British companies in online vanishing act
Cited as a 'new' report on tech news site The Register today, but actually released last July; if it wasn't for the mentions of Google, this article from 'leading' UK ISP Fasthosts reads like it came from 1997.
"UK businesses are failing to take full advantage of the world wide web by ignoring search engine rankings."
Are they not writing quality content? Are they not obtaining on-topic backlinks?
"Almost three quarters of companies surveyed admitted that they do not submit their websites to search engines. As such, their online presence is practically unknown to internet users resulting in lost revenue."
Er, OK. How can we remedy this unfortunate scenario?
"To ensure its visibility online, companies should submit their websites to search engines immediately after website registration and continue submission updates on a regular basis."
Andrew Michael, Fasthosts CEO then goes on to plug their TrafficDriver service:
"websites are automatically submitted to more than 100 search engines each month, and they appear in searches within six weeks."
Pay a bit more and they'll submit to over 400 engines. Wow, that's nearly all of them! It's great to see that UK ISPs are committed to providing up-to-date information and valuable services in all aspects of their business.
400? behave, there are
400?
behave, there are thousands are there not? :-)
Frightening
It's frightening isn't it that this kind of reporting still exists in publications both on and offline from sources that are generally perceived as respectable and reputable. I live and work as an SEO in Germany where it's even worse. They are still writing about stuffing the meta keyword tag with keywords to ensure top rankings in major IT/Internet publications.
It makes want to bang your head against wall (or open up a search engine submission service that submits to 30,000 crappy "search engines" and free for alls ;-) )
Alan
Crap!
Crap! Everybody knows that in addition to submitting you have to put lots of keywords in your meta tags, have hidden text on your home page, have massively long alt tags on every spacer gif, and sleep with a DMOZ editor. No?
In other "breaking" news theregister will shortly announce who is to succeed Ronald Reagan as president of the United States.
Speak of the Devil
I just called out Fasthosts on the carpet for harboring some of the nastiest scrapers I know the other day.
Small world.
Hey bill some of the
Hey bill some of the nastiest scrapers are probably members here. ;-)
Does DaveN own that ISP ?
Does DaveN own that ISP ?
I'm not shocked
Not even a little surprised
Only kidding
Bill,
Hopefully webprofessor's comment was meant light-heartedly. I believe Fasthosts are/were Bigmouth Media clients, which surprises me. Surely with such an excellent grasp of modern SEO they wouldn't need to bring in an outside agency?
yes I was jesting but DaveN
yes I was jesting but DaveN does own an ISP or webhosting company of some sort. He mentioned it on Strikepoint.
The majority of folks
The majority of folks outside of the industry do not have a clue about SERPs and how to get them
People I speak to and come onto my forum often ask how to submit to the SEs
But it's not surprising really - anyone from outside any industry doesn't have a clue - there just needs to be some cleaning up/ a trade body or something so SEOs don't "become" plumbers and the like :)