Search rankings dead? I don't think so

Yes I know this blog is supposed to be about the middle age and families and stuff.

But my irritation at the sheep-like search engine optimisation community is just too powerful to resist this opportunity to give my fingers free reign at the keyboard.

It's just this rankings are dead thing. People have been saying it for a while. But Bruce Clay made a splash about it recently (splash link is to a video if there is anybody else in the world like me who hates to wait for a video to load that will then take up 10 times more of your time than the equivalent text content). And I guess he got what he wanted because he got a lot of coverage and links from saying it.

But now everyone and his dog is saying it.

Now I'm not saying all this talk is groundless. Follow any of the links in the above paragraph to find out about how more localised results, video, images and oh dear yes Google's personalised search will or may effect the way Google orders search results.

And I have no beef with the other point the seo sheep bleat: the one about how high rankings are useless if the people who come to your site don't convert (buy/contact you/sign up) when they get there.

But I would argue the converse is also true. In other words, the old seo chestnut about great content that converts well being useless if nobody comes.

And how are people going to get there? Digg? Stumbleupon? Twitter? Friendfeed?

I don't think so, not if they aren't looking for the latest article on How Best To Tweet to your Tweeps or similarily naval gazing tactics that is.

No. The majority will be searching on Google. If I actually wanted something, that is where I would go.

And what would I click on? Why the results on the first page of course, maybe some from the second page, even the third if I really needed something. Would I be clicking on videos? No way. Why waste time? Images? Local? Maybe, if they looked like they might lead to something genuinely useful.

I had a sudden panic here. Am I just reflecting my age in the way I search? So I went and conducted a not entirely scientific survey and asked daughter 2 what she would do if she had to search for something. We picked buy New Rave clothes because that was something she recently had to do for a themed party.

So what would this tech-savvy screen-addicted YouTube-watching teen do? Well, she would go to Google and then:

• I definitely wouldn't look at the video" (yesssss!)


• I might look at the images but I would check they wern't something silly like Jennifer is wearing... (she was watching Friends at the time)

So basically, she would do the same as me. Click on the text results in the first page or two of the Google results.

So for both of us Google and the websites that rank are what count - however they got there.

Really, what I am saying is that I still believe the best way to get business for my customers is to get them on the first page of as many relavent popular Google search results as possible - ie to get them to rank.

That would certainly include optimising images for search; video too if it was affordable. Local optimisation for local businesses is obviously a must.

And I would absolutely ensure that what people who click on my customer's websites get when they come is content as good as can make it. I also would try and make it very easy for them to convert. All these things I would test with website analytics software (another of the shiboleths of the rankings are dead crowd.

And good content seems the best way to get promoted in personalised search too - except by competitors of course who, in the smallish local search results I am interested in for my customers, are as far as I can see the only ones using Google's personalised search so far. (Note to self: save anti-personalised search rant for another post)

There are others of similar mind.

As I see it, rankings, far from being dead, are still the number one consideration for SEOs. How we do it may change. But without them, it's us not the rankings but us who will be dead.

Time the Healer

Been a long time...

And reading my last post, I just cant believe how much my feelings have swung.

I'm not talking hormonal fluctuations, just the normal passing of time and what it does with the things that happen to us.

Last post - just a few months ago - I couldn't think about daughter 1 and her impending departure to uni without flashbacks to her childhood and tears welling in my eyes. Maternal guilt was running rampant.

This post - well she's gone. And am I crying? No. Do I think about her all the time? No? Am I waiting with baited breath for her calls and her Blackberry messages? No.

We talk and Blackberry message quite a lot which is great. I don't feel cut off from her. I still know what is going on. I still feel like her mother.

But I'm quite happy without her. The other three children provide enough entertainment and work to more than fill the time that I'm not working.

Next week, she is coming to stay for a few days with her boyfriend. And I am looking forward to it. But I'm also mindful that it will mean extra work for me (lazy lazy person that I am).

How far have I come from the distraught mother of 5 months ago?

So what do I draw from this?

Not much really.

Yes time heals. But everybody knows that. And it never helps at the time.

And I don't believe that the fact that I am thinking and feeling so differently now invalidates what I was thinking and feeling then.

