When someone performs a search on Google (or any search engine), Google relies on over 100 different factors to determine which page in its index is the most relevant to that term in order to rank it in position 1. Note that Google looks for the best page not the best website. Accordingly, SEO best practice is to divide your overall list of target phrases into logical clusters of no more than 4 related phrases (“hotel Dublin, hotels Dublin, hotel Dublin city, hotels Dublin city” for example) and assign these phrases to the most relevant page on your website. Links to the website, links to the page, page download speed, site age, presence of up to date sitemaps, presence of 404 errors and much more are all analysed by Google in less than a tenth of a second. However, perhaps the most important metric, quite logically, is whether or not the phrase that has been searched for resides on the page being analysed. Obviously, if you want your page to rank well for a particular phrase and Google wants to put the most relevant page for that phrase at the top of its results, it makes sense to include this phrase on the page on a number of occasions. By doing so, the message to Google is clear:

If you are looking for the most important page on the net for this phrase, don’t look any further, it has to be me as I’m mentioned on the page 3 times!!

However, we do understand that ultimately human beings will view and judge the page. As a result, engaging in keyword stuffing, whereby the keyword is jammed into the content several times in inappropriate places, while this may help ranks, drives down conversion rates. So, there is a balance between content that works for SEO and content that works for humans and finding the balance can be challenging.

Our approach is to advise our clients what phrases we are targeting to what pages on their site and then ask them to provide us with the content. With a bit of care and backed up by in-depth knowledge of their business, clients can deliver content that helps us get great rankings but also reads well. For example see the below from Scott Murray, the proprietor of Bar Sport in the UK. He has managed to get his target keywords for the page very well represented on the page but at the same time it reads well and is informative.

So, when writing content, our advice is to remember the phrases that you want that page to rank for and then start writing naturally all the time keeping an eye out for opportunities to include the target phrases. By doing this, you should be able to write content that satisfies your potential clients and search engines.

Bars for sale
Since the onset of the recession, there have been a lot of bars for sale / bars for lease throughout the UK. A simple Google search of "bars for sale" or "bars for lease" or "bar for sale" "bar for lease" reveals the true glut of bars now for sale and lease in the UK. However, in the vast majority of cases, the reason that the bar is for sale or lease is that the previous owner went bust. Does it make sense to buy or lease a bar when the previous owner couldn’t make enough money to keep it open? So, while the fact that there are all these bars for sale / bars for lease may look like a good opportunity for would-be pub buyers, one must ask why are so many bars for sale / bars for lease? Typically, because these bars are merely alcohol selling houses offering nothing new. Such bars have been slaughtered in the recession as they offer nothing unique; they just sell booze.

Our food menu and family friendly environment ensures that families see our bars as a viable, fun alternative to restaurants. Because our premises are the best place in an area to watch sport, serve great food reasonably priced and are totally family friendly, we tap into a market that failing pubs never could. So, yes there are loads of bars for sale right now but they are selling a concept that has failed. Bar Sport is selling a concept that has proven to be successful and crucially recession proof. So when reviewing bar for sale/ bar for lease in the UK, make sure to pay close attention to Bar Sport, the only bar chain expanding through the recession.