I want to show you how to get a keyword to number 1 in Google, so I need a keyword that’s not too competitive to  use as an example so as a target I’ve chosen to use my name “Ashley Peake”. Normally this will be a walk in the park unless you share a name with a celebrity,  I don’t know of anyone famous with my name but as it happens there is a shop in Ilkeston, Derbyshire called “The House of Ashley Peake” which will make this a little bit more challenging as they are listed on different sites and directories.

I grew up in a village 3 miles away from this shop but it has absolutely nothing to do with me.  I went through school with every new teacher I had asking me the same question, “Is it your parents’ shop?” I remember getting quite bored of telling the truth so used to make things up, I always found it funny when they actually believed me when said “no, it’s my shop I inherited it and renamed it”. I now live is Stafford so people don’t make the connection anymore, the last time I was asked was a few years ago now on a flight over to Cayman by a guy sat next to me. Anyway back on topic,  what this means is when you search on my name you get 26 results (searching on google uk from the uk) before it gives a page on our main site called “meet the team” where my name is mentioned.

 
So let’s make a start. Firstly I need a page to use, I could use the one that’s already ranking but that’s no fun so I’m going to create a new page on our site called ashleypeake and give it the title “Ashley Peake” and guess what,  I’m going to put some content on the pages which includes “Ashley Peake”.  This is a really important aspect of SEO the search engines have to be able to see your target keyword or phrase clearly, this means using the keyword in a number of different page elements including the page name, title, H1 tag (and other H2,H3 tags), image tags and including it in the <p> tags of the page the actual content. Now it’s easy to get carried away here you can have too much of a good thing and having a page with only your target keyword repeated would look a little spammy and Google would notice the over optimisation and prober ably give it a penalty before I get started. So I’m going to create a simple little profile page giving a little information away but including my name in key elements of the page.
 
So I’ve created my page, what now?  well we have to show it to Google.
 
I need to get my page indexed and I can do this by placing a link on a page that’s already indexed in Google, this will mean it will see the new link and spider my page and few days later my page should appear somewhere in Google’s index. Also using your target keyword as the link text also helps Google identify the target of your page,  it’s very simple when you think about it.  If a site has loads of links to it with keywords like wedding cakes, nice wedding cake, pink wedding cake etc.  it stands to reason that page is probably about wedding cakes and this is the reason external links play such an important role in todays SEO.
 
So I’m going to use this page to link to my new “Ashley Peake” target page, did you notice the link?   
 
After Google first looks at the page it can take anything from minutes to weeks for it to display your page somewhere in its index and this depends on a number of different factors the main ones being - how popular is the page its’ linked from?  and how popular is the site the page is on?  well in this case Blogs get spidered & indexed quite quickly and the site the page is on has plenty of inbound links already so the chances are it will appear in the index within 7 days.
 
The next step is to drop a few other links to the same page with the target keyword as link text, so how can I do this?  well have a read of part2 which I’ll post here as soon as I spot my page in the index.

If you’ve got half an hour to kill then we suggest you take a look at Google’s latest foray into the world of mapping. We were pretty dazzled when Google maps hit our screens, and totally blown away once Google Earth was launched. Now they’ve gone one step further and started taking 360° of our streets, so you can now get an even clearer picture of where you’re trying to get to. Currently it’s only available in 25 UK cities, but after an initial play it’s pretty comprehensive and we managed to navigate our way through Birmingham purely by sight. It’s really going to help with those difficult to find addresses.
But you have to ask yourselves if this is going a little TOO far? It looks like we’re another step closer to the 24hour surveillance Britain that was prophesized years ago, and there are certain schools of thinking that don’t like the idea. The Google StreetView system utilizes face recognition software that supposedly blots out facial features and vehicle number plates to maintain privacy, although it only seems to work when the face, or number plate is facing directly into the camera. Any feature at more than a 20° angle from the camera seems to escape the recognition software, leaving the unsuspecting public open to spying from all over the world. It’s an eerie thought.
But we don’t mind if we get captured on film and we love playing with the new gadgets that Google bring out. Take a look for yourself on www.googlemaps.com

Take a look for yourself

We’ve just launched the latest inception of one of the UK’s most prominent gap year placement companies. The Leap specialise in creating breath-taking, life-changing experiences for students taking time out from their studies, or adults taking time out from their busy career. The Leap takes people on excursions into deepest Africa, South America and Asia helping communities and really making a difference to the communities and conservation.

Rapid Web created a totally bespoke CMS that allows administrators to alter every facet of the site - from a comprehensive experience creator which allows you to create new vacation experiences, add interactive galleries, realtime pricing structures and itineraries, through to a powerful blogging system, online calendar and brochure booking system. It means that The Leap can concentrate on what they’re good at rather than having to worry about spending time updating the site. It’s quick, easy to use and we’re pretty proud of it.