How to improve your Google search rankings

How are people going to find my website?

Thinking about how you are going to reach people via your website is extremely important. Think about the words that you use to describe your organisation, products and services. Then think about how someone would ‘Google’ you. What search terms do you think they would use to try and find your organisation. You’ll be surprised that they may not be the terms that you use everyday. For example, what a local Council may officially call refuse or waste collection, everyday we call it bins, or wheelie bin collections. Sometimes it’s a case of thinking more colloquially and not using corporate jargon.

Different search engines use their own algorithms to rank websites. The algorithms are broadly based on weighting for different elements of your website. For example, scores are given for having page titles, recently updated page dates, hyperlinks, metadata and image tags. You need to submit your website to the search engines and they will in turn visit or ‘crawl’ your site - following navigation links and other embedded hyperlinks to visit all of the pages of your site. Simplistically, when someone searches for a keyword in a search engine, the results listed are ranked according to what these crawlers found on your site and how it rates against the algorithm. This is why your website may not always appear at the top of search results listings.

Try out these tips

There is no one single solution to ensuring that your website appears at the top of search engine ranking results lists. The most that many organisations strive for is to appear on the first page of results in the search rankings list. There are however some straightforward steps that you can employ to try and improve your website rankings. All of these are achievable, but will require some further consideration from you and your organisation about your website.

Try following these simple guidelines:

1. Measurement - how well your site is performing?

In order to improve your website rankings you need to know how well your site is currently performing. You should measure the ranking of your website in the four major search engines and / or any specialist directories that you would like to appear in. To create your benchmark, choose up to six keywords and phrases that people would use to find your site. Search for these and keep a record of the date you searched and the ranking that you achieved. We suggest that you undertake regular reviews every four to six months. So recheck the rankings of your site against these keywords and analyse the results. Think about what you can do to improve your results.

2. Website technical infrastructure

You should check to see if your website infrastructure is search engine friendly? For example, is your content management system solution preventing search engines from accessing your site? Make sure that your site is fully accessible to all users. Ensure that you have:

• Relevant page titles - that appear in the web browser
• Metadata tags – an underlying description of the page content using keywords and phrases
• Image ALT tags – all images have description tags

3. Content, content, content

Your website is nothing without its content. When you write for a website, it’s very different to writing a report or a corporate brochure. The tone and emphasis needs to be much more user friendly and easier to read. It’s very important to include the keywords and phrases that people will use to find your website on the home page and the first paragraph of key pages on the site. People will only be able to find you, if you use the terms in your content that search engines can match when returning search results.

Check:

• That your website provides good content
• Your content is written specifically for your website
• That you regularly review your content – search engines pick-up on the date of when a page was last updated
• That you provide and reciprocate links

4.  Visitor gimmicks and attractions

The main idea is to attract users to your website. You should find ways of interacting with site visitors, as well as retain users. Give people a reason to revisit your site, even if it’s just a gimmick such as a news feed, or quick opinion poll. For example, on the BOCC website we include our Oxford Weather Station. As people in the UK are obsessed with our weather, it’s a good ploy to get people to our website, even though we’re a web agency and not the Met. Office!

5.  Website statistical reports

Make sure that you have a good website visitor reports package in place, such as Urchin, Wed Trends or Google Analytics. You need to review your statistics at least once per month and from these you need to look out for:

• Visitor content trends – what’s hot and what’s not!
• What areas of the website are most visited?
• What areas of the website are least visited?
• How can you improve the website?

Based on this information you may need to move content or pages  around your website and bring popular content to the front of the site.

6.  Paid for advertising

It is possible to pay for advertising, using tools such as Google AdWords, sponsored links, banner advertising, or MSN adverts. These may be relevant to use if you are in a competitive marketplace, or have a particular campaign running around a product or service you provide. This type of promotion can be fairly pricey, especially with lots of organisations competing for similar positions based on the same keywords. Consider getting your website content up to date before anything. Really getting this right should lead to your site naturally working it’s way up the search results rankings.

7.  Useful resources and tools

Google provides a number of useful hints and tips in their ‘Webmaster Tools’ area. From here you can find out about Google Site Maps, Google Alerts and useful checklists. For example, Sitemaps are a way to give Google information about your website and is simply a list of pages on your site. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site.

References

You may find some of the following references and resources useful:

Online

Google Webmaster Tools (Sitemaps, Google Alerts)
Google Webmaster Guidelines
Google AdWords

Search Engine Watch
Information about search engines, useful hints and tips
 
Web Developers Journal
Useful articles on Promoting your website

Web Credible
Useful resource page provided by Web Credible 

Web Writing That Works

The Plain English Campaign

Publications

Viney, David: “Get to the top on Google”; Nicholas Brealey Publishing (2008)

Grappone, Jennifer and Couzin, Gradiva: “Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day”; John Wiley & Sons; 2nd Edition (2008)  

Nielsen, Jakob: “Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity”; New Riders Publishing (2000)

Rosenfeld, L., & Morvill, O.: “ Information Architecture for the World Wide Web”: O’Reilly (1998)

Michael, A., & Salter, B.: “Marketing Through Search Optimisation: How to be found on the Web”; Elsevier (2005)

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