Search Engine Optimization

One question we get asked a lot is, what does it take to get a particular site into the top 10 of a search engine, like Google. This isn't meant to be a ground-breaking guide, but more a bit of help to those just getting started.

So, here are the factors that go into a site's search engine ranking, in no particular order.

1. Quality Content - The more resourceful your site is, the more visitors you will end up with. Likewise, the more the content changes (good characteristic to have) the more visitors will keep coming back to your site.
   
   And more importantly, the more frequently you change the content on your site, the more frequently the search engine spider (a program that engines like Google use to periodically check websites to gather information for the purposes of engine rank) will come back and visit, which is good!
   
   
2. Keyword Relevance - Simply meant, if your site is on dog food bowls ... how much does the text on your site, discuss things that have to do with dog food bowls (ie. dogs, bowls, food, thirty dogs, etc)? Google not only looks for the term "dog food bowls" on your site, but the fore mentioned variations on the term. You'll want at least a few paragraphs of keyword rich text on your homepage.
   
   
3. Popularity - A huge factor in your search engine ranking, is how many other sites link back to yours.
   
   Typically, you want sites to link back to your with your company name, and your main keyword as the link. Like, John Bee's Dog Food Bowls.
   
   Quantity is important, but so is the popularity of the site linking to you, and the industry. So, a link from Purina Dog Chow to your site, would be VERY, VERY good.
   
   An effective, but time-consuming way to get an edge over some of your competitors, is to trade links with other websites on the internet. This process is called "link exchange", "link exchanging", "reciprocal links", "reciprocal linking", etc. It's too much information to cover here, but we recommend reading up on that topic.
   
   
4. Page Optimization - This is, how well you've used keywords on your pages. Did you use your keywords in your title tag? Did you add meta tags? Did you add keywords to all your ALT (alternate image) tags? You also need to optimize your internal links. You want to link to pages within your site with your top keywords.
   
   Instead of linking this way ...
   
   Click here for dog food bowls.
   
   Consider ...
   
   Learn more about which dog food bowls are right for your dog.
   
   Obviously, this is more about the "guts" of the web page. Most of these optimizations will not affect your visitor's experience, at least not negatively. Pay special attention to the homepage.
   
   
5. Use of Header Tags - Do use header tags ( H1 .. H2 ... H3 .. etc) for your header text. Most sites have a short word or phrase near the top of each page, so you know which page you are on (Example: Welcome, About Us, Contact Us, etc). Not only use H1 tags for this part of the page, but periodically change these slightly and pepper them with a keyword or two. Instead of "About Us" try "About Our Dog Food Bowls" or "About Our Dog Food Bowl Company"
   
   
6. Some Things Not To Do - (1) Do not use a company or software that uses a program that automatically submits your site to many search engines at once. Search engines don't look kindly to those programs, so that can actually get your site banned from some search engines. (2) Do not copy another site's text and use it as your own. Either heavily paraphrase or cite sources as needed. (3) Avoid using Flash or an image as a splash page for a website. A search engine spider will visit your site, and only see a call to a flash file or an image. It typically cannot read the contents of either. Search engine spiders love to see paragraphs of keyword dense text, much more.
   
   
7. Focus In On Your Keywords - Let's say you are an oil painter. Don't shoot for "art" as your keyword, it's much too general. Too much competition. You want your site to be a big fish in a small pond, not the other way around. Try being more specific. Consider terms such as "Atlanta Georgia Oil Painter", "Georgia Landscape Oil Paintings", etc.
   
   
8. Be Patient - Unless you update your site frequently, Google (and other search engines) will only visit your site about every 4 weeks or so.
   
   
9. The More Pages The Better - Google, Yahoo, and others put more worth in sites that have more pages. So, a site with 10 pages, will most likely rank lower than a site with 100 pages, and a site with 100 pages will rank lower than one with 1,000.
   
   
10. Number of Visitors - One last factor to note is that the number of visitors you get daily and/or monthly can affect your search engine ranking. Do you get 10 visitors a month, or 100,000 per day? Most of the top engines take this into account.
    
    
11. Provide A Sitemap - A sitemap is a page that contains links to every page, or, at worst, every major section on your website. It's like a bird's eye view of your site. Not only is it helpful to your visitors, but the search engine spiders love to see sitemaps. It also ensures that all your pages are linked to.
    
    Pages that are not linked to from anywhere else on the internet or your site, will probably not appear in search engines.
    

In conclusion, there is not just ONE right thing to do, to get a high search engine rank. These factors frequently change. There is a constant battle between webmasters trying to get an edge above their competition and search engines changing the way they rank sites, in an effort to be as fair an accurate as possible.