Tips for Google

This article will look at tips for getting better rankings on Google. For most websites Google is the most important search engine to target. I am going to show you tips for optimising your site for Google, points that will enable you to improve your site's visibility. Most small business website owners are quite lazy or ignorant when it comes to search engine optimisation, so this is where you can get ahead.

Metatags are not important for Google.

Once upon a time you could ensure good visibility in search engines by diligently putting in the right keywords into the metatags. Some other search engines still use the metatags, but Google largely ignores them now. So do put them in, but don't agonise over them if you're targeting Google.

The title tag

The title tag is what search engines read as the title of your page, and it is of course very important. You should limit the length of this tag to 65 characters (no strict limit though). If you're looking at the HTML source, the <title> tag will appear inside the <head> part of your site. Get keywords into the title, preferable the most important ones first.

Optimise for the right keywords

Pick a fight you can win. Be realistic about the keywords you target. Don't choose obvious and general ones that everyone else use, because this will drastically decrease your chances. The competition is simply too strong for it to be realistic if you don't have a huge budget. Say you are in the financial adviser business. To try with keywords like IFA, financial, advice is not going to give you any results. On the other hand, if you try more specific keywords like "financial advisers in dagenham" (if that is your place), you will increase your chances of the right people finding you.

Domain age

Google has tried to decrease the weight of what we can call "opportunistic sites", i.e sites that pop up quickly in order to cash in on something. Some landing pages are good examples of this. One way that they have done this is to look at how long the domain has been around for. A site that has been around for a while is more likely to be a serious site.

Link age

Recent links are better than old links, it shows that your site is being linked to recently.

Link (anchor) text

The text that people use to link to your pages has importance. This is the text used between the <a></a> tags for a link. You should encourage people to link to your pages with the right words, but don't make them identical, as this could work against you. One way of encouraging the right words in links is to give people the links you would like them to use.

Also make use of the TITLE attribute of the link, both for outgoing and incoming links. This attribute determines the tooltip text that comes up when someone hovers the mouse pointer over the link. Put keywords in here. This is a neglected area.

Unique content

Before you could increase your site's rankings by stuffing it with content borrowed (legally) from others. This does not work well anymore, as Google now checks for duplicate content. By allowing your content to be spread on other sites and by including content borrowed from others you are creating problems for yourself. If you pay someone to come up with content for you (this can be a good idea), make sure it is unique. There are tools on the web you can use to do this, for instance Copyscape . Uniqe content is one of the most important things you can do to increase your ranking.

If you have PDF's on your site with the same content as your HTML, you can put the following in robots.txt (a file that should sit in your root directory and is used by search engine robots):

Disallow: /*.pdf$

This will make sure Google does not fetch the PDF's and treat them as duplicate content.

Linking sites

It is not insignificant what sites link to you. A link from a high-ranking site is deemed more important than a low-ranking site. If you are running a link building campaign you should ensure that a good portion of the links come from sites with high enough page ranking. Avoid links from "link farms", they will be spotted and are worthless.

Make pages directly accessible via the menu

If a page is important for you to get visible, make sure you can easily get to it via the menus. The search engines will read your menu and follow it. A direct link would be best. For the same reason make sure your menu is easily readable. Avoid flash menus.

Use a sitemap

A sitemap is an XML document that gives a navigational guide to your site that robots can follow. Sitemaps can be made submitted to Google according to their own instructions.

Use different pages for different keywords

You can only really optimise one page for a few keywords. If you have more, and you should, choose other pages to optimise for those.

Layout and styles

Use keywords in headers, bold text, italic text, and lists. Notice how I'm using lots of headers on this page. Most of them are level 2 headings, only in the beginning do I use a level 1 heading. I could have used another form of formatting, but Google looks for headers.

Use images

If for nothing else, so that you can utilise the ALT and TITLE attributes of the image to get your keywords in. Even try to set the filename to something relevant.

Outgoing links

Your page will be considered a good webpage if it links out to authoritative sites, i.e. other sites with a good pagerank. This is because the whole idea with the internet is to have hyperlinked content where the links are relevant.

External content

Publish articles about your chosen area, but do not post copies of content on your site, due to the duplication issue. Of course make sure the articles link to your site with the appropriate link text.

Avoid unethical SEO

One day you're going to be caught out anyway, and if you are, your site will be punished in the rankings. So what sort of things are we talking about?

Link Farms
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More Googletips

Not surprisingly, one of the best places to get advice is from Google itself. Have a look at Google Webmaster Tips .
The SEOBook has a lot of tips to keep you ahead of the competition, and it will give you lifetime free updates.

This article is a work in progress and has been optimised for the word googletips. Maxweb has great expertise in optimising pages for the search engines, please contact us for a quote.