I've recently been dipping my toes into SEO for a client of mine La Peniche (see I've even learnt to link to them all the time as I did this I've noticed something about search results.

If you do a search for Dublin Restaurants you wont find any restaurants for a least two or three pages. All the results are 'guide sites' with lists of restaurants, most of these sites are pretty mush useless - just adwords holders.

So now I'm in a postion where I can't really expect a small restaurant site to get above these sites with many pages, so I pay for adwords - hence completing the circle and encouraging more link sites

Of course Google is not going to mind as they're coining it in on the adwords but do you think we're near a stage where a search engine that actually returned results might compete with Google? and do we realy want a web full of adword sites with no value add?

des

Hmm.. well if you keep linking to it like that it should rank pretty well for 'La Peniche' soon enough

The real issue is what are people looking for when they search 'Dublin Restaurants'? My guess is they want reviews of Dublin Restaurants. Internet time is short and people want aggregate results.

Why not target sub-niches rather than an entire set?

__________________
Search Engine Optimisation - Red Cardinal Internet Marketing
Internet Consultant Ireland | Search Engine Optimisation Services
Catering Company Dublin - My sister's handmade canape company!

True but thats not what their getting - there just getting a list of restaurants with no value add (like reviews). They're simply sites put up to put adwords on.

In fact I couldn't find one non-perfessional restaurant review site.

des

Right - I'l have to take a look at the SERPs to see what you're talking about here.

So your only getting MFA sites returned?

Interesting.

*I can't really expect a small restaurant site to get above these sites with many pages* By no means impossible, but you need to at least include the phrase in the page text ;-) Elizablues.com is around 7 for "Dublin Restaurant" which it heavily targets, it's nowhere for "Dublin restaurantS", but then that phrase doesn't appear in the page text. Have a look through the ads that appear for "Dublin restaurant", I looked at 2 and neither contained the phrase. BTW, who else is getting this on G.ie? Refine results for dublin restaurants: Dining guides Attractions Suggested itineraries Lodging guides Shopping Tours & day trips

I'm not getting the refine option from my location. It's a feature they brought in a while back - mainly shows for generic type searches in the US.

Have never seen it for .ie.

One other thing is the distinction between 'dublin restaurant' and 'restaurant dublin'. People have stranage habits when it comes to 'what where' or 'where what'.

Very often it starts with 'what' then refined to 'what where'. Might be time to do some testing methinks

I can't quite figure out how Elizablues.com did it actually. Although you say they heavly target "dublin restaurant" its not in the page text that often and its not in any of the other normal seo targets: metadata, keywords, alt tags h1 tags. In fact they seem to do a lot wrong - not much keywords/titles no alt tags - photos not with keyword names.

They do repeat Dublin and restaurant a lot but I would have thought the lack of other tartgets would have counted against them. Any ideas?

*I would have thought the lack of other targets would have counted against them.* Shows how important having the phrase in the page text is, the rest is just gilding. They've done a bit of linking and that's about it, the rest of the site doesn't appear optimised at all..

Not sure if it's relevant here, but I'm getting a little more activity on A-Lyric from Google since I sorted out the sitemap thing. That seems to help, though it took a week or so for it to notice the change.

__________________
a-Lyric I Screenplay Europe I Cannes or Bust!