a back link from the US government to the homepage of my web site webnauts.net

Searching with google the keyphrase "Skip Main Content", my article Skip to Main Content Links are Important ranks #1 out of 558,000,000 pages and I am above USA.gov: The U.S. Government's Official Web Portal

Check that here: skip main content - Google Search

Does that make some sense to the topic here?

[Peter (IMC)]

Kind of, but your high ranking is because you´re in reality competing with 7 or 8 pages, not 558 million pages.

inanchor:"skip to main content" intitle:"skip to main content" - Google Search

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Kind of, but your high ranking is because you´re in reality competing with 7 or 8 pages, not 558 million pages.

inanchor:"skip to main content" intitle:"skip to main content" - Google Search

You are right Peter.
I did not look so far...

[ctabuk]

Well my blog got no listings as yet - so I have been buying URL's that fit the title of the search term - I'll be using RSS Feeds from Google Alerts - but these will also be on my main site - I assume that as these are so readily available that the duplicate content issue will not be a problem?