Finally! Page 1 for my name

Posted by David Whitehouse

It’s taken me a few months, but finally I am ranking on page 1 for my name, David Whitehouse.

I’m not sure where to go from here for my blog – my sole purpose was to get it ranking for my name – a kind of online centralised store of information so people can see what I’m about.

I’m considering writing a big guide to Google Analytics – as it appears to be something I know a fair amount about.

I’ll also be putting the answer to my AdWords/Analytics problem up soon – I’ve received a nice email from someone who has given me a possible solution, I’m just waiting to try it out at work.

Update – Just thought, rank #1 for my name would be a good target to have.

David Whitehouse is really hard to rank for!

Posted by David Whitehouse

So after my previous rant about how hard my name is to rank for I decided to try and rank for Anthony Shapley – to prove how hard my name is to rank for. Fortunately I have succeeded in ranking for my name in Google.com – but I’m still having problems in Google.co.uk (I need to switch my hosting).

So, here are the results:
In Google.com I currently rank #8 for David Whitehouse, for Anthony Shapley I rank #4

Rank #4 for Anthony Shapley on Google.com

Rank #4 for Anthony Shapley on Google.com

In Google.co.uk I currently rank #64 for David Whitehouse (awful), for Anthony Shapley I rank #6. To be fair, Ant actually ranks higher than me for my own name!!! Although I’ve switched my settings to target the UK in Google Webmaster Tools, so hopefully this will change over the coming weeks.

I will keep you informed of any changes!!!

Getting Search Queries for Google AdWords in Google Analytics – Part 2

Posted by David Whitehouse

Ok so I’ve been doing a bit of research, and I still need to write the script and run a test, but here is the logic I have determined:

If referrer = Google and request_url contains gclid {
utm_keyword = strip_out_search_string(request_url)
}

My only worries is that if you have the Google Adwords Cost Data enabled that despite setting utm_keyword it may overwrite it. This is why I need to do a test. If there are any volunteers, let me know :)

Getting Search Queries for Adwords in Analytics

Posted by David Whitehouse

I think I have come up with a way to determine the search query used to trigger an keyword based ad and then input that data into Analytics.

I’m going to write a plugin for wordpress over the coming weeks – so if you want to see the terms a user searched for, rather than the keyword you bid on in Adwords, in your Google Analytics then watch this space.

Wolfram Alpha Will Help You With Your Poker

Posted by David Whitehouse

So I subscribed to the Wolfram Alpha Blog a few weeks ago, I’ve not really understood how useful it will be. It seems to be great if your doing a degree in maths, other than that I was struggling to see the benefits of using it.

Until now.

You can type in poker hands and it will come back with the odds of having that hand! I’m quite impressed!

So I am a little bit more excited about using Wolfram Alpha now? Although I think they have already made some glaring errors:

  • The name is crap – its named after the founder
  • The domain name is way too long for a search engine you will be typing the address of a lot
  • They are not selling the benefits at all

I think Wolfram Alpha’s release date is tomorrow – I think I will know within a few minutes of using it whether it is going to be a flop or not (I already suspect it probably will be)

Update – It will be a flop, at least you won’t get a single SEO specialist bothering to SEO for it – so it hopefully it won’t be full of spam.

Why is David Whitehouse so hard to rank for?

Posted by David Whitehouse

It’s true, my name is hard to rank for. I’ve got a whole site with a domain name containing my name, and most of the <title> tags also contain my name. So how come I’m not up top?

Many people have a bit of a dig, since I’m in the SEO industry, but my blog is only a few months old. To prove the fact that my name is hard to rank for, just take this into consideration. I’ve done one post on Anthony Shapley and that post is ranking #12 on Google.co.uk, whereas I am currently ranking #51 for David Whitehouse!

So if any of you out there would like to give me a hand, I would much appreciate it! I’ve got some BBC correspondent with the same name as me!

Here is the code (to make things easier for you all):
<a href=”http://www.david-whitehouse.org”>David Whitehouse</a>

Thanks in advance for your support, I’ll keep you updated on my progress!