Thread: Free SEO Guide for Irish Business

Hi Leslie

I never have problems with anyone giving away free content!

My only issue with it is the part about the hosting and domains.

If your primary market is Ireland make sure your web hosting is in Ireland. Same for the UK and the US, if they are your main market host your website there.

This will make a big difference if you are not using a country domain, e.g. a .com or .net. If you are using a .ie or .co.uk the difference will be less noticeable - but it still makes a difference in Google’s search results.

Maybe it's how I am reading it in context, but to me you are saying that if you don't host your site in Ireland (even with a .ie domain name) that it will make a difference to the search results.

Please correct me if I'm wrong??

If this is the case, well that's not true. You don't need to host in Ireland at all. The .ie is sufficient enough to make Google believe your business is in Ireland and there are other ways of "fooling" Google into believing your site is based in Ireland.

Tom

Hi Tom,
I'm no expert in this but where you actually host the site does come into play according to some people??
//Gary

Originally Posted by tomed

Maybe it's how I am reading it in context, but to me you are saying that if you don't host your site in Ireland (even with a .ie domain name) that it will make a difference to the search results.

Please correct me if I'm wrong??

If this is the case, well that's not true. You don't need to host in Ireland at all. The .ie is sufficient enough to make Google believe your business is in Ireland and there are other ways of "fooling" Google into believing your site is based in Ireland.

It may need some clarification as it is the 'pages from Ireland' results that can be affected by the location of the site. However it is possible to use Google Webmaster Tools to 'locate' the site. A significant number of .ie domains are not hosted in Irish servers and Google has no problems with them.

Regards...jmcc

Also one very important point that may be missing (I just took a brief look at the document) concerns the danger of using a purely Javascript navigation system. Many search engines do not index Javascript (MS Live is doing some weird stuff though) and a links menu that is purely Javascript may be ignored.

Also Sitemaps might be worth a paragraph or too.

Regards...jmcc

Originally Posted by tomed

Hi Leslie



Please correct me if I'm wrong??

If this is the case, well that's not true. You don't need to host in Ireland at all. The .ie is sufficient enough to make Google believe your business is in Ireland and there are other ways of "fooling" Google into believing your site is based in Ireland.

I dont think you need to fool Google - the webmasters tools lets you set a country - and even then you can sometimes show for more, depending on your search and link history.

I don't think you have to host in Ireland in order to show. That would be anti-free trade and Google is an openly free-trade, globalised company. In fact they even have a video about this. I haven't seen this as an issue before.

Sure,if you have a .ie and host it in Ireland it will definitely have an advantage over a ".com" hosted outside Ireland that isn't seen as an Irish domain.

There are issues with your free content too - it just reads like the numerous top 10 tips for SEO - most of which are just read from other peoples sites and largely worthless or innaccurate. Most SEO is base on past experience - but it doesn't mean that a couple of successes makes you know everything. You've rushed this and you haven't put anything into context.

For example, your comments on flash will only continue to cause confusion should anyone read it. You are saying flash is now only ok if used in the header? So you can use flash in other places either? What if you wanted to use flash where you'd normally have one image to rotate different images? how will that negatively impact your site?

Secondly you can do much of what Flash does in other ways - there is Microsoft Silverlight, there is javascript and javascript content can be read. I'm not advocating it - I'm just pointing something out.

Your next point almost sounds like you shouldn't place text in images - this isn't true - you can do both.

The description and keywords tags are no longer used for ranking - please refer to the Google Blog for this.

Your advice on keyword stuffing and having a "couple of hundred" keywords is far from good practice and you haven't presented a balanced approach with this information. The number of words doesn't have to be "a couple of hundred" and it is not "best" to stuff keywords or use as many from the "research list" as possible - even though it may seem "ugly".

You clearly haven't bothered keeping up to date - links from Directories are largely useless - they tend to have little relevance to the sites being linked from, they're being pushed down the list with every Google update. Worse are PR sites and ARticle sites because of the huge spam they create - and they'll probably have little effect in 2009 and later.

Yahoo ansers have a nofollow tag and squidoo lens are very open to spam. Again something thats not a good place to build links in


Reciprocol links? Really?

What if there is no social aspect to people creating links on social media or with social bookmarks? Isn't that contributing to spam? isn't that why Google are reducing link value from these sites?

Originally Posted by garycocs

Hi Tom,
I'm no expert in this but where you actually host the site does come into play according to some people??
Gary

Hi Gary,

Yes it does come into play, however as mentioned in my response, there are other ways of "fooling" google into thinking your site is hosted in Ireland.

Hosting in Ireland is only one way of geo-targeting your website, there are other ways of doing it.

One other way is by doing what the lads suggest below, using the Google Webmaster Tools to geo-target your website.

You could also be hosted in Ireland and ask your hosting company to put your site on an Irish IP block.

All of these will make your site geo-targeted to Ireland. But the simple solution is just to get a .ie domain name.

Originally Posted by jmcc

It may need some clarification as it is the 'pages from Ireland' results that can be affected by the location of the site.

It's not only the pages from ireland searches though. If you do a "the web" search in google.ie, Irish sites are likely to get preference.

Originally Posted by jmcc

However it is possible to use Google Webmaster Tools to 'locate' the site. A significant number of .ie domains are not hosted in Irish servers and Google has no problems with them.

Exactly.

Originally Posted by link8r

I dont think you need to fool Google - the webmasters tools lets you set a country - and even then you can sometimes show for more, depending on your search and link history.

Agreed, but the option of fooling is there.

The idea of fooling Google is not one I would want to run with on any long term site.

I believe that hosting in Ireland help - however if the hosting is outside Ireland and the domain is .ie I think the diference is little - but I want that little.

If you like the article at little love would be nice Sphinn - SEO Guide for Irish Business

Cheers

Originally Posted by caminowebmaster

The idea of fooling Google is not one I would want to run with on any long term site.

I believe that hosting in Ireland help - however if the hosting is outside Ireland and the domain is .ie I think the diference is little - but I want that little.

If you like the article at little love would be nice Sphinn - SEO Guide for Irish Business

Cheers

First off, the term "fooling" is being taken completely out of context there. Running your website on an Irish IP range if the site is hosted in another country is by no means a hack or spamming technique. It's just another way of making Google know that your site should be geo-targeted to Ireland.

Secondly, it makes absolutely no difference where the site is hosted, if one of the following applies.

1. You have a .ie domain name
2. Your site is hosted on a country specific ip range

If you want your site to be geo targeted to a specific country, do one of the following:

1. Geo-target your site using Google Webmaster Tools
2. Get a coutry specific domain
3. Host Your site in that country (e.g. if targeting ireland, host in ireland)
4. Get your site on a country specific IP block

It's that simple...

looks like we are going to disagree on this.

If IP is Irish I agree - if it is not, not.

I have a few .co.uk sites - had most of them hosted with Godaddy in US - moved them to UK hosting and saw a rise in rankings and traffic.

I think SEO is one of those areas where one has to be open to be wrong and just go and find out - the only people that know for sure are the ones in Google...

And yes I picked up on "fooling" it is word usage like that, that gives SEO a bad name.