What search would you apply if you needed....

I'd search for "health and safety somerset" for example

so I'd suggest changing your site title to start with "Health and Safety" rather than "Smart Health and Safety" etc

but it all depends on how many links you've got to your web site. if you don't have many links to your web site, but your competitors do, then google will consider your competitors web sites to be more important/relevant to someone searching for "health and safety" than yours.

take a look at what your competitors are doing, what do they use as a site title, what sites link to them etc

I hope that helps

Tom

CRM Software, Contact Management Software, Quotes, Invoicing and Billing, Contact Database for Small Business

Thanks Tom. yes links building on a daily basis. It is the search analogy I am interested in for certain.

Mike

To be honest Mike you have touched on an interesting point. The amount of people I speak to who dont know their target audience is scary!

Personally i always search for xyz in the town im looking for, but do sometimes take the "in" out as it affects the results - does that make sense lol. Re & or and, think its personal preference, again as a user id probably type "&" first but if i didnt get any results id try "and"

Not sure if ive helped, but thats my 2 pennies worth

It does Clive, I had not thought of the word 'in.'

Thanks

Mike

This might be a silly question, but have you actually listed your business on Google?

Yes, indeed I did Mary. took the call with my pin code to verify and entered it up. Seemed to go through fine. Anyway, you got me to thinking so have just repeated the process and entered the pin provided by the phone call.

The message displayed was a standard thank you, your listing will be displayed within 24 hours. Now I wait...

Thanks

Mike

Sorry. I think I've spent too long providing informal tech support at the family-member level.

Hi Mike, interesting subject, and not straight forward!

Assuming you are signed up with different directories, maybe vary your listing title names, and plot your progress.

For example, with us, you are listed as:
SMART Safety and Health Solutions

and your address is
North Newton
Bridgewater
Somerset

This is currently giving you the following results on Google:

Safety and Health Solutions Somerset - top page 1
Safety and Health Solutions bridgewater - top page 1
Safety and Health Solutions North Newton - top page 1
health & safety consultants somerset - lower page 1
safety & health consultants somerset - mid page 1

So... if you played around with your listing name, which is a key indexable phrase with us directory peeps, you may be able to tweak your results.

eg, maybe changing you MLS listing name from "SMART Safety and Health Solutions"

to:

"SMART Health and Safety Solutions, advice, help and consultancy across Bridgewater, Taunton and Somerset"

Only a suggestion!! No promises, and of course your listing could disapear from the google gods, but SEO is an ongoing game, and its down to results. What do people search for, how competitive are those phrases and what kind of conversion rate do I get.

If a particualr phrase is too competitive, then its time to consider having a play with adwords, but thats a whole different topic!