What's it all about [Google]?

If anyone could help with any part of the original 2 questions - or point me to a Google forum that might assist, I'd be extremely grateful.

Yours hopefully .....

Linda,

For the specific tools you refer to on point 1 I'm not sure there a specific answer - though now I've stated that somebody will come along and correct me!

Re point 2, The click through will always be lower than your impressions as that is the number of people who have actually clicked-through to your website from the searches, which is <10 (less than 10). As for a more accurate figure, I'm not sure what you hope to gain from knowing that 7 people visited your site rather than say, 2 people?

Hi Linda

I have not forgotten that we have spoken, just trying to clear a back log of stuff which should be complete today.

As for your question about semoz - ask yourself what would google do if the top 40 people chasing the term you are chasing all have the same B+ grade ?

Where would google place you? - it is rarely just about logic or any specific criteria, I am currently doing seo on one of my own sites that in theory should be position one page one, more back links than competitors etc however it is currently bottom of page 2 on google.

Many many people only look at 2 or 3 keywords to promote their business, you must look at hundreds if possible.

apologies Linda, must have missed this post!

If I havent mentioned it before, a good tool to use is Keyword spy. If your doing serious SEO work, it may be worth a subscription, or you can get quite a lot from the free trial.

But looking on there, your example keywords don't appear to have a huge UK search volume:

career plan search volume 33,100/mo
career planning search volume 90,500/mo
career counselling search volume 27,100/mo

Compare that to say:
jobs search volume 226,000,000/mo
employment search volume 30,400,000/mo

With the comparitively small search volumes, you should be able to get yourself a reasonable ranking, as there shouldn't be too many competitors. But lower volume, means less targetted traffic, conversions.

Keyword spy is a good tool to see what keywords your opposition is using, as well as giving related keyword ideas.

As Tomsk says, dont just look at a few keywords, optimise for as many related ones as you can.

Obviously with all of these tools, don't take it as gospel, they are just a guide and aid.

If you want to get heavy duty SEO advice, then a good forum is the SEO Chat Forums, but they can be a bit brutal at times to newbies, so tread lightly

A favourite of mine is Matt Cutts Blog, (he heads up Googles webspam team) and he reguarly drops titbits about how to optimise and improve your rankings.

Hi MRB and Tomsk

Thanks for your answers, both are very helpful to me.

Tomsk, you've stopped me wasting time chasing false targets. Instinctively, I'd thought there would be a very close relationship between the SEOmoz rating and the Google page positioning, now I know it's a much looser relationship.

I'll carry on trying to do the best I can but will stop getting hung up on whether the term targeting has improved by minute amounts.

MRB, I thought <10 meant "less than 10" but wasn't sure, being a bit confused by the format. Now I know what < 10 means, it seems to me I can ignore these stats most of the time because the Google Analytics visitor information is more useful. Phew!!

Thanks again and all best wishes for the weekend.

Linda

Just a quick and enormously grateful "thank you" to you all. I'm still working through and implementing the advice you've given me - there's still a lot more for me to do.

I thought a bit more detail on the work done to date might help others making a similar journey to me and protect them from making my mistakes.

I'm optimising for 3 keyword phrases on each "proper" page of the site (having been told there was no point in trying for a larger number) and one keyword phrase on each blog entry. Almost all keyword phrases used relate to only one page of the site.

The blog items are largely chosen for their career-related keyword potential - adding to the blogs is the easiest way for a novice to "expand" her site. I've found that using the keyword phrase at the very start of the title of the blog item seems to improve its placing on Google.

I'd assumed I simply wouldn't be able to compete for the huge UK search volume items. Having looked at the evidence (my competitors have PR7 and include government sites so are well-funded and staffed by SEO experts, whereas my site is PR5 and I'm an amateur), I still think the competition's too stiff. However, I'm going to try, with a page I can't otherwise make work (in SEO terms) for me.

My "Individual Services" page repeats the keywords career, job and work so I've now used these words in my title tags etc and will be linking back to this page with suitable blog items and external links. I tried changing H1 (???) but discovered this mucked up the look of the site, so changed it back.

As regards the lower volume keyword phrases, I think there should be some progress at some time with them but don't know when. A PR5 site halfway down Google page 1 has a D SEomoz rating for career planning, my site's now got an A rating for it and an A+ for career plan - I think it's hopeful.

Have started to look at the tools and forums you've recommended, but am only in the earliest stages of this activity.

Thanks again for all your help.

Best wishes

Linda

Linda, I presume you have access to all the necessary files and if so, you just need to amend the .css files to keep the look you're after but still utilising the H1 tag.

Hi MRB

I'm able to look at the HTML aspect of my site as well as the "Visual" one but don't understand HTML, let alone .css. I did a quick check to find out what a .css file is and now suspect this is a (technical) step too far for me. So I shall concentrate initially on the stuff I do know how to do, recognising it's unlikely to be enough to put me in contention for the keywords I'm after.

Is it possible to keep the layout a human being sees exactly the same while changing the .css files a computer sees, plse? And would it be regarded as "black hat" tactics to do this, if it is feasible?

What I'd dearly love to do if practical, ethical and affordable would be to place extra H1text in very small font and in the same colour as the "margin" to the "Individual Services" part of my site, to pick up the keywords career, job, work mentioned in the body of this page.

Thanks again for advice. Best wishes Linda

Ultimately, in ideal word it is good to have a basic understanding of HTML & CSS, however I appreciate not everybody wants to so if you're feel like having a play you can tinker without causing harm by using the Firebug add-on with the Firefox browser.