That my children will leave me is a tragedy - a completely right and reasonable tragedy - that I will sometimes experience again. That the bossy five year old with a squeaky voice has gone is another tragedy that I know about but am not experiencing now.

So maybe what I have learnt is that time doesn't exactly heal. But it does change things. Until, of course, it changes them again.

Terrific?

Ok so tomorrow is now today and it's time for something terrific.

Only there isn't anything.

Instead, there is only sadness.

I just read a fantastic post by a mother of four looking back at the hope and love she felt 32 years ago when her first child was born and at how things turned out differently but also the same.

That post really struck a chord with me.

Daughter 1 is due to leave for university in a few months and she will be living in Scotland, a four and a half hour train ride or 30 minutes by plane away.

The family is breaking up. It hasn't always been the happiest family. In fact, sometimes things have been downright terrible. Even so, it was a family, my family, and I have lived inside it for nearly 19 years.

And soon, it is to change, shrink a little, lose a member. It feels like an amputation is beginning and I can already feel some of the raw pain. Images of daughter 1 as a 5 year old flash into my head all the time, a bossy little girl with a squeaky voice telling everyone what to do and all I can do is cry.

And daughter 1 is only the first. The others will follow. In 7 years, they will all be gone.

Pretty obvious stuff? Well yes, only... I hadn't really realised it before.

What makes all this really bite is something similar to what Ms. Moon, the authour of the post above, is experiencing:

I wish, oh babies, I wish - I could have done better by you sometimes. I do.

I wish that too. I wish it so hard I could gouge my eyes out with the strength of that wish.

Mothers feel guilt all the time. It comes with the job. But this is something more. I know I could have done better by them. I know I should have done.

Cracking content

I read the other day that if you don't write on your blog for a while, you should'nt apologise, you shouldn't even mention it. You should just set to writing some really cracking content so that your readers (who?) will just be grateful that you're back.

Hmmm cracking content. OK I'm lighting a cigarette (horrified intake of breath) and thinking.

More news from the kids' exam front? Not cracking. Walks with the dog? Not cracking. Lack of progress of builder at recreating our shower room? Definitely not cracking.

Think I'll go away and hide my head in the sand and come back tomorrow with something really terrific.

Worried about daughter one

Today, I suddenly got worried that daughter 1 was taking drugs.

I know she has taken drugs, both weed (which is what you have to call it now) and cocaine. But not much, I have always believed. It's the boys in her group who mainly take the drugs and most of her girlfriends don't. They drink instead, but that's another story.

Today though, I wondered if drugs were behind her recent inability to do any work.

Her A levels are in a week. And yet every opportunity she has to do some revision, she uses to watch one of the endless stream of US soap operas she follows. And if she isn't watching TV, she is on the phone. The sound of her walking up and down the stairs with a portable plugged to her ear is one of the top irritations of my life at the moment.

She says she knows what she is doing. She's done well up to now without working overly hard (which is true) and I should trust her to do it again.

She may be right. Then again, she may be pushing the limits too far this time.

And of course, she may be taking drugs.

Time will tell.

Wasted day

Today:

• Took daughter 1 to school (late) because she has an A level. She rung me as I was half way home to tell me she had left her glasses in the car and I had to take them all the way back to school and deliver them in the office because it was too much of a trek for her to walk to meet me.
• Talked to plumber about new shower and shower door.
• Did tiny bit of work
• Picked up son 1 from his A/S level and sat in hot waiting room at orthodontic hospital for long time and then had brief appointment with nice orthodontist and 7 silent students.

Now home but its 5.00pm and gotta walk the dog in half an hour.

Older children don't monopolise your time like younger ones do. But they do eat it up.

I want to be alone

They think its them who want to get away from us. Kids that is. Actually, it's the other way around.

I long for peace, that light airy feel of NOBODY AT ALL being in the house with me. Instead, I got both sons. Son 1 on study leave; son 2 ill. That's ill as in the strange mysterious illnesses that overwhelm at 8.00am and magically clear up by 10.00am ready for a long hard day on the Playstation.

They aren't making any noise but somehow their presence bears down on me.

Just being selfish I suppose.

But maybe (little interesting appercu coming now) it's natures way of preparing for the separations ahead.