Here are a few tips from Lincolnshire Web Design.
If you already have your own web site and are struggling to get
your ranking on Google improved, here are a few tips you can follow. None of them will cost you anything but your time. The changes to your web are quite subtle, but
will make quite a difference to how your site is ranked.
Google ranks
web sites in a number of ways, one is by title of your home page. To
improve your ranking, make sure the title of your home page is no more than
12 words long, preferably in groups of two words separated by a comma,
and that you include your main key words in the title of your homepage - don't simply call it 'Home'!
Additionally,
keywords are best written in your body text in groups of two, such as
"web design", "corrugated boxes, corrugated cases" and so on.
However, avoid too much repetition of keywords. "Keyword stuffing" as this is
called, may only serve to reduce your overall ranking in the search engines.
Text is king. In these days of
moving graphics, video and 3D, Google
only really takes notice of text. The
more text based information you put in a
site the better. If you make the
information in your site relevant and
interesting, Google will come and will
index your pages quite high up the
rankings. Good text based pages are more
important than almost anything else you
can do.
Links to your
web site from other ranked and recognised sites or directories play a key
part in how Google and Yahoo will rank your site. (These are known as
ranked in-bound links). Try to get your site registered with as many good
quality directories as possible. Some are free, others make a small charge.
This is well worthwhile.
Make sure all your web sites pages are indexed. A major fault most search engine
optimisers and web designers make is only to optimise the home page. Google ranks pages, NOT web sites. Make sure your home page has direct links to every other page
and optimise each pages text and keywords. You will vastly increase your chances of success. Cool home pages with no links to the rest of your site are no good at
all.
Google
especially, takes note of changing information on web sites and
typically, you should try to add a page a month, or change the text on
at least one of your pages regularly. Typically, between 200 and 300
words should be enough.
One way to
obtain regularly changing data is by including something called an RSS feed
in your web site. Really Simple Syndication or RSS allows you for example, to
put live news from BBC.co.uk onto your own web site, so your automatically,
get updated and changing news information on a daily basis. Google loves this
sort of thing and we have used it to good effect in a number of web sites.
Make sure your
web site has its own 'site map'. This makes Google and Yahoo's job of
crawling and indexing your web much easier. Again, this is something most major
search engines look for. This should be linked directly off your home page for best results.
Stay away from 'landing
pages', or opening pages with little or no text. Google hates them and,
by the way, so do web users. You need to get Google to index your home page
and your customers to go straight to it. Don't waste your time with fancy
landing pages saying click here to enter - its old hat, people hate them and
Google can't rank pages like that with little or no information in them.
