 |
 |
Hi folks, A College Head at my institution has questioned why, when he enters 'Postgraduate Study' and 'UK' into Google, our site does not appear unto the 10th page of results. A familiar scenario for most of us, I'm sure. Leaving aside the advisability of such a generic search, I admit that postgraduate information is not well structured or organised on our server, and I suspect this is the reason that we are ranked so poorly. The College Head, however, believes we can improve our ranking in Google and increase hits to the site in the short term, without immediately addressing these problems. My opinion is that Google will not rank us highly if ultimately there is no well structured, meaningful information to link to. This is to an extent borne out by other well-structured, well-maintained sites on our server which do rank well in Google. Nevertheless both he and I are curious to know whether certain sites that appear in the first two pages of results take active steps to 'court' Google, other than the standard good practice of well-structured, valid code and content etc. Does anyone use AdWords or Google Sitemaps for example? Sites that fare well at the minute include: Warwick Newcastle Cardiff Manchester Swansea Edinburgh. Nottingham Sussex RGU Cranfield Surrey Glasgow If you can reply to me off-list, I will summarise back to the list if I get any useful information. Thanks, Mike ------------ Mike McConnell Web Team Manager University of Aberdeen [log in to unmask] http://www.abdn.ac.uk/web/ Directorate of Information Systems and Services Edward Wright Building Dunbar Street Aberdeen AB24 3UF Tel: +44 (0)1224 27 2602 Fax: +44 (0)1224 27 3372 ------------------------------------